I’m in Esteemed Company

A great many authors I love are cat people, apparently. This pleases me to no end.

Sylvia Plath. Stephen King. Edgar Allen Poe. Neil Gaiman. Patricia Highsmith. Jean Paul Sartre. All cat people. Actually not a fan of Sartre, just wanted to increase the intellectual level of the crowd another notch.

It seems I am destined to be an author based on this information. Should I quit my day job yet, or wait for the book deal?

Haha. My idea of a joke.

I also noticed that this crowd of cat-lovers is a little dark, which also explains a lot. The darker the craft, the more of a cat person the author? Look at me, formulating hypotheses as if I were back in school about to jump into a psychoanalytic seminar discussion. How cute.

My cousin and I were discussing our respective views on cat ladies as a social institution last week, seeing as we both have been branded as such by our family since time immemorial. Our consensus came with her observation that being a cat lady is “underrated.”

Slow clap.

Well said, Lana.

It’s true that we both have significant others so the typical depiction of the lonely old woman who dies alone surrounded by cats (who later dine upon their owner) doesn’t apply (yet), but for a long time it was a widely held belief in our family that we would die alone with only our felines for company.

My saturnine temperament, my adoration of my childhood cat Max (who was seriously a mind-reading apotheosis of feisty black fur), and my insistence that I didn’t need a man as long as I could become a wage-earning author probably fostered everyone’s conviction that I would one day embody this archetype. I think I surprised everyone when I actually convinced someone to marry me.

See, I am the type that had I not found my soul mate at the age of nineteen, then waited nine years to marry him, I’d have been perfectly content to live out the rest of my existence alone. No roommates, just me and my cat. Preferably a black cat, to scare away the neighborhood children.

Not to say that I never imagined being married with children – I did want that, and very much so. I wanted that Disney movie ending just as much as the next little girl who grew up on the cusp of the eighties/nineties, the heyday of The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast. I just never saw myself settling for anything less than a soul mate for a lifelong companion, and I knew there was always a possibility that I wouldn’t find the man of my dreams and live out a typical happily-ever-after (whatever the hell that means). Yes, even as a child – I was that cynical. After all, someone has to end up being Cruella DeVille. Except less mean and with fewer dogs.

So that’s what cat ladies are. Women with high standards.

Tell that to aunt Gladys next time she asks for the fiftieth time why you don’t have a fellow. Or tell her you’re a lesbian, which will probably also get her to stop asking.

I don’t mean to exclude dog people, here. Dog ladies can be similar to a certain degree of course, but there is usually something less melancholy about dog-lovers. They reflect their animals in a way: more open and affectionate, less cantankerous and solitary. In fairy tales the witch living deep in the woods in a ramshackle cabin never has a menacing looking rottweiler or a teacup poodle. Cats are just natural accoutrements to surly old ladies, witches or otherwise.

But don’t picture me as a scary witch or anything! I am too well-humored to be Cruella DeVille. Unless you let your dog crap on my lawn. Then you’d best skeedaddle before I put a hex on you and sic my black cat across your path. I have an itchy trigger finger.

Hmm… on second thought, I sort of remind myself of Edgar Allen Poe; at my writing desk, with the cat trying to annoy me as much as possible: