I befriended a cat lady.
and the joy of quiet activities
The second time I’d ever met this woman, it was her 64th birthday. To celebrate, we ate Vietnamese food and walked the cemetery. Sweat dripped down my back, as we strolled up the little hill covered in tombstones. We stopped at the edge of the grounds. Looking down, I saw a little marble rectangle cracked into pieces, with faded writing.
“The grave of a revolutionary war soldier,” she proudly proclaimed. It was a little known secret. I smiled and babbled on about how young the United States is as a country. In speaking of America’s youth, I heard my own naiveté reverberate back.
A few hours prior, when I’d walked into her house, I knew this woman was a cat lady in every sense of the word. At one point, she’d owned three cats; today, there was just one left, Teddy. I was in charge of him, while she left for a month long vacation to South Africa.
Teddy is a capital little fellow. He’s quite elderly, at eighteen years old. With tufts of black fur sticking up everywhere; he perpetually looks like he’s been electrocuted. Teddy only has one, milky, mostly blind eye. I’m not sure what happened to his other one. He’s mostly deaf too, with only selective hearing in his right ear. When I look at him, he reminds me of a mad scientist or a supervillain.
But, even beyond physical cats, Teddy’s owner fits the prototypical description of a ‘cat lady.’ She lives alone, no kids and never married. Her calendar, bookends, posters, are all cat themed. She has a robust library and exclusively drinks tea— mostly non-caffeinated. When discussing Teddy, she mimics his rare yowling, scrunching her fingers to transform into paws and flailing around to demonstrate his contempt for baths. The cat lady dresses in kooky patterns and sleeps in floral muumuus.
I lived with her for a week before she left for vacation. She and I got along unsurprisingly well. I identify as half cat lady.
In a town full of primped and polished people, the cat lady is refreshing. An Asian woman with cropped hair and wrinkles around her eyes, she reminds me of my grandmother a few decades younger. Hanging out with the cat lady, there is no pressure to be smooth. I didn’t mind how I dressed and happily conveyed my plans to go to the zoo. Somehow, it actually felt inappropriate to dress in obviously stylish clothes in front of her, like overdressing for dinner with a set of friends. Wearing chic clothes, I would’ve felt bashful, projecting that she’d be unimpressed because it highlights my youthful desire to please the strangers around me with vain, materialistic items. In her humble apartment, what was I trying to prove? Hanging out with her, the cat lady almost demanded I be comfortable. I chatted with her in loose fitting shorts and old T-shirts.
Maybe it’s because she’s older, or because she’s introverted like me, a little awkward like me, but, the cat lady often ended winding conversations with “very good” in a lilting tone, almost replicating the intonation of the British but with an American accent. I found spending time with her was indeed very good.
Sometimes, we’d have dinner together, and she’d talk me through the must-visit museums in town, pulling out magazines and old Washington Post papers to show me which exhibitions were still open. She chuckled, when I admitted that I didn’t really know how to read a physical newspaper, and I enjoyed watching her stifle her giggle as I read “(continued on C3)” and proceeded to frantically wrestle all the pages of the newspaper to finally land on C3. When I jest in this way, bringing to light our intergenerational differences, I am subtly, but intentionally, paying respect to my elders without overexposing both our generations’ inadequacies.
When a city-wide warning alerted us that the tap water was not safe to drink, the cat lady boiled a bowl of water for me and left me a ladle. On Fourth of July, she beckoned me to her balcony, leaning way over the railing to show me the red and blue sparks glittering behind a giant oak tree.
In conversation, I was often taken aback by how much she remembers about me from our first meeting, over a month ago when we chatted as strangers, scheduling for this cat-sitting job. “You were a dancer, right?” It’s rare to find people who really listen when you speak. I pride myself as one of those rare people, but I could not remember the same minute details of her life, though she had shared them with me. I felt ashamed that I could not return the gift of her attentiveness.
When the cat lady finally left for her trip, the house felt empty.
There’s something unmatched in intergenerational friendships. With peers, I often feel like we’re over-energetic pups, scrabbling over one another, layering sarcasm on top of sarcasm and laughing until we can’t breathe. Every conversation builds and builds, pulling from inside jokes, pop culture references, until the rapport bursts. Then we search for a new topic, of the same size and material, to exploit in the same way. Our chatter is intoxicating and erratic. It leaves me exhilarated but gasping for air.
With the cat lady, there was a steadiness to our interactions. I wasn’t so hyperaware of her presence. Even when she left, I felt myself relaxing into her way of life. In bed by 10pm, reading during early mornings, I let myself become supple. In the cat lady’s house, I do not have to bolster myself against the world.
With her gone, Teddy keeps me company. I babble to him about the books I’m reading “Have you read any of this Foucault stuff?” He refuses to dignify my senseless jabber with a response. I’d like to think his silence is not a function of his animal status but rather an intentional decision to disregard my words, seeing through my attempts to impress him with high-brow literature. I’m only now realizing that Teddy is technically younger than I am (in one week I will turn twenty-two), by four years. But, I perpetually think of him as older and wiser than myself. His disheveled appearance may not suggest that he’s distinguished, but his patience says otherwise.
Yes, I feed him and administer his medication, but Teddy acts mature. I’ve never heard so much as a peep escape from his mouth, a stark contrast against my own frequent belting of Rihanna’s “Only Girl (in the World)”. Next to him, I am a clumsy toddler, and he is a worldly gentleman. When he shows his annoyance, getting up and moving away from me, I have to remind myself to tone it down. After all, I am living in his house. Slowly, I do calm down. As I stroke his graying fur, I remember who I am. Youthful adrenaline seeps out of me.
For a long time, I didn’t like cats all that much, preferring the rambunctious nature of dogs. But, I wonder if part of my dislike for felines stemmed from an unconscious disdain for my own introversion, and my love of dogs spoke to a covert desire to be extroverted.
In the cat lady’s house, I allow myself a season of recuperation and insulation, although not isolation. I am allowed to be silent. I engage in quiet activities, mostly reading and writing, yet do so with the companionship of an elderly cat who spends his days resting.
In a few weeks, the cat lady will return from her trip. In a few more weeks after that, I will return to university. Surrounded by people my age, I will adapt to this different setting, and I will remember how it feels to be young. Silence is rare in college. Although understated, it’s a powerful element with potential to heal and potential to scar.
I was born in the sun, and, in a few months, my summer season will end. Soon, I will miss the cat lady’s friendship; I will miss the cat lady’s house; I will miss her cat. But, I will also do what I have always done. Solitude, along with socialization, is in my padded gait. When Fall creeps into my peripheral vision, I will search for pockets of respite from the extroverted life. Sprawled out on the floor somewhere, I will engage in my quiet activities, tucking myself amidst pages both empty and full.
The 99c Monocle includes personal essays and long-form commentary on culture, literature, and politics.
loled imagining Teddy listening to you sing "Only Girl" XD
love the last paragraph, so poetic