Episode Transcript
[00:00:13] She's your friend.
[00:00:19] Hello, everyone. This is my thoughts of the day podcast. And on today's episode, we're gonna talk. I'm gonna tell you crazy cat lady stories about mostly dead cats.
[00:00:33] As a rule, I don't tell people about my cat stories. Some of my friends don't even know I have cats. All of the cats. If you're watching a video of this podcast, all of the cats that are pictured are mine. These are. I've got, like, a 300 cat slideshow, and then next to it is like a tiny window of me and all of my going out glory. I'm in a pretty red dress tonight, so. Okay, so. So I'm trying. Usually I try not to tell boring stories, so I don't tell a lot of cat stories because I just assume all cat stories are boring, you know? And partly because I'm a barren woman who has snubbed my nose at societal norms. My hair has been blue and green and pink for 20 years. I'm a rabid feminist. I'm a hetero woman who does not have long term relationships with men. I'm a dried up old spirit spinster who lives alone with my cats in the eighties and nineties. And basically up until, like, 2010 ish. I feel like this was a bad thing. Like, I mean, really, Kate McKinnon made crazy cat lady sexy, like, ten years ago, and I want to seem cool, so I keep my cat lady stories to myself.
[00:01:59] But then JD, Vance and Trump came after cat ladies, and then I saw the rest of you being, like, thirsty for cat lady shit. And so I thought I would come out about my cat lady spinster lifestyle.
[00:02:14] So I thought I'd tell you some cat stories. Some of them are from my childhood. So, trigger warning. I talk about child abuse, and I talk which me being abused, usually. And then I also talk about me and my relationship with one of my siblings. Um, sibling abuse. I was a bully.
[00:02:37] So if you can't handle that, I totally get it. You should totally just skip this one. Or just go on YouTube and just look at the slideshow of my cats if you'd like. Um, okay. And then I also give you the whole story of a cat, so I include how they were born and then how they died of. So trigger warning, dead cats.
[00:03:03] Also, you may not agree with the way I treat cats, so trigger warning for whatever that is.
[00:03:11] As an adult, all of my memories are cat based.
[00:03:16] I remember when a thing happened by which cats were there, and actually not really as a kid. As a kid, the cats lasted for a really long time.
[00:03:31] I'm starting to think that maybe I'm bad at this. When I count out how many I've had.
[00:03:39] I'm not poisoning them. I feed them. I feed them a lot. Actually, I'm a big believer in just leave the food dish full as an adult.
[00:03:50] Well, okay. So it started when I was a kid.
[00:03:54] My dad's allergic to dogs, so we gave cats a try. He can handle that. I think he's still allergic, but it's not as bad or something.
[00:04:02] So when I was six, my family took in this orange tabby cat, which we creatively named Tabby, and she had two babies. We kept one of them. We creatively named him cuddles. Cuddles immediately became the chosen one.
[00:04:19] And my parents, my sister, my brother, and I, we would team up against each other in different configurations from moment to moment. None of us were unconditionally loved by anyone else in the group. It was the girls against the kid or the kids against the units, which is short for parental units, which is something, I think more nineties, more eighties ish.
[00:04:47] That's what we called them before we started calling them by their first names, because by the time I was in my teens, it was psychological warfare, and I was not going down anywhere easy. So I actually called them by their first names for most of my life, my parents, that is, the units.
[00:05:13] Cuddles. Cuddles loved every single person in our family equally, and it made him everyone's favorite, like my little brother.
[00:05:22] But he never turned against anyone in the family, unlike my brother, who was swayed by logic, people's past behavior, and ice cream.
[00:05:33] After Tabby died, we got this new kitten, muffin, creatively named Muffin was tiny. He was like. We got him when he was the size of a, you know, a hand. But he wasn't the favorite. He was the worst. Not because of anything he did, because we treated him like he was the worst. We just assigned him that. When Cuddles finally shuffled off our mortal coil, we had a funeral for him. It was one of the few occasions we were all together as a family in the backyard, which is crazy, because when I think back on it, I would give anything to have a backyard that big and lush. I don't know why we weren't out there all the time. California man.
[00:06:21] Okay, so we were in the backyard for the funeral, and my dad goes, I wish it was him. And he pointed at muffin over cuddles grave.
[00:06:32] And, like, even though I was used to my father saying unhinged shit, that struck me as particularly fucked up. Like, muffin was right there. Like Muffin could hear him.
[00:06:47] But also, it's weird to resent the pet you have left instead of just, like, treasuring him.
[00:06:55] I mean, butt hurtness and anger was right on brand, though, from my father at that time. So years later, my mom told me a vet once told her that Muffin acted like he'd been abused.
[00:07:10] I'm sure he did.
[00:07:13] I let her fill the uncomfortable silence that followed.
[00:07:18] I didn't say.
[00:07:19] Several therapists have told me I act like I've been abused, too.
[00:07:25] She was implying I abused the cat, and if I did, it was a group project, one she spearheaded. I already required that she and my father apologize to me for the way they abused me, and I didn't have the energy to explain that those things were connected.
[00:07:51] You know, when I look back on muffin and cuddles, I think about how we could have been kind of muffin, but by the time we got in, we were already being abused. We thought insults and taunting were part of love, and we were mean kids to each other. We chased each other with knives. We threatened each other.
[00:08:13] I know I smashed my kid brother's head against the side of the house to prove a point once. I'm sure I did some other fucked up shit, too.
[00:08:22] Sibling abuse is one of the most common forms of abuse, is what I remind myself when I feel like shit about it, which is, like, a lot, but it doesn't make me feel better about it. I'm really sorry for the way I treated him. I didn't know it was abusive. When I was twelve, I thought it was love or being in charge of them or rite of passage. But I also liked the feeling of being feared.
[00:08:56] That was also part of my goal. I thought that that power would make me feel safer, or I thought that power would make me feel better.
[00:09:10] I don't know if it ever did. Also, it was hard to get my brother to give a shit about anything.
[00:09:19] He doesn't let people have power over him that easy.
[00:09:23] I don't think I really ever got that far. But I was a dick. I could be a dick to him. And I've apologized. I'm really fucking sorry. I've been really fucking sorry.
[00:09:38] I worried about the lasting damage it did to him, physically and emotionally. I was a bully and an asshole, and he didn't deserve that. And I'm sure it affected the way it grew and is able to relate to people and. And my brother ranked higher in the pecking order of our family than muffin did.
[00:09:59] We didn't, like, physically hit cats. If you wanted to discipline a cat, you yelled or sprayed it with water.
[00:10:08] And none of us ever really, I think, ever wanted to hit a cat besides just spanking them on the butt, which they seemed to like.
[00:10:19] We did it because they, they would get, like me happy about it.
[00:10:29] But if one of us wanted him, we'd throw him across the room instead of handing him gently.
[00:10:37] You know, he grew up skittish for a good reason. We'd scare him. We didn't hurt him intentionally, but we would. I'd imitate my father when he wasn't home. I thought that's how you were in charge.
[00:10:55] So we yelled, we chased, we gave into a rage, and muffin learned to stay away from us. And then he started overeating and we thought he was funny fat because I think funny fat was basically a thing until like ten years ago also.
[00:11:15] And so we, we just thought it was hilarious that all he ever wanted to do was eat.
[00:11:23] But my mother was terrified of him being fat.
[00:11:30] She was just terrified of fat in general. She was the one who told me that no man would ever love me because I was 150 pounds. She thought I was too fat to be lovable.
[00:11:48] Yeah, she had a really hard time with just weight, just fatness, I guess. I mean, we all kind of did, but, yeah, her thing was she told me I was, I was fat. And I mean, like having brown hair in the eighties and nineties basically made you ugly.
[00:12:11] Just that was enough to make my sister party and me ugly. She was also tall. She's also like just thinner and quieter.
[00:12:26] I tell the story sometimes about how in order to get Christmas presents, we had to act out the story of the baby Jesus for my parents, convincingly, my brother and my sister and I. And when I was ten, we all three kids decided that I was gonna play Mary for the first time. And my parents were like, okay, but it's not believable that Elisa would be a girl. I'm sorry, we're just not gonna buy that she's gonna have to be Joseph again because I was too ugly to play the girls part when I was a kid.
[00:13:13] So, yeah, that happens.
[00:13:18] It's just as an adult, as a me now, it is a little crazy. The kind of messages I got.
[00:13:28] We all got in the, in growing up in the eighties and nineties just about like basic things like being a brunette or, and being into reading and having a big butt basically just meant that you were ugly for life.
[00:13:48] So, yeah, so, okay, so back to Cuddlese. I looked at the guts he left for me and told me he was a good kitty. But you don't have to bring the bones for us. You can eat the whole thing. We're proud of you, my father would boast. And he hasn't brought us any presents since then. And so everybody in our family had this story about how cuddles was a good listener, so smart, such a good communicator. But none of us watched what we said about muffin, and none of us had any, like, good stories about him. It didn't occur to me until now. I mean, yeah, that muffin heard us talking shit about him and heard my father wishing him dead. And that must have affected him. You know, on some level, all of us were jealous of cuddles, who seemed to soak up all the unconditional love of our parents, but also each other.
[00:14:56] As kids, we were spanked.
[00:14:59] And my father threatened to strangle me once. I mean, no, sorry. He threatened to beat me a lot. He strangled me once.
[00:15:10] He yelled every day.
[00:15:12] And my mother made it clear that she was disappointed in us a lot. That's what we thought love was.
[00:15:22] We didn't hit the cats. We didn't hurt them. But we were mean, at least to muffin. And we were indifferent to his comfortability. Whereas cuddles, we wanted to be comfortable at all times.
[00:15:39] At 22, I became estranged from my parents.
[00:15:43] I left them a note telling them I couldn't trust them to behave themselves, so I wasn't going to talk to them unless we were in the presence of a licensed therapist. And I gave them my email address and told them I'd be happy to make an appointment at any time.
[00:15:58] And then my father took me up on it. He went to four sessions before throwing a tantrum and, like, running out of the room.
[00:16:09] So then I was just estranged.
[00:16:13] And I decided if I was going to go get through it, I was going to need a cat. And so I went on Craigslist. Craigslist forever for getting free cats is basically what I say.
[00:16:27] Everything else on Craigslist may be a scam, but. But there's usually a crazy cat lady on Craigslist who will give you. Who will hook you up with a cat.
[00:16:38] Um, this lady hooked me up with a six month old orange tabby she lured into her studio apartment that she shared with nine other cats from the woods. And then she'd found this, like, two month old or month old baby. I think I named the six month old tabby tarot. And the baby was Nev. And baby Nev didn't last very long. She peed on everything I owned, but she didn't seem to know she was doing it. She had something wrong, biologically, neurogically, something.
[00:17:17] She died as soon as they put her under to spay her. Feral cats inbreed. Sometimes a cat will have a litter and then mate with one of the cats in the litter. And some of those cats end up with weird health problems. This is why I think that, like, people are never like, oh, yeah, I got this cat because my friend had a cat that was pregnant, and I loved her cat. No, no, no. Like, cats meet, like, in the dark, and you just find them and then you get what you get.
[00:17:52] But my friends with dogs are always like, oh, yeah, his brother is a wonderful dog. We knew his mother, we knew his uncle.
[00:18:02] They talk about the lineage of a dog, and I just think cats breed faster and. And in a much more fucked up, feral way, I think.
[00:18:15] And that's why you never hear the lineage of a cat.
[00:18:22] So, okay, so, yeah, so I think that's what happened with baby Nev.
[00:18:30] And in my view, as soon as a cat dies, it's just like with when a person dies, as soon as a. Especially a baby, though, like, when a cat dies, when you have a miscarriage, that animal or person goes right back up to heaven and then gets to do whatever the fuck they want. Cause that seemed like a lot. So I.
[00:19:02] I mean, that's my personal view. That's what I got from religion. That's what I got from growing up in a christian cult as a child. So I know I'm making jokes and telling you about these dead cats, but I'm also.
[00:19:19] I mean, I cried about baby Nev. I missed her afterwards. But she also didn't have a great time. She didn't know she was peeing on stuff, you know, like, there's something going on with her. I like. I don't know how healthy she was. And I'm a big believer in, if animals aren't healthy, they don't have to fucking stay.
[00:19:44] You know, people.
[00:19:49] I think people can sometimes get divine purpose or a purpose and can.
[00:19:58] Can enjoy their lives regardless. But animals, especially pets, dude, if it hurts too much, fucking take off, man.
[00:20:13] You don't have to be here. Like, this one isn't a. This isn't a good round for you is kind of the way I think of it in the cosmic afterlife deal. I think of it as, like, baby Nev died on that operating table, and then just got back up to heaven and, uh, or. Or was reincarnated or however it works, basically, she just got back up in line, or she just got to party it up for. For a while after that, you know, baby neve style. Like, I don't.
[00:20:55] I'm not in favor of gassing all of the cats or all of the dogs, but I am in favor of not letting any animal stay here for longer than a second.
[00:21:05] Then they're at, like, then their quality of life versus, you know, period.
[00:21:15] Same thing with people. If you're having a really bad time, I. I'm all for you going to the next thing. That's. That's up to you. Um, I do think it sucks for everybody. Who else. Who is involved? Um.
[00:21:34] And, oh, this. I guess this wandered off topic a little bit, but it is. That's my view of the afterlife, is whatever's here, if it's too hard for you, it's too fucking hard. And you're allowed to tap out whenever the fuck you want.
[00:21:52] And so. Yeah, so, baby neve didn't last very long, but tarot and I had six wonderful years together.
[00:22:02] I named him Tarot because I thought maybe he knew things. And I was just starting to read my tarot cards regularly then. And my tarot cards, when I read for myself, they usually give me the future, which is terrifying and usually non understandable.
[00:22:22] It's very unnerving.
[00:22:25] So I was wrong about the cat, too. He didn't know things, and he was so far able, I couldn't pet him for the first five years of his life, really. That last year, I could only pet him because his lung had already collapsed, so he couldn't wiggle free because he kept getting in cat fights. And there was just that lung collapse. It took him, I think, a year and a half for him to get bad enough that he died, but it could have happened at any point because he kept getting wounded on his stomach, and depending on what's. What's clawing at ya, they can catch a lung and the doctor can't go in and fix it, or that's what the doctor at the time told me. I mean, this was 20 years ago, I guess.
[00:23:27] So he stayed feral, and we both kind of were. I was unmoored. I was estranged from my parents, and all 17 of my other family members thought I was a total asshole for that estrangement. All of my friends had moved out of town or gone to college, and I wasn't sure, like, who I was or where I was going or even if I wanted to stay alive, and I was just full of rage. I had constant flashbacks. I was having a nervous breakdown. And in retrospect, my bipolar disorder was really starting to get going. And Tarot wanted to be back in those woods. In retrospect, he was not happy being an inside cat at all.
[00:24:12] And I mean, as a kid, all of the cats I'd ever had had been indoor outdoor.
[00:24:18] And as an adult, all the cats I've ever had have been indoor outdoor. But Taro was like, he would come in to eat.
[00:24:30] Sometimes he might spend the night inside if it was really cold out.
[00:24:36] My grandparents lived in Prundell, California. They didn't have animals themselves, but all of their neighbors did. So there were always fresh eggs and honey and jam, newly preserved jam. There's a horse or a llama to pet as well. Everywhere. Every day at my grandparents house, you can go outside and you could pet so many animals.
[00:24:59] And my grandparents had two dogs, freeway and Snoopy, and they lived outside alongside snow. The cats, none of them were allowed in the house. You could sneak the dog in the house, but you could only sneak him into the living room. The dogs and cat had dry beds in the garage for when it was cold or raining outside. None of them ever got a bath. That would have been considered a waste of water. And the.
[00:25:27] When I, especially in Prunedale in the eighties, I mean, people didn't even take baths every day or showers because there was so little water.
[00:25:39] My dad, or not my dad, my grandpa would go out and, like, measure the water in the tank that the community had every day just to make sure that they had reserves.
[00:25:53] So none of the dogs ever got a bath or retreated for fleas or they ever got brushed. The only reason freeway even had dog tags was because my grandpa kept burying him.
[00:26:05] So freeway would, like, run away, and then a few days later, a neighbor would call and grandpa would sadly bury a dog carcass. And then the next day, freeway would come home. And that happened three times before freeway got its tags. And now that I think about it, nobody ever inquired or found out, like, who those mystery dead dogs were. Like, that was never part of the story.
[00:26:33] So as an adult, I mean, even though. Even though the freeway story. The freeway story, actually, I think somehow cemented that animals belong outside, I mean, that's what my grandparents believed. Even the cat, even, um, she was missing part of her ear. She'd had cancer in it. So they cut it off. They took her to the vet. The vet cut it off, but she still wasn't allowed inside. And, I mean, snow was a white cat, but she was always black with soot because she'd been rolling around in the car park where. Which was her home. Um, so, as an adult, I've always encouraged my pets to go outside. Like, I wanted them to have their own lives and adventures and friends and maybe a second family. Like, I wanted it to be fun for them. But I also wanted cuddle sometimes.
[00:27:28] Um, I've learned to be kind to myself. I've learned to love myself unconditionally. I've learned to love my cats unconditionally, too. But it took time. When Tara and I would fight, I'd find myself in a fit of rage that reminded me of my father. Like, it was really hard to calm myself down. It took a therapy and hard work and years before I figured out that rage wasn't a healthy part of love.
[00:27:53] That people and animals you love may do things that make you mad, but calming down is an essential part of interacting. Before I can address what happened, that taking my rage out on a person or an animal isn't a good way to be in charge of them.
[00:28:13] My father thought screaming and threatening to beat me randomly, depending on his mood, was a good way to parent, and he thought that was discipline. He also thought hitting and, like, taking away essential things were discipline. My mother agreed with him, and she threw in her own narcissistic bullshit to make things unnerving in order to take care of myself and other human beings.
[00:28:41] Not human beings. Other beings. Just kitty cat beings. I had to re channel my anger into something that wouldn't hurt them or me.
[00:28:53] And I had to stop believing the lie that my parents were good at discipline or that it was so hard to love me that anyone who tried would be driven wild with anger also.
[00:29:04] And if I'd had a kid instead of a cat, I would have abused that kid. I would have yelled at that kid. I would have been terrible mother.
[00:29:17] I didn't want to hurt anyone else the way I was hurt, but I also. At 22, I didn't know how to do anything differently yet. So practicing on a cat was fucked up, but better.
[00:29:33] It was the best solution I could figure out. And Taro and I would have fights. He would sulk. I would sulk. He would shit on my bed whenever he was mad at me, every time he went out into the night. Not every time, but most every time he'd get into a fight with other cats. He had 13 surgeries in his lifetime in six years. And no matter how hurt he was, he'd fight his way outside and. Okay, so once he was, like, drugged up, like, high on painkillers, right?
[00:30:06] He had three tubes coming out of each side of his stomach so the pus could, like, flow. And then there was, like, six stitches down his middle, crusted over with blood. I left the window open. Screen. Screen it firmly in place. Window open, though, because it was summer, it was, like, 80 degrees out, so I didn't want the room to overheat and. And fuck him up even more. He punched the screen window out, jumped into, like, the story below. He jumped into a wild BlackBerry bush and just disappeared. So I get home from work. I knew he was drugged. I knew he wouldn't go too far. But I got home from work, and I, like, go in my room where I closed him in, and the screen's out, and so I have to find him. And, like, the whole time, I'm just, like, worried that he's stuck somewhere with his fucking tubes and the cone.
[00:31:00] I knew he was drugged, so I wouldn't go too far. So I did find him. I mean, we had a big. It was the funhouse. So it was a big victorian house with the big side yard and backyard and that. We weren't gardening or anything. I mean, we were punk kids. We weren't doing much with it. So I found him next door, glowering at me from my neighbor's porch. I found a new family. I live here now. His expression said.
[00:31:31] I wrestled him back into the fun house.
[00:31:34] He gouged my ray poop so bad, you can still see the fucking scar.
[00:31:40] I mean. And I would make fun of him for getting into fights and losing, but every time I left the house, I would also get into fights, and I don't know how many of them I actually won.
[00:31:54] Besides, he would pay me back by shitting on my bed when I forced him to stay inside to heal. We were kind of in the same place emotionally. And it felt good to have an animal that was as wild as I am was.
[00:32:08] I didn't mind the occasional angry bed shit. It cracked me up, actually.
[00:32:15] And it felt good to have something fight back and being themselves and loving something, even though it was wild, even though it wasn't doing its best to please me. I felt like I was loving something, even though it wasn't perfect.
[00:32:38] And maybe I just needed to practice that for a little while to show myself that I deserve that or that I knew how to do it on tarot.
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[00:37:02] So Taro and I moved from San Jose to Portland together.
[00:37:10] I lived in Portland for about six years. It was my first real foyer out of California. And he died within the first year. When he died, I didn't stop crying for three days. I called my best friend and he invited me to visit him in Olympia. So I went to Olympia and I cried there. I kept crying. That friend still hasn't talked to me. My nervous breakdown of this house didn't go over well.
[00:37:39] But I couldn't get back to okay.
[00:37:42] I couldn't stop crying long enough to thank him for trying to help. When I got back home, still crying, I called another best friend, and she was like, I think you just do better when you have a cat. Maybe just go get another one.
[00:37:56] And the next day, I went out and I got Tigger and monkey. They were two little brothers who had a peeing problem. Tigger. Tigger, the character from Winnie the Pooh. I took them home, not really thinking about how to retrain them and have new boundaries with them, which is something I sucked at back then.
[00:38:21] Tigger continued to pee on everything I owned for the next twelve years.
[00:38:27] For those years, I still had problems with boundaries.
[00:38:31] At three years old, Monkey ended up with a weird neurological thing. His legs stopped working. The vet didn't know what was wrong with him, and I couldn't afford any exotic tests. I surrendered him to the vetted, something she suggested. I don't know if that's something a lot of vet suggests. I'm not sure what happened to them. That after him, after that, for a while, I kind of thought that he was everybody's favorite cat because my neighbor worked at that vet clinic, and that's what he said. But looking back, he was a liar. And so. And I mean, if what was wrong with monkey wasn't a parent, I don't know why they would have helped him more. He was a sweet, adorable kitty. But, like, at three years old. He, his legs just didn't work. Like, I don't, I don't know if they rehomed him or not, but my brother Stephen was living with me in Portland right then, and I told him he could pick out his own cat. Tester was also three years old, and when he. We got him home, he was a little, little unnerved. He was panicked all the time. Once we got him neutered, he calmed down.
[00:39:49] He fell in love with Tigger as soon as they met. Chester and Tigger spent ten years happily together.
[00:39:57] For the first year, Tigger was annoyed. He'd walk in a room and Chester would run up to him and just follow him around. Chester's just like, got his nose up Tigger's butt. Just super excited to see Tigger every single time.
[00:40:15] It was very annoying to take her. But slowly, Chester worn him down, and they fell in love. I used to say they were prison married. She's the prison. My friend Colin once explained Tigger had a special sigh for when he got his nose positioned perfectly above Chester's balls. They would make out 4 hours. They loved each other so much, and it was genuinely healing just the way they were so happy together. And so any of the pictures, if you've decided to watch the screen, show any of the pictures you see of two tabby kitties just digging each other who are the same size?
[00:41:07] Well, the brownish one and the orange one, that's Tigger, and that's tester, and that is them being in love with each other. And it was a love that was beautiful to watch. And they were always happy for you to join them. But wherever one was, usually the other was also. And they were always sleeping together. They were always happy together.
[00:41:34] When we all drove, I drove the two of them from Portland to Seattle. A friend of mine, Tim, helped me move them.
[00:41:43] They just held each other. I had them in one large dog carrier because they were 20 pounds each. They were big kitties. And my brother had moved back to California. I was moving to Seattle, and the two of them just loved each other so much. And they just held each other for the three hour ride. They comforted each other and they me, and they comforted me, and they also peed on everything I owned.
[00:42:11] I didn't figure out how to have great boundaries until after both of those cats were gone.
[00:42:18] I love big kitties, and they are big. Big kitties.
[00:42:24] Fat or just born big, I don't care. I just want a lot of kitty to wrap my arm around. So whenever I was worried about my health or my death. I'd call a friend and I'd make them swear to keep Chester and Taylor together because they loved each other so much.
[00:42:44] And I love them too.
[00:42:50] But they also peed on everything I owned. And I would yell when I fell. When I found their little puddles, I would spray them with water. And when I was food, insecure, so were they.
[00:43:03] My boundaries with them were never really consistent.
[00:43:06] I knew they understood me, but I'd still rage at them when I got overwhelmed. It was an abuse, but I wasn't keeping my trauma to myself.
[00:43:16] And I also wasn't great at taking care of myself, necessarily, or them. I think some of this is my depression and my bipolar being out of control.
[00:43:29] I didn't know how to consistently clean a space and I never brushed them. I never thought about brushing their teeth or clipping their toenails.
[00:43:45] They didn't really have toys besides the yarn I used to knit from, or the thread I used when I was quilting.
[00:43:53] I never gave them teeth cleaning, I think, or maybe one flea bath each total.
[00:44:06] And so it wasn't abuse. But like I said, I wasn't keeping my trauma to myself. And that's part of another reason why, even though at 24 to 34, 36, I just. I loved these cats. And I still do, and I still think about them. And they kept me sane and alive, and they comforted me and they cracked me up and I fed them and I took them to the vet and I worried about them, but I also made fun of them. And I was sometimes mean to them or mad at them.
[00:44:54] And when I was hungry, they were hungry. You know, like starting out snarky cards.
[00:45:00] Sometimes we'd go hungry and it sucked.
[00:45:05] So that kind of food insecurity, that kind of.
[00:45:09] I still wouldn't have been a good parent. And I still feel like on some level, it's better that I was practicing love with cats instead of people, which is something you might disagree with me about. And that's okay when I. Okay, let's see. I think 30. Yeah, maybe I was 36, 38. Tigger had a stroke. He was twelve ish.
[00:45:41] So, three days later, my sister went on Craigslist and she found a litter of kittens. And I knelt down in a backyard full of kids and I picked Klonopin up and I put him in the crook of my neck. And we were both just happier.
[00:45:58] And I got Klonopin when I was in a lot of pain. And that's why that's his name is. He's my natural antidepressant. That was a good suggestion by Arlette.
[00:46:13] She knew. She knew exactly what I needed. She was a very good friend. And, yeah, she, like, she just thought. And I've never actually. I don't think I've actually tried the actual klonopin, but the cat Klonopin has done a lot for me.
[00:46:35] He's always by my side. When I was in pain, when I was sitting, there were a lot of times I. Well, I was. I had a lot of repetitive stress in my hands, as well as pain in both of my broken legs. And I was recovering, and that's when I got klonopin and the repetitive, like, I hand painted 50,000 carts and sold them. Like, there's. There's just a limit of things you can do to your hands without caring for them at all, you know? Like, I hadn't.
[00:47:07] I hadn't been taking care of them while I've been using them like that. And it's not something you can keep doing the rest of your life. I don't think. I don't think that's possible. So he was sick too. He couldn't keep food down for the first two years of his life. It didn't matter what I fed him. He threw it all up.
[00:47:26] He was always hungry and exhausted, and I was in pain, and we comforted each other.
[00:47:32] And about a year later, Chester was done.
[00:47:40] Klonopin and I spent two days holding and snuggling and talking sweet to Chester and giving him treats while he got ready to go.
[00:47:49] And it's interesting, because when I think about cat death, this is the most peaceful cat death I think I've had. Chester going is just.
[00:48:01] It's a little bit like labor, where a cat makes it clear that they're settling down, they're slowing down, they're not that interested in food, they're not that interested in water. Just being alive seems to be more exhausting than usual.
[00:48:18] So I racked my brain while Klonopin and I surrounded Chester and tended to him and loved him and told him how much we loved him. I couldn't think of a single thing that I'd ever really deprived the cat of. You know, we gotten to a point where the food was consistent for the last couple years of him and Tigger's life, we had a lot of food security. We also had treats.
[00:48:53] You know, there were some toys.
[00:48:58] And it was just always kindness. It was just always sweet pets.
[00:49:07] So, yeah, once he stopped eating and drinking, I took him to the vet. So they could put him to sleep. And my sister and I have a cat death ritual. We go to the vet together. The vet gives the cat a shot.
[00:49:22] We put the cat in the dead cat purse. Then we walk back to her apartment, have some coffee, cry, bury the dead cat in her backyard, and the only vine in her landlord's garden is on top of that pile of dead cats.
[00:49:39] Tester joined the pile of dead cats and a day or two later, still on Craigslist, I found Moose.
[00:49:48] He, I was introduced to him when they were trying to catch him. I walked into this woman's house and there wasn't even a picture of him online. He and Klonopin actually look exactly alike, but I had no idea that that was true or possible.
[00:50:07] I just watched him sort of zip around this house while they were trying to catch him. And I just thought he was adorable and fast and fun and he is, he, as he zipped around, like, he laughed this, there were like four of them trying to catch him and it was so cute and funny.
[00:50:26] And I, you know, we finally got him in the, the cat bag that I had at that time, which was an old bowling bag. And I just looked at him and I was like, we are going to have a really good time together.
[00:50:40] Yeah. So he was, he was nervous, but I got him home and I introduced him to Klonopin pretty right away. I put him in the bathroom and he and Klonopin still actually play under. Like the, like one of them will stand on one side of a door and like put their paws underneath because it was the first time I'd really ever tried that, where you separate the cats before you introduce each other. I think it lasted like an hour or two because by hour three, moose had like, I'd shown him the porch and he'd left the porch, took a walk around the neighborhood and then like scratched, like the front door.
[00:51:31] Like he'd already, like, he took like a 1 hour just walk around the neighborhood just taking a look at his new world and knocked on the door and I was like, oh, all right, that's okay. Sure. Cool.
[00:51:48] So he, Moose would go outside a lot. He doesn't anymore, but he would go outside almost every night and he would also hang outside the porch. I was walking towards my porch once and people pass on the street a lot and I saw this drunk guy like try to grab moose and moose just like punch him in the face because both moose and Klonopin like to be on the porch and they can passerby see them and are like, oh, cute kitty. And I think they both like that. I think they both like being the cute kitties that are on display and complimented by strangers. But yeah, Moose stopped interacting with them at some point. I think Klonopin doesn't mind. Klonopin will sit there. It doesn't matter if there are fireworks, gunshots, or even the lightning strike. Klonopin was like, whatever, this is my fucking porch. Klonopin's just down. He's, he's hurt it all. He's a city cat. He doesn't fucking care. But he also doesn't leave the porch. He's happy on the porch. He'll stay on the porch. He doesn't fucking give a shit. Light thunder he was not, he was not ready for this week in Seattle. But Moose has slowly become an indoor kitty.
[00:53:11] For the first year or two I had him, though, he would bring, I was still trying to figure out Klonopin's stomach problems and so I was trying to limit what they ate just to narrow it down. And Moose did not like the diet, so he brought home a dead rat and they played with it and then they ate it. And then he brought home. There was one night where he found, I think he just found like a bunch of little bunnies, baby bunnies, and he just kept bringing them home. And it was crazy because it was like two or three nights in a row that he brought home a dead bird, a dead rat, baby bunnies. And he and Klon have been feasted on them. And then after that, Klonopin could hold food down. It was fucking weird. And since then, he still has a delicate tummy. He only wants to eat one brand of cat food, but he can hold that cat food down and he, they don't eat, they don't eat wild animals anymore. Moose doesn't bring home wild animals anymore.
[00:54:32] I know that if there was a rat that ran across the porch, that one of the cats would probably catch it, but they're not getting takeout themselves anymore.
[00:54:47] And I keep birdseed on the porch so that every morning we can watch the birds getting food. The thing is sometimes I leave the, the porch, like, open. So we'll watch, we can hear and see the birds, like taking their food from the porch. And so in theory, the cats could run out there and murder any of those birds. Sometimes one of them will take a run at one of the birds, but even then their hearts aren't in it. They don't really want to murder them. They're just driven by natural instinct a little bit to just chase, you know, fuck with something.
[00:55:29] I was really proud of moose for bringing home dead stuff. Just part of, like, growing up with country cats. And the way my family, I think, treated cats that I still think is real is like they're wild animals. If something happens to me, I want to know that they're going to be okay, you know?
[00:55:48] So even though it was less frequent every once in a while when moose would bring home an animal, I just, I just. A couple of rules where I was like, look, you can play with a dead thing, but only in the living room. I don't want any dead shit in the bedroom or in the bathroom or in the hallway. Just. Just the fucking living room and the porch and please kill it outside. It's not pleasant for me to listen to something die, you know, it's just not my bag. Right.
[00:56:19] And when they're done with it, they have to leave it in their food bowl, if not on the porch. So they. I told them, and they started doing that because cats actually do listen to you, you know, and actually you listen to you too. I think understanding things about what I've realized is that I.
[00:56:50] I treat my cats the way I treat myself.
[00:56:53] It's probably the way I would treat a child, if I had a child, the way I treat myself. And the nicer I become to myself, the nicer I became, the more therapy I got, the more. The more I was able to unconditionally love myself and forgive myself and be honest and kind with myself, the better I was at doing that for cats.
[00:57:18] And I feel like now I would be good at love, you know?
[00:57:28] I feel like now I could communicate love. I feel like now if my dream happens, uh, if. If a man showed up at my door, this is my dream. This is, this is why I'm a spinster. This is why I'll be alone forever. Probably. My. My fantasy is that a man shows up at my door with, like, a seven year old child of indeterminate gender, sexuality, whatever, um, and said, I got knocked up by you seven years ago, and I never told you, and I can't take care of them anymore here. That's my dream. That's my dream is basically, is because of, because of plumbing I don't have. My dreams will never come true.
[00:58:22] And then they shove the kid at me, and then they run away. And then I feel like now I could do it. I could trust myself not to pass on that trauma or abuse.
[00:58:33] I could maybe even figure out financially how to take care of myself, another person, I hope.
[00:58:39] But that. That is after 30 years of therapy, which cost me half a million dollars, thousands of dollars of regular old medication and reading a hundred ish self help books.
[00:58:57] You know, until then, I practiced on these cats. I did my best loving these cats.
[00:59:08] You know, I've been taking care of cats for 23 years, and I've finally gotten the hang of being in charge of a living being. I finally figured out how to communicate, listen, be kind to them and myself, and not take their behavior personally.
[00:59:23] I still don't brush their teeth, but I do brush them. And thanks to my bipolar medication, I'm also better at taking care of my furniture, my. My house, my laundry, myself. And I can schedule things like flea medication or shots, or, I mean, even simple things like making sure that their litter box is taken care of every day at the same time that I sort of give my toilet bowl, like a cleaning, just simple shit like that.
[01:00:08] I give them real cat toys as well as boxes. And in my household, every living thing plays with paper. So the cats play with paper, I play with paper.
[01:00:21] You know, as a crazy cat lady, I've never claimed that the cats were my children.
[01:00:32] But learning not to take my own trauma out on a cat took practice and lots of therapy. And I'm really glad I learned how to do it, and I'm glad I didn't damage a person in the process. And sometimes I pray to these dead cats that they forgive me because I yelled, because I got mad at them for things they couldn't help, because I was inconsistent with my boundaries with them. And it meant to, that I was an asshole, or I was being an asshole because I was traumatized by something that wasn't cat related.
[01:01:11] The food insecurity, the lack of brushing, the lack of toothbrushing, not cleaning the litter box, expecting them to shit outside, all of this is illegal to do to a person. And honestly would have made me a terrible mother.
[01:01:23] It's not great for an animal either, but I would have been jailed for the kind of parent I would have been.
[01:01:30] I really needed the last 30 years of therapy to figure out how not to repeat the rage of my father or to make sure that I never hurt anyone the way I did my little siblings. Again, being a crazy cat lady, let me practice love with minimal harm to all living things. And not everybody can do all that shit.
[01:01:58] Unlearning abuse can take a lifetime, and pressuring someone to have kids just because they have the physical parts is fucking crazy.
[01:02:06] Some of us don't have kids because we're trying to do no harm. And some of us are practicing love on animals or learning how to love from animals.
[01:02:19] I mean, I still am working on learning to listen to my cats.
[01:02:27] I'm still remembering things I did to Tigger and Chester, ways that I didn't listen to them that make me feel cringe.
[01:02:41] I'm still trying to learn from my past mistakes.
[01:02:47] So, hopefully you enjoyed some of these crazy cat stories.
[01:02:55] I'll end with this one.
[01:02:58] When Tigger and Chester and I were moving from this awful alcoholic's house, he and his cat, the house was full of fleas.
[01:03:12] So full of fleas, in order to relax, to go to sleep, I had to be like, okay, you're going to be bitten by fleas when you go to sleep. And that's just the way it is. And I would just try to wear as many clothes as I could when I slept or in the house. But also, the bathroom was never clean enough, so it was hard for me to wash. It was just. It was a nightmare living with Skye. So I moved, like, a mile down the mountain from where he lived in Queen Anne. And I. There was one night where I was moving a lot of my things, and I just was walking from one place to the other. But Tigger and Chester had stopped sleeping inside because they hated the fleas, and I stopped sleeping inside. So they followed me down the mountain this mile and a half, and we'd never gone this route before. I've never walked the neighborhood with them before, especially that neighborhood. It was on a fucking hill. And my broken legs were still bothering me, so. And I was carrying a bunch of our shit.
[01:04:14] So we walked down, and Chester followed me the whole way. But Tigger got lost, like, two blocks from Pia's house where we were moving to. And Tigger was lost for a week. And I went to the Humane Society. Chester and I worried.
[01:04:37] I walked back up and down that hill. I called his name.
[01:04:41] Everything I could do, everything I could think of, and, like, I didn't. I mean, we'd never been on any of those streets before together. We'd never been on them since. I didn't. I didn't know how or if I was ever going to find him. He was an older cat, you know, I was so sad.
[01:04:59] Tester was so depressed. And then a week later, at two in the morning, my ex roommate calls me, and Tigger has found his way up. It was like some homeward bound shit, man. A week. A week later, he climbs back up this mountain that he'd only been on once with me, somehow he found his way back and he was waiting for me at the old apartment. And so I went. I got him, took a taxi, and he and Chester and I were safely ensconced with Pia in her house. And that was a nice place to live in. And I was so proud of him for finding his way back, for just being kind of magical in that apartment complex, too. There was a cat that was bothering Chester, and Chester literally, like, backfliped over and went, hi ya.
[01:05:56] And just like, all 30 pounds of Chester just spread out. Like, he stood up on his back legs to scare the fuck out of this scary. The cat. And I had, like, a glass of water. Like, I was ready to help back Chester up.
[01:06:14] And this cat was just like. I was entranced. The cat was entranced. We were both terrified of Chester. So the cat ran away, and Chester never had a problem with him again.
[01:06:25] It was fucking crazy. Those cats were something else. They were always interesting, as you can see. And Chester was so nice to Klonopin. Chester loved being the big kitty. He was a good cuddler.
[01:06:43] He taught Klonopin how to be kind.
[01:06:46] Moose still has a hard time not being the only kitty cat. I think he was for the first year or two when he was with his first family. So he gets. He gets itsyenne, he gets nervous, he gets uncomfortable. But Klonopin will lick Moose. Klonopin will try to lick Moose and take care of Moose and snuggle Moose and get close to him, because Chester taught Klonopin how.
[01:07:13] They. They were all very good at love and kindness and cuddles and.
[01:07:21] And they were all. They all taught me how to be good at it, too. So that is me and my dead cats. I hope you have enjoyed my thoughts, and I hope that you listen to my thoughts again next time, guys.
[01:07:50] Breathtaking. So bizarre. Elise a star, Elisa star trying to get you to laugh at your scar. Elisa star. Elisa Star tells you what the. Wherever you are, Elisa star, Alisa Star. She is a boogie barber. Matt my friends close.
