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my last day of freedom, or, more about the kitties



and i’m not spending it protesting. no, baby. i’m going to sleep in the sun with our new cat, sotto, a much more successful endeavor so far than our previous homicidal kitty from whom we have finally separated ourselves. of course we couldn’t simply hand homicidal kitty off to a shelter. we’re not an Eye for an Eye kind of makeshift family. we weren’t crying for Blood. we were crying, in good liberal style, for Rehabilitation.

so, like i said, housemate dina found a crazy cat lady. crazy cat lady (CCL) turned out to be the GI Joe of crazy cat ladies. CCL lives on the 6th floor of an abandoned walk-up in alphabet city. she and several other folks who were homeless at the time started squatting there in the late 80s, and after a brief and unsuccessful attempt on the part of the NYPD to oust them, new york shrugged its shoulders and gave them the building. CCL replied by getting a sex change and then filling her apartment, floor to ceiling, with cats. cats with ears missing, eyes missing, paws missing; ferile cats, skeletal cats, fat hising cats; and one cat named, er, Osama bin Falafel.

CCL herself is over six feet tall, broad-shouldered and serious, loaded with muscles the way fruit trees are loaded with fruit, tattooed up the wazoo. the first time we trekked up to CCL’s own private zoo, dina asked CCL of her worst cat-inflicted injury. cheerful CCL showed us the scars. actually though, CCL reflected, i don’t mind being mauled. it’s a rush.

kind of like getting a tattoo?, i asked.

exactly, said she.

anyway, CCL has taken charge of homicidal kitty and we, in turn, have adopted one of hers.

this whole cat process has occupied me nicely during this last week of indolence. i also spent a lot of time hanging out with folks, dining, strolling, food shopping, watching a lot of Bravo, enjoying the sunshine, going to the Met, and reading Vanity Fair in preparation for the new mira nair movie. time passed much more quickly than i expected it to, and i’ve been on a more even emotional keel. we’ll see if my happy calm withstands tomorrow on which starts:

swat (not on labor day, for the first time in memory)

the republican national convention

and my time as a salaried member of corporate society