Perfectly Normal

“It’s so hard being creative,” He says in a drawling whine. He’s probably a few years younger than I am, and has his palms pressed against his temples, anguished, right here in this overcrowded coffee shop. I consider him for a moment, his blue eyes, and decide that he’s probably writing some stupid, angry-young-man drivel. I base this assessment on the single shot of espresso he’s been choking down for the last thirty minutes, and the smirk that accompanies his writer’s block.

“It’s supposed to be,” I say, hoping that he doesn’t hear the same Tom Hanks “A League of Their Own” quote that I do as the words leave my mouth. But as this is LA, he is twenty-something, and I am the pretentious girl sitting beside him with an Orangina, he is gracious. He smiles, then returns to his angst.

I feel bad about judging him, and for being the kind of person that I keep saying this town is full of. It’s getting late and nearing my bedtime, so I pack up my own days writing and head home. When I arrive, there is cat shit in my bathtub.

This has been going on since November, the poop in the tub. At first, I blamed the stress of the holidays. Who doesn’t wig out a little? With the extra bustle, excesses of food, the traffic of company coming and going, these kinds of things are expected. But this is February, and the line between holiday indulgences and just being a pig is starting to blur. Ike disagrees. At this point, only one of us is impressed with the notion of poop in the toilet, and is acting accordingly.

The Toilet Trained Cat book says that this kind of thing is to be expected, and not to worry. It’s only a sign that perhaps training is moving too rapidly, or that some external stressors are inhibiting the learning process.  Shit in the tub, as they say, happens.

So for the last couple of months, in a desert climate, I’ve been living with an inch of water in my bathtub. This is effective in redirecting Ike’s target location, but not her enthusiasm. She whines and sulks around the apartment. I avoid her at these times, knowing that she is prone to angry outbursts, usually at my expense. She generally prefers something carnal, like slashing at my arms or clutching my wrists between her paws and biting until she draws blood. The book suggests lots of encouragement, and plenty of well-timed rewards and praise until the kitty is feeling more secure about the toilet. I give, and Ike is eager to remind me of all the ways I have failed her. She cries. In familiar drawling tones, she despairs over the inch of water in the tub.

“Don’t start,” I tell her when she begins to succumb to the throes of anguish.

Last Thursday, at one in the morning, my brother left for Taiwan with his girlfriend. I do not feel bad about judging her. They will be there for a year, and despite the stress this causes me, I haven’t yet slipped up and gone number two in the tub. Here is a list of things that can happen to a person in Taiwan that can not happen to them in Seattle:

1. Typhus.
2. Accidentally eating dog.
3. Typhoon.
4. Eathquake.
5. Direct Chinese hostilities.
6. Losing touch with one’s family due to a 12-hour time difference. 

7. Poor enforcement of the rights of pedestrians.
8. Unwittingly wandering into a sex-trade ring.
9. Exotic toe fungus.
10. Discovery that homes, cars, sisters, cats, and microwaves can be left behind.
11. Vespa wasps. 

When he and my family flew into France to meet me after my study abroad school term had finished, his catchphrase was: “this country blows.” After asking him how he liked London, he said that the effort of getting there was a lot of work for a couple platters of soggy fish and a two-hour Jack the Ripper tour. He doesn’t like to travel. I’m his sister, I know this. Why The Girlfriend thinks she knows better is, well, because, as she is quick to point out, she knows better than me on a great many topics, my own family not excluded. The guy who once outlined a proposal for the right to chloroform noisy children in public spaces will now be teaching English to the schoolchildren of Taiwan. He’s not even a fan of boba tea.

The worst part is that despite myself, despite how selfishly I want to keep my brother for myself, I am proud of him. I am proud of him for taking a risk that will challenge him, all Lassieburgers aside. The whole thing would be so much easier, for one of us, anyway, if he were more worried. If I could tell him something like, “You’ll be fine. Just steer clear of the unadvertised massage parlors with no windows. You can call me when you get to your apartment,” then I would know how to navigate this. But I don’t think he needs to call me, and the massage parlors are pretty easy to identify. So I check my email four or five times a day waiting for the latest updates: We’ve landed in Taipei. We’ve found a hotel. The “IBF” (“Idle Bag Formation,” conceived in France to prevent pickpocketing and theft of luggage) remains as effective as ever. I think that by the time I go to bed at night, he will be waking up in the morning. I worry for him, and then I don’t. I think of The Girlfriend getting explosive diarrhea, and I turn in the direction of the kid with the blue eyes at the coffee shop and try to peek at the screen of his laptop to make sure his lines are as derivative and banal as I expect them to be, and then I take another swig of Orangina. What I do not do, is go home and poop in my bathtub.  

Yours, Mine, and Ours

I’ve never been a person who shares. It’s not that I don’t understand it, or that I was never taught the value of sharing. I’ve just always been of the philosophy that even though a Twix candy bar comes with two cookies, it only comes with one wrapper for a reason. I value my space. I value my things. I have both the way they are for specific, neurotic reasons.

            Living in a city the size of Los Angeles, I’ve had to do a lot of involuntary sharing. A spacious driving lane that I think is mine will be overtaken by a number of cars many times. When I rent an apartment, the space is mine, but the sound space I share with traffic, hoards of neighborhood children, my pothead neighbor, his idiot friends, his television and music equipment, and one easily-surprised dog named Coco who waits for cars to pass by his yard and startle him. When I submit a piece of art, writing, or a performance into the world, it will have to fight for its space among thousands of others.  

            One thing I love about living in LA is getting to hate it. I’ve never dreamed of living in this place. I am not impressed by bright city lights and could care less about wearing the “right” brand of shoes, meeting a television star, or how my tan is coming along. I studied French, not Spanish. I don’t even like the beach. LA is a filthy, insecure, beehive of a city with inadequate parking that threatens to turn me into the kind of person my mother would tell me not to be friends with. And if in the end, I don’t sell a single painting, screenplay, or short story, or act in a single film, I can say that well, I never liked the place, anyway, and I don’t know why people live there.

            Entering the 101 Freeway after 4pm on a weekday always reminds me of a war film, of the moment when the good guys look over the crest of the hill only find the enemy army already stretched out across the valley for miles and miles and miles. The difference of course, is that this army is equipped with Starbucks, cell phones, and organic potato chips, and said Valley is terrible, mythical place that is famously, like, WAY hotter than The City. But once I commit to the onramp, I join the ranks of the miserable, and submit to occupying a strip of concrete with them for the next hour of my life. What it boils down to is this: there are way too many people here.

            After five months of living in a place with a view of the Hollywood sign, I now live outside the city, in a quieter suburb. Ike is happier here. I am happier here. We no longer are followed by homeless people when we go for evening strolls, and I haven’t had to chase away anyone from stealing my recycling. I can hear crickets when the sun goes down. My neighbors are a reasonable couple: a nurse, and soft-spoken guy with a sensible name like Finn.

            Ike watches visiting cats from the screen door without the previous threat of cigarette smoke wafting into our home. This is our sanctuary, this is our home, and we live here together in a harmony of mutual understanding.

            Her toilet training has advanced at an exciting pace. Another week or two, and the litter pan that just a few weeks previously had intimidated the both of us will be completely removed from it’s place inside the bowl. Her progress is such that she now squats with all four paws on the seat of the toilet, and I have removed three-quarters of the pan, leaving a two-inch strip of litter near the front. There are days when I come home from work to find what we have come to call “Victory Yellow” in the toilet bowl. It is an exciting time.

            Today, however, when I removed her pan so that I could use the toilet, Ike became irritated. When I lifted her pan from the floor (a bottomless litter box is considerably less useful once it’s removed from the toilet bowl) she began to meow as if not only had I inconvenienced her, but also offended her.

            “Look,” I said, “I can’t just stop what I’m doing here. You’re going to have to wait your turn.”

            I may as well have told her to go outside. The meowing continued, and she eyed the bathtub threateningly.

            “Don’t you dare,” I said, knowing my threat was as hollow as that bottomless litter pan.

            Meow. MEOW. MEOW!

            She sniffed at the clean, white porcelain of the tub. Mercifully rejecting it, she jumped to the sink. Meow…

            I shook the pan so that the litter rattled against the aluminum. “kitty, kitty…”

            Her eyes surveyed the sink. What was it to her but just another porcelain bowl?

            “Fine.” I said.

            I hustled. “Here.”

            Ike’s face was smug as she perched on the seat. Aware of my commitment to positive reinforcement, I told her “good kitty.”  

            I gave her the privacy that she refused to afford me, and soon heard the tinkling of success echoing in our bathroom. After scratching at the seat a few times, she ran from the bathroom and swatted at my feet.

            I understand. I really do. The cost of another's company, or the company of ones goals, comes sometimes in making concessions. It doesn’t mean that I like it, or that tomorrow I will look forward to subjecting myself to masses of mostly inconsiderate strangers in this disgusting city. But I get it. I get it. 

Like it or Clump it

My right hand is battered and marked, red with fresh wounds from earlier today when Ike’s misdirected aggression once again fired in my direction. A visiting cat meowed outside our door, and, being the coward that she is, she attacked me when she couldn’t reach him through the screen door. It is on days like these when our relationship feels more like a junior high alliance rather than the devoted-pet-and-caregiver one I had hoped for when I took Ike into my home four years ago. Like a thirteen year old girl sensing weakness, Ike plays her assets: She’s adorable. Charming. Your omg bff, like forever. And this seems sincere. It is sincere. We can have matching charms: I <3 my cat/ I <3 my human. We will agree to hate the same people and the same things and this will be the cornerstone of our relationship. But then without motive, the charade slips away and the creature that was lurking beneath the purring steps forward. Instead of receiving her pat on the head, she bites the hell out of me.

On page 18 of “The Toilet Trained Cat,” the author suggests that “toilet training is much easier if the cat wants to please you, and a cat’s not going to want to please you if she doesn’t like you.” This is under the chapter titled “How Your Relationship with your Cat Affects Training.” Before seeing this in print, it was a thought that sat in the back of my mind like a kid shooting spitwads in the back of a theater. It’s not that Ike doesn’t like me. She does. But I think she is also fairly certain that I am a Philistine, a moron that she must tolerate in order to continue receiving food. Like any good despot, she knows must abuse me to make sure that I stay aware of this. So as Ike and I approach a milestone in our toilet training journey (putting the litter pan in the toilet bowl its self) I worry not that Ike doesn’t like me, but that it would be beneath her to please me. Of course I want my companion animal to like me. I buy her the good cat food. The no-clay litter. My floor is littered with her toys. I laugh at all of her jokes, even the ones that aren’t funny, and tell her that of course she’s not gaining weight—she’s the prettiest one out of all of us. But now, with the moving of the litter box, the stakes are higher. If Ike refuses to use the litter in the bowl, it could turn into a messy few weeks.

In the last two weeks of training, there have only been two missteps. The first was a miscalculation on Ike’s part. It was the first day that the litter pan had been on top of the toilet seat, and perhaps Ike was feeling over confident. I came home to a yellow puddle on the back rim of the seat, and a clean box of litter. The second may have been an attempt to correct the first. I came home from work to find the litter box upended and litter strewn across the tile floor. I ran through the scene in my imagination: Ike perched coolly on the rim of the box, all four paws gripping the same edge. And then physics would have taken over. A ten pound cat on the edge of a three pound litter box yields disaster. The scene spoke for its self, and Ike had no comment on the embarrassing situation. I handled the event delicately, cleaned the mess, and within one day we were back on track. Which leads us to today, the premier of the litterbox-actually-inside-the-bowl phase.

The reason this phase is tricky is because it requires the kitty to sit on the seat it’s self, and accept the new, more hidden location of the litter. Some cats will refuse, others will find new locations to relieve themselves. My hope is that our prep training has paid off. My hope is for a clump of litter in the pan by morning.  My hope is that she trusts me enough, likes me enough, to give this a try.

When, in 8^th grade, my best friend since 6^th grade moved on to a more affluent social group, I didn’t fight her decision. It was a quiet friend break-up. There was no screaming match, no returning of clothes or even badmouthing one another in the junior high hallways. But she with her long blond hair and Sketchers shoes and I behind my braces and glasses could no longer find a place to meet one another. She liked 98 Degrees, I was a Beatlemaniac. Somewhere, I had slipped behind, and in the dust of our friendship, there was nothing left to say, except for a nod in the hallways in between classes. It wasn’t that she didn’t like me. And it wasn’t that I stayed angry at her. It was that perhaps she had outpaced me in the direction that she was traveling. I threw away the macramé necklaces and beads that we had made together and didn’t speak to her again until the final quarter of our senior year.    

Maybe I’m expecting too much to hope that this will be a kind of bonding experience for Ike and me. Sharing the same unmentionable space should be the kind of thing that brings owner and pet closer together. Not that I’m expecting her to like me more.  I don’t delude myself into thinking that this will end the biting, the cold shouldering, the looks of disgust and pity, but I do hope that somewhere between flushes, we can find a new common ground. I’ll leave the lid up for her.  

One Cat, Approved

“If you were looking for stability, this ain’t it.” I told her from the front seat of my car, which was loaded with the majority of my earthly belongings. By this time, though, already two years into our lives together, Ike didn’t need the lecture. We were skedaddling on out of a Cragslist room-for-rent situation that had turned really weird really fast.

            To be fair, Ike’s life began with instability. Named after the hurricane that literally blew her into my life, she had been a three week old kitten with fleas and a homelessness situation when I agreed to take her in for a few days.

            Four years, five states, fifteen houses, and thousands of miles later, Ike remains a constant in the hurricane of my life. For every new place I live, I mark a check beside the "Cat" confession on the rental agreement. One cat, approved. We’ve spent the last five years on the racetrack, while I keep her in catnip by galloping Thoroughbreds on some of the most famous tracks in the country. They operate in conjunction with one another, so when one racetrack closes for the season, another opens, sometimes a few states away. The trainers follow the purse money, the horses follow the trainers, and the workers follow the horses. Kentucky, New York, Kentucky, Florida, repeat. And so Ike has learned the art of riding shotgun, leaning into the turns and discreetly using her travel-ready litter box at the appropriate times.

            What she lacks in conversational substance, Ike makes up for by being a remarkable listener. Watching yellow stripes blink by on the asphalt always makes me apt to take advantage of a captive audience, so I take her silence as an invitation. “No te muevas, Ike,” I tell her. “Todo bien, bambina.”

            I speak a version of racetrack Spanish that is functional but still makes me sound like a cheerful yet pitiably optimistic village idiot. But I love it, because every Spanish word I have was a gift from a specific person in this whirlwind. I learned the words “dry” and “dead” and “rat” from a Guatemalan groom in one spectacularly unfortunate incident during my first summer in Saratoga Springs.  

The first of those summers, the year before Ike joined me, I rented a room from an English rider/equine dentist who had been on the track since he was a teenager, living in Italy, England, and up and down the eastern United States. In his upstate New York home, he has footage of himself as a gangly teenager in a British television special, a dog from his first marriage, and a box of old coins he found on the beaches of Pisa. These are the things that tie his life together, no matter how broken the geography becomes. If these were his constants, his footholds, then Ike soon became mine.

But please, don’t start getting all sentimental. Understand this: Ike is horrible. She knows this, prefers this, and makes no apologies for the red lines she leaves on my arms or for the puncture wounds she inflicts on people she doesn’t like. Like most problems of this nature, her antisocial and embarrassing behaviors are rooted in insecurity. By the age of three weeks, Ike was already familiar with loss, self-reliance, and the art of playing a sucker. She finds comfort in her own box of familiar items. Given a choice, she would prefer to sleep in her pet taxi instead of on the pillows I set out for her. She quickly rejects gifts from well-meaning friends to play with a ragged set of mini-foam soccer balls she’s been batting around for years.  These are her constants, the anchors in her hurricane.

The winter after Ike tumbled into my life, her social awkwardness made it impossible for us to stay with any of my past roommates and their pets. The season had once again shifted, and we were headed south to Florida. That meant we were gypsies again, in need of a roommate and a room for the winter. When I told my prospective new roommate about Ike, she said she wasn’t worried. She had Moxie.  

Moxie was a sleek, beautiful black terror. Though usually kind, Moxie was cunning, agile, defensive, and quick to snap. Maybe it was because life hadn’t been fair to Moxie. She had, herself, been a sick orphan when my roommate had taken her in off of a cold New England racetrack. I had initially hoped that Moxie would be a kindred spirit for Ike, a fellow wandering soul. Instead, the two cats paced the apartment like gunslingers, filling our home with tension for the entire four months of our stay. I wondered at times if it was life on the road that had turned Moxie into the ruthless creature she was. My roommate was prone to occasional bursts of vulgarities that, had she the means, Moxie would have also employed. This lifestyle of constant upheaval requires an existential calm, and an ability to body-surf on the waves of a tsunami. Maybe Moxie had simply had enough of it, or maybe she had developed a different skill. She didn’t surf the tsunami, she raised an angry middle claw to it.    

She and my roommate moved on, the way racetrackers do, and by the following winter, Ike and I found ourselves back in South Florida settling into a converted garage I had found on Craigslist. Things had stared out normally enough. Laura, my landlady and housemate, was in her mid-forties, glad to have a comforting ear to listen to her troubles about getting her 22 year old Ethiopian boyfriend into the country. They had only met a few times two years ago while he was visiting Chicago, but this, she assured me, over frozen wontons and box wine, was real. Gil, down the hall, went to high school with Laura. Funny thing, he would say often and loudly, he and Laura weren’t even really friends in high school. Back then, you know, he was the school soccer star. Life had slowed for him lately, though, and he spent his days with a tanning screen and a gold necklace in the back yard. A sorrowful matted Persian cat roamed the house, and I spent much of my time apologizing for Ike’s antagonistic behavior towards him.

One month in, I knew it was time to cut my losses. I’d packed my things the night before, and by eleven o’clock the following morning, Ike and I were on the move. Once again, I found myself in a mid-size car surrounded by the things that give my life the illusion of structure. My entire life was packed around me, punctuated by a sarcastic cat in the backseat.

“Lista, bambina?” I said.

Of course she was ready. I turned the key, and we were off.