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 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 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 a terrible, mythical place that is famously, like, WAY hotter than The City. But once I commit to the on-ramp, 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 sooooo 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 look away from folks rummaging through my recycling. I can hear crickets when the sun goes down. My neighbors are a reasonable couple: a nurse, and soft-spoken guy named 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, “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 herself, 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.