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.