Look What The Cat Dragged In…

I heard the story recently of a woman and a cat. Not the usual story of feline obsession. There were no special little kitty-cat outfits or freshly massaged beef flown in daily from Japan. Nope. The cat became this woman’s catalyst for change. Long, long, overdue change. Here’s the story:

A woman lived in an apartment for a long time. Too long. As the landlord aged, his saint of a wife passed, he fell into ill health and his temperament changed. He turned from a basically okay guy into a pot-bellied, yellow-toothed rat bastard.

Meanwhile, the once lovely building began to fall apart. Not all at once, but systematically. First, it was the single elevator which became a hit or miss box-of-terror. The out of order sign was permanent and if you didn’t feel like walking the seventy-eight steps up to the third floor with your groceries, you took your chances. But not without a valium. And a crowbar.

Everywhere you looked the paint was peeling faster than a bad sunburn. The front buzzer hadn’t worked for years, (friends just shouted up for the keys to the front door from the street below her window), and her oven either made lukewarm everything or charcoal briquets.

Everyone who visited the apartment urged her to move. But after eighteen years of rent control, she just couldn’t bring herself to leave. And they allowed cats. That is until the fateful morning he came banging on the door to personally deliver a UPS package addressed to her that he claimed was loitering in the front lobby. When she answered the door, the friendly feline came over and wove itself in and around her feet, rubbing its face on her three-day leg stubble, purring loudly.

Too loudly.

“What’s that?!’ her landlord hissed between teeth the color of aged ivory piano keys.

“Oh, uh…that’s my cat”, she stammered.

“I don’t allow cats in this building!”, he bellowed, his fat belly quivering for emphasis.

“But I’ve always had it”, she replied nervously, trying to shoo the cat away with her slippered foot.

The cat thought it was a fun new game and began tightly hugging her muck-luckity clad foot with its front paws while furiously rabbit kicking it with its rear legs She grabbed the box from his twisted, cigarette stained fingers and closed the door to just a crack in order to hide the madness happening below her bathrobe.

He was undeterred. “The cat goes or YOU go!”, he yelled. “You have one week or I’m evicting you.”
With that, he managed to propel his girth away from her door and with enormous momentum practically plummeted down the stairs. She slammed the door leaning against it for support, trembling. The cat strolled away contentedly, convinced it had beaten its foe. Exhausted, it jumped up onto the chair by the window, rolled into a ball and promptly fell asleep in the warm morning sun.

What am I going to do?, she wondered. She had to admit that the place had transformed over the years into a shit-hole and the landlord into a troll, but the thought of moving sent her into a full blown anxiety attack. She had savings, it wasn’t that. She wasn’t good with change. She hated the thought of leaving, of looking for a new place. She was used to it there. Even though she knew her quality of life could be so much better—she was willing to settle. For everything that was wrong with the place, the voice in her head came up with a million reasons why it was easier to stay.

Her tolerance for mediocrity, misery, and sub-standard living conditions had reached an all-time high.

Terrified, she hid every sign of the cat.
Late at night, she’d load its dirty cat litter and empty food cans into bags and lug them three flights down, out to the scary-ass alley where she’d walk several buildings over to dump them. The cat box took up residency in her shower when she wasn’t using it and she played the radio to hide the sounds of any meowing. One Sunday it took her nearly the entire morning to move the gigantic carpeted cat tree from its sunny place next to the dining room window into a dark corner of her bedroom. She made sure to keep the blinds closed on all of the windows—just in case.

One night, laying in bed, she literally made herself sick with worry. She realized that not only was she miserable, she had now seriously diminished her dear cat’s quality of life as well.

And THAT was the last straw!

The next day she begrudgingly mentioned to someone at work that she needed a new place— a place that took cats.
Not even three weeks later, she found the most adorable little house-behind-a-house owned by a terrific man, his equally fantastic husband, and their two siamese cats. A fresh start! Fresh in every way. New paint, shiny refinished hardwood floors, even the unfathomable! A stackable washer and dryer! Not only that, it was at ground level, the oven worked like a charm, and the front porch was screened with a perfect spot for the cat tree. Nobody was happier than the cat.

Now…you may be wondering, did the cat make this happen? Did it show itself at just the wrong time to get this ball rolling? Perhaps.

But I think the real moral of this story is the habit many of us have of dragging our feet on the way to our own happiness.
I’ve done it and I’m sure my friends—you have too. It’s about self-worth and why our cat’s, friend’s, spouse’s (fill in the blank), everybody else’s happiness is more important than our own.

It’s also a story about how there are great possibilities out there, possibilities we could never have imagined— if we can only just step out of the complacency and fear.

Take it from this cat story, the very thing you dread could be the best change you’ve ever made.

Carry on,
xox