Pictured above: Toth (Right) and The Square Root of Seven (Left)

Last Christmas I adopted two stray cats from the Pier 70 Project in Philadelphia (animal lovers can read some about what the project does here). Casey and I got them together, but since I moved out I've been housing and caring for both of them. They're both about 6 months old, and just this past Saturday I took them back to Philly (one of the amazing things about this project is that the volunteer run clinic provides free vet care for all adoptive parents, although it is a bit inconvenient for me since I don't live in Philadelphia anymore, and hadn't at the time of adoption) to get spayed.

I had been very nervous about this operation leading up to the procedure since these kittens are essentially my baby daughters and I've apparently inherited my mothers pension for worry. They're doing ok now, but the whole weekend turned out somewhat disastrously.

I was particularly excited about taking the girls down to Philly since my best friend from college, Savannah, still lives down there. Theoretically, the trip would have been a nice quiet mini-vacation from all the things that have been bothering me lately. But you know, my life is apparently the embodiment of Murphy's Law.

The main thing I learned from this trip: Cats don't like other cats. Sure cats will bond with each other, much like Toth & Sq Rt did as babies, and sure a female cats maternal instincts can be pretty damn strong to the point that cats unrelated through biology will adopt kittens as family. But at the end of the day, cats are very territorial, insecure creatures.

After possibly the longest trip from Brooklyn to Philadelphia ever, the girls both being confined to a single carrier in the backseat of various cars, Toth & Sq Rt were plopped in the middle of a tiny apartment that housed up to six different cats at a time. In spite of being left alone the entire night and having the entire bathroom of Savannah's apartment all to themselves, it was still olfactory overload for my two girls. Toth didn't step out of the carrier once all night, and Sq Rt hid in the corner of the bathtub. They also refused to eat, drink, or use the litter box. They felt so threatened, and so unsafe that they began to lash out at Savannah and I the next morning when we tried to gather Sq Rt up to bring her to the clinic.

All of the stress this put me through caused me to cut my trip a bit short and run the girls back to Brooklyn, so that they were able to recover in a comfortable and familiar environment. Basically, I just wanted to stop worrying, and get my babies to a safe and secure place where I wouldn't feel that I wasn't putting them in any danger.

Because, you know, it always comes back to me.

Anyway, the girls have been home since Saturday night. They're healing just fine according to John & Margaret (the wonderful couple who have been busting their butts with the clinic and from whom I adopted my girls from), but they still can't be in the same room with each other without hissing and growling at each other. Sq Rt has stopped lashing out at everyone but her sister, but last night when I tried to pick up Toth I got a paw full of cat claw in the face. I still have the scars.

We all have scars around here.

This whole ordeal got me thinking about humans and the way we interact with each other. Unfortunately I don't speak catonese, so the only way I can understand what my girls are going through is through analogy. John pointed out that they're still probably coming down from the anesthesia, combined with having their ovaries ripped out, and so are understandably very very moody. I've seen this happen with human beings quite a few times.

But I started thinking about what happens when we hit rock bottoms. Some of us like to spread the misery. Some of us cling to our loved ones for comfort. Some of us even try to substitute the company of our loved ones with anyone willing to lend us an ear. And then some of us shut out the rest of the world and prefer to suffer alone. When we reach the worst points in our life, all we really want to do is be somewhere that we feel safe.

That's why it astonishes me that in modern society there are very few sanctuaries for people. Everything is about extending oneself. About taking things to the next level, no matter how unfamiliar or unsafe that level is. This is not necessarily a bad thing. All of the greatest advances of our race have developed in this fashion. But at the end of the day, who or what do we go home to? At the end of the day, who or what do we want to go home to?

For most of us, the two don't necessarily match up. I come home to a tiny ass apartment, populated by dirty laundry and two hormonal kittens. Sure I have my books, my DVDs, and my internet, but I no longer have someone to share a conversation with. I no longer have someone who inspires me to be silly and dance to ELO songs. I no longer have someone willing to make me hot tea or soup when I'm sick or simply just cold. It would be nice to have this, wouldn't it?

Not that we are incapable of making ourselves hot tea or soup, or picking up the phone and calling someone, or posting our silly ELO dance videos on YouTube, but none of this a given anymore. Human relationships, real relationships that develop over time and build histories of in-jokes and witty reference, are no longer a given. In order to attain such things, or even maintain such things require effort. It requires extending yourself and perhaps putting yourself in an unsafe position. Sure the pay-off is more than worth it, but did it really have to come to this?

Some of us are really good at this. I like to think most of us are not. But if you are ever in need of a simple real conversation, I'll be cowering in the bathtub like a scared kitten.

Labels: agoraphobia, cats, kittens, melodramatic rant, Philidelphia