wouldn’t let me get near them, but something had to be done about them. I just kept hanging on to the hope that someone else would deal with it. The truth is I was completely taken with two of these cats. I just thought they were too good to become alley cats. They were so perfect and clean andinnocent that I didn’t want them to live that harsh alley-cat life. I think the impulse to save animals is, aside from being empathetic and humane, also symbolic of saving some part of ourselves. I wanted these cats to be okay. I wanted to be okay.
The night before the 2004 Republican National Convention I was freaking out. We were going to cover the convention live at a booth in Madison Square Garden, behind enemy lines. I was nervous and couldn’t sleep. So, of course, I decided I was going to deal with the cat issue. That’s how I do. When life is scary and chaotic I like to make it more so.
I took a large shoe box and cut a hole in it. I put a small can of food in the box and set it out by the garbage can while I stood behind the basement door and watched. I had recruited my neighbor Jodi to help me; her job was to make sure I didn’t completely freak out. I saw the first cat get in the box. I scrambled outside, quickly covered the hole in the box with a piece of cardboard, picked the box up, and ran it up two flights of stairs to my apartment. I released the animal into my place and it scurried scared and crazy behind the stove. “It’s freaked out,” I thought. It will grow to like me.
Over the next few hours I performed this same procedure with four of the five kittens. Once I finally had them in the house it was like I’d released a pack of wild ferrets into my living room. They weren’t acting like house cats. I didn’t realize at the time that if a cat is eating on its own it’s not a cute housekitten: It’s feral. I had trapped and released four wild animals into my apartment.
Two of them lodged themselves behind the stove. When I looked back there all I could see were two gaping, hissing mouths directed at me. The cat that I named Monkey went flying down the hallway and attempted to jump out a window. I was two stories up. He hit the screen, then climbed up the screen and wedged himself between the screen and the window. He stayed there for two days. LaFonda got herself stuck to a glue trap I had laid outfor mice. She was flopping around on my kitchen floor, a mess of angry gray fur attached to a card. She didn’t know me, I didn’t know her, and I had to pull her off the trap. Her claws ripped through my hand but I managed to detach her from the goo plate. I believe the terror of that incident got locked deep in her wiring. She is still twitchy about it. That was her Nam.
In the days that followed I tried to shoo them back out the door but they didn’t even know where they were so they wouldn’t leave the apartment. I had no idea how to handle the situation. I tried to pull the “I’m your parent now” thing, but these cats were already about three months old; they weren’t trying to hear that mess. I was surrounded by vicious little things and all I’d wanted was friends.
Night was the worst. The black-and-white cat whom I called Hissy would sit in the window of the kitchen, which faced out the back of the building. She would wail and her mother would answer in the alley. It was heartbreaking. I was living in a cat opera and I was the bad guy. The other one, whom I called Meanie, had a very frightening stink eye that he would shoot at me. He was horribly menacing for something that size. Monkey dislodged himself from the window, and LaFonda, after the mouse-trap incident, spent most of her time under the couch. When I shut the door to my bedroom to go to sleep, they’d all emerge. From under my covers, it sounded like my house was being ransacked and robbed. I would let it go on because I wanted them to have fun. When I woke up and walked into the living room there were no cats but half the
The night before the 2004 Republican National Convention I was freaking out. We were going to cover the convention live at a booth in Madison Square Garden, behind enemy lines. I was nervous and couldn’t sleep. So, of course, I decided I was going to deal with the cat issue. That’s how I do. When life is scary and chaotic I like to make it more so.
I took a large shoe box and cut a hole in it. I put a small can of food in the box and set it out by the garbage can while I stood behind the basement door and watched. I had recruited my neighbor Jodi to help me; her job was to make sure I didn’t completely freak out. I saw the first cat get in the box. I scrambled outside, quickly covered the hole in the box with a piece of cardboard, picked the box up, and ran it up two flights of stairs to my apartment. I released the animal into my place and it scurried scared and crazy behind the stove. “It’s freaked out,” I thought. It will grow to like me.
Over the next few hours I performed this same procedure with four of the five kittens. Once I finally had them in the house it was like I’d released a pack of wild ferrets into my living room. They weren’t acting like house cats. I didn’t realize at the time that if a cat is eating on its own it’s not a cute housekitten: It’s feral. I had trapped and released four wild animals into my apartment.
Two of them lodged themselves behind the stove. When I looked back there all I could see were two gaping, hissing mouths directed at me. The cat that I named Monkey went flying down the hallway and attempted to jump out a window. I was two stories up. He hit the screen, then climbed up the screen and wedged himself between the screen and the window. He stayed there for two days. LaFonda got herself stuck to a glue trap I had laid outfor mice. She was flopping around on my kitchen floor, a mess of angry gray fur attached to a card. She didn’t know me, I didn’t know her, and I had to pull her off the trap. Her claws ripped through my hand but I managed to detach her from the goo plate. I believe the terror of that incident got locked deep in her wiring. She is still twitchy about it. That was her Nam.
In the days that followed I tried to shoo them back out the door but they didn’t even know where they were so they wouldn’t leave the apartment. I had no idea how to handle the situation. I tried to pull the “I’m your parent now” thing, but these cats were already about three months old; they weren’t trying to hear that mess. I was surrounded by vicious little things and all I’d wanted was friends.
Night was the worst. The black-and-white cat whom I called Hissy would sit in the window of the kitchen, which faced out the back of the building. She would wail and her mother would answer in the alley. It was heartbreaking. I was living in a cat opera and I was the bad guy. The other one, whom I called Meanie, had a very frightening stink eye that he would shoot at me. He was horribly menacing for something that size. Monkey dislodged himself from the window, and LaFonda, after the mouse-trap incident, spent most of her time under the couch. When I shut the door to my bedroom to go to sleep, they’d all emerge. From under my covers, it sounded like my house was being ransacked and robbed. I would let it go on because I wanted them to have fun. When I woke up and walked into the living room there were no cats but half the
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