Cats and the Single Girl

by Gwen Cooper — April 16, 2007

When you’re an unmarried woman over the age of 30, there are probably only so many cats you can have before people start referring to you as “the crazy cat lady.” I myself have three. On the occasions when somebody presses me to give a home to a fourth—and it’s always a sore temptation—I tend to respond by saying something such as: “I’m one cat away from being known as Old Widow Cooper….where the neighborhood kids walk by my house and throw rocks at my window, and say things like, That’s where Old Widow Cooper lives. She’s craaaaaazy…”

My best friend, Lisa, puts it more succinctly. "You'd be unfuckable," she says.

My first two cats came into my home more than 10 years ago. At the time, I was living with the man I planned to marry. The two of us wanted pets, but felt that we didn't have the time and attention to devote to a dog. So we got cats--and I am now heartily ashamed that I ever considered them a second choice. (Mommy loves you, babies!)

My third cat, Homer, was taken in after my ex-fiancé and I split and I'd ended up with sole custody of our feline offspring. Homer was only four weeks old, and had been abandoned at my vet's office after a virulent eye infection had necessitated removal of both his eyes. My vet called with a long sad story--perfect for a cable movie, if only there were a station called Lifetime for Cats--about how nobody would take in this blind kitten. Not even the people on her list who had specifically expressed a wish to adopt handicapped cats.

Newly single at the time, I was of the strong opinion that it wasn't in my best interests to take in a third. But I was practically sobbing by the end of the story. "I'll come in and meet him," I told my vet tearfully. "But I'm not promising anything."

A pillar of fortitude I am...

Homer is eyeless and all black, and has remained very small well into his adult life. He is, by far, the most fearless of all my cats. He's the first one to introduce himself to new people when they come into my home. He's the first one to explore new places and new things. When I brought home one of those six-foot cat towers a few years ago, he was the first to climb all the way to the top. In my more contemplative moods, I find something inspirational in the way he'll climb and climb as high as he can, even though he can't see where he's going or figure out how he'll get back down.

Homer is also the most playful of the three, and he's recently decided that tampons are his favorite toys. I suppose I can understand why that's so--a tampon can roll around and it has a string at the end. A perfect cat toy, really. He's figured out how to open the cabinet under the bathroom sink where I used to keep them, so I've had to move them up to a higher storage spot to keep him from getting into the box.

But I guess one must have fallen out, because I brought my date home last night and there was Homer, tearing around the apartment with a tampon in his mouth. It had come out of the wrapper but was still in its cardboard dispenser (thank goodness!).

Nevertheless, it was quite a sight: an eyeless black cat scampering around with a tampon hanging from his jaw. "It's not what it looks like," I hastily informed my date, not wanting him to think he'd stumbled into a serial killer's lair. "I'm not a crazy cat lady or anything..."

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, just published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen's posts in The Dating Life, click here.