And so it begins...

Eight years ago, I was between regular teaching jobs and had to move into a co-worker’s basement. It was a low point. I don’t normally advocate giving one’s pets away, but a year prior, I had adopted a cat and now felt the co-worker was being kind enough by letting ME live in her basement, never mind a cat. I justified giving my pet away by telling myself that giving Graysee (who is gray, see?) to my best friend was okay, and in any case, the cat hated me. I think this picture accurately represents our relationship.

So I gave her to Nancy, who had a 3-bedroom house and 2 other cats. Graysee loved Nancy, who always told me it was because she, Nancy, never forced the cat to cuddle against her will, unlike me. Nonetheless, whenever I visited Nancy’s house, Graysee avoided me at best, hissed and growled at me at worst. I felt pretty lucky that Nancy had taken her in.

Only Nancy is downsizing in 2017. And since she actually has many, many cats now (and a dog), it is only fitting that I take Graysee back. I’m very, very worried about this. 

1.) For one thing, Graysee doesn’t like me much.

2.) For another thing, I am not a multi-cat person. I actually spend considerable time worrying about becoming a multi-cat person, as women in their 30’s sometimes do.

3.) Graysee hates Mocha, as I discovered when I kittysat for 2 weeks. It was  stressful.

But I love my friend and I love animals, so I figured, we will work it out.

Then I realized there are almost no doors in my house. I had been planning to keep Graysee in the spare room until she acclimated, but when I went to shut the door, it was so old that it wouldn’t shut! I don’t know how that even happens. Yes I do. You buy a house built in 1917, that's how it happens.

So before school one morning, Mocha and I went to inspect the spare room door and see if it could possibly be shut by determination.

That’s how I accidentally locked myself in the spare room at 6:30 in the morning when it was pitch black outside. It turns out you cannot just make hundred-year-old doors open and close by the force of your will. You can heave them shut but then that is where they will stay. 

This was certainly a conundrum. I didn’t know what to do. I had already called in late to work one day because I'd locked myself out of my apartment. I could not now be late because I'd locked myself INSIDE my house. What would they think?

So I forced open a window and jumped out into the darkness, running around the side of the house and in through the front door. Mocha almost had a heart attack, thinking I was still in the spare room.

I imagine it's the times like these that forge resourcefulness in a person. Do I still have wrapping paper coving the bathroom window? Yes. Did I accidentally pull a scary looking light fixture out of the ceiling whilst attempting to change a lightbulb? Also yes. But I jumped out a damn window when I trapped myself in a room. And that is something. I will have to remember that.