Nevermore

Thank god for cats. Cats don't give a shit.

When you've had a bad day, it's nice to come home to a cat. Dogs sense immediately that you've had a bad day and start groveling. Meanwhile you've been groveling all day, enough already, you need a drink.

A cat, on the other hand, locks eyes as soon as the door opens, engaging you in a staredown that will last until one or the other of you figures out what the fuck the cat wants. Food? treat? litterbox hasn't been scooped since the midterm elections? Even the cat doesn't know.

Accomplished hypnotists, cats will eventually release you from these recurrent trances with one long blink. By then you've forgotten all about your lousy day. In fact, you've forgotten who you are, where you've been, where you're going, why you're standing slackjawed in this vaguely familiar mudroom staring at a cat.

Dogs invented the term "separation anxiety." When you leave the house, whether to get the mail or go to France, a dog calls its therapist. A cat could care less where the hell you're going or if you're ever coming back, just leave the computer on. Why do you think they call it a mouse?

My cat takes saunas. She scratches on the door and bellyaches until I let her in, then stretches out on the lower bench and glares up at me. She doesn't like NPR -- which I listen to religiously, even in the sauna -- she prefers the sound of her own being. She keeps glaring until I rise like a parboiled phoenix and turn off the radio, at which point she gives me one long blink and starts to purr.

So much for Talk of the Nation.

Speaking of religion. I had one of those bad days last week in which religion figured prominently. Not my religion, silly wabbit, that disappeared ages ago along with my belief in little people who lived in the walls and virginity. I'm talking about the church where I work. Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those, for crissakes. I just happen to teach at a preschool that happens to be annexed to a church where, though I remain as committed a communist-lesbo-pagan as ever, I happen to be surrounded by Believers on a daily basis.

It's like being surrounded by people with headlice. In a crowded elevator.

Believers kill me, they really do. When Believers have a bad day, they lay it at Jesus' feet. Jesus needs hip waders just to get out of bed in the morning. Poor sap. I wonder if he has a cat.

But back to my bad day.

There I am in my classroom, at the end of a long week, hard at work cutting out Doctor Seuss, scissors softly thwacking. Somewhere a clock ticks. Suddenly the door opens, in walks a Believer. Soon she's joined by another, then another, until the room is crawling with 'em (remember the headlice?), all gathered for the monthly meeting ("Where da meetin' gonna be?"). Okay, okay, I'm technically part of this monthly meeting, but so far I've managed to distance myself. Like that weird girl in the back of the room in every class you had in grade school.

Once the Believers settle in, they bow their heads and start their engines. Then it's Jesus this and Jesus that and Jesus the other thing and help the rainforest and help the polar ice caps and help me lose weight and help my child pass math and help me think of another example. These are college-educated women, let me tell you, it's mind-numbing. I mean, I believe in spiritual awakening as much as the next guy, but enough already. Whatever happened to Carlos Castenada? I could use a plug of peyote right about now.

I take all I can take of this crappola before distancing myself through the emergency exit out to the parking lot, where I engage in a low-voltage primal scream and jump in my car and race home through the gathering darkness, swearing for the umpteenth time that I will never ever subject myself to that fucking meeting again not ever no never not one more time!

Back at the ranch, the dog has me figured before I'm through the door. She hangs up on her therapist and falls over in a swoon, tongue lolling out the side of her mouth onto the carpet like toilet paper. The cat is nowhere to be seen.

Discarding various items from my person, I stagger across the room in the general direction of the refrigerator, where I raise a beer and tilt my head and suddenly there she is, perched atop the appliance like that raven in the poem, locked in a staredown: The Cat.

Weak and weary though I am, I ponder. The cat is not so much a raven, as a gargoyle. No, that's not it. Actually she's my second grade teacher. My Great Aunt Margaret Who Never Married. The Sheriff of Nottingham? The muse? Could she be (gasp!) Jesus?

None of this rings true, but by now it doesn't matter. I've forgotten all about my lousy day and whatever it is about me that made it lousy in the first place. I stand in the middle of the vaguely familiar kitchen and tip my beer in a toast.

"Who gives a shit?" I say, and the cat blinks once and starts to purr.

Living Will

In keeping with my husband's observation that you know you're getting older when you wake up in the morning and realize you've injured yourself sleeping, I offer the following as further proof that our brains, along with our bodies, do not function as they once did in the halcyon days of our youth.

While perusing my annual benefits statement from the Social Security Administration, under the section entitled "What retirement age is best for you?", the unconscious part of my brain made one small substitution which, I'm embarrassed to say, went unnoticed by the conscious part for a few beats too long:

"There is one more thing you should remember as you crunch the numbers for your retirement. You may need your income to be sufficient for a long time, because people are living longer than ever before, and generally, women tend to live longer than men.

For example:

- The typical 65-year-old today will live to age 83;
- One in four 65-year-olds will live to age 90; and
- One in ten 65-year-olds will live to age 95.

Once you decide on the best age for you to actually die, remember to complete your application three months before the month in which this will occur."