Cats: Why They Are Awesome & I'll Take a Kitten Over a Baby

Once again, real life has interrupted my updating this blog. A friend of mine that my husband hates got sworn into NY on Wednesday & I volunteered to go since no one else was (plus it was a simple subway ride for me to get there). I felt bad since I know what it's like to do things in life & not have anyone be there for you or even just dismiss your accomplishments. He got motioned in but I still felt it was something that warranted someone showing up for. I'm still the only person in my entire family (including extended and in-laws) to have taken the bar exam, much less be an attorney. Motioning in or not, it's still a bigger deal than putting on your clothing all by yourself in the morning or walking to the street corner (assuming you haven't suffered grave personal injury that would prevent you from doing this already).

I even altered my normal sleep schedule to do this & wore makeup (since a swearing in is always at the courthouse, where you're expected to look nice & I didn't want to go with zits showing on my face). I doubt my friend cared but it was one of those girly isms of not wanting to look totally sloppy.

The only person who came to my CT swearing in was my husband & he's been the only one to go to my company's events. I'm not even sure my family would attend even if there were a screening of one of my films in their town or nearby.

On top of this, my father got into a car accident on Monday night that totaled my first & only car (the one I used while living in Atlanta and CT; I guess a 10+ year run isn't bad but still). He ended up getting a hairline fracture near his knee, has to do physical therapy, is out of commission for a while & my family's got enough shit going on already.

THEN, we've had this stray cat in our neighborhood that is super affectionate. On Monday evening, when it was snowing & cold outside, I came home to find this cat in our apartment entryway. I was puzzled about it but my husband said he felt bad for the cat & that he could no longer watch her suffer outside (particularly since our neighbor saw an issue with the cat's leg & I said we'd have to take in the cat if she were injured or in danger of being abused if she stayed out). He was going to take her in that night in a carrier we'd planned to get rid of since it inspired terror in our cat but the cat got outside before he could.

On Thursday, he got the cat into our house. The scary thing is that cat went right in the carrier & later was sleeping in it. I've never seen a cat be cooperative with one of those & I've had cats most of my life. You can tell this cat is STARVED for affection. She's currently in our bathroom until we get her checked out by the vet on Monday. We found a local one with acceptable reviews to me that exclusively does house calls. I don't want my cat getting sick or harmed b/c of my husband's pity for this stray cat.

If we keep her, we'd also have to get her declawed since our current cat is declawed. I'm not a proponent of doing that since it hurts cats to do that to them. However, it's not fair to put a clawed and declawed cat together. My cat also has a history of hating other creatures (though he loves me). We're trying to see about getting her a home but anything we're going to do is essentially on hold until the vet sees her on Monday.

At least we did pick out a name for her: Ortensia. If you figure out the reference, you get 100 points. I looked at her after hearing this name suggestion & thought "She DOES look like an Ortensia."

What do you think?



Our bathroom is essentially a closet but it seems to be working for her right now. Here's another shot I got of her where she's looking up:



This cat is so extremely affectionate that you can tell she belonged to someone before. I also don't think she was treated well based on what we've seen her do & how she treats even basic affection and attention.

The alpha cat has not been around Ortensia so much b/c of safety but he knows she's there & he can't go into his bathroom. She also doesn't drink from the sink like he does.

From what we hear, apparently some tenants who lived in this building abandoned this cat & moved to Virginia. My husband plans to pay a little visit next time we're in that area.

If this cat actually belongs to someone, they are the biggest deadbeats around. The cat has NO collar (well, didn't but we fixed that), was being fed by others who took pity, kept trying to get into our building & for fuck's sake, THIS IS NYC!!! You don't let a cat roam outside when you're living in the city & surrounded by a bunch of apartment homes with no front yards but a busy street and sidewalk. She doesn't even appear to have a name since she responded when noise is made or to general greetings like "kitty."

When it comes to cats, I'm very passionate about decent treatment to them. After all, they kill mice (how many kids have you seen doing that?), kill & point out bugs, eat some of this stuff they kill, don't have to be walked (if you're too lazy to clean a litter box, you sure don't need to have children & change dirty diapers) and they don't play mind games with you. If a cat doesn't like you, they don't pretend and then gossip about you behind your back like a human would. They're not racist, sexist or ageist.

As long as you're nice to them, maybe give them a treat from time to time, they'll be your buddy. Kids certainly aren't that way; you can be the nicest, coolest parent out there & get rewarded with nastiness, ungrateful behavior or other various shitty treatment. Cats are a trillion times easier. Maybe living up to childfree stereotypes but I totally prefer cats to kids per capita. Individual factors definitely play a role but if you gave me a choice, I'd take a kitten over a baby in a heartbeat. I actually know something about caring for a kitten.

When I say I'm "very passionate" about proper treatment of cats, I mean that I could probably get off on violence against an animal abuser based on temporary insanity. Let me tell you a story to illustrate this.

My ex-friend decided to take in a stray that was hanging around her cousin's beauty salon when I was staying in her home after graduating college. I helped her out on this.

Her husband came home & kicked the carrier after arguing with my ex-friend. I was in a different room at the time but could see & hear the action.

The instant he did this, I zoom over to him and stand right in his face literally robbing him of personal space. Seems I scared the hell out of him. It was 100% instinct. Any social cues or niceties left me when I saw that since it pissed me the fuck off. I think it took less than a second or two for me to get there.

After that, he was far nicer to that cat.

What's the lesson? Don't fuck with me when it comes to animal abuse. This includes ditching your cat b/c you decided to have a baby.

Guess what, fuckers? My sister and I were raised with multiple cats around us. We were taught to be respectful to the cats. My parents would not have dreamed of getting rid of any of our cats because of having a baby. My sister currently lives with my parents and her small kids; she hasn't even dared asking them to get rid of their cats to cater to her little kids. Nope, her kids have to actually treat the cats with respect & she bothers to PARENT!

By 5/6 years old, we knew how to properly hold a kitten & not be fucking assholes to them or any other conventional pets. We didn't die & the Earth is still turning. I'm doing what I do now so obviously you're full of crap to go tossing pets out like they are an old TV set or a bed that broke.

Being abusive to an animal tells me that you are a sub-human piece of garbage who is not entitled to the same rights the rest of us share. Therefore, what does it matter how you feel or what you think? I don't give a damn since you find it awesome to be abusive to dogs & cats. I also feel people like that have zero business breeding. What will they do if they have a baby who cries all the time or has a neurological condition? Are they going to just toss that baby in the dumpster b/c it became "inconvenient?" If they think it would be monstrous to do that, then why the difference to a cat?

For me, if you think there's a difference, you are a scumbag & have mental problems. The irony here is that apparently sociopaths have more regard for animals than human beings. Tony Soprano cared about a mistreated horse about as much as I do about cats.

I don't give a shit about your financial condition. Would you leave your kid by the side of the road b/c (s)he was too expensive? Then why is it okay to leave a cat, a so-called member of the family that formed a bond with you & whom you've put money into? If you had it declawed & you're doing that, you are right up there with an adult who exposes kids to known child molesters, pimps, rapists and any other "bad element" that would rob that child of his/her soul, physical being, etc. My parents don't have money either but they'd never abandon their cats. This was also true when I was a kid living there.

Am I a sociopath b/c I care more about cats than humans? I don't know. If I am, I'm no worse than any other person in my position or field. Plus, I think how one treats the lesser of us shows how much character someone has. Someone who's shitty to a dog or a cat? Tells me you're a person I'll be avoiding & balling out for being such an asshole. Character transcends social class, race, age, everything. It's something you have or you don't, much like class.

If my feeling as I do about animal abusers makes me a sociopath, then I'll wear that title proudly just as I wear it proudly than an ex (who was also 14 years older than me) said I had the capacity to be Livia Soprano.

An Important Life Lesson: Learning How to Fail

This lesson is perhaps one of the most important of all in my book. I also think too many people don't know how to do it and suffer for it later on.

One big problem in this learning how to fail is the punishment heaped upon you for doing so. Consider getting a failing grade in school: you don't get to take a class just to learn the material. If you fail, parents will punish you, teachers will label you as that slow kid, & you could end up on academic probation or even tossed out of college or grad school. In other words, most people don't have a safe environment in which they can fail without being completely annihilated. If that pressure isn't enough, most people have their own inner voice beating them up for it (smart kids definitely feel this & I speak from personal experience).

When you move further up the totem pole, this pressure to be the best intensifies. If you go to law school, you'll notice a high amount of competition. This continues when you get out into the world as a new grad & as a new lawyer.

"What's bad about never failing?" you may ask. "Doesn't that mean that I'm just a super bad ass who's great at everything?"

Here's the answer: everyone in life is going to fail at something sooner or later. No one is good at everything & sooner or later, you're going to fail at something. If you've failed early in life, you realize that it's not the end of the world if you can't play sports or master Algebra. The world still turns, you can take another path & you can move on. You learn about your strengths and weaknesses.

Plus, it builds character. If you've failed, you are human. You aren't some machine or deity. I think it also makes you more forgiving of others' shortcomings & builds self-awareness.

If you don't fail at anything in life, what happens? You become the kid that commits suicide after getting a B. You're the person whose world shatters over some little inconsequential shortcoming that really means crap when you look at the big picture.

I most definitely have struggled with things & faced failure. For one thing, I'm lousy at sports. Get me in a Phys Ed class & I will humiliate myself. Thank God I had the option of Dance in high school; I loved taking it, though I'd call myself an average dancer. Since we never got to learn any useful life skills in Phys Ed like self-defense or even do something I'm halfway decent at like swimming, I just wasn't interested in being mocked by little bitchy clique girls & jocks.

Smart kids totally & completely feel the pressure not to fail. When I was in high school, I was taking AP Chemistry. This was a class that the teacher even said was the hardest one you could take. I was getting a low grade in it & at the time I was in National Honor Society. Despite the level of difficulty of a class, the group would put you on academic probation if you earned lower than a C. The same thing happened to a friend of mine a couple years before but she was in a different AP class. How about letting me learn the material without that kind of pressure, huh? If I was gifted enough to get in to start with, shouldn't I not have been pressured in that way? AP classes are college level courses & I was still in high school. Geez, it's like going to a restaurant and expecting the server to wipe your mouth for you. Give them a break!

I wasn't even given the option to fail in high school. My whole "smart kid" image was so firmly entrenched that when I was slacking off on an assignment for Latin class, my own classmates were harassing me about it! When I got to college, I decided to deliberately avoid any special academically gifted classes or programs since I felt that incident created way too much pressure on me.

This lack of failure in a safe place keeps people from doing new things & getting out of their comfort zones. I think it's a good thing I had those experiences because it kept me from being suicidal in law school. In fact, I think it's pretty damn good that I never got lower than a C- & did not have the assistance of study aids. I also think not being born to money helps in character building but that's another conversation.

Despite any failures, I've had a lot of success in life & gotten things I wanted. My sister recently told me that I'm the only one in our family that has done something with their life since I got an education & no one else did. Lately, though I've had a fear of being 50 years old & still being in the same boat with respect to my career. I know exactly what I want to do, which I guess is a plus since there are so many people who either don't know or are just settled into something they don't really like or care about.

I told my sister that she's being a mother & a good one at that, which isn't easy to do so she should be proud of that. I'd pick my path over motherhood anytime.

Seems like God & the universe are trying to tell me that it's going to work out but I just need to have faith in the whole thing. How else do you explain my luck with day jobs? Some days, I feel like I've lost my ambition. Then I realize that's only when it comes to anything long term unrelated to my company or the entertainment field. Yeah, I just don't care & in a lot of instances, you can see why. I'm used to having autonomy & being treated like an adult. I'm used to being respected. Why would I be motivated to deal with anyone who's not going to treat me in that way? Would YOU have that motivation? I think my soul would indeed die in that kind of job. I can't approach interviews & the like in the same way as someone who's spent their life working for others, being treated like crap & so on and so forth.

A secret about people working in entertainment: some days, it's very discouraging. There are times when you have no faith at all in things. Some days you want to chuck it all and feel like you're out of your league. You do need a positive outlook to work in this area & most of us ultimately believe in ourselves since that's all we've got. However, that doesn't mean you never feel down. This is where supportive people & one's support network come in.

Perhaps I also feel this way because of two family members being in the hospital under dire straits. It's not anyone I'm super close to: one of these is a relative so remote to me, he may as well be a random subway traveler or a celeb I've got zero connection to. The other is someone who has refused to get help for herself and inflicted excessive pain on loved ones (including children), something I obviously have some very personal feelings & animus about.

I'm not going to either funeral because of travel costs & what would I say?

Really, though I think people should be given some space to fail once in a while. It's too taxing & unfair to turn a mere human into a superman/superwoman. I also think it's just as important as sharing, debate, self-defense training or cooking among other survival skills. Otherwise, it might be you or your loved one jumping off the roof or committing hari-kari after getting a B.