Although he identified with wolves and German shepherds, I’m convinced my grandfather was 49% cat.
Exhibit A: he stayed home, guilt-free.
A New York City police captain, a cartoonist, a lifelong learner, and my best friend, Grandpa lived as many lives as the best cats. But, when he was happiest and most honest, all those lifelines led home to the 700 square foot condo where he felt most alive.
Cats know a great deal about condos and comfort.
If the cubbies of Tabby’s Place can be compared to any form of architecture, it must be the noble condominium. Sharing walls and warmth, leaning against each other for life support, they are separate but together, private but communal. The inhabitants lack the big yards of the Lobby or the picket fences of the staff offices, but they’ve found their own little slice of heaven — a Sicilian pie slice, squat and square and squarely “enough.”
CAT is the condo-cubby resident par excellence, the king of his SIZE castle. He peeps out to survey the neighborhood; he “meeps!” forth to invite you to come watch the Yankee game on his 19″ TV; he creeps back home at the end of the fifteen-minute visit, back to where his blankets and his blisses and his secrets live.
Should he need an extra jingle ball, or someone to commiserate with about the indignities he has just seen on his 19″ TV, CAT need only nudge himself upstairs to CAT2. In the comfort of the space between — the ramp being our answer to the hallway, open and public and soothingly prone to only short conversations — they will have their meeting of the minds, musing and marveling and maybe exchanging microwave tips before retreating to their cubbiminiums.
To landed gentry like CAT, this minimalism may smell stifling. Who could be comfortable in a cube when you could be landscaping the Lobby, or stretching out in a sweeeeeeeeeeeeet staff office, or even managing that vast manor known as the Lounge?
Condo cats don’t need to defend themselves. They live large in small spaces. Perhaps this is because their inner architecture is so enormous, it takes days just to walk from one end of their emotions to the other. An uncomplicated abode makes life inside their big brains more manageable.
And we’ve not even discussed the Airstream cats, RV-ers for life. (I speak, of course, of the CATs and CATs, eschewing an address for the Kerouac freedom of a well-placed Amazon box.)
But cube champions like CAT and country squires like CAT are more alike than they realize.
They all, to a cat, love their homes.
They love their blankets.
They love their nightly dates with Schmancy Feast at 4pm, and Wheel of Fortune at 7:30, and a Psalm or a poem or a page from The Unauthorized Biography of Meat Loaf before bed.
(There is not a cat alive who is not fascinated with the late Mr. Loaf.)
And when well-meaning party persons come to pull them from their nests and nooks and bubbles and books, they are as cranky as they were when they first found out Meat Loaf was a vegetarian.
They are as cranky as a child commanded to view Citizen Kane.
They are as cranky as my Grandpa when anyone told him he “really should” show up for social events.
Cranky, but not guilty. Because when party persons tell cats that they “really should” submit to a nail trim or a new suite or a nincompoopy visit to Dr. C for foul veterinary festivities, their universal answer is, “no, thanks.” Minus the “thanks.”
This is not to say that our happy homebodies turn down every invitation. Just like Grandpa got giddy if I offered him a date to the Stateline Diner, CAT charges out of her condo for a stroller ride. Just like Grandpa would drop his book for a phone call about purpose or poetry, CAT will stop kneading her blanket, paws mid-air, if you ring her for a hug.
But just like Grandpa was at his most golden-generous in his grace-space, cats come to life — sometimes many lives at once — when you come to them.
As they are. Not in spite of who they are, but precisely because of who they are.
CAT will cower like a naked alien if you chase him around the SUITE lawn, cackling “come play croquet!” But CAT will cuddle you like a cherished child if you contort yourself into his cubby.
CAT will sink between her shoulder blades if you shuttle her onto center stage, feeling very small amid the small talk. But CAT will grow taller than a tower of German shepherds, and sweeter than sixty strudels, if you settle down in her neighborhood (namely, that little lawn on the Lobby where she’s set up her blankets and her garden gnomes).
CAT will plug his ears and sing Led Zeppelin’s Dyer-Maker (“oh, no no no no, you don’t have to go…”) to soothe himself if you should delude yourself into thinking he wants to be weighed. But his solitude will be weighed and measured and found wanting in comparison to the chance to cuddle you…in his comfort zone.
Cats, like a certain cherished grandfather, want to know and to be known.
They are blissfully guiltless over the need to feel at home.
And when given the grace to go or stay in their own honest way, they will make us feel at home, too.
But all of this transcends homebodiment. This is about embodiment. This is about embroidering your own life, in your own words, with a “Home Sweet Home” that no one should ever try to take.
This is about not feeling guilty about wanting to feel safe. Because, kittens, everyone wants to feel safe. Only grandfathers and cats have the courage to admit it.
Think about it: who makes you feel better about life on this lurching globe, the guilt-guild grilling you about why you didn’t come to happy hour, or the happy-go-luckies who love you right where you are?
Who empowers your highest powers, the austere aunts who insist you attend All The Things, or the cats and friends (and these categories surely overlap) who insist you attend to your own garden?
Who give you courage, the cardboard conformists who call all creatures to the same standard of “social,” or the folk and felines so at home with themselves, they give you permission to be home, too?
Whether you’re a homebody or a roaming body.
Whether you crave your condo or rave all night.
Whether you are a Grecca or a Grandpa.
You don’t have to go. You get to go your own way. And the ones who get you are lucky to get to get you in their lives.
Now go mow that lawn, microwave that mac ‘n cheese, and make yourself at home.