Welcome to Lonelyville

When you lack a cat and emergency contact

CATLESS CAT LADY

I was on a vacation last week that started very sadly and surprisingly with the sudden emergency euthanasia of my beloved black cat Poe.

Eighteen years ago, Poe came to me in the bar I owned in Brooklyn (by way of my bartender/friend Zofia who deposited in my back garden the stray kitten she discovered in the nearby park). I shared her origin story in more detail and the fiction she later inspired here. It was 2006, I had no desire or ability for any ongoing cat project (which was not allowed in a bar nor at my apartment), but suddenly there I was brainstorming and quickly naming her Poe after the story “The Black Cat” by Edgar Allan Poe—and therefore she would be mine. The sweetest, all-powerful cat of the night with the smallest pure white chest spot.

I’ll write an essay about the significance of names/naming sometime, but for now Poe is the word that echoes in the new emptiness of my house and is this fleeting shadowy thing that stalks my dreams and seems to flit across my peripheral vision. At first it was shock—the shock of learning, through my ex-husband’s perspective, how much skinnier she had gotten in recent weeks than I had lately realized, as I was perhaps too close to see it clearly; the shock of having to make a sudden trip to the vet the very next day to discover putting her down right then was the only practical path to take for an intestinal tumor stopping such an elderly feline’s successful digestion; the shock of not having her constant presence on my lap as I write this, winding around my feet, biting my hair, rousing me awake at 5 am, stealing pieces of my dinner, slowly destroying prime spots of the house, as she had been for the last 18—admittedly often annoying—years. The shock of not being needed by a needy/needless thing, of not being annoyed/adored anymore.

Yes, cats are independent, to a degree, and so am I. But we were symbiotic and had our equal and opposite rhythms and contradictions. Toward the end, she had taken to littering everywhere else but the litter box, which I just thought she was doing to offend me personally rather than as any real sign of sickness, since I left her behind when I had to go work at Town Hall or on the weekends when I escaped to the Catskills and had her checked in on by kids or neighbors too quick to linger long. She’s just getting old, she’s lonely. My neighbors would report they heard her forlorn pleas through the windows. She clocked in about six hours a day on my lap during the pandemic when I worked from home on the computer, a time I miss, the furry warmth always on my lap. And my kids growing up with this one consistent pet their whole lives. My first child before children.

The heavy dose of ketamine they used to put her into a deep sleep took effect in my arms in the vet’s office as she grew limper then dropped, her drool running down my leg, and when I was done crying and petting her enough to transition to the next final step, I rested her on the table where they shaved a patch of leg and injected the harder stuff to make this state permanent while I cried and petted her some more. The vet launched her “over the rainbow bridge,” he said, as the weirdness of this moment took hold, and said she was with his 29-year-old son now whose heart just stopped one day some years ago, obviously too soon. The vet’s long lingering heartbreak populated mine; whether or not there were any bridges for these dead of ours, the living could at least bond.

The next day we were supposed to be camping in the Catskills, so we took a last minute route change to bury her, wrapped in her blanket, on our own land, complete with a little ceremony with messages and drawings and a cat toy for her pleasure. And then after the As I Lay Dying oddities of transporting the dead and staging our own summer burial, we launched ourselves into the slap of distraction of cold, rainy camping with grumpy teens, followed by the rewarding luxury of clean white sheets in a fancy hotel complete with sauna and hot tub. This series of escapes were each a relief, and then it was a relief after the four days away to finally land at home again in my own bed and take momentary stock of what needed to be done when ready: what would I do with the litter boxes (now there were two to lure her to not poop all over the house), the basket of cat toys, the bin of food, the gallons of unused litter, the carrier, the ruined wall-to-wall carpeting in the basement, the clawed leather couches. The cleanse would be a relief I wasn’t yet ready to admit yet either, so we took off for another day trip, and a day trip after that.

TOGETHER IN LONELYVILLE

Who knew that an impossible drive through the umpteenth highway interchange across Long Island to the ferry to Fire Island would land us in this actual neighborhood called Lonelyville where the Covid signs endure until they someday rot off the pole.

We were visiting longtime Sleepy Hollow friends who go there annually to rent the same house just one house shy of the gorgeous empty beach on this network of immaculate boardwalks.

The idea of Lonelyville—

Welcome to LONELYVILLE

Stay home when possible

Maintain social distancing

Wear a mask at all times

—had me taking stock of how important my solitude has been to me through the years, how much it can be my superpower sometimes, my creative identity that depends on fierce isolation that isn’t truly—there are people and creatures that haunt at all times. My kids coming in and out of my house freely when it isn’t technically my custodial week, my cat ever-present even if often only sleeping or tugging at me as a responsibility to worry about from afar, the intermittent waves and texts I get from neighbors who look out for me a single mom, the good friends like these who invite us to Lonelyville of all places, where we can laugh and share for a few hours, happily reminded how uplifting and enduring if sometimes subtle and overlooked these connections, these lifelines.

When we returned home for real at last, I returned my kids to, as I joke, their rightful owner (their dad), and I had a good sound sleep. It felt so strange in the morning with no one there who actually needed me to wake up. A taste of the empty-nesting to come when the girls go to college in a few years. I don’t want another pet now, can’t imagine it, but I do imagine I might want one again by then. I started cleaning before I went to work and days later I still can’t seem to stop. I want to empty every cabinet and scour every pot and pan, re-carpet the basement, throw away toys both cat and kid. A hearty purge to stave off the discomfort upcoming autumn always brings with all its plans and expectations, and the promise of kids stressed in school. A cleanse please. JD Vance’s dumb old comment has added this cache to the status of childless cat lady; but now I am further from qualifying, as a woman still with children and now no cat. I’m nearing the age of grown-and-flown, if never actual childlessness. This house will grow increasingly quieter, so I’d better get cracking on being down for that and build up those friend and hobby muscles.

Back at the office, an elderly woman left the most heart-tugging message as people always do when encouraged by our Supervisor’s countywide and decades-long reputation to help anyone with any issue, his cell phone number atop his car like a pizza delivery. My voicemail, I’m told, is also very kind. Your concerns are our priority. She had wanted to sign up to take senior trips with the community center group. But the form asks for an emergency contact. Susan said,

My brother passed away. There is no more emergency contact. I would like to know what to do. I cannot be the only senior with no one to put down as an emergency contact. I would like to know what people do. I can put somebody who may or may not come. My sister is in New Jersey. She is in her 80s. She is not going to come. There is nothing she can do. There is nobody. I can’t be the only one with no emergency contact. Please get back to me with how to solve this realistic and philosophical problem.

That very question has caused anxiety in me for years, as it is right now when the school forms arrive for the new year. Each kid has four slots for contacts and I have one or two at best, and the second is already a stretch. Luckily the girls have their dad. But who do I have, no one really. An estranged brother. An elderly mom in mid-Connecticut who won’t drive on the highway, can’t hear well if anyone calls her, and doesn’t really have the wherewithal to help anyone. I don’t seem to cultivate emergency-contact-level friends. So I guess it’s time to start. Look at Lonelyville, with this great couple who always invite us and always host and we barely remember to reciprocate. It’s time to host the heck back at them. Pia had painted a rock with Poe on it a few Halloweens ago and keeps all the broken pets she finds.

I talked with this woman Susan, who wanted of course to talk a long time, and she informed me she learned from someone at the community center that it was okay to leave the emergency spot blank. She could still go on these trips. I was trying to encourage her to just put her sister’s number there anyway, it would be better than no one. She has more than no one. But she disagreed. The sister would be more trouble than good, and I know what she means. I found a whole Reddit forum with others, of all ages, who have no others, no friends, no family, no number to put on their forms. They were embarrassed to admit that, for instance, to the Human Resources department at their new job. Here we all are, suffering this strange solitude together. Might we form a network for emergency-contact neighbors who pair off for each other? There must be a better way than just rattling inside the silence of these empty houses sitting side by side in our suburbs.

I do not know how to solve this realistic and philosophical problem. But Susan was grateful for the call back.