Cat-a-tonic

Let’s just get this out of the way right up top here. Yes. It’s true. I am a single man in his 50s who lives alone with a cat. And no, this does not mean that as I write this, I’m listening to a Streisand CD before getting dressed in my best Star Wars t-shirt to join my mom for the early bird dinner at Denny’s.

Still, I knew very well the stereotype I was walking into when I decided to bring a cat into my second life. The truth is, I’d resisted getting one ever since my separation, despite my kids’ constant pleas to adopt one. I felt strange enough being a divorced guy. Throwing a cat in as my life partner only completes the picture of a guy who’d pretty much given up on the idea of ever having a date again. Still, I went ahead and adopted her, telling the world it was so my son and daughter could have a pet that would make my apartment seems somewhat more like a home. Stereotypes be damned!

This is a much bigger life step than it may seem at first. I still can’t forget those early days of my separation, when I’d first moved into my apartment and had no idea how to function on my own after nearly 20 years spent living with a significant other. There are plenty of fears that come with a separation, and most of them somehow always come back to worrying about how you’ll cope as a solo act after so much time working as a duo. Paying bills. Eating dinners. Making fun of bad movies. Criticizing your parents. It all goes so much easier when you have a partner to rely on and I honestly had no idea how I was going to deal with any of these things on my own.

And, for a good long while, I didn’t. On the nights I didn’t have my kids, I stayed hours extra at work just so I didn’t have to come home to, well, myself. And when I finally did get to my apartment, the TV instantly went on so at least there was the sound of other human beings conversing. I annoyed friends with nightly phone calls during which I’d insist that I was doing great, despite the fact that annoying nightly phone calls to friends is proof positive that one is not doing great.

I just couldn’t take being alone. This meant joining groups I would ordinarily never have joined, except for this pathological fear of simply being alone. Sometimes, the plan worked out fine, like the hours I’ve logged volunteering for places like the local homeless shelter. Then again, sometimes it’s been a less than ideal experience, such as that cooking class where the teacher asked me for both recipes and the use of my kitchen to do the cooking.

Good or bad, though, I felt like I needed to prove both to myself and to everyone I knew that divorce hadn’t left me retreating into a hole every minute I wasn’t at work. It’s only natural. Of all the innate human desires, the craving to avoid solitude ranks high atop the list, somewhere between the need to breathe and the need to slow down and stare at traffic accidents. We tend to stay in bad relationships for years longer than we should simply out of fear that being alone is worse. Still, as the weeks of being on my own turned into months, I felt like something began to shift.

I think it began with bill-paying. This was one of those duties I happily surrendered while married. Math and I have never been particularly good friends, so in those first few months alone, I put it off for as long as possible. Which, as those who pay bills know, lasts only until your power goes off or your 0 percent interest credit card rate zooms to 19 percent when you miss a payment. People who don’t know you don’t seem to care that you’re getting used to doing things on your own, so you’re forced to learn to take care of your debts very quickly.

Then, there was food. In my married days, I loved to cook. Sunday dinners for the family were always my thing, making everything from meatballs to arroz con pollo to barbecued ribs. There was something about being in a kitchen, preparing something for others (who would continually enter to ask when I’d be done), that left me feeling connected to my life.

Once I was on my own, though, that tradition came to an end. I still cooked for my kids when they came over, but we were pretty much on the pizza/hamburger/spaghetti and Ragu diet at first. I wanted to make them happy, so I didn’t experiment with new foods. And when I did cook, I wanted it to be quick because I’d rather spend my time with them than in the kitchen.

And when it was just me without them, my meal options were most often either takeout or whatever could be heated up in three minutes or less. I just didn’t know how to cook for or by myself. The reward in doing it was not so much the eating but the pleasing other people, so with that out of the equation, what was the point?

As with everything else in this second life, though, that eventually shifted. I think it was New Year’s Eve a couple years ago, my first without my kids. Nearly all my friends were either out of town or otherwise occupied, so I opted to stay home alone that night. Which was a difficult decision in and of itself. With an entire evening to kill, I decided to spend the four and a half hours it took to make my enchilada recipe. And by the end of that process, I was hooked again. Cooking gave me something to focus on, as well as something to eat for the next week.

From that point on, things seemed to shift for me. Not only did I not mind staying home alone anymore, I kind of started looking forward to the peace and quiet of it. There was a time post-divorce where I avoided going out to dinner or a movie on my own because sitting solo in a room full of couples made me feel I’d shown up wearing a chicken costume. Newly emboldened, though, I was able to sit there without constantly looking at my pretend watch so it seemed I was still waiting for someone to join me.

Being out or at home alone was simpler, cheaper and far less stressful than being out on a date. At some point, living on my own had become my natural state of being, culminating with the previously-mentioned solo vacation to Sedona for my 50th birthday. That was the ultimate proof that I could go off alone and be completely fine with the experience. Which is great. It’s the place I think all divorced people hope to get to. I was pretty happy about it myself, until I started to realize I’ve got a whole new set of problems to deal with.

I’ve grown probably too used to eating what I want when I want, to going out to the driving range whenever the mood strikes, to sleeping on a futon couch (my son wanted his own room, so I gave him mine), to never having to see movies based on anything by Jane Austen….I have to work at mixing my life in with someone else’s. It’s the greatest thing that one can do. I know. I did it once. However, it’s also become the hardest thing to do.

Then, along comes Oreo the cat. My kids are used to having animals around, and they’ve insisted for three years now that we needed some other living creature here to make this apartment a home. (Lately, I’ve been trying to keep fresh flowers on the table, but apparently that’s not good enough for them.) So, when some friends rescued a kitty and asked me to adopt her, I decided to take the plunge. I took on my first full-time roommate in three and a half years.

So now, here I am, with a new female in my life, trying to get used to the idea of sharing my time and space. The cat is sort of like my starter kit, kind of like how at the beginning of the space program, we sent monkeys up in rocket ships to see if it was safe before asking a human to take the journey. Oreo (yes, a black and white named by the kids) is boldly going where no woman has been dared to go. Yet.

And I’m not quite sure how it’s going three months into the experiment. For instance, I still forget that I need to be home at a regular time now because someone is depending on me to be there. I occasionally get annoyed having to clean up after her. Our sleep schedules are totally incompatible, and she always seems to want to take my side of the futon.

The cat has also become this furry, sharp-clawed reminder that I’m now out of practice with sharing myself and my life. This isn’t necessarily something I’m proud of. It’s just where my life has led me at this moment. And yet, there are moments, having a pet around actually does remind of the dedication and selflessness it takes to allow someone else into your life. Which, in turn, reminds me of how rewarding it is to allow somebody into my life to the point where you have to talk to each other several times a day, where our likes and dislikes begin to merge together, we develop the same habits…. This is an area I would like to spend a few more paragraphs exploring, but I suddenly have this craving to stare at the birds outside my living room window.

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Read all of Craig's posts for LifeTwo here.