You’re Not A Crazy Cat Lady, You’re 22

jtrain9 years ago

I read a Facebook post the other day from a girl about how she’s some sort of “cat lady” because she’s twenty-something and single. I started thinking about an actual woman in her fifties with a couple of cats and how she feels reading that status update. This isn’t entirely far-fetched. I mean, I’m reading this thinly veiled cry for attention, and I barely know the girl. I think we met at a bar, I bought her a shot, feigned interest in her college major, friended her on Facebook, then told her I needed to use the bathroom and walked directly across the street for pizza. So it isn’t a stretch to think that her “cat lady” post was read by her Aunt Mary who isn’t even her Aunt. It’s her mom’s good friend that she calls “Aunt” because she has no kids and makes her feel like she’s part of the family. Aunt Mary likes a whole bunch of this girl’s pictures and writes comments like, “You’re beautiful!” anytime she puts up a theme party picture even though the word “beautiful” should never be associated with a “Tennis Hoes” outfit. Aunt Mary exists for a really good percentage of people. You don’t think of her as the “cat lady” but she’s a more real version. And every time she reads about your half hearted attempt for moral support in your twenty year old dating world she gets reminded that she’s fifty and the Tinder guy who wrote, “Purr cougar, purrr” may not be “the one.”

Every day you write that post about being the cat lady you get closer to becoming that reality because that’s not what people want to be around. I know confidence and knowing who you are is something you have to work on (I know this first hand). But the girl who talks about being the cat woman is just sitting there waiting for something to happen. She’s the plastic bag in the wind Katy Perry keeps serenading us about. But things for her aren’t so bad. She has no kid to worry about, no mortgage hanging over her head, and all that freedom with a fresh uterus. She’s literally in her physical prime with an ability to go out to the bars with no money and come home drunk. That’s like being some sort of God-Magician. Bring a good attitude and guys get drawn in with their wallets like bees to a honeycomb that could possibly give bee jobs (bee blow jobs). Yet she sits here looking for validation in the form of likes on a joke about being a cat woman that she half believes. I’d rather see how Aunt Mary’s body held up than even go on a first date with that.

Maybe a part of the issue is the timing. This attitude is new from guys. We are less looking for the girl whose goal is to find a guy and more looking for the girl where a guy fits into their shit. I hear it from friends a lot. That they’d be more ready to commit if their own stuff was hashed out. If their job didn’t suck. If their life felt more “on track.” Those are all just excuses for the responsibility of maybe having to take care of someone that isn’t them. Maybe growing up in an economic boon then watching it all come crashing down then searching for a job while you do the self-checkout at CVS, literally adhering to the technology that will someday overtake your own job, has made us all want something different. Something that’s more of a partnership.

I have a friend I see semi-randomly. She’s my age and absolutely beautiful. I got a text from her the other day. She wanted to know how I was doing, what was up with me. I figured she was fresh off a relationship. That was the drill with her – dump a guy and then see what’s going on with all her old pals, see who she could go tear it up with that weekend. It wasn’t a reactionary state for her; she wasn’t trying to get wild and make bad decisions because deep down she was hurt that love evaded her. She was trying to go out because she was an independent, happy, and fun-loving person, and that’s what independent, happy, and fun-loving people do. She’s the kind of person that when she tells me she just broke up with a guy, I feel sorry — not for her — but always for him, the poor bastard. That’s the reality she’s created for herself. I’ve never once heard her complain about men, except to point out what slobbering, insecure pussies some of them were. Otherwise, she just exists, defined by no one but herself. She has a cat; I’ve never heard her mention it. It’s inspiring, if only because it seems rare. That’s a shame..