When Cat Worlds Collide

Sometimes I feel like there are as many incarnations of "me" as there are people I know (or at least know well). It's not that I'm creating fake personas or acquiescing to the expectations and desires of whoever I'm around, or at least not entirely. Actually, I feel like each "me" is as real and fully me as the next one.

 And really, when you think about it, it makes sense that it's this way. The prominence and influence of a certain friend or family member in your life ebbs and flows with time, and so does your personality. I am different than how I was two years ago, but I was no less fully me two years ago. If I spent a lot of time with someone back then, but rarely see her now, she knows that particular past me (Two Years Ago Me, we'll call her) but not so much Present Me.

So when I visit this particular friend again, she will likely interact with PM as though I were TYAM. And I, in return, am likely to respond as though I am still TYAM, not because I'm interested in perpetuating an elaborate farce, but because, in my old friend's presence, I start feeling like TWAM again.

Sometimes I, and I'm guessing a lot of other people as well, seamlessly and subconsciously slip into a past or alternative self when the appropriate situation arises. But other times I notice it, and noticing it might as well be reaching through a tear in the space-time continuum. A lot of times, I don't even realize that TWAM (or whoever) and PM have diverged until I notice myself becoming TWAM again. It's always uncanny. And it always makes me desperately miss all the things TWAM saw and did and ate and felt and thought if I can remember them. And if I can't remember them clearly, well, then I mourn my lost memories.

When I came home to Beckley for Christmas this year I definitely, definitely "noticed it" a lot. Normally, when I go back home, I slip pretty easily into Daughter Me, who is also kind of Teenage Me. Occasionally, I'll "notice it" a little, especially as I try to flatten out some of my multi-dimensionality for the sake of my parents, to smooth down a few of the most foreign facets that have developed since I moved out and went to college. It's not that I become this simpler person because my parents are simple. I become her because I still have to be someone that they can fully know, someone who has not yet been separated from them forever by the barrage of realizations that is young adulthood.

But this time I brought some things home with me that threatened to prevent the transition, to make the gulf between DM and PM impossible to jump. Those things were my cats, Nona and Bear.

I got Nona and Bear last June, right after I graduated and moved into the first pet friendly place I've ever rented. My mom basically discouraged it, perhaps because the me with whom she’s best acquainted is somewhat more irresponsible, immature, and self-absorbed than I'd like to think that PM is. And I, admittedly, was somewhat wary myself. I'd been wanting to adopt a cat for a while, but I kept having these nightmares in which I'd suddenly realize that I'd left several puppies/kittens/etc. unattended and neglected in a closet or something for weeks. I was concerned that this was my subconscious trying to tell me that I just wasn't ready.

  

But my need for feline companionship outweighed my fears, so when my roommate came across a lady in Cheat Lake trying to find homes for a litter via Craigslist, I was on board.

And good news! I never once left the kittens unattended in the closet for weeks. In fact, I turned out to be a much better pet owner (resisting the urge to use the term "cat mom" here) than I ever could have guessed. I fed the cats twice every day! And scooped out their litter boxes! And took them to the vet! And administered their antibiotics when the vet said they had worms!

My point is: Nona and Bear, in all their robust, well-cared-for glory, are a symbol of my burgeoning adulthood. And I'm pretty in to them. They are the best damn cats ever.

My mom loves cats, and our family cat, Ralphie, is an important part of her life. I thought that if I brought Nona and Bear home for Christmas she and I could bond while enjoying the company of all three cats.

But as soon as I hauled Nona and Bear's very luxurious cat carrier over the threshold of my childhood house, everything just felt wrong. Firstly, it was clear that my mom was just not as in to my cats as I am, but I do appreciate her effort to muster enthusiasm. I don't know. I guess I just wanted us, as a mother and daughter, to revel in Nona and Bear's otherworldly amazingness. But she didn't know N and B like I did, and really, Ralphie is her one true cat love. Her inability to understand that N and B are The Best Cats created a chasm between us, which may have actually been a chasm between PM and DM.

  

And I know this is going to sound weird, but another thing that contributed to the chasm was the fact that I was responsible for the health and well-being of these creatures. My role as a responsible pet owning adult was alienating PM from DM, because DM is neither an adult nor responsible, and she definitely isn't a pet owner. I can only imagine that this phenomenon plays out on a grander scale when you have actual children.

  

My inability to reconcile PM and DM was accompanied by an acute awareness of my current life situation and of how much I have changed in recent years. It was all very conflict-y. And then, when N and B finally emerged from the cat carrier, my emotions manifested themselves metaphorically in a hissing match between Nona and Ralphie.

  

By the end of my visit, however, the three cats were coexisting, not entirely peacefully, but with minimal conflict.  So I guess that the conclusion that can be reached, if one cares to extend this metaphor (and I'm sure that one does), is: My days of fully becoming DM may be over, but that doesn't mean that DM won't occasionally surface and for a time exist, not entirely peacefully but with minimal conflict, alongside PM.