As her eight-week birthday approached, everyone started thinking about trying to find Helen a permanent residence. Her eyes were open, the ear tumor was shrinking, and aside from a chronic upper respiratory infection (treatable with antibiotics), she was ready to start her new life in the home of some naive, benevolent stranger. There’s a bulletin board across from my desk with flyers for missing dogs and sales pitches for needy kittens, and Laura, sitting at the reception desk, got to work on some prototype ads with little tear-off tabs. Should it be funny? Or maybe a serious tone would be better. Should she pull at some heartstrings? Or be straight up about what an expensive mess she was going to be? Helen’s chest cavity was too small and her tiny nose was chronically stuffed with green herpes snot, not to mention that she needed eye drops every night and her crusty ear growth was still, uh, crusty, and basically what kind of assholes would we be unloading this needy medical nightmare onto some unsuspecting cat lady? ALSO HER PERSONALITY WAS TERRIBLE. THAT BITCH DIDN’T EVEN PURR. What were we, heartless monsters?! Well, I am, for sure.
“Don’t disclose any of that,” I snapped at Laura as she drew tiny angel wings on the cartoon rendering of Helen we were going to post on the bulletin board. “We need to make sure this bitch sounds adoptable!” I left to go to the bathroom and when I came back it had been decided: these jerks wanted me to take Helen home. The details are hazy: some bullshit about it being unfair to give her to someone knowing she’d need constant medical care, everyone had grown attached, and how would we know she was still doing okay if we gave her to a stranger, blah blah fucking blah. I didn’t have any pets at home (I am an expert at learning from other people’s mistakes), and I didn’t have any children (like I said, expert), so I didn’t really have any excuse, or so Laura informed me. I would be taking that smelly ball of excrement and fangs to destroy the tranquility of my home, and all I would get in return were a couple of cans of cat food and a free rabies shot.
I tried to get into the whole “caring for an animal” thing, I really did. I bought a little carrier with paw prints all over it and overpriced food dishes and natural litter made from recycled newspapers. When I brought her home the day before Thanksgiving, Helen stepped tentatively out of her box, surveyed the landscape, and scoffed. “Where are we, the set of a horror movie?”
Then she smiled at me as she hopped into one of my shoes and peed in it. “I THOUGHT YOU WERE HOUSEBROKEN!?” I screamed, racing over to dump her little ass out of my soiled New Balance. “I AM!” she shouted back.
I hate this bitch and she hates me. For seven years we’ve been trapped in this mutually abusive codependent relationship, tearing each other apart emotionally while booby-trapping the apartment in the hopes that this will finally be the time those scissors just happen to fall on the floor blades up. Helen Keller doesn’t do any of that nice cat stuff you see on YouTube—no cuddling, no purring, no biscuit-making. She eats and craps and scowls at me judgmentally from her perch atop my pillow, silently critiquing my outfit choices through narrowed eyes. (“Sure, you look good in that”—she’ll snarl at my elastic-waisted QVC jeans—“I mean, if you think so.”) She doesn’t play, she doesn’t chase, and catnip doesn’t interest her. Occasionally she’ll sit on my desk, face pressed to the glass, chattering marching orders to the bird army assembled on the power lines hanging just outside the window, but other than that she doesn’t really do anything. She brings me absolutely zero joy. Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and feel her hot body, nestled close, but never ever touching. If I move even an inch, she’ll jump up and move away mumbling some shit like, “It was cold in here and I was just stealing your heat,” because it would obviously kill her to admit she feels even the smallest bit of gratitude or affection toward me. I feel like I’m living with Mommie Dearest and nothing I do is ever good enough for her. More than once I have pouted and screamed, “But I’m the person!” while waiting for her to grant me access to the spot on the bed I like or clear the path between me and the bathroom. She has bitten me no fewer than 1,762 times, including once on my fucking eye while I was fucking sleeping, and another time she took an inch-long row of bites lengthwise down the inside of my wrist. (BITCH, I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE TRYING TO DO.) Every single time I get a delivery, or the laundry service comes, Helen is right up behind me in the hall when I answer the door, banging her suitcase into my ankles as she tries to slip past me to start her new life with the college kid who spends his weekends driving a busted Tercel with a Domino’s light on top. And I don’t care, she can GTFO. “Have fun living in a studio with six other dudes!” I said the last time she pulled that stunt, slamming the door shut in her face.