I have a Dream.... of a stuffed cat?

Location of Cat: Snuggled up in bed with no intention of getting up

I have a dream….

….that one day I’ll have an office with a wide-oak desk, with a green, tiffany bank lamp. Shelves from floor to ceiling will cover the walls, lined with leather-bound and expensive looking books. There will be a fireplace, and a little basket in front of it for my cats. My chair will be a throne, and my crown and gown will be made of tweed with little patches for the elbows so that the fabric is not worn away through my many musings of History.

But this is not to be. My desk is a home-made one, my chair from Ikea and my books stowed away in boxes in the basement. I am currently an unemployed (though, in my defense I do have a summer-job lined up as a Viking/Iron Age woman but that’s a blog for another day) historian. The world is full of history, but there is not a great deal of employment for historians. What do historians do, you might wonder, aside from rant on their Cat-blogs? Historians, in a nut-shell, challenge the paradigm set by their historian-ancestors and, if successful, decide the way in which their society think about their past (and make them feel good about it). They also drink a lot of tea and wine and have permanently bad hair-days. In fact, in University, I had a professor who wore the same sweater –every- day. At least two of the students would mimic this trend and wear the same clothes the whole year around, the only thing changing was their bear growth as the semesters progressed.

The historian’s throne is filled with a few, hairy men and women who quite often sit it in until they are carted out in a black bag. (I had this dreadful dream that, when this happened to me, they’ll wheel my stuffed cat out too, though I am not quite sure why I’ll put wheel on (or even stuff my cat), but I am fairly certain that I will!) And a historian’s dream is to get published, with a proper book read by more than the cult of their academia. As an author of a blog, it should come as no surprise that I am quite keen on writing, though I find my skills and lack of a publisher, lacking. (Ideally I’d write a book about the history of cats!)

So these days, I suck it up, and search for the Dream Job, while hoping to make myself more into a round peg so that I can fit into the round holes that it is the Norwegian University systems. If I sound to you bitter, dear readers, it is not your imagination and I fear it is another gentle nudge from Real Life towards Cat-Ladyness.

More like this:

And less like this:

A Cat Lady's Purse

Location of cat: Still asleep in my bed.

The contents of a woman’s purse is an archaeological excavation into the ritual of her daily life and a mystery to many men, (and at times even to me). While a man may manage to navigate his daily ritual with just his keys, wallet and phone- all which fits into his pocket, few women will ever feel comfortable leaving their house without their purse (and let’s be honest, guys, quite often your items will find its way into the girl’s purse because you realize how unpractical it is to carry it around). I’ve seen women cart around hair-brushes, huge cans of hairspray, make-up bags and bottles of perfume and an additional pair of shoes. Some of them have bags so large they can hardly manage carry it.

My purses are no different, yet quite a lot smaller. For me bags are not as much a fashion-statement as a practicality, my thumb rule is always: function over fashion.

Yet, as a member of the female gender (and in fear of antagonizing any stalwart feminists with my stereotype) I must simply confess the universal truth: love purses (and shoes!). But mostly purses and bags of all shapes and sizes. And it is an unfortunate truth that the more I love a bag, the more expensive it’s bound to be. My favorite is one is from the Cambridge Satchel Company (if my Cat Lady career fails me, I'd like to be a tweed-wearing English-style professor), but some are decorated with cat motives, such as the lovely white bag from Cicca(another brand I love due to its cat-iness).

Today I decided to empty out one of my many bags and to examine its content to see if there are any items which have ended up there as a part of my Cat Lady evolution. What I discovered was that my love for cats was apparent even at the core of my wallet.

The first stark give away was a bonus card for, yes, Cat Food. (I’m just another purchase short from a free bag of cat-food!) In addition to this there was a recite from the Vet and a worm-pill for the cat. My key-ring has a cat-motif (my affection for cats have not gone unnoticed even by my Japanese friends), and I found several pink Hello Kitty Band-Aids (in my family we are always prepared for almost any eventuality, at least those that can be solved with a band-aid).

My phone was no different: most of my apps are fairly un-cat related, except for a few games: Sushi Cat, Cat Towers and Simon the Cat musical game. Yet, of the 187 pictures on my phone, 120 or so are of my cat. A few are of my lovely niece reading… a cat book I got her (I also got her a stuffed cat as her birth-present figuring its best to start the grooming early!)

After examining the contents of my purse, I have this image of my self as an old lady, ambling along the road to the store with one of those tartan bags on wheels with my old cat in it. Oddly enough, I do not find the picture all that uncomfortable.


Here are some links to the aforementioned bags.
www.cicciadirect.co.uk
www.cambridgesatchel.co.uk

Going to need a (Cat Lady) montage

Location of cat: In the window.

In the last few days I’ve been excommunicated to my den to work on my exam papers. The Cat, of course, has been my steady companion and constant distraction with its bouts of adorableness.

However, in an effort to distract myself from terms such as “Darwinian selection models” and “empirical quantitative data” and, in my endeavor to mitigate my Cat Lady Metamorphosis, I have taken up jogging and cycling with outward-bound enthusiasm. As I am daily bombarded with stories of couch-potatoes-turned-champion, I felt that I too would give it my Eye-of-the-Tiger-best. But, what really got me going however, is one of those stories from my daily life that makes me go “Awww”, somewhere between embarrassment and Cat Lady Pride (incidentally I have a t-shirt with just declaration, but that's a story for another time)

I was out airing my brain and, as it is wont to do The Cat followed me, leaping ahead and around my legs with all the enthusiasm of a bright-eyed-puppy (The Cat is nearing 8 years old, but never seems to leave the porch so it’s always around when I leave the house). Fearing for The Cat’s inability to find its way home (I’ve plucked it down from trees more than once and its tendency to meow at birds, thus scaring away its prey, makes me fear it may one day fall victim to the “Darwinian selection model”) I follow a regular route around the neighborhood. This was a particularly sunny day and a broad, middle-aged woman was out tending the garden when saw me approaching The Cat with its periscope tail trailing after me. She put down her watering-can and came to meet us.

“Awww, what an adorable kitty! Out talking a walksies” (yes, she did talk like this). I muttered a reply that I hope was pleasant enough, when the woman quickly continued “my friend told me she’d seen some young woman about walking her cat.” I could do nothing but confess my guilt, as the Cat was distracted by sniffing some moss and offering no support what-so-eve. “Isn’t it just the cutest thing?” she said with the voice of a woman longing for her first grand-child.

I quickly excused myself from the conversation, with a lot of “Yes-the-weather-is-fantastic” and “I-really-should-be-going-I-have-a-cake-in-the-oven” not certain if I should celebrate this recognition or bury my head in shame.

For the sake of my own spinster-hood I have decided that hence-forth the Cat is better left to do its own “walksies”, with the result that I run away from the front-door as soon I sense its gusto for attention. I do, however, wonder what impression that is giving my neighbors.