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.