The Musings of an Old Lady?

Yesterday I was enjoying a meal, with only the cat and an old picture of the royal family for company, while quietly musing over my latest antique find, when I had an epiphany. This was not one of those enjoyable epiphanies when you suddenly remember a secret stash of money (or chocolate), but one those that makes you want to dive into a bucket of Ben and Jerrys and never return.

I quickly took stock of my surroundings to hopefully alleviate my fears. 

One cat – check. A picture of the royal family- check. A dinner for one-check. Home alone on a weekend-check. Having recently found an enjoyable cat figurine on an antique fair-check.

I was living the life of an old lady.  

Suddenly I could hear the chime of the Super Mario game, just as time has hit less than 100 seconds to finish. That sudden dread in the pit of your stomach when you just know you’ll just reach the castle in time, only to discover that the princess is in another one.

A survey of my own room did nothing but confirm my suspicions. Books. Pictures. Books about cats. Pictures of cats.  The Cat itself, moseying around my feet (and being ever so cute) and I was talking to it. And the Cat was answering.

“How could this be”, I wondered, as I slowly sank into my old lady’s sitting chair.  
I have a job now. I got colleagues, a desk and a paycheck. I bought an apartment (that hasn’t been built).  How could I be more of an old cat-lady now than when I was a student last year?

As I was lovingly petting the cat, I mentally tried to retrace my steps, wondering where I had gone wrong.
True, I had an old lady’s job. I mean, teachers, no matter how cool we’d like to be or how much we funk up the t-shirt, at the core we’re all old ladies.  We’re constantly surrounded by people reminding us of how old we are what with their hoodlumish ways, hooliganism strange languages and loud music and walking on my lawn(!)

Was it the lack of my own crib? Well, it wasn’t my fault the project hasn’t started yet-I could hardly go down to the dig-site with pitchforks and torches and tell the peasants to get working. It really shouldn’t count!

Perhaps it was my liking of old things? I thought vintage and retro, was a “fashion” – a life-style. There are certainly enough magazines to support that theory.

Was it, then, the liking of old cat-figurines? Was that my missteps that tipped the scale to old cat-lady hood?

I went to view my old-lady collection. Maybe, I thought, it will one day be worth a fortune. That would certainly be a redeeming quality, it wouldn't be a collection-it would be an investment!

 This is one of my favorite pictures. I found it at my grandmothers' house. For some reason I also found it (and various copies of this image) on some visiting  Dannish antique fair.

 It's my amazing cat-lamp! I mean, words cannot express it's tantalizingness.

 It's a Goebler vase from the 1950s. It's a bit cheecky.

 It's a Goebler cat from the 1930s. No idea what it's used for, maybe sugar-lumps?

The big cat I found in some dusty old shop in Berlin run by this smelly old guy with a beady eye. The smaller one belonged to my dad.

The Caterwauling of a Working Girl

Location of cat: outside.

So, anyway, I've become a (more) respectable member of society now. I am a proper (over) taxed, working girl, not exactly working 9-5, but you get the general idea.

I've been at my new job for a measly few weeks and already I feel like I've been working for months, as if the system is trying to keep me down, as if the government is only after my money and as if I should be singing "The International" in bawdy taverns while grumbling into my bitter ale about how The Man is making his profit off the sweat (and hopefully never, tears) of the Working Man's, Woman (Comrades) Back.

Now, this may all seem to you slightly melodramatic, but I cannot think of any other work place that is as dramatic (save, perhaps, Dawson's Creek) as High School.

I imagine most of my readers remember their own high school experience, perhaps some of you even with fondness. For many of us it was three grueling years that one had to endure before one reach "adulthood". Like some sort of rite of passage, more painful and slow than hopping one-legged through the Amazons while fending off killers bees with a bonnet. So now, I am a proper "adult", and for the first time in many years, not a student.  And it is in one of those cases I can say, with the utmost certainty, that the grass is not greener on the other side of the Teacher's Lounge door (though, it does for some inexplicable reason, quite often contain some sort of cake).

I used to think that I was young and hip (though the word "hip" should in itself have set off alarm bells), but I realize that I have very little to common with the Beliebers of this generation. I can hardly understand them at all. In some regard I am thankful for the void that separates me from the "kids these days", but on the other hand it makes me feel more older and more cat-lady like than ever before.

That is probably why I am bringing a second picture of my cat to put on my desk. As a warning sign.

Picture is the property of: http://xkcd.com/231/

Crazy Cat Lady Seeks Home .

Yesterday I got the calculations for the down payment of my student loans. According to their mathematics, I will be finished paying it all by the time I am 48. Just in time to start getting into pedigree cats and catshows, but how much will be left for my cats to inherit?

I suppose it doesn't behoove me to jump that far ahead in time in the narration of my own future. I've -still- not been able to move out, but I feel keenly that I can blame this entirely on the economy. The economy that does not make account for single cat-ladies who do not have a hubby who makes a waste fortune scouring the seven seas for oil and gas. Even the blasted house adds have pictures of a happy couple glancing gaily at their new kitchen, something which I feel is a stark discrimination of us single gals.


I want to see house advertisement were a kindly youngish woman is feeding her twelve cats in her new kitchen, that seems far more realistic (I might be slightly bitter, it's true).

I mean, honestly, what's wrong with a Hello Kitty themed kitchen?

 I've landed myself a job though (yay), which is both amazing and utterly mind-numbingly terrifying at the same time. A quick search of the net, however, ensures me that should I want, I could have an Hello Kitty themed desk (and which girl, honestly, wouldn't want to). It might sooth my anxious nerves to be surrounded by pink kittens all day, but the new co-workers might not be as impressed

And I think we've got to be somewhat honest here: cat lady's are, unfortunately (!) not highest on the social hierarchy. We're rather stigmatized and we bear the burden of being frowned upon and herald as a warning for all single gals out there, when in reality, the truth is we're quite normal. For the most part.

Cat careers?

Location of cat: somewhere outside. Time goes by far too fast, even for a doddering cat-lady. I thought it might serve my reading rates to up the creative license when I summarize the last few months. I could write how I enlisted on a trading ship and set sails for the Far East, making friends with Tom-tom the ship’s cat, or how I ran away with the circus with a litter of dancing cats. Shiny costumes and a cat-eared-top-hat would certainly be involved.

Instead, dear readers, I will regale you of the story where nothing, absolutely nothing happens. Not. A. Single. Thing. I studied diligently and became an embittered forty-year-old-teacher within two weeks of my internship, cursing the idleness of youth and how everything-was-so-much-better-when-I-was young. It made me realize I was a major school-geek and that I had completely skipped the rebellious-teen-phase.

Then I discovered that I will not even be paid according to my expensive foreign degree, because my country's bureaucrats have yet to validate it. The papers have now been in some three months for processing, and I find it inane that my motherland simply cannot trust the superior educational system of foreign countries.

Alas. The paper-mill must have its sacrifices and I am one of them.

Of course the Cat was a gentle listener to my laments, while sneakily managing to occupy more and more space in the bed, (and a bigger and bigger space in my heart). My work prospects grow ever dimmer and so I now I entertain the prospect of getting a cleaning job offshore on some oil-rig and start earning my waste fortune. It seems a sweet “gig”, working 2 weeks and having 4 weeks holiday. It would give me ample time to set up and run a cattery on some small farm. I could even hire some retired relative on minimum wage to look after the cats for the two weeks I am off. I can picture it now, quite vividly. How I’d wear old rough-spun dresses and wellingtons, even in summer. Kitted out with one of those heavy woolen cat-patterned fleeces and a home-made hat. I mean, if you’re going to be a crazy cat lady, why not go all out?


I really need to browse other career prospects befitting a cat-lady.  I offer you a mental image of possible ward-robe choices.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, but at least there was always the Cat

Location of Cat: Still in bed.

There's not much room for me, but there is no sacrifice too big to accommodate the Cat in its search for perfect comfort! And yes, I am aware of the pillow doesn't really help my cause against the Cat Lady syndrome.








I was mulling about today, tidying up affairs of 2011, shuffling away outdated school papers and trying to summarize my first year as a Cat Lady.

I'm still living at home.
I'm still unemployed. I'm still relatively broke.
I'm still sharing my bed with my Cat and my life is more or less, in boxes.

This chain of thought naturally brought me into a frenzy of Googling: searching for part-time jobs, summer jobs, a place to live, a ticket into the Foreign Legion. Anything to get me out of this rut.

The search got gloomier and gloomier. The newspapers proclaimed with stern and lecturing voices that rent and property prices are at an all time high and that the financial crisis will soon sweep over the country and cover it in a darkness at likes which have not been seen since the Black 1930s. (A shame we couldn't at least have the roaring 1920s first, the period with the best hair and most fabulous dresses-Dowton Abbey anyone?)

There isn't a single job out there for a History Major and cat lover. In fact, I'd say there isn't a job out there for anybody who isn't a doctorate in biochemistry, or working within the oil and gas industry. I had always suspect this to be the case, but to see it in black and white made me feel rather despondent.

There are jobs out there for would-be teachers, of course. In primary school, or in the math and science lab. But I am becoming woefully aware that I have may have doomed myself to a life of ugly t-shirts and safe-guarding priceless museum exhibits at minimum wage or preparing hot-dogs in the cafes.

Maybe I must bite in the bitter cheese and crawl back to the cheese factory and beg for a summer job, so that I at least will make some money. I've never seemed to be able to make use of my hard earned, not to mentioned, expensive education, before-should this summer be any different.

Should I just put my nose to the grind-stone and churn away at the factory-if they'd even take me back? Or is there a summer job out there for a cat-lover with a major in History worth about half a million?

The Cat is a keen fan of the computer, though lolcat is not its favorite site.