The problem with having four cats in a 500 square foot studio is, well, having four cats in a 500 square foot studio. When you take into account the full sized bed, the tv stand, the bookshelves (a house is just not a house without books), the dresser drawers, the bedside tables and the loveseat, there's not a lot of that 500 square foot space left. But somehow, somehow I mange to keep all of that, my boyfriend, and my four cats safely enclosed.
I've never been without cats. As a child, we had several, and in each foster home that followed, there were several more. When I turned 18 and got my own apartment, a cat was among the first things I aquired. (Along with a microwave. Cooking suuuuucks!) There has only been one time in my life without cats - the first year after my divorce. I was barely able to feed and house myself. I thought taking on a cat would be irresponsible. But that year passed and I soon knew it was time to return to caring for something.
Judy was the first to enter this new home. My boyfriend, a man who'd always loved cats but was never allowed to own one at home, picked her out at a shelter. We brought her home, unsure of what to name her at first. But she was a typical cat - snooty, regal, and utterly above us mere mortals. Therefore, Dame Judi Dench, the ever classic British actress, became her namesake.
Soon after there was Piper, one of the cats my ex-husband and I had owned. I'd desperately missed her and he was kind enough to release her to me. She'd been named by niece long ago and responded well to already given name. So Piper it was.
Pip - also named by niece - was next. A cast off of my sister (who has an alarming record of attempting and failing pet ownership), the housing arrangement was supposed to be temporary. But as my sister's own homelessness stretched, I realized this creaky old cat with a broken stub tail (lost long ago in some unknown accident) needed a stable home.
And last month, there came Molly. A stray that was so starved you could see her ribs from several feet away. A meow that was more of a rasp, so dehydrated was she. Unable to turn away from this bag of bones that housed a feline spirit, I slipped her into my truck and brought her home. She was alternately thrilled, terrified, and enraged. The first night I put her on my food scale and was horrified to find she weighed only 3 pounds. (An average healthy adult female should weigh 7-10 pounds.) But over the last month of care, she has put on a full pound and become much calmer. Molly, the name of a dangerous but oddly vulnerable character in a William Gibson novel, was bestowed upon her.
These four cats do not always get along. They fuss, they fight, they occasionally ambush each other by the litterbox. The cat hair, despite my thrice a week vacuuming and addiction to lint rollers, covers everything. It's not unusual to wake up and stumble nearly blind into a pile of cat yak. The older cats, reaching those final stretch of years, occasionally experience incontinence. And it's just not fun to carry up the 80 pounds of cat litter we go through every month. (Second floor apartment - oh yay!)
But I would be bereft without them. Even as tiny as this 500 square foot space is, without them, without having to continually watch where I put my foot lest I step on a tail, this place would seem unbearably immense. I would rattle about, having nothing but my bookshelves and blankets to talk to.
My apartment may only be 500 feet. But my home is so much larger.
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