Before my cat Lemon got sick, she would sit with me while I read The Wayward Writer, a book by Ariel Gore that’s set up like a class to help guide writers to tell their stories and liberate themselves from capitalism. Those aren’t my words. Those are the words on the cover. All of which proved to be very true. It’s one of the most useful books I’ve ever read. I would read a chapter and then do the brief assignment at the end. The book is designed to be completed a chapter a week, but I did a chapter a day and was lucky enough to have Lemon with me through the journey. Doors are a repeated theme in the book. Gore emphasizes doors represent change and transition and representations of periods of time. A few of the assignments directed me to think about doors in my life and what passing through them meant, or how a door might have served as more than just an entry or obstacle to another place. I remember doing the exercises, but feeling like I didn’t have a door experience that was significant to me. That has changed.
The doors in my apartment never close except for the front door. Because that would be insane. When you live alone, you don’t have to close doors. I pee and poop with the door open. One of my closest doors broke, so I just took it off. I masturbate and have sex with the door open. I’d shower with the door open if it didn’t get water everywhere, so I guess yes, there are closed doors in my apartment, but for the most part, one can enter and exit with no resistance. Which was the intended effect for a very special and certain one. When I had roommates, doors were closed, but not mine. I had a bathroom in my bedroom and in that bathroom was a litter box and so it remained essential that the bathroom door remain open and the door to my room remain open. My cat Lemon could come and go as she pleased and use the facilities or peek in on me relieving myself as she liked. Not that she liked. But I do think she felt it gave her an advantage over me. We’d seen each other in our most vulnerable, but I was the only one cleaning up after the other.
I was self-aware enough to know the dynamic was weird, giving that much power to a cat. She was like an inverse Gandalf. “I shall pass.” What I don’t think I was self-aware of and probably should have been was that it was most certainly weird for my roommates that my door was 99% open. It meant that for that 1% it was pretty clear what I was doing. And that it was only taking up 1% of my time. But the alternatives to my open door policy simply would not do.
I could have kept Lemon in my room, but her food was in the kitchen, so that seemed cruel to keep her from sustenance. I could have kept her food in my bedroom or the litter box out in the main rooms, but those options seemed unsanitary. As much as I failed to see how peculiar and intimate it was for me to keep more door open, I was preoccupied with ensuring my roommates didn’t have to smell, see or even think about Lemon’s litter box.
I probably should have just asked, but I assumed if me leaving my door open was an issue, they would have said something. Though now, in retrospect, I could see what a big ask that is to expect someone to confront you about your bedroom door.
Lemon demanded an open door policy. Perhaps because she couldn’t go outside, she didn’t want anyone to cut off any more access to the world (or fingers crossed, she just loved me that much). This meant if I ever attempted to shut a door, she would make a noise that sounded like “hello” on the other side of it. So the doors stayed open. She would come and chirp at me when I was in the shower, or like I said, check on me when I had my pants down around my ankles. On more than one occasion, she would come in and use the litter box right alongside me. It’s about as intimate as I can ever imagine being with another living creature. One time someone I was seeing shut my door for the entire night because Lemon was being disruptive and when I woke up, Lemon had taken a dump on the couch. I don’t think it was out of malice. I think she just needed to go. She was used to the unrestrained restraints of her living situation.
Lemon’s open door policy made the apartment feel more inviting and warm and it made us feel more connected. There was no place I could go inside her home (and let’s be clear it was her home. She spent more time in it than certainly my roommates or myself. I may have paid the rent, but she made the house a home) that she wasn’t able to access if she wanted. During the pandemic, I converted the spare bedroom into a little workout room and even for 45 minutes (let’s be honest 20 minutes), she would insist on the door being open so she could come and roll around on the mats, making me have flash panic visuals of squishing her with a weight. Many workouts were reduced to me lying on the ground petting her. I’m told it only takes 1000 pets to burn off an Oreo. With the doors open, Lemon could decide it was lap time, or run in to ask me where I’d been or where I was going. And most importantly, she could remind me it was time for a nap or food. I lived by myself, but I was never alone.
After she died, I started shutting the doors. It was just too weird to leave them open for her when I knew she wouldn’t be walking through them. For the first time in fourteen years, my room was finally totally dark at night because the glow from the streetlights through the living room couldn’t slip in. Bathroom time was sectioned off from living room time because it felt like the adult thing to do. Workouts were moved out into the living room with the bedroom doors closed to keep the A/C trapped in the space where I was sweating. When I was using the office to teach, I’d close the door to block out noise pollution. I went from an open floor policy to the container store. When Lemon passed, she took my millennial policies with her.
A month after Lemon passed, I got a kitten. Mighty was 7 weeks old when I got her. This new resident meant rooms would serve new purposes and more doors would close. She needed a “home base” as the pamphlets called it. Some place where she could feel safe that wasn’t full of risk and danger. I put her in the bathroom. She’d play with toys and eat and poop and pur when I let her out. She’d climb up my leg and onto my back. She was the perfect little nugget and after three days, I let her check out some more of the apartment. The door opened temporarily.
Then I got a second kitten. The plan was always two. Well, not always. The plan was to foster and while I was awaiting approval, I couldn’t help to just look on the websites at kittens. My heart had been hollowed out. I knew I couldn’t fill it back in. Even if I tried, I couldn’t replace Lemon. That’s what made her so special. But I had also spent three weeks alone in my apartment without a chirp or a pur or a pet and life was too short to spend much longer in the absence of a feline companion. I’m fighting every urge to defend my decision here, but since I’m working on reminding myself that the only person I need to be ok with it is me, I’ll sum it up like this. My oldest friend John texted me when Lemon died saying “Losing a pet is harder than losing a human and that his dad always told him, life is just better with them.” So that was enough for me to get one. And one was enough for me to get two.
So I found a kitten, Midge. Midge was part of a three cat litter and the foster mom had posted that Midge’s brother and sister had gotten dozens of applications and Midge hadn’t received a single one. An unwanted fur ball. If cats were cocktails, that would be my “regular.” The one other people aren’t excited about. Lemon was the runty, fluffy temperamental werewolf of her litter and she became my best friend. So I said I’d adopt Midge. The foster parents said that they’d really like her to go to a forever home with another kitten and asked if I’d entertain that idea. I said I would. Which is where Mighty came in. She was on the Pasadena Humane Society website along with another kitten named Smoke or Star that I liked. Mighty didn’t have a name yet. When I showed up, Smoke/Star was getting spayed, so they showed me A21789 and said I had picked a good one. This was either true or they could smell the desperation on me. Immediately, I fell in love with the little ball of fur. I signed the paperwork that day and was told they’d reach out when she was spayed. I had a dream and in that dream I don’t know what happened, but when I woke up, I had called A21789 Mighty.
So there was Mighty in my bathroom and then, for a few hours a day, out in the living room with the other doors shut.
And then arrived Midge. Midge needed her own space to feel safe, so she got my room. Now I had all the doors in my apartment closed. The bedroom doors, the bathroom doors, the closets and pantry. They all were closed off to keep these kittens quarantined from each other and safe from all the temptation and risk my apartment offered.
I was told they should smell each other first from the other side of the doors before they could hang out, and not until three days had passed for Midge. So I would visit each one individually and then let them out to run around for a bit, before putting them back and letting the other one out. I was like Jack from Three’s Company. I had two chicks over at the same time but couldn’t let them know about each other, so I ran around slamming doors and swapping shirts to hide the smell and blaming the treats accidentally left out on my cousin. “Oh yeah my cousin was here and he just loves cat treats…oh and that little stuffed bee that looks perfect for chasing and chewing on? That’s for you babe. I only have toys for you.” The lies were killing me. What a guy will do for pussy.
After a week, I finally introduced them to each other and there was, as I was told there would be, hissing and swatting. It was pretty mild, but still not the most pleasant thing in the world. Midge was still a kitten, only four months old, but now she was the adult to this little hairball of paws and claws and teeth who was just learning about her limbs and what she could do to something moving and breathing. I’d let them chase each other around and learn boundaries for about twenty minutes before tricking them each back into their home bases. Doors closed.
Midge slept with me, in the bed, curled up next to me and purring. Mighty would have slit my throat had she known, but she didn’t and unless she learns to read, she never will.
After five days, I opened the doors to let them play and when I left for work, I put them both in my room and shut the door. They stayed safe, though I routinely panicked, worrying about their safety. One night in particular, I couldn’t see Mighty on the pet cam that was embedded in her food dish. I used the voice function, and still nothing. I pulled out the last stop and triggered a food drop. Still nothing. I convinced myself she was dead, pinned between the bathroom sink and the wall. I was hosting an improv show, so I couldn’t leave for another hour, so I just sat in my chair and silently prayed. I thought about asking my partner to go check on her, but if I was right, I was asking her to witness a dead kitten and I couldn’t imagine doing that to her. When the show was over and I raced home, she was fine, just in a deep sleep. The anxiety never got that bad again, but my central nervous system remained on high alert.
With Lemon, I spent the last two weeks of her life saying goodbye to her and kissing her on the head every time I left the apartment. I was convinced that every farewell would be the last time I would see her alive. As it turned out, I would decide when the last time would be the last time because a natural death was going to be too painful, so I made the call and was right there when she passed with the help of sedatives. But the repeated emotional plunges up until that moment left my central nervous system swollen and inflamed.
It’s been over three weeks with Mighty and Midge. They now run around together and play and even sleep together on top of me or near me. They have their favorite spots on the window sill and leaning against the side of the couch or on top of my head sometimes. They pace in the kitchen thinking that if I’m making food it must be for them. They run to the front door when I enter. They await an open door and welcome me by lying on their side and allowing me to pay off my enormous debt of undelivered belly pets. They’ve made my apartment their home. In truth, it was never my apartment. It was Lemon’s. And when she passed, she left it to me temporarily, but I believe she passed so that some other cats without homes could be safe and happy because she trusted me to do that. She’d made it home for fourteen years and she taught me to keep the doors open so that when she left, some little kittens could walk right in and be loved and cared for. It’s quite the belief I’m transferring on to her, but she’s dead so she can’t argue it. The doors are open in my apartment again. So are the ones in my heart. Lemon trained me to keep them open. It’s how you let the love in.