crazy cat lady

Lately, as in, since my household went two-cat last October, I've been giving a lot of thought to the exact location of the line between conscientious pet owner and crazy cat lady.

To date, I'm happy to report, I'm leaning far more toward "conscientious" than "crazy" in the estimation of the only person whose opinion matters to me - that is, me.

And yet, when you find yourself monitoring cat bowel movements, or cleaning up after said bowel movements, or cleaning up cat pee (both events referred to, by cat experts, as "inappropriate eliminations," a euphemism that could apply to anything from accidentally deleting an email to shooting the wrong South American socialist dictator) you start to wonder... Wait, I can turn this into the beginning of a Sex and the City episode. "And then I asked myself, 'Does cleaning cat shit off the storage room floor make me a crazy cat lady?'" (This would be followed by a half hour of cat-related hijinx - Charlotte would embroider one, Miranda would sue one, Samantha would f...ind one - at the end of which Carrie would conclude, "And then I realized, it's okay to be a crazy cat lady, as long as your friends are all batshit too.")

I think any woman acquiring a second cat has a moment's pause. A moment when she pictures herself in an apartment with 30 cats, each of whom is named for an actual member of her extended family and for all of whom she's knitted slippers.

I can't knit, which could save me. But the slippers aren't really integral to this type of madness - it could also take the form of baking them little cat-size lasagnes, or raising mice to feed them. Just because you don't think you're God doesn't mean you don't think you're Napoleon, if you know what I mean.

Sheer numbers seem to be the obvious warning sign of impending cat mania, and as long as I stick to two, I think I should be fine. I will ask a friend - probably a dog-person - to intervene if I show signs of acquiring a third. Or a 15th. Dog people would happily step in. They never get the whole cat thing anyway. They think you'd be just as well off keeping your Christmas carp year round as getting a cat, for all the affection you get, but this shows just how wrong they are because 1) cats are VERY affectionate, they just need everything to be on their terms, like Israel; and 2) carp must be kept in the bathtub which means ownership of even one would immediately catapult you into crazy (not to mention smelly) carp lady territory.