With my wife out of town this past weekend, I experienced the most humiliating double date of my life.
It’s not what you think.
It’s worse.
On the date were my friend Ted, his girlfriend Sarah, me and my cat.
We were at Sarah’s place, and everything should’ve been cool, but I’d had too much to drink, and my cat, a lovable but abstemious animal who won’t even touch catnip, was shunning me. As a result, I was an emotional wreck.
My cat, you see, has been living at Sarah’s place, and this was my first chance in a while to see her.
For the reunion, I’d even worn freshly pressed black slacks and dabbed a bit of wet food behind both ears. But allow me to back up, so you get the whole picture.
My wife and I, blissfully wed for four years, are eager to embark on the blessed journey for which we were put on this earth. Yes, the two of us, our love undying, would like to have a child, and to experience, together, all the awesome wonder that procreation entails.
But that’s not important.
What’s important is that until this miracle comes upon us, I’m stuck living without my cat.
Why’s that? It turns out my cat wasn’t plodding about our home on her own; deep inside of her live a community of parasites who, if they ever make the jump into the bloodstream of a pregnant woman, can cause complications.
My wife was convinced she’d eventually suffer this fate, even though, medically, it’s next to impossible, unless she were to topple, face-down, into the litter box.
But since I have cornered the market on irrationality in our marriage, I felt I owed her one and agreed to find a temporary home for the cat. If anything, this was a good opportunity to prove to my wife once and for all that I loved her as much as the cat.
And that brings us back to this past weekend.
As I said, my wife was out of town, and I’d spent Friday night and all day Saturday really missing my cat.
Everywhere I looked something seemed to remind me of her–the cat photo album, the box of cat toys in the closet, the carrying case in the basement.
Fortunately, I was due to meet Ted at a bar that evening, and I began plotting a way to parlay this encounter into a late-night outing to Sarah’s apartment/my cat’s new home. Later, at the bar, after a few glasses of cheap wine, I got up the nerve to dial Sarah to see if we could come over and see my cat. Call it “drunk dialing,” or, more specifically, “drunk dialing a cat,” but the only thing that matters is that Sarah invited us over.
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But that’s when the worrying really began: Would she remember me? If so, would she be angry I’d abandoned her? Probably the opposite. The reports were my cat had never been so happy.
Bounding into the apartment, my worst fears were confirmed: After seeing who was at the door, my cat, unimpressed, promptly retreated to the bedroom. I began doing the desperate-cat-owner thing: picking up the cat, putting her on my lap, acting unaffected when she immediately jumped off and then repeating the cycle until my arms began to ache.
Then I just sat there … on the couch … well past midnight … with my friend and his girlfriend.
I probably would have felt like a third wheel, but, as luck would have it, I started to feel really sick.
Sarah offered to let me crash there, or at least she didn’t wake me up when I nodded off. Honestly, it was the best thing that could have happened: At 3 a.m., my cat, hungry and suddenly recalling who I was, began her four-hour clawing-at-my-head routine. It brought a tear to my eye. Thank heavens, I don’t have to live with that for a while.
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