Cat Ladies
Cat Ladies Read this essay as originally published at Watermark.com There was a time when I was a dog devotee, quite anti-cat in fact: obnoxiously alpha in all the ways that dog imagery and canine metaphors invoked. I insistingly self-identified as “Jaydog” and was prolific in the jargon thereof: you were all my dogs. In that obnoxiously top-dog way, I insisted that people refer to me as such. Up to and including my late thirties, I was never simply tired, I was dog-tired and if I was sick, I was sick as a dog . My reading materials were always dog-eared and I subscribed, as a libertarian, to a dog-eat-dog mindset. Whether metaphorically or actually, I was usually performing it doggy style. Alas, I’d been barking up the wrong tree and was thus transformed. This old dog learned a new set of tricks and positions: call me simply “Jay” if you want. Or more precisely, “cat-lady-Jay” (if you’re being nasty). Since the age of forty, when I was walked off the dog-ledge by my
