The Best Little Whorehouse in Palo Alto

When I was little, my sister used to tease that my mother actually found me in a dumpster and raised me as her own. There are a couple of surprisingly plausible reasons to support this claim:

• My mother was 40 years old when she had me. The fact that I didn't turn out with an arm coming out my face or as a musical genius-idiot savant is a medical miracle.
• I am practically the only dog person among my family members and many, many relatives.
• Corollary: I am deathly allergic to cats. Nobody else in my family is.
  
  
  
  

My aunts, uncles, cousins, and especially mother and sister are all very much cat people. Naturally, when a stray cat and her five kittens just popped up in our backyard one day in June of 2009, my mom's soft, head-nurse-of-pediatrics-trained heart just couldn't stand to watch them starve. One can turned into ten, and next thing you know, coming home one weekend, I stubbed my toe on two whole cases of cat food from Costco.

At first, I didn't mind the cats too too much, so long as they didn't come in the house. Eventually, three of the kittens disappeared, and unfortunately, none of us know what happened to them. (Boy, I sure hope the old "every time you touch yourself, God kills a kitten" adage isn't true, because I would feel really guilty.) The mother and her two kittens stayed, however, and my mom and sister eventually claimed them as their own.

But then came the feline equivalent of your girlfriend leaving her toothbrush and underwear at your place – in other words, The Next Level of the Relationship:


My mother bought the cats a house. Not just any house. A dog house.

I'm going to repeat that for emphasis. My mother bought a doghouse for the two cats. Let that sink in for a minute. Done? Good, I was getting tired of waiting.

"Why didn't your mother just bring the cats into the house?" you ask. We each are masters of our own domains. Yours might be the tennis court or the kitchen; mine, as are many other manly men's, is the Throne Room. My mother's is more nebulous than those physical confines – her territory is the state of cleanliness in her house. A dirty dish, a speck of dirt, even a loose hair on the ground, and she is all over it like Birds of Prey on Federation vessels. (Oh shut up, it's not my fault you're not cool enough to get that reference SNORT.) Of course, this OCD of hers to keep the house clean enough to perform open-heart surgery in means absolutely no pets in the house. I guess the clear solution was getting a DOGHOUSE.

Eventually, I accepted the fact that these cats were here to stay, which was fine – they stayed in the backyard, which didn't bug me. The cats went about their merry days, chasing and running and eating and generally doing cat-like things.

But then the two surviving kittens got big. Like, really big. Like Pablo Sandoval big. Two months later, seven wet, blind, shivering bundles of terror popped out. Dorayaki, the aggressive one, had five; her sister, Milk, the shy one, had two of her own two weeks after the first litter came. (Side note: my family and relatives do this thing where they name all their cats after food items – Milk, Dorayaki, Cocoa, Mocha, Tangerine, Pear, Mango, and…um…Emily. No idea how that one happened.)

My mother's intent refusal to have the kittens spayed resulted in both sisters' irresponsible behavior in the back of some horny male cat's '83 Impala, and now we had SEVEN KITTENS to worry about. Thanks to some generous friends and the magic of Facebook, though, all seven were eventually given away and are now in safe hands. Milk and Dorayaki are back to their old lives, now with reproductive systems thoroughly butchered to prevent this problem from recurring. Isn't sex ed fun, kids?

I thought all this cat drama was over and life could return to normal. Then I found out something about my mother that I never wanted to know: considering that I don't have that close of a relationship with her, I guess it shouldn't really have shocked me all that much when I realized that she might actually be Catwoman. (For pleasantries' sake, let's say Michelle Pfeiffer and not Halle Berry.) How did I come to this conclusion, you ask? I present Exhibit A:

None of these kittens are ours. NONE. They just showed up at our backyard steps one day. The front one, clearly the Alpha of the pack, was meowing its face off, making threats that could only be appeased with Fancy Feast. The other three just sat there without the slightest movement, presumably to scavenge off my dead body after the Alpha came in for the jugular. I mean, just look at them. They are Nightwalkers, keenly aware of my every breath ; their eyes thirst for blood and mortal souls. I risked life and limb at the front line for this, faithful reader. (Donations for emotional trauma recovery would be appreciated.)

Scientific conclusion: MY MOTHER HAS THE POWER TO SUMMON NEIGHBORHOOD CATS AT WILL AND ASK THEM TO DO HER BIDDING.

Good thing I'm moving the hell out of here in a week, but going 3,000 miles away might not be enough. Next thing I know, my mother will send cats to smother me in my sleep for some inane thing that she clearly blew way out of proportion. Like screening her calls.