...is usually a reflection of your own psyche.
Me, I'm pretty anal and have a semi-pronounced sense of duty. Regardless of how hung over or depressed I am or have been, I scoop the cat poop out of the litter boxes for my 5 cats at least once a day: always first thing in the morning after I get up, sometimes a second time in the evening.
Both the German and East Texas sides of my family were once working-class farmers who, despite their own goings-on of the night before, still had to get up at dawn to take care of their animals. Today, I'm a much more effete, city-dwelling offspring of the family branches. I have no cows. But I do have five cats. They produce nothing useful, but, still, they must be fed on time and their poop must be disposed of.
Today, upon the second scoop of the day, I was reminded of going to a woman's apartment back in 2006 for the first time. I'd had a mad crush on her, and we'd finally connected at a club, and now she was taking me home with her! The first great sign was that she played a mix-tape in her car of female country singers, including some very inspiring songs like Loretta Lynn's "Fist City" and Tammy Wynette's "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad." My god! Exactly what I was in to!
Once we got to her apartment, I don't remember what we watched or what music we had on. But I do remember a few other things:
One, she said she thought she was the reincarnation of the Black Dahlia (and she was serious).
Two, she said her former boyfriend had once thrown one of her three cats against a wall.
Three, when I went to the bathroom, where her cat-litter boxes were, the cat poop was spilling out of the boxes. The boxes obviously had not been changed in many days, or even in over a week. Despite being a guest, and one who was hoping for sex, I had to step out of that role and actually ask her where the scooper was and scoop out the boxes myself. It was THAT necessary!
Four, when it was finally 5 or so in the morning, and we went upstairs to bed, she didn't have a bed, just a mattress on the floor, with a broken frame at the side. With condom wrappers scattered around it.
We slept next to each other on the mattress that night but did not have sex. (We ultimately never had sex, though we later kissed, at the club where she worked.)
I'd wanted her so, and had for many months. Had she initiated something, I surely would have responded to her. Despite the many warning signs I got in only a couple of personal hours around her:
Feeling you're the reincarnation of the horribly murdered/dissected Elizabeth Short... That's just about the saddest, darkest thing I've ever heard. Where did this come from? (She couldn't explain to me that night, though I asked.)
You allowed a lover to hurt one of your cats and didn't immediately kick him out. (NEVER would I allow such a thing.)
You didn't bother to clean the cat poop for days; you let your 3 cats literally wallow in their shit.
You didn't bother to fix your bed frame, or, more importantly, to pick up the condom wrappers lying around the morning after!
Jesus Christ, what a fucking mess. But I still thought I "felt your soul" after this. (I REALLY felt badly about your "Black Dahlia" thing---dear god, I tried to empathize.)
Why didn't I just walk away after all of this utter decrepitness? Was it my own "bi-sexual thing"---thinking that surely she would see that I was so much "purer" than the awful boyfriends? But what about her own awful feelings and behaviors?
I kept chasing after her for the next few months. That summer of 2006, she went to her high-school reunion and re-met a guy she'd known there, then MARRIED him that fall (breaking my heart) and moved from Austin to Houston----they divorced a few months later, after I'd already moved to NYC.
She was so attractive physically to me, and her surface personality was also very attractive, but... The cat litter boxes revealed all there was to know about her, really.
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