an open letter to sally jesse raphael.

single mother searching for aspirin, cigarettes

Dear Sally Jessie Raphael,

Somehow over the past few months I’ve become a mother. Not like a “Pamie’s pregnant! Call the press!” kind of mother, but I am very much in charge of these two cats that live in my apartment. I have two cats, Sally. One is five and his name is Taylor. The other is two and his name is Cal. He’s the new cat around here.

They’re killing me.

I didn’t know they had a terrible twos for cats. Cal has it. He has him some terrible twos bad.

At eleven each and every night he must run full-speed around the house, knocking over everything. He attacks curtains. He gets himself locked into bathrooms. He tries to eat cigarettes. He spills glasses of beer and water. I can no longer have nice things in my house.

Taylor must have my attention every time I get on the computer. He sits on whatever I’m reading. He tries to sit on my keyboard. If I go to move him, he bites me. If I try and hunker down and protect my keyboard, Cal jumps on my back and bites my shoulder. When I walk by the couch, Cal will reach out and bite my butt.

He bites my butt. Sally, why does he bite my butt?

Yesterday I was trying to get some work done when I kept hearing them screech and yell. Now, usually I just ignore it and it goes away in a few minutes, and I chalk it all up to the two of them aggressively playing. But I heard Taylor give a triple-hiss, which I’d never heard before, so I went to check on them.

They were standing outside the bathroom door. Taylor had clumps of wet kitty litter all over his feet, as if he had been throwing peeballs.

My first action taken was to clean out the litter box, as Taylor wouldn’t let me near him to clean him off and Cal was standing in front of the box like he had hidden something important in there. But as soon as I cleaned it out both cats tried to get inside the box and there was much spatting and yelling.

So I stood over them for a while to wait the fight out, but they both knew I was standing there so they both stood still and stared at each other. Cal was in the litter box taking his sweet time and Taylor stood just outside it, waiting.

Have you ever watched two cats sit? It’s very boring, Sally. I couldn’t take it. I went back to the living room, only to hear the fighting begin again.

Cal is completely out of control, but when my boyfriend comes home he acts like a perfect sleepy angel. It’s maddening. My boyfriend doesn’t even really believe me that this cat can be capable of such things.

I used to really like cats, but this one is making me feel like a mother. I don’t want to be a mother. I want to be young and free.

I’m writing to you because I really admire the work you do with out-of-control teens and kids and I was hoping that perhaps you could send Cal to a boot camp for a day to teach him what he’s headed for if he doesn’t calm down? And then a nice post-counseling with Pat would be great.

If you could find it in your heart, Sally, my family would greatly appreciate it.

Anxious in Austin,
Pamie

P.S.: You may know me from my work in Mighty Big TV, where my latest Get Real recap is posted. You may also know me as a mightybigtv.com “netizen” as quoted in E! Online. See? I’m important, too, Sally.

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