“Like That One Rolling Stones Song”
by
Grace Michaud
In late June of 2020 I became a stereotypical single, anxious, twentysomething woman: I got a cat. In typical Brooklyn fashion, how this came to be is in no way straight forward. Do you know the show, I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant? Where a woman will be on the toilet thinking she has really bad diarrhea but when she looks in the toilet it turns out she gave birth? That’s how I felt becoming an unexpected cat owner.
Brooklyn was month three into COVID and Black Lives Matter rallies were being held every day. The summer weather was bringing everyone out after being cooped up in their apartments for months. The CDC told us it was ok to be outside, feeling like a miracle. The air in Bed Stuy felt friendlier. People deprived of human contact were much more open to saying hello or even smiling at you. The simplest greeting by a passing stranger felt like such a relief.
I was one of those deprived people that morning in late June. I sat on my apartment’s stoop drinking an iced coffee from next door at Willoughby General, a little shop adjacent to my building. A man I recognized walked by. I said hello. He was from Trinidad originally and lived in the neighborhood fixing up brownstones. We chatted for an hour. In that hour we talked about his life, spirituality, and his cat, Snowball. He showed me pictures of Snowball, to which I casually said “I would love a cat someday.” He looked at me and said “I can get you a cat.” I laughed and didn’t think much of it. As we wrapped up our conversation he bought me another iced coffee and told me: “I’m going to surprise you one day.”
The next day, my doorbell rang. It was my neighbor from yesterday. He tells me he has the “cat” in his car. Now he has a heavy accent, and because I’m an idiot, I could not understand what he was saying at first. I followed him outside to his car. He opened the door and clinging on top of the backseat was a little gray and white cat. His fur around his ears was patchy, he was dirty, and he looked so scared. My neighbor told me he got the cat from a friend who had a bunch of cats. He then put the cat in a box and handed it to me.“Hold this” he said. He put a $100 bill in my hand and winked. “I told you I would surprise you.”
This is when I felt like a woman in I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant. In less than 20 minutes I was unexpectedly in charge of a living thing dependent on me. I have never had a cat before, had done zero research into cat care, and I was nervous because my landlord didn’t like cats. Standing there on the street, dumbfounded, the owner of Willoughby General came over. “What did he just give you?” she asked. “A cat.” I replied, my voice shaking. She just laughed. “Oh, I thought he was giving you some weed or something.”
I facetimed everyone I knew who had cats. I didn’t even say hello, shouting into the phone: “SOME MAN JUST GAVE ME A CAT WHAT DO I DO?!” Once they got over their own shock, they walked me through it. Told me I would be fine. Get the cat to the vet. Buy some food, flea medicine, and litter in the meantime. I was a total mess for the rest of the day. I used the $100 for cat supplies. I scrambled to find a vet, eventually getting an appointment the next day. The cat had stayed in the box, looking as shell shocked as I was. Eventually it strayed under the couch.
Strangely enough, through the anxiety-fueled-haze, I named it. I was re-watching a lot of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and I remember thinking if I had a cat I’d name it after the character of Charlie, the illiterate janitor of the show’s bar who had an affinity towards cats. It just felt right. So boy or girl, this cat’s name was Charlie and that was the only certainty in my mind that day.
That night Charlie let me hold him. He emerged from my bed and was trying to run to my bathroom and I caught him. I held him in my lap and tried to determine if he was a male or female since my neighbor hadn’t told me anything about the cat. I thought Charlie was female at first because I couldn’t see genitalia that would indicate he was a male. Also I do not know what cat genitalia looks like. I think that’s a normal thing to not have knowledge of, personally. I then proceeded to pet him. He purred. That’s when he first started to trust me. That’s also when I learned he did not know how to use a litter box because I found cat poop in my shower.
The rest of the night was like a night with a newborn. He wouldn’t stop crying and I didn’t know why. I was scared that my neighbor would rat me out to the landlord. Why I thought my extremely old Polish neighbor who would let people into his apartment at all hours of the night would rat me out, I don’t know.
I went to the vet the next day on Fulton Street, still uneasy. Charlie was given his shots and he wouldn’t stop shrieking. I was in the corner, on the verge of tears. I was scared with no idea what was going on. In just 24 hours I was responsible for a living creature when I was just learning how to take care of myself at 26. The vet kept referring to me as “Mama’ which I found oddly comforting. She could see on my face that I was overwhelmed, and reassured me things were fine and to go sit in the lobby.
She told me earlier that if Charlie tested positive for feline AIDS, she would have to ask me if I wanted to put him down. I thought: “Well if they put him down then I am free of this cat and I don’t have to worry anymore.” I was so stressed out that my mind wanted to go to the easiest route, which was to give up. Thank God the worst thing Charlie had was a fever. I listed Charlie as a girl on the check-in forms. “Mama, he’s a boy.” The vet called me over. “Come feel.” And that’s when the vet made me feel my cat’s testicles.
Charlie got more and more comfortable. By the third day, he was sleeping in bed with me, begging to be pet. All the built up stress in me vanished the first time he laid on my chest. I got it. I was in love. I couldn’t believe I would have been fine if he had been put down, because now I would now do anything for this creature.
Charlie was playful, social, and curious. He was like his namesake too, Charlie Day’s Charlie Kelly from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Like the character, my Charlie too was illiterate. He also had the look of a doofus and tended to be extremely clumsy. He required your attention the minute he stepped into the room. Yet, he was endearing. Sure he wasn’t the brightest cat in the world, but look at that pink nose of his! How can you not love him for his stupidity? I eventually got him a collar with a sun and moon on it, reminiscent of Charlie Kelly’s famous “Dayman” musical from the show. I bought him a custom tag from Etsy, engraved with Charlie and an outline of New York state.
July came, and within days Charlie followed me everywhere. During the day we would sit in my bed and watch television for hours in those hot summer days, when it was perfectly acceptable to stay inside and do nothing. For the first time in 2020, I was at peace.
Of course, it’s always calm before the storm. Prior to Charlie, my roommate decided not to renew the lease and I had a girl lined up to room with me who also had a cat. When Charlie came into the picture, she backed out because she didn’t think her cat would get along with him. So once again, right as I was over the initial shock of being a cat owner, things went back to what they always were: stressful. I was panicking about finding a new roommate, because after two years of living in my Bed Stuy neighborhood, I didn’t want to leave.
Life during COVID, like a majority of the country, revolved around uncertainty. Unfortunately for myself, pre-COVID life was no less uncertain.
I had entered my twenties as Brooklyn was becoming the new “it” place to move to after college. Thanks to shows like Girls and Broad City, I imagined my post-collegiate life as one full of going to hip bars in Williamsburg, seeing indie bands in underground venues, and having a group of friends to do this all with. In my head, the essential Brooklynite was someone respected, trendy, and creatively successful. I admired the baristas at the coffee shops, gorgeous and probably all making art when they weren’t working.
Moving to Brooklyn from my childhood home in Westchester County in June 2018, I thought I made it. I moved out of my parent’s house two years after graduating college. I had a job in television. I was 24 and finally feeling like an independent adult, like the road was easy from there. But in 2019 my first job that allowed me to move ended. I thought I would find work quickly. I didn’t.
I was living in Bed Stuy, a neighborhood known for its culture and food, and yet I barely left my apartment that year. I had a lot of free time to get to know it, but I was narrowly making rent by babysitting and working the occasional film/tv gig. I sometimes hung out with a group of girls from a past job, but I didn’t have anything in common with them, and eventually I stopped seeing them. I dated some guys, but they talked at me rather than talk to me. One guy told me I should “work as a waitress and then spend all my money on improv.” He thought that was the perfect segway into kissing me. Like the group of girls, I didn’t even like them, but I was lonely.
I felt like I wasn’t worthy of Brooklyn. I wanted to be a writer, but I wasn’t physically writing. I wasn’t hip. I wasn’t trendy. I rarely had extra money. Because I wasn’t employed full time and successful, I felt like I didn’t deserve to go for a walk or explore the neighborhood. I attributed my value to being employed. Every time I passed a cool store or a bar, it would give me a pang of guilt and shame. I wasn’t like everyone else, I was broke with barely enough money in her bank account to live. Around me everyone was employed and beautiful and great. I didn’t deserve to be in their presence. And so I stayed in my apartment, depressingly watching Frasier.
At the end of 2019 I was visiting my best friend in Rhode Island. We pulled her car up to an empty field to look at the night sky. I saw a shooting star. I thought it was a sign that the coming year would be better. A month later, I had finally secured a long term gig. I was an Office Production Assistant for a highly anticipated streaming television show. I met a guy I actually liked. I was happy and relaxed for the first time in a year.
We all know how the rest goes.
Now, in the summer of 2020 in the middle of a pandemic, I was finally enjoying where I was living. I spent a lot of time volunteering with a mutual aid group for the neighborhood. And now I was back to worrying if I could stay. Except, this time I had Charlie. Charlie was a certainty. As a child, my parents played the song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones a lot. Thinking back to the shooting star, I now think of the chorus of that song: “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need.”
My search for a roommate led me to Willoughby General, the little store attached to my building. I asked the cashier working if she knew of anyone looking for a room. She said she didn’t, but her coworker, Elisa, was looking for someone to fill a room in her apartment. This girl’s apartment was on the same block, and was 2 floors with a backyard. She had a black cat named Looloo. Compared to my cramped two bedroom apartment, this one was perfect. I was ready to move right then and there.
Elisa and I hit it off. She was warm and would invite me out. She introduced me to people that came into Willoughby General or whoever passed us on the street. I thought she was the mayor of the neighborhood, the way she knew everyone. We’d drink on the stoop of four boys living together just a couple of houses down from us.
One night she invited me to an outdoor movie night at Herbert Von King Park that the boys had put together. There Elisa introduced me to a musician named Quinn. He was there with his friend Jake who also was a musician. After the movie we got to chatting, and they mentioned they had to go to the bathroom, but the park bathroom was closed for the night. I offered my apartment, since it was only a couple of blocks away and I was living by myself at the time while my then roommate was quarantining in California. Suddenly it was three am and I had two boys on my couch, one falling asleep and one enthusiastically showing me music videos on TV. It was ridiculously fun.
Movie night became the highlight of my week. I would meet so many new people and end up at Herbert Von King for hours drinking and chatting. Charlie and I moved in with Elisa in August. The first week I moved into the apartment, movie night rained out. I invited Quinn and Jake over, Elisa invited her friend Sarah, and we talked till four am. A week after that, our third roommate moved in, a girl Elisa found on the Roomi app. Her name was Sophia. She made a Shrek joke the first night we met and I laughed so hard I cried. She hit it off with our friends. We named our apartment “The Bada Bing” after the strip club in The Sopranos, the first show all three of us watched together.
So throughout the rest of 2020, despite the fear and the letdowns, I ended up being…happy. I had it in my head that happiness comes from being professionally accomplished, because otherwise, what was the point of living in Brooklyn? I could have just moved back with my parents, saved money, and found a nice remote job. Instead I decided I’d rather be babysitting so I could live in one of the greatest cities in the world. I didn’t need to be something I wasn’t. I was drinking coffee on my stoop with my roommates and friends, waving at neighbors passing by. For the first time since living in Brooklyn, I felt like I belonged.
Brooklyn is not a type of person. Brooklyn is a community. Like any community, you give what you take. Brooklyn gave me Charlie. Charlie is one of the greatest things to ever happen to me. I can unhealthily put my worth into where I am at in my career or relationship status. However, this cat reminds me that there is so much more to life. He has kept me busy, he shows me love. He teaches me patience. There are still so many other ways to be happy. I cannot put into words how much I love him. He sleeps in my bed almost every night. Usually, right before I’m about to go to sleep, he jumps up on my chest and rubs his face onto mine. When he does this, my heart just wants to burst. Here is this little creature, who honestly is not the brightest, showing that he loves me. His presence is the constant reminder of what Brooklyn has given me. I belong here because I am happy here.
Three years later, I’m still in the same apartment. I continue to babysit and juggle multiple jobs. I couldn’t have seen multiple industry strikes shutting down film and television production in 2023, but I’m hopeful. I have a lot more friends now, all of whom I met through my roommates. We helped organize a block association. We often go to the boys down the block’s house for backyard shows. I babysit our upstair’s neighbor, who was born in 2021. A cat ended up following Sophia home one year and now we have three cats. Our little family has grown, and so has the cat hair on the rug. The three of them hang out with us watching TV, and occasionally wack each other’s faces. Carlie remains the only boy, but I don’t think he minds too much.
I still see my neighbor who gave me Charlie from time to time.
All of this, the happiness, the friends, the community, the new apartment, all of this happened because I kept the dirty cat in a box I decided to call Charlie.
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