The Tao of Martha: My Year of LIVING; Or, Why I'm Never Getting All That Glitter Off of the Dog

by Jen Lancaster

  While we waited to meet candidates, my attention was drawn to the huge glass wall at the end of the hall. Easily what were three hundred cats peaceably coexisted in a maze of indoor/outdoor rooms filled with a million toys, scratching posts, and multilevel beams. An entire feline kingdom lounged, waiting to meet us.

  Fletch nudged me and pointed. “It’s like looking into your future.”

  “Not funny,” I replied.

  “But not untrue,” he countered.

  I scowled in return.

  My first clue that things were about to go horribly awry should have been when the volunteer pulled two cats out of a small cage they shared, and not the big kitty commune. But at no point did it occur to me that maybe there was a reason that these two particular cats had to be kept separate from the three hundred others.

  The volunteer handed me a bite-size tortoiseshell cat with green eyes that took up almost half her face. Fletch took her plump counterpart, a gray Siamese mix with slightly crossed eyes of cobalt blue and the pink nose of a bunny. “What’s their story?” I asked.

  “Someone adopted them from us and had them for a year. Then they had to move, so they brought them back here. They’ve been with us for…” She checked their file. “Oh, dear. They’ve been here for two and a half years.”

  Oh, my God. These poor little babies had a home and then were forced to live in a cage again? That’s awful!

  “But why hasn’t anyone taken them? They’re beautiful!” I exclaimed, hugging the little one to my chest. The cat gazed up at me with huge liquid eyes straight out of a horrible velvet painting. She leaned into me and purred.

  She shrugged. “I’m not sure. But it’s really hard to adopt out a pair. We’re about to break them up to see if that helps.”

  Um, not on my watch.

  “We’ll take them!” I exclaimed.

  The volunteer said, “We have other pairs. Maybe you should meet some of them before you make a decision.”

  “Have any of them been here longer?”

  “No.”

  “Then, SOLD!”

  “Whoa, hold on. We need to see how they are with dogs,” Fletch reasoned.

  We waited and held the girls while the shelter workers brought a variety of dogs through to test the cats’ temperaments. Fletch’s cat stretched out on his lap, content as could be, and mine snuggled up into my neck.

  I melted.

  “They’re totally fine and they’re totally ours!” And with that, we paid the adoption fee, bundled the cats into their carrying cases, and brought them home to their new family, at no point realizing these sweet, docile cats had pulled a con on us worthy of Wall Street.

  Because of their coloring, I named them after my all-time favorite characters: Patsy and Edina from Absolutely Fabulous. In the past, I found that cat naming is really prophetic. Our first cat, Maggie, had the most twee moniker I could think of back in the day, and she turned out to be just as dainty and delicate as her name dictated. Tucker was thus christened for a really fun, friendly college bartender (who’s still our buddy today), and Jordan for the crabby ice princess in the movie Cocktail. Point is, I firmly believe that your name goes a long way in determining your personality.

  So I should have known better than to saddle the girls with the names of the two most cantankerous, pugnacious, backbitingly vicious vodka-soaked assholes on the planet.

  Should have, anyway.

  Not long after bringing the new girls home, we discovered that they had an adorable little party trick.

  “Jesus!” Fletch shouted.

  “What happened?”

  “The little one took a chunk out of me!” Fletch barked, looking up at me over the side of the bed and clutching the meaty part of his hand. We’d been trying to coax the cats into their carrier for a vet appointment for a solid ten minutes at that point.

  “Her name is Eddy, and she was just saying hello,” I argued unconvincingly. “You know, like those T-shirts that say, ‘Sharks hug with their mouths.’ She was hugging you with her teeth, being friendly.”

  He shot me a dark look. “My friends don’t bite me.”

  “Oh, stop being so melodramatic. She weighs four pounds. How hard could she bite?”

  “This hard.” He waved his bloody hand at me before getting up to the bathroom for heavy washing and disinfecting.

  As it turned out, Fletch wasn’t the only one who wasn’t in love with the new girls.

  Aside from me, no one likes Patsy and Edina to this day, which is exactly why Fletch is afraid to be alone with them. The dogs are okay around them, but they aren’t buddies like they are with the Thundercats. Libby and Gus chase each other all day, and Odin and Chuck are perpetually using Maisy and Loki as their big canine mattresses.

  Anytime a dog comes too close, Eddy does her best Mike Tyson impersonation, smacking the dogs’ muzzles with eight hundred lightning-fast uppercuts before scampering up the bookcase to hiss, while a shell-shocked Libby or Maisy looks at me as if to say, all Will Ferrell–style, “Am I taking crazy pills?”

  (Loki doesn’t get involved. He’s like Murtaugh in Lethal Weapon, walking around, shaking his head, and grumbling, “I am too old for this shit.” He steers clear of the girls and sees them only at night, when we go to bed.)

  Patsy and Eddy presently live in the connecting bedrooms on the first floor, where they’ve been for the past six months. That’s right, six months. Our attempts to mainstream them into the rest of the pack have been unsuccessful, much like one could consider the final flight of the Hindenburg unsuccessful.

  Having done my research, I was aware that introducing new cats to the household could be a challenge. And yet, in the past twenty-plus years, I had successfully integrated nine different cats, two pit bulls, and a shepherd into my household without a single incident. We’ve babysat friends’ dogs, spent holidays with my family’s pets, and had tons of quality time with Tracey and her pup, Maxie. With all these creatures in and out of the house, there’s never been a nip, not a scratch, not a fur out of place.

  True, we did spend two months fully integrating the Thundercats, but only because they were so tiny and frail and feral. Every night we’d take turns holding one of the kittens while we watched TV, and as they grew, they slowly learned to trust, and eventually love, all the creatures under our roof. When they were finally big enough to go free-range, they did so in a house full of friends.

  I’d done a ton of research, and I read that I needed to isolate Patsy and Eddy for the first week or so, allowing them to become familiar with the scents of the other cats under the door. Then we were to put up baby gates so they could make eye contact for another week. Our instructions were to ferry toys and blankets between the two sets of cats so that when we finally opened the gates, all would be fine.

  Sometimes the Internet is wrong.

  No one warned me that even when you do everything right, cats don’t always get the memo on how they’re supposed to behave. When I brought the two groups together for the first time, I didn’t anticipate the whirlwind of fur and hate and what sounded like a thousand sheep being slaughtered. The girls turned into two small Tasmanian devils, and their violent reactions triggered whatever was still feral inside the boys.

  It was ugly.

  Fletch attempted to break up the fight by grabbing Eddy, since she’s the worst of the lot, and she turned her anger on him. He began shrieking that she’d slashed him so hard that she’d struck an artery and he was gushing blood.

  Turns out she’d just peed on him, a fact in which he took little comfort.

  (This may be when he started to dislike her.)

  Also, being around the boys gives Eddy a condition our vet calls “irritable colitis,” but which is more commonly known in this house as “terror shit.”

  Did I mention things aren’t going well?

  To complicate matters, Patsy’s and Eddy’s fear and anger are putting the Thundercats on edge and they’ve started to act out. They’ve been digging trenc
hes in the carpet outside the girls’ door, and they’re peeing on everything, everywhere.

  Taking the girls back to the shelter isn’t an option; I could never live with myself. I made a commitment to care for these cats and I will honor it. (I don’t want to have to put “or die trying” in here, but it should be inferred.)

  In their defense, it’s not that Patsy and Eddy can’t be sweet; they can and they are. Every night while Fletch reads, they both climb on his back and perch on his shoulder, after giving him a minimassage. Also, they’re very friendly with people and are happy to consent to the vet’s exam. It’s just that they despise the Thundercats with every fiber of their beings. I can’t say that I blame Eddy, seeing how Gus slashed her back leg down to the muscle when they first met, requiring forty stitches. As for Patsy, she’s less outwardly aggressive, instead preferring to eat her feelings. She looks like a gray football with legs.

  Our vet has assured us that the process takes time and that we’re doing the right thing. There are solutions she can offer, such as Prozac and declawing, but surgery seems like a cruel and unusual punishment for the cats, as giving them pills would be for us. So we pledge to keep doing what we’re doing…no matter how much of Fletch’s blood it spills.

  In retrospect, I bet he wishes he’d kept a closer eye on that balsamic.

  I give Fletch a big squeeze and I tell him, “Everything will be fine with the cats. You can do this.”

  I say this with such confidence that I almost believe myself. Almost.

  MY CAT FROM HELL

  The first week of the book tour is under my belt. Fletch managed the whole menagerie nicely and I’m proud of him. See? That wasn’t so bad after all.

  I leave for the second leg of the tour starting in Seattle tomorrow afternoon, which means I repack my suitcase today. I’m so anal that I never leave anything for the last minute when I’m on the road.

  Although learning how to travel efficiently isn’t a skill I gleaned from Martha, I’m sure she’d applaud my uncharacteristic level of organization. I keep a permanent checklist, and I have doubles of everything I use on a daily basis. From eyeglasses to color-care shampoo to lash primer, I keep one set permanently packed in my carry-on.

  In attempting to discover and embrace the Tao of Martha, I realize that the way I travel neatly illustrates a cornerstone of her philosophy: Never, ever scramble.

  By maintaining a strict packing list, a predetermined set of mix-and-match outfits, and duplicate personal items, I’ve removed the whole element of chaos during travel. Traveling light prevents luggage loss or a missed call time because I’m stuck at a slow baggage claim. Mindful packing means I never have to expend the mental energy wondering where I can pick up tampons or a Band-Aid or my special leave-in conditioner on the mean streets of Nashville. Being organized means I can funnel my energy into my events and into remembering to not drop an f-bomb on morning television. Never scrambling is what stands between me and an FCC fine.

  As I meticulously assemble items from my list, Maisy observes glumly from her bed. Very little in this life makes her unhappy, save for seeing my suitcase. As I sort, fold, and then roll each item into a zippy Eagle Creek travel packet, she glowers and grunts. Were she able to write me a strongly worded letter on the subject of my leaving, she absolutely would. Many exclamation points would be used.

  Every time she huffs, puffs, and groans, I lean down to give her a kiss on her wide snout, and she rewards me by sighing contentedly and curling her toes. If someone could harness the power of my love for this dog, I swear I could singlehandedly end our nation’s dependence on foreign oil. As it is, Maisy has such an issue with my leaving that I’ve shaved a dozen dates off of my tour schedule over the years, winnowing my travels from twenty-plus days a year to a more manageable ten.

  Each time I walk over to kiss Maisy, Patsy and Edina deposit themselves on top of my clean laundry.

  Clearly Fletch made no integration headway while I was gone last week.

  Thus far, no amount of baby-gate conditioning has helped in bringing the Palestinian Thundercats and Israeli New Girls together, and it’s been nothing but scud missiles and dirty bombs up in here. At this point, Fletch and I have decided to allow them to live separate lives until I’m finished with all my summer book business.

  The whole “two households” foolishness has become a running joke with most of my friends, save for Gina. She had to keep her cats (Bailey and Phoebe) apart, until she lost Phoebe last winter to kidney disease. For five years, one cat lived on the first floor and the other on the second. I used to think that situation sounded a bit crazy, until I found myself living the exact same way.

  (I should note here that Bailey’s related to the Thundercats, as they look and behave exactly the same and they’re all from the same alley in Gina’s neighborhood. Coincidence?)

  I allow the girls to hang out on top of my stuff—rationalizing that no reader would recognize me if I weren’t covered in pet fur—while I head down the hall to pick up my bras. When I arrived home yesterday morning, I stepped in from the garage and immediately began to unpack my suitcase. I laundered my bras first so that I could leave them out overnight to dry, and now they’re ready to pack. I retrieve the two nude, one white, and one black (coordinated with the opacity of all my tops in mind) from the closet doorknob next to the dryer.

  After a few more Maisy makeout sessions, I finish packing. Once I double-check my list, I’m satisfied that all is as it should be, and I wheel my suitcase to the hallway.

  I’m in the Admirals Club at the airport when I first smell something both awful and familiar. I peer up over my book to see who might be traveling internationally, because I figure that’s the origin of the stink. (Relax; I’m not xenophobic. I’m only talking about the result of a human body being stuck in a metal tube for many hours between showers, regardless of nation of origin.) However, I’m alone in the cell-phone-free portion of the lounge.

  I sniff deeply and I suddenly realize why the odor is so familiar—it’s cat pee.

  Specifically, my cat’s pee.

  Which means the smell is coming from me.

  DAMN IT.

  Then I remember how on Saturday, Gus was loitering around my bras hanging on the doorknob. While I petted him, he turned his back to them and did this thing I call “happy tail,” where the cat makes little dancing motions with his paws while his tail vibrates. Generally I see this behavior in relation to moments of sheer delight, like when I’m opening a wet food can or carving a chicken, but once in a great while, the cats do so while peeing.

  So, rather than making happy tail because he was thrilled to see me after a week, Gus was instead whizzing all over my undergarments and I didn’t even realize it. And I’m wearing the black bra, which was at the back of the pile, so there’s an excellent chance his stream polluted all the bras in front of it.

  DAMN IT, AGAIN.

  I douse myself in Jo Malone sample, which doesn’t mask the scent of urine so much as enhance it, bringing out all the notes of skunk, ammonia, and public urinal. So now my seatmate is going to spend the entire flight trying to determine if I’ve been traveling internationally.

  This is why I can’t have nice things.

  When I arrive in Seattle, my fears are confirmed: Gus has, in fact, nailed all my foundation garments. I deploy my travel-size packet of Tide and launder all my bras in the sink.

  Then I spend the entire week apologizing to readers for smelling like pee when they hug me, because save for an exorcist, nothing is going to remove that stench completely.

  We really have to fix this cat situation.

  What would Martha do?

  Turns out I don’t specifically figure out what Martha would do, largely because Martha gets all her cats from the same breeder and they appear to come presocialized. (I suspect you do not sell Martha a feral cat.) Also, I’m sure she’s never ruined a sauce; ergo she’d never have found herself in this situation in the first place.

  I’m
on my own in piecing together her various guidelines in order to come up with a workable solution, because every single member of this household will be happier once we’re integrated.

  The first set of pet-related tips I can find comes from her Bible-size Homekeeping Handbook. I love this book, not only for the information it contains, but also because it’s thick enough for me to prop my iPad on when I Face Time with my friend Karyn so I don’t look all double-chin-y.

  (Non-Martha pro tip? Never, ever let anyone photograph you from underneath—make the photographer stand on a chair for the most flattering angle.)

  I attempt to make the solution she recommends, which combines tepid water, a clean cloth, and dishwashing soap, but that just angries up the profound stink of Chuck’s, Gus’s, and Odin’s displeasure. Her next suggestion is to use an enzymatic product such as Nature’s Miracle, and that does work in driving cats away from the area they soiled. But instead of being deterred completely, they simply pee on different spots.

  Honestly, it doesn’t help that my rugs and carpets have been around for cats in kidney failure previously. No matter how much Nature’s Miracle I squirt, some of that odor lingers from pets no longer of this mortal coil. I’ve no choice but to switch to DEF(ecate)CON 2, which includes having the floors and carpets professionally cleaned.

  Afterward, the stink rises to the surface, and I pity anyone who tries to do push-ups in my house. Martha says if none of this works, consider replacing all the carpet and the hardwood, which is an attractive but extreme option, as wasting money is the antithesis of what makes me happy. There’s got to be a way to fix the larger behavioral problems, and quick, because I notice the Thundercats have been trying to tunnel under the door in front of the bedroom in order to try to get at the New Girls.

  I make vet appointments for everyone, to double-check that there are no physical issues turning my beloved creatures into hellcats, and it’s confirmed that they’re just jerks. I’m still not on board with medicating them, so we try everyone on a new diet, and I invest in all kinds of pheromone dispensers—via collar, diffuser, and spray. These are supposed to make everyone calm and copacetic. My house is so rife with ectohormones that I’m surprised every cat in the neighborhood isn’t swarming us.