Katie Vaca - Love to Hate Cats

 

I love to hate cats. I come from a family that doesn't particularly care for cats. In fact, my mom not only dislikes cats very much, but she has an actual cat phobia. And like any good old fashioned familial conditioning, that fear has been passed down to me. And despite my best efforts to avoid these creatures, somehow they have highlighted some pretty important moments in my life. The very first conversation I had with my husband was regarding cats. In 2009, my sister's dog had a litter of puppies and his family took my favorite one. I don't remember exactly what I said, but I sent him a message on Facebook saying something along the lines of, “I'm so happy for you guys. She's the best.” I do have remember exactly what my husband said to me. It was one sentence and it read, “I'm more of a cat person.” And I thought to myself, this guy is rude and he's a cat person, that's two strikes. But my husband also happens to be tall, dark and handsome. So what are you going to do? [audience laughter] 

 

A year later, we started dating and things got pretty serious and we started to spend a lot of time together. And as a result, I spent a lot of time with his cat, Frank. Frank was an indoor-outdoor orange tabby. He was a really proficient hunter and he would bring in sometimes living, sometimes dead lizards, mice, hummingbirds. And although I'm told this is a sign of love and infection, I did not care for having a half-decapitated lizard dropped into my lap. And this was like immersion therapy for me. 

I was having reoccurring nightmares that thousands of cats were coming in from every window and door of my house, going to scratch off my face. But I had to make a decision. I was falling in love with this rude cat guy, and Frank came along with him. [audience laughter] So I decided to learn about Frank. And as I learned about him, my fear started to lessen and we developed a bond. He would greet me at the door when I would walk in and roll around on his back. It was pretty cute. I would give him my shoes to indulge his weird shoe fetish. He would meow and scratch incessantly at my door at 4:00 in the morning to let me know he wanted his food bowl topped off. And as time went on, our bond grew stronger and he really became my first cat friend. 

In 2015, I got a call from a dear childhood friend of mine, Matt. And I don't have enough time to tell you all the things I'd like to tell you about Matt, but I'd like to highlight my favorite qualities about him. Magnetic, hilarious, intelligent, and I love to spend time with him. And I'll never forget it, I was pacing around IKEA as he was explaining to me that he hadn't been feeling well, and he went to the doctor and they discovered that his colon was covered in tumors. And he was diagnosed with a really aggressive form of colon cancer. And I know there's many of you out there that can empathize with the feeling of your gut dropping and desperately wanting to do or say something, to make something go away, and there's nothing. 

He had a girlfriend that uprooted her life in Los Angeles to be here with him during his course of treatment. And I started to feel a real push and pull. The push of wanting to spend all the time that I could with my friend and tell him everything I was thinking and feeling, and the pull of not wanting to be intrusive during a sensitive time. I didn't want to take away time that he could be spending with other people. And I did not want to remind my friend that he was sick. So I was reserved to keeping it really light and checking in. “Hey, how's it going? Thinking of you, praying for you. Let me know if you need anything.” And that was it. And in 2017, Matt died, and I was devastated. 

And I felt this deep feeling of regret not having had the opportunity, but more importantly, the courage to have told my friend how much he meant to me while he was here. I didn't tell him that I loved him. I didn't tell him that he had changed my life for the better. I didn't tell him that he was one of the best people I had the privilege of knowing. And I didn't tell him how much I would miss him when he was gone. [sobbing] Later that year, his girlfriend decided it was time to get her life back on track and move back to California. And in the process, she couldn't bring her cat with her to the apartment she had found. And without hesitation, I said I would take him. 

And I immediately started having anxiety because while I knew and liked Frank, my husband's cat, I was not sold on cats. I was still really scared of them. And I had visions of this thing coming into my life and being really mean and destroying my house. But I did it without hesitation because it felt like something I could grab onto, something that I could do for my friend by lightening the load for someone that had loved and cared for him during his time of need. And luckily for me, aside from taking a massive dump on my brand-new couch the first night he was in our home, [audience laughter] Juan Carlos, the giant Russian blue cat, is one of the nicest animals you'll ever meet. He's a stage 5 clinger, he wants to snuggle me from head to toe, and he's part of the family. 

In the fall of last year, Frank got really sick, my husband's cat, my first cat friend, and he was dying of kidney failure. And we had to take him to the vet for that awful vet appointment that I had only ever heard about. My husband and I drove home with our empty pet carrier. We crawled into bed with Juan Carlos. I thought about my friend Matt. I thought about Frank, and I cried. I cried over a cat. I cried over one cat as I was deeply comforted by another. And now I hate to love cats. Thank you.