The other cat person

I am sort of the cat person on my block. I didn't start out that way. It began three years ago when someone else's cat came into my house on a spring morning when the front door was open and had kittens in my back bedroom.

I already had two adult cats of my own, but suddenly I had seven. And the mother cat, who seems to be remarkably fecund, always returns to my place when she is with litter, which is about three times a year. She's gone right now, which is normal for winter, but she'll be back in the spring.

Meanwhile, most of her offspring live around my house. I feed them, keep water out for them, and try with limited success to find them homes.

There is another cat person on my block. She lives across the street and three doors down. She seems to be even more of a recluse than I am. I have never talked to her in the five years I've lived here, and I've never seen her talk to anyone else. I know she leaves food out for the cats just as I do, and I sometimes see the cats commuting back and forth between our houses.

I enjoy seeing the cats together. Cats behave differently among themselves than they do with people. I like watching them play. I'm probably just projecting all my personal family issues onto them, but I like thinking of them as a family with some sort of familial bonding going on amongst them.

I wonder if the woman across the street who seems to be even more of a recluse than I am enjoys watching the cats the way I do. I wonder if she has family issues she projects onto them.

I guess I could go over and talk to her, since we obviously have something in common. Or she could come over and talk to me. But we're both antisocial –– who will make the first move?

What I'm reading:

"It is good to recognize that the expectations of others, the standards they expect us to meet, are really our own projections. We judge ourselves by our standards, project them out onto other people, then believe that they think those things about us."

Cheri Huber, The Depression Book

I went back to bed, and had a dream in which two women I know, one a fairly close friend and the other just an acquaintance, abruptly told me they wanted me out of their lives.

I wonder what that was about, and whether it will come true.