Homer's Odyssey: A Fearless Feline Tale, Or How I Learned about Love and Life with a Blind Wonder Cat by Gwen Cooper

Author:Gwen Cooper
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Cats - General, Life Sciences, Ecology, Animals, Blind cats, Nature, SCIENCE, General, cats, Pets, Essays, Human-animal relationships, Biography
ISBN: 9780385343855
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2009-08-25T04:40:11+00:00

17 • “The Pussy Galore

Tour”

Ze us take s all

trave le rs unde r his

prote ction, for he

is the ave nge r of

all suppliants and

fore igne rs in

distre ss.

—HOMER, The

Odyssey

BY JANUARY OF 2001, MY THIRTIETH

BIRTHDAY LOOMED ON THE HORIZON

(technically it wasn’t until October,

but milestone birthdays cast long

shadows), and dark days had

descended

upon

the

dotcom

industry.

Internet

companies

everywhere

were

shedding

employees

or

shutting

down

altogether, and Miami was no

exception. The company I had

originally gone to work for had

closed its doors months earlier. I

had quickly found a position with

another firm, but a mere three

months later, they shut down as

well. I’d found yet another job

within six weeks, but they soon lost

their funding and cut my salary in

half. I was hemorrhaging savings as

I struggled to make ends meet.

It was a state of affairs that

couldn’t continue indefinitely. I

began to send résumés everywhere I

could think of, but hiring in Miami

had all but frozen solid. The fallout

of the dot-com failures had spread

its misery across most of Miami’s

other

industries—tourism,

real

estate, finance—and nobody was

hiring staff for marketing positions.

I didn’t get a single call for an

interview.

The beauty of having nothing to

lose is that you have everything to

gain. My vague soap bubble of an

idea about moving to New York had

drifted aimlessly in the background

of my thoughts for some time, but it

had always seemed too impractical

for serious consideration. For one

thing, why would anybody in New

York hire me from Miami? Moving

would be expensive, not to mention

how much more expensive it was to

live in New York City than South

Florida. And wasn’t I getting a little

old for such a major life change?

Starting over in Manhattan seemed

like the sort of thing one did straight

out of college, not when one was

approaching thirty.

But as the Miami job market

continued to dry up, I started e-

mailing my résumé to companies in

New

York. Why not? I asked

myself, and couldn’t think of a

single good reason.

It was a shot in the dark, one that

I didn’t really expect to hit its

target.

Within

three

weeks,

however, I had requests for

interviews with five firms in New

York City. I flew up the following

week to meet with them, and by the

end of that week I had three written

offers of employment. One was for

a director of marketing position

with a large technical recruiting

firm

located

in

Manhattan’s

Financial District, six blocks from

the World Trade Center. In addition

to the generous salary they offered,

they were also willing to offset my

moving expenses. I had a friend

who lived in an apartment building

only a block away from this

company, and he pulled some

strings with his leasing office.

Twenty-four hours later, I’d landed

an apartment without any of the

drama

one

normally

hears

associated with apartment hunting in

New York.

It was almost disconcerting how

easily everything had fallen into

place. By mid-February, my whim

of only a few weeks ago was a

reality.

I was moving to New York.

ALL THE ARTICLES I’d read over the

years on the subject of caring for a

blind cat were united on one point:

The most important thing was to

create a stable and permanent

environment for the cat. You were

advised not to do things like move

furniture around or change the litter

box’s location. Moving homes

altogether is unsettling enough for

any cat—cats not being creatures

who regard change favorably—and

is especially to be avoided when

the cat in question is blind.

Homer was about to undergo his

fifth move in five years.

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