The Cat, the Cat House and the Plight of the Homeless

The cat house will get here tomorrow.

A friend sent me a wonderful warm house for Charlie the traumatized cat.  Neither our lease nor Michael’s allergies will tolerate an indoor cat. We knew that when Charlie wandered up to the porch begging for food about a year ago. Back then, Charlie was living with the Artful Dodgers, who didn’t feed or care for their pets, but who let them stay inside where it was warm for the night. We only fed her.  Now, she’s mine. She lives on our porch and guards my garden from the groundhog. This worked out perfectly in summer and pretty well in Autumn. It’s not very comfortable now that it gets below freezing every night.

Charlie likes the winter, in part. She played with us in the snow after the big winter storm Wednesday morning– pouncing on the snow, hopping up and down like a ninja, leaping back and forth in our footprints like an obstacle course. But she’s also uncomfortable at night. She started mewing outside the second story windows every night at about sunset, and she was decidedly unimpressed by the way I filled her favorite cardboard box with warm blankets to burrow in. Adrienne and I were beginning to feel guilty.

I complained on my social media, as I often do.

A friend of mine conferred with me and picked out a warm cat house on a Black Friday sale.

The house is a stainless framework covered in thick, durable, waterproof fabric, fabric that the manufacturers swear wouldn’t soak even if it was left outside in a downpour. It has a floor with a built-in heating pad, buried under comfortable fabric, and the  pad turns on automatically when it senses the weight of a cat stepping on it. The cord coming out of the heating pad is shielded in bite-proof plastic tubing so there won’t be an accident. There’s even an emergency exit hatch on the side, so a cat can make a break for it if a curious raccoon comes in through the front door. This is a state-of-the-art luxury home, a mansion for a former stray. This weekend will be the best Saint Nicholas Day ever.

I came out this evening with a handful of chicken scraps, to treat Charlie to a snack. I petted her and apologized for one last night in a cold cardboard box. I told her again and again that a nice warm house was coming for her. She rubbed against my leg in a friendly way, not comprehending. The chicken was gone in less than five minutes. I said “good night” and went to bed, feeling guilty.

It is good to rescue animals. Animals shouldn’t suffer. If you can stop any creature’s suffering, you’ve done a good deed. But a stray cat has a furry coat and can fit into a small cardboard box. A human being isn’t so adapted to the cold. A stray cat can slide under the porch where it’s warmer. A human being couldn’t fit under there. A cat can wake up after a miserable night in the dead leaves under the porch, brush her fur clean with her tongue, and go wait at the door for her breakfast. A human wakes up filthy and cold, and can’t go anywhere to get clean or be served a meal.

Cats have feelings. A cat can be happy or upset. I don’t believe people who say that cats don’t love their families and are only looking to con you for food: I think a cat can bond with and love a human, and feel loved by a human.  But humans have greater depth and breadth of feeling, so the spectrum of pain they can experience is broader and deeper than a cat’s. A human can feel ashamed to be trapped in addiction, illness, or extreme poverty. I don’t think a cat reflects on its place in society in the same way. A human can know if they’re stigmatized, if people are treating them like a cautionary tale instead of a person. When Adrienne and I pet the cat and tease her “oh you spoiled, greedy devil! If I sprinkled you with holy water, you’d sting!” all the cat knows is that her family is showing her affection, and she purrs. If somebody mocks a human being with “Oh you spoiled, lazy freeloader! Why can’t you get a job instead of stinking up the sidewalk?” that human being will be deeply hurt.

Many of the stray cats in LaBelle have patron families who feed and spoil them. The homeless humans in Steubenville, and all over the country, are  usually treated like vermin.

A cat meowing at the backdoor is funny and charming, if you like cats. A person begging from door to door usually gets the police called on them.

In this neighborhood, the cats are bold, but you rarely see your homeless neighbors. They are here, but they usually squat in derelict houses or hide in the woods at the edge of the shale cliff, because they know what people think of their plight.  Last year, a lot of them would have spent the night in shelters. Now that there’s no homeless shelter left in the city, all of those people are outside for the night.

The Friendship Room is operating an emergency warming center, which will save lives. But it won’t take the place of homeless shelters. And homeless shelters don’t take the place of stable housing in the first place. What homeless people need, is homes. Only homes will solve the crisis.

I can solve my cat’s problem with a bit of chicken and a sixty dollar Amazon purchase.

It’s going to take all of us working together to change society for homeless people. We’re going to have to change our minds and our attitude about a lot of things. We’re going to need a lot of hard work and creativity, and there’s no time to waste.

Let’s do whatever we can, starting now.