Hello Darling Ones,

On behalf of Childless Cat Ladies, I’d like to say, you could do a lot worse. The US, any company, the universe, your life, your household should be so lucky as to be run by a childless cat lady.

Childless cat ladies are great and they come in all different kinds. Some are partnered up, some are single, some are trans, some are queer, some are cat ladies of color, some are international pop superstars. . . I tell you, childless cat ladies are legion and loving and warrior queens all at the same time.

You ever go to battle with a nine-month old kitten with needle/knife claws over a pair of pants you want to put on? I got scars to show you and stories I could tell.

It should come as no surprise that Turnip’s Shillbilly VP choice said something as ignorant about how the US is run, “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.”

Here’s the thing J(jackass)D(dirtbag): 1. Cats are rad. 2. Being a childless cat lady is a choice too!

I know the Republican party doesn’t believe women should have choices at all, but we still have a few left.

As a young lady I thought cat lady was the ultimate slur and a terrible fate. Men love to wield that phrase like a cudgel. It’s basically their way of saying you don’t give me a boner or you rejected my boner so you will die alone with cats.

Pop culture loves to play into this trope too. Remember that episode of Sex in the City where Miranda chokes and she’s afraid her cat will eat her face when she dies?

I bought into this nonsense for far longer than I care to admit. I felt like a failure as a woman and a human because I didn’t reproduce, I also never shackled myself to some man until death do we part.

This isn’t easy for me to admit, but I was wrong. So wrong. The wrongest. If I had really, truly wanted those things I could have gotten them. I thought I wanted them because society told me I did. But I didn’t want them enough to really work for it and for that I’m grateful in retrospect.

Being a childless cat lady rules.

Because I never had kids I had the time, patience, and money to be a very excellent Aunt to my niblings. I spent so many summers with them. One year at the State Fair I took all five of them to Build-A-Bear.

I’m still pretty rad at it even though they’re adults now.

Because I never had kids I was able to buy a house by myself and fill it with cats and other things I love. Why would I be miserable about those choices?

For the most part men, and Republicans specifically, are terrified of women — childless or otherwise. It’s why they hate us so much. But men are extra-super-duper scared of women who have no need for a man. A woman who pays her bills and runs her life and is happy at the end of the day with her cats? A fucking horror show.

Sorry dudes. While I don’t need you, I do like a lot of you and occasionally even want some of you. So do me a little favor, get your boys in formation and elect a lady for president. Do it. I promise your weiner won’t fall off.

Cattily yours,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

Let’s lighten things up a bit here in Supergeniusland. Enough of the life and death of it all. Instead I’m gonna write about my cats.

I was just sitting here resting after vacuuming this place and messaging with a friend about my cats. I was grinning because she’s funny and also because I realized that I am so fortunate to have so many crazy cat ladies in my life.

My mom is A-#1 crazy cat lady and it is marvelous. My dad was very anti-cat so any cat in her life always came with some strife, but since his death she is filthy with cats. She lives with Sister #4, who moved from South Dakota back to this area for my mom. They have five cats and Dolly, a dog.

The other day I quizzed my mom on all the family pet names. She was kind of offended and rattled off 15 of the 16 names with no problem (between us there are 13 cats, 2 dogs, and a hedgehog). She struggled a bit with Sister #2’s Franklin, but that’s it. This is also a woman who has not called me or any of my sisters by the right name the first time around in decades.

When she comes over every week to take me to swimming she shows me pictures of her cats and Dolly. I told the Sisterclub how cute it was and Sister #4 said, “That’s nice. There are no baby pictures of me.” She’s right, there aren’t.

For the record, I’m not a cat mom. They are not my fur babies. I often say we are colleagues. I’m the CEO of Supergenius, Inc. and they are my employees.

“I don’t see them collecting checks,” Sister #4 said when she was here doing my laundry on Tuesday.
“We’re a nonprofit now,” I said.

If our nonprofit had a website, this is what the About page would say about the cats.

Wendell Gary Hobbes

Senior VP of Sales & Cuteness

Name origins:

• Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes
• Sister #2’s long-dead cat Oliver
• Michael Gary Scott from “The Office”
• Walter Hobbes, Sister #2’s dog who got his last name from the “Elf” character

Nicknames: Cutie with a Big Bootie, Wendell Bendell 9:15, Lucky Bucky Boy, the Pride of Milwaukee

Fun Fact: Wendell came to the family in summer 2017 through BFK, who fostered his mom and siblings. Also, I named him even though he wasn’t my cat yet.

Wendell joined Supergenius, Inc in Spring 2019. He came to stay when Sister #2 and Ben sold their MN house and I kept him.

Mortimer Fignatius O’Reilly

Inventory Manager

Name origins:

• Mort the Mortician from “Bob’s Burgers”
• Ignatius Reilly from A Confederacy of Dunces Quotes

Nicknames: Baby Bop, Schmortimer, Mort the Sport

Fun Fact: Mortimer is often called “rebellious and ungrateful of my love” like William Miller’s sister Anita in “Almost Famous.”

Mortimer joined Supergenius, Inc in October 2023.

Duchess Fergus Bernadette McClurg

Royalty

Name origins:

• My imaginary boyfriend in this Scott Hutchinson video. He’s the guy in the stripey shirt. I named him Fergus.
• Sinéad Marie Bernadette O’Connor
• Edie McClurg the actress who played Mrs. Poole in “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”

Nicknames: La Gatita Bonita, Fergie Ferg, Ferguson, Fergalicious

Fun Fact: Fergus was almost named Fig, but Fergus won in the popular family vote. She is a strong believer that girls go to the bathroom together and will come tearing into the bathroom if she notices I’m in there without her. She loves to jump in my pants while I’m going which means I shout “Ferg stay out of my pants” about 12 times a day.

Fergus joined Supergenius, Inc in October 2023.

Those are my cats, Darling Ones. They are awful mischief makers and I love them. The kittens call Wendell, Padre, and love/annoy him to death. As my nephew hilariously said, “He’s might be the real dad, but he’s the dad who stepped up.”

Meow,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

The first of the month is known by two things around these parts. I consider it Filter Day and Los Gatitos consider it Friend Liberation Day.

It’s Filter Day because it’s the day I change all the filters, and by that I mean two of them. The furnace’s air filter and the coffee maker’s charcoal filter that does something, I think. On certain months there are four filters to change, the one for the water in the fridge and the one for the air purifier. I live a very filtered life.

Changing the furnace filter makes me feel like the most excellent and responsible homeowner. I change it very month because the furance repair guy I thought was gonna sexually harass me after the repair told me to. “Buy the cheapest filter you can fine and change it every month,” he said.

I thought he was gonna sexually harass me because after he made the repair and as he was repairing my bill he said, “Look, because I like you and you’re funny, how about. . .”

And then he said if I wrote a check out to him he’d charge me for the part at cost, saving me $400. At that point I wanted to sexually harass him (kidding, sheesh).

For the record, I HATE HATE HATE having to let repair men into my house. It gives me high anxiety. Appraisers, plumbers, delivery men, etc. I even got into it once with ol’ Shovelly Joe, my former neighbor, because he wanted to check my water heater to see it it was leaking and I wouldn’t let him in.

While the chance of me being raped and/or murdered by the guy delivering an appliance or fixing my toilet is slim, it’s not zero.

Anyway, I don’t mind changing filters, even post-stroke. What I do hate is changing the calendar on the kitchen wall. It’s the seemingly easy task that hits all my stroke issues all at once.

1. Standing
2. Standing while raising my hands above my shoulder
3. Trying to use my floppy scoop to get that small nail through a little hole

It’s a scary, nightmare. Last month I had to dramatically grab my walker as I stumbled a bit because it took me so long to get that nail in the hole. Yeah, I could have my mom or sister do it for me, but I get “asking for help fatigue.” Plus, I like to live dangerously.

Los Gatitos, which is what I call Wendell, Fergus, and Mortimer, like the first of the month because I open the utility coset door to change the air filter and thus free all their friends they shoved under the door. It’s a combination random garbage (bottle caps, a clove of garlic, a pistachio shell) and their actual toys (small pompoms, pipe cleaners, teeny mice). It takes about two days until all that crap is back under the door.

Well, Darling Ones, my goal for April is to write more because it’s good for me and makes me feel better. Since my tremor has come back with a vengeance, I’ve been down in the dumps. Downer and dumpier, I mean. I’ve been pretty down in it since BFK cut me out of her life, the tremor just makes it worse.

Now that the tremor has struck my head and upper body, I call it The Wiggles. When I focus on it, I can do a really good hob of controlling it. But when I’m not paying attention, my head wiggles on my neck. I’m literally a bobble head.

My theory is that this is why walking has gotten so much more difficult. My brain is so busy trying to control The Wiggles while simultaneously convinced I’m plummeting to the ground and mustering up the energy needed to lift my right foot that feels like it weighs 88 pounds that walking is a lot for it to handle. Poor damaged brain.

Love,
Jodi

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Hi Darling Ones,

I lost my shit this morning and now I have guilt. And I’m super weepy on top of that. Today’s not so great.

My mornings have been starting later and later since the relapse. The time change doesn’t help. Neither does staying up past 1 a.m. most nights. I’m lucky if I’m downstairs making breakfast by noon.

Today was no exception. Getting such a late start to my day makes me a little anxious. It makes me feel like a teenage slacker. I have no reason to be downstairs before noon. There isn’t much work to be done. And, well, I’m tired.

So I was finally ready to get the day started. My coffee, yogurt, breakfast sandwich, and water precisely balanced in the basket of my walker. Since I can’t walk and carry things, I use the basket to haul stuff. It’s the medical equivalent of the wicker-basket little girls used to put on the handlebars of their banana-seated bikes.

I turned from the walker to weed out some dead stalks from my green onion garden. It feels like my way of sticking it to the man, re-growing the green onions I buy from the grocery store in a pot of dirt on the counter. Free(ish) onions! Because I can’t stand for more than 90-seconds I have a wheeled stool I use in the kitchen. I was wheeling to the garbage, my back to the walker when I heard the crash.

Mortimer, the little acrobat, had jumped on the walker basket upsetting my delicate balance. My sandwich flew under the Sadness Garden cart, coffee and water rolled under the dining room table, and in his attempt to flee the scene of the crime Mortimer knocked the adorable mushroom plate I won at Rock & Roll Bookclub to the ground, shattering it.

That’s when I lost it. I threw the spoon I had in my hand into the sink and screamed “Fuck” as loud as I could, scaring all three cats.

“I AM SO ANGRY,” I shouted as I began to clean up the mess. “I’m angry at you,” I said to Mortimer who had calmly folded himself into a loaf in the middle of the kitchen floor.

“STOP!” I yelled at Fergus as she tried to lick the remains of my breakfast sandwich. “I’m angry,” I said in a more normal tone of voice as the anger quickly dissipated.

Because they are cats they did not care one fig about my hissy fit. Because I am human I did care about yelling at them for acting like kittens. It’s not their fault.

Losing my shit had little to do with the ruined breakfast or the shattered plate. It was just the very last thing I could take. I exploded for reasons. Good reasons, I think.

Yesterday I had a follow-up appointment with my primary care doctor. My Physical Therapist had messaged her expressing concern about my relapse. My doctor was also concerned and asked if I would come in.

Of course I did because I’m a goody-goody even though I think the concern is misplaced.

While I was there I showed her my new “party trick” where my right arm shakes uncontrollably unless I really focus on it. Then I can get it down to a barely discernible twitch.

“I think you should see a neurologist,” she said.
“Really?” I asked. We had discussed this in a telehealth appointment and at the time we both agreed it was probably unnecessary.
“Yeah,” she said, nodding her head. “I really dug into your records for the last year after our last appointment, and while I feel less worried that you can control the tremor with focus, I want to make sure there’s not something we missed.”

So she’s referring me to a neurologist for further testing. AND that was the second to last thing I could take, and why the breakfast catastrophe broke me. There’s something about seeing a neurologist that feels big and scary, somehow more serious and dire than, you know, a stroke.

Emotionally, I’m a precariously balanced walker basket.

I’ve been handling the relapse pretty well. When I had my physical therapy evaluation last week we discovered I had backslid quite a bit from where I was in September, but I had not slid all the way to where I was at the beginning in July. I even improved on a couple of things.

But still, it’s SO ANNOYING. And you put that on top of the grief of losing the relationship with my best friend and the money woes and what’s going on in the world and being a human, and well, something has to give.

In most ways I’m better off now than I was in March 2023, but damn I could really use a good break.

Thanks for listening,
Jodi

P.S. If you have any spare money you’d like to share with me I’d gratefully take it. I only made $225 last month and that doesn’t even cover my ridiculously cheap mortgage.

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Hey Darling Ones,

I desperately wish I were the kind of person who, after going through something something tragic, like, you know, a debilitating stroke that leaves you basically disabled and wondering if you’ll ever get your life & body back would come out the other side as a person who is relentlessly positive and encourages you to find joy in the beauty of two kittens asleep on a yellow sweater.

I want to be the kind of person who would reflect on my trials & tribulations and then impart tons of relatable yet wry wisdom people would want on coffee mug.

Maybe I’d be like a wellness coach or a guru of positivity or I don’t know some sort of influencer. I’d be both financially secure and beloved by thousands of adoring fans.

Instead, I’m a person who went through a tragic, debilitating stroke with serious vision problems who is cheerfully cranky about my limitations and how hard every fucking little thing is while reminding myself that I’m grateful for being able to do hard things.

I’m the person who roared at the adorable kittens this morning because Fergus bit me hard while I was getting dressed and now I have two puncture holes in my arm and when I came downstairs to dress my wound I discovered they knocked over the garbage last night while I was sleeping and spread citrus peels, pistachio shells, and a bloody pork shoulder bag, all over the floor. They also broke the beautiful little saucer with violets painted on it my nephew Cade gave me, and they knocked over the lavender on top of the China cabinet, and while I was cleaning up all the mess Fergus & Mortimer batted pistachio shells around the kitchen in the pork blood and Wendell puked between the couch and the coffee table, which is really hard for me to clean up because of the aforementioned disability.

And I am not at all aglow with positivity or full of wise words perfect for coffee mugs.

I’m cranky that I can’t easily clean up the barf. I’m cranky they knocked over the lavender and I can’t right it because standing up and moving my hands above shoulder height makes me super wobbly and afraid I’m going to plummet to the ground.

God, I wish I could be the kind of affirmation-spouting, relatable person instead I’m just this messy-haired, bloody-armed, cranky old giant who is resentful about all the mess, but super fucking proud that I cleaned it up.

If you ever need someone to help you rage at the tiny injustices or minor inconveniences of life, I’m your girl.

Love,
Jodi.

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