The Ugly People's Cat Club

Every day started the same. 

Before the club, that is. 

This rainy morning started the same as always: I looked in the mirror with my eyes squinted.  The squinting helped me not to see it.  I had trained my eyes only to look at my forehead, or at my lips and chin...  I just couldn’t look... I could NOT look at... it. 

My computer is set up in one corner of my studio apartment.  Sometimes to strangers in chat rooms I would refer to it as my: “home office”.  It was a desk with a fold-out partition behind it to keep unexpected Skype callers from seeing my bed against the opposite wall.  In the last year, though, I refused Skype calls.  Even from my mom.  Before “The Club”, I couldn’t let anyone see it.  On this particular morning, a half-eaten cup of ramen noodles stood stagnating on the desk in my “home office” from the night before.  

500 square feet of apartment and it is usually immaculate.  I’m a perfectionist, which is part of why I can’t bear to see it.  It’s the reason that on a rainy Tuesday morning I was leaning over my bathroom sink with warm yellow light from the mirror falling on my dark brown hair, and I was shaking.  This had been happening more and more frequently.  It had been a mistake.  A dire mistake and I was paying for my negligence brutally;   I’d looked at it.  I had looked RIGHT at it.  And then I had stared.  That thing on my face.  That monstrous, heinous, unlovable nose. It. 

My therapist gave a name to my obsession, but I stopped seeing him because I couldn’t stand him looking at it anymore.  I imagined that next to my name: Lilly, he’d written: “The Troll with the Massive Schnoz.”  I just knew he went home and told his wife (whom I was convinced had a beautiful petite little nose) and they laughed and talked about me between sessions.  I didn’t know if my therapist had a wife or not, but the thought of this imaginary couple laughing together over my nose with a bottle of wine at dinner was nauseating. 

Speaking of nauseating, on that particular rainy, cold, gray Tuesday morning in Downtown Seattle, after looking at it in the mirror, I threw up in the sink.  “Sorry, Dalton, I know you want breakfast, give me one moment.”  Dalton, my gray and white tabby cat with a torn-up ear was watching me patiently, sitting on my fold up card table- one of the few pieces of furniture I’d actually bought for myself.  My father paid for the studio (I didn’t make enough money) and he’d bought me several furniture staples from IKEA.  I didn’t have a dining room table but lied and told him I did.  I felt bad for the money he was spending.   I worked from home but refused any promotions because I simply could not let anyone see it.  All the interviews for any promotion would be held via Skype or Zoom.  I couldn’t let them see it... 

Dalton was one of the few things in my life that brought me unadulterated and unfettered joy.  In my early thirties, I didn’t have much money, I didn’t have friends anymore, and romance seemed unobtainable to me.  If I couldn’t let my own mother see it, how could I let a boy close enough to hold my hand, whisper in my ear or – Oh God!- kiss me?   I vomited once more in the sink.  The shaking was subsiding and I looked apologetically at Dalton, whose gray tail was swished thoughtfully as he watched.  “Lo siento, Naricita,” (“sorry Little Nose” - my nickname for him because, YES, I am obsessed) I said gently, rinsing the sink and watching the vomit wash away.  I found bleach spray under the cabinet and held my breath as I spritzed the porcelain.  Dalton sneezed loudly from the card table.  He didn’t object to many things, but cleaners were among his most arch of nemeses.   

I loved Dalton in a raw and fierce way.  I was not raw or fierce about anything, well, except for the hatred for it, which quite literally ruled my life.  But Dalton- Dalton had a perfect little pink nose, with a delicate white spot above one nostril.  He had needed me desperately when I found him, abandoned in one of the green dumpsters that stood catty-corner to my studio.  I’d been taking my own trash out to the curb when I heard the most pathetic, tiny cry.  It had been during the summer, two years ago, and I’d slipped outside with a scarf wrapped around my face so no one had a chance of seeing it. I didn’t want to ruin anyone else’s day, of course, and found myself to be quite courteous.   

The scarf fell away from my face when I saw Dalton, tangled in the debris of the dumpster.  When he looked up at me with those panicked green eyes, I saw a flicker in them as he registered my face.  The flash in his eyes was of unbridled hope and plea.  He struggled to lift his head on his skinny, emaciated neck and he meowed so softly at me, as though he hadn’t any strength left beyond that final, hopeful, begging squeak. 

That dumpster was deep and the sides were high.  I wrapped the scarf tightly around my neck and I threw myself down into the stinking mess of garbage next to Dalton.  One paw stretched to me weakly, his mouth slightly open, little pink tongue panting.  I saw the glaze of exhaustion in his eyes and I reached to him tenderly, bundling his body in the scarf so that something soft touched his body rather than discarded cans and bottles and boxes that had undoubtedly been jabbing his flimsy little frame.  I held him against myself, for a moment, in that dumpster.  He closed his eyes and tucked his head against my neck. 

As I walked back to my apartment that hot summer day, neighbors watched me carrying my bundle.  When I closed the door behind me, I realized with a start that I had not cared or thought about them seeing it. 

For the next two years Dalton would be a source of unconditional love that I had never known.  Not from my mother, who was devastated beyond consolation that I’d never be the prom queen pageant circuit girl, as she had been.  She ended up on Lexipro because of it and made a point of looking very hard at it with a sneer on her mouth whenever she had the chance.  My father had wanted a boy, but still felt bad for the emotional abuse from my mother, so he made up for it by giving me money instead.  Not enough money for a nose job, of course, but for a shitty studio apartment in a bad part of downtown Seattle across from a large green dumpster.   

That  green dumpster may have saved my life. 

But now, two years later on this rainy Tuesday in Seattle, in a tiny studio apartment with a sink that smelled like vomit, I admitted to myself I was drowning.  Drowning on my own loneliness, drowning in the loss of relationships I watched slip by on Hinge, because I had ghosted them, disappeared, afraid they’d laugh if they saw it; the monolith that cast a shadow of solitude on my tiny, closed off life.  I couldn’t even watch TV anymore, as I’d compare everyone’s nose to my own.  I’d watch the women with petite, pretty little buttons on their faces, laughing and scrunching the bridge of them delicately.  God how I wanted that.  Just one day to not think about it.   

And then there was the trouble with Kitch.  Kitch was a boy on Hinge.  We’d been engrossed in meaningful online conversation for months, now.  He was kind, and his profile picture showed a gentle face with eyes ensconced in laugh lines; he smiled a lot.  His pictures weren’t pompous or shirtless or arrogant.  In one he had his arm around an enormous white goose and in another he was with his rather large family.  There was something different about him, and certainly different about our interactions.  Of course, I had talked to several boys at once before on the dating app, but since he and I started talking, I let the other conversations snuff out.  To one shirtless, douche-y looking frat boy named Drake I said “I met someone.”  He actually wrote back: “KK, baby.  I hate to see you go, but I love to watch you leave”, with the ‘side-eye’ emojis.  Gross. 

One of the endless parade of Hinge-faces I had met up with in person.  Hopelessly punctual, I’d shown up to the restaurant 30 minutes early and sat in my car, heart palpitating and armpits growing clammy.  Swearing under my breath I applied layer after layer of my purse-deodorant, cursing myself for wearing a white t-shirt.  All I could think about was it.  What would he think when he saw it?  The pictures I had chosen for Hinge were all strategic angles of my face that minimized the horrific, Lovecraftian monster on my face.  Who would agree to a date if they saw that?  My only hope was that my charming and funny personality won them over in the first 7 minutes.  If not, I was fucked.  Except not literally.  Who wanted to bang Pinocchio? 

It was well passed the COVID era when I entered the Italian restaurant, looking for my date... this did not stop me from wearing a mask as I searched for our table.  It was my last vestige of cover until I was forced to eat something and take it off.  No one else in the entire restaurant was wearing one.  My date’s name was Darren, and he stood to hug me when I reached the table, but I’d already begun to sit down.  Awkwardly, me half-squatting with my arms around his mid section, I realized with a jolt that this was the closest proximity to a man I’d had in over 3 years.  It was really cramping my social life.   

Darren had the rugged, ruddy-faced look of a man who worked outdoors.  His neck was broad and tanned and the scoop of his tshirt revealed the beginning of a strong, sunburned chest. I wanted to ask how one got a sunbunin Seattle when the waitress arrived and poured two courtesy glasses of water.  Of course, she could have been a nose model.  That little thing on her face was a precious gentle ski slope, like a Who from Whoville.  I stared so hard Darren cleared his throat to break the trance.  “Cheers,” he said, extending his glass toward me.   Oh no, I thought wildly, understanding this was a ploy to get me to remove the mask. 

Cautiously, I took the mask off and set it on the table.  As I raised my eyes to meet his, I saw as a grim realization passed over his face.  His mouth set into a hard line.  We clinked glasses and he threw back his water.  Most of the date was cordial and some of it was awkward.  There was no flirting, after he saw it and when we left, he gave me a brief side hug.  I never heard from him again. 

Kitch wanted to see me.  He wanted to meet in person.  All I could think about was the bleak disillusionment that had tightened Darren’s face into a bored resignation for our entire date.  It had struck again, bludgeoning my near nonexistent confidence down into a gnarled little stump. 

Rain fell in thick gray sheets against the window pane.  Dalton was in my lap, purring.  I hadn’t noticed that I’d started to cry on that rainy Tuesday until I saw tears dappling his fur.  My phone was pinging.  It was Kitch. 

He said: “What about tomorrow night?  I’ll take you to that Thai place you mentioned!  Anything you want, my treat!  (even the fortune cookies.  I’m a big spender, haha 😉 ).” 

Instead of replying, I exited out of the app.  I held my thumb down on the little purple H and waited until the option to delete the app appeared.  This was it.  It ruled everything.  All of it.  My entire life.  No love for someone like me.  No dates.  Not even with sweet, funny Kitch. 

But before I could select “delete,” something caught my eye.  At the solitary window in my dinky apartment, a cat stood, perfectly in the center of the pane, in the cold sheets of rain, staring at me and the warmth within.  I stood up, Dalton gathered in my arms and I gasped out loud.  The poor little thing was shivering, scrawny, eyes wide and scared.  “Oh my god!”  I said, gently depositing a sleepy Dalton on the card table.  I moved for the door (the window itself didn’t actually open) and I dashed into the rain to rescue the poor bedraggled soul. 

The cat was retreating, a slight limp detectable in her gate.  My burst of energy through the door had startled her and she was disappearing in the alley behind the green dumpster.  “I’ll be back Dalton!”  I called through the door as I closed it, and I followed her. 

My hair stuck to my face and neck as the rain soaked me.  “Kitty!”  I beckoned softly, “here baby, it’s ok!  I’ll get you something to eat, baby!”  The alley became a sidewalk, bordering some abandoned buildings, and I could just see her fleeting calico form as she limped to the left around another corner and I followed her down an alley between two brick buildings.  The rain was intensifying and I shivered. 

“Kitty!” I  called as I turned left after her, and then I froze.  She was standing in front of me, looking up beseechingly with wide green eyes, and then she began to figure eight around my ankles.  I wasn’t looking at her though, I was looking at the little tented community in front of me.  Six people were huddled around a fire beneath a small, torn tent, and all of them were looking at me.  At ME.  At it.  My hand rose slowly to my face and touched it, mortified.  The stray cat had put her front feet up on me, imploring me to hold her.  Without tearing my eyes from the group of homeless people, I bent down and scooped her against my wet, shuddering body. 

“Hello,” said a gruff male voice.  He was sitting on an overturned bucket and had a scruffy looking cat on his lap.  “What the hell are you doing out in this weather?” 

I was holding Calico, shivering, moving closer to the tent and the fire.  It looked so warm... “I - I was –” 

Another voice, coming from a woman so wrapped in blankets I could just see her wrinkly old face said: “Come up to the fire, hon!  You’ll catch pneumonia out there.”  As I moved in closer, I saw she had a cat in her lap as well.  Calico had already started to fall asleep against my chest. 

The first, gruff man pulled up an upturned crate and I sat in their strange little circle around the fire.  Each one of them looked older and more weathered than the last. All of them held a scruffy bundle of cat in their arms.  I thought that the cats looks content, most of them sleeping.  “So,” he wheezed, looking at me curiously, “what brings you out on a night like this?  You crazy too?”  He looked around the group with playful accusation in his eyes.  One skinny old man coughed out a barking laugh, startling the cat in his arms. 

“I- I’m..” but suddenly my throat was snagged with emotion.  This was the first time I had interacted with real flesh and blood people in over a year.  They were looking right at my face.  Right at it, and nothing bad was happening. 

The gruff-voiced old man patted my knee.  He handed me a Hershey bar. 

“Thanks-” I tried to say, my voice breaking. 

“You ok?”  The blanketed woman asked. 

“No- I mean yeah!  I just... I just haven’t talked to people in so long!”  It was embarrassing but tears were falling down my face as fast as the words were spilling out of my mouth, and I couldn’t stop either: “I’m just an ugly person with a cat!” 

There was silence, and then the entire group began to laugh, especially the gruff-voiced old man.  He slapped my shoulder and said: “That’s all of us!  Look around!  We’re just ‘The Ugly People’s Cat Club,’ ain’t we?” 

I noticed I was laughing too, and Calico was purring in my arms. 

I sat with the Ugly People’s Cat Club for over an hour, eating my Hershey bar section by section.  When I left that night, carrying my new purring cat home with me, I told them I’d be back soon, and I’d bring some ramen noodles for us to share.  Some of them answered, some were rocking staring at the fire, but NONE of them looked at it, or even seemed perturbed by it. 

So I left the club and went home with Calico.  Dalton was delighted to see me, rubbing against my shins, purring and meowing.  After an hour, he and Calico were asleep in my lap in a dark apartment on a rainy Tuesday. I was staring at my phone screen. 

Hey Kitch!  Tomorrow sounds great!  I’ll see you then.