Perhaps I Dream Too Much Alone

Thievery is the way of the day--I steal my upstairs neighbor's wireless to write this.

I recently moved into my first apartment. It's old and a bit damp; a drywall seam marks the below/above-ground line throughout the apartment. There's a charming little archway between the kitchen and living room, and the doors are a beautiful dark wood. I've furnished it in college-girl style: mismatched dishes, 70s furniture, an old school desk that doubles as my office and my dining room. Buddha statues perch next to a stuffed robotic Boobah, which I swear was unintentional. Five baby mother of thousands plants share a pot on the shelf over the too-shallow kitchen sink, and an old fish tank and its accessories waits for ambition to tug it out of the hall closet and give it purpose again.

I have two roommates of sorts. Siddhartha, an elderly little brown rat missing part of his tail, spends his time rearranging his cage, stealing bits of whatever I'm eating as he sits beside me on the couch, and mycoplasmotically wheezing. He just completed a course of rat antibiotic after contracting an upper respiratory infection following the deaths of his buddies, John Paul, a champagne-colored rex, and Nietzsche, a hooded fawn. They both died of old age, long outlasting Sid's brother Mohandas. Nearly a year ago, Mo died after developing some kind of rat encephalitis that led to a two-week struggle of falling down whenever he walked and eating only a porridge of lab blocks, vanilla wafers, and cream. Sid and I spend lots of cuddle time together while we both wait for him to die, as is the custom with 2-year-old rats, I hear.

Our other, more energetic roommate is Bob, a beautiful white long-haired cat with three extra toes (six on one front paw, seven on the other). Bob moved into my boyfriend's house after his roommate drunkenly brought him home from a friend's farm. He spent a year at Joe's before I got this apartment, and I dutifully cuddled him as he yowled in the car during his ten-block move. He turns up his nose at sharing meat products, preferring to lick the foil tops of yogurt, sneak bites of Swiss Cake Roll, and crunch down barbecue Pringles when I have a salt craving. (As you can see, sharing food with animals only minimally disgusts me.) His main advantage over Sid is that I can talk to him, which is less crazy cat lady than it sounds, and he looks up at me knowingly and meows back. He's remarkably well-behaved. He comes when called, looks away guiltily when I catch him eyeing Sid, and uses his scratching post dutifully, though he insists upon waiting until company comes before he shits profusely in his litterbox, which, despite all the nag champa incense in the world, makes the apartment smell like a pig ranch for fifteen minutes afterweard. Another distinct cat-over-rat advantage is his complete lack of focus on chewing the down duvet on the sofa, which seems to be Sid's favorite pastime lately.

I've been living the liberal art major life, waitressing and bicycling to the library and driving out to the country to remind myself of the landscapes that were only two blocks away back home. I stay up until four in the morning most nights, playing Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon and watching DVDs on my cable-less 19-inch television. I knit and play out of old John Thompson lesson books on a cheap roll-up piano; I alternate between classic literature and Oprah's Book Club selections; I draw oil pastel portraits of Little Edie Beale and eat peanut butter straight from the jar. Living alone has its good points.