Living Single

I am recently coping with the fact that I now live alone-for the first time in a long time. I had been co-habitating Will and Grace style with a gay best friend for years, and he has moved out leaving me to cook, clean, dress myself, arrange flowers, do my own make up, obviously pay all the bills-pretty much be a functioning adult which, up until now, I clearly had not been doing.
And since he has moved out, I have had a small kitchen fire (started by a pop tart that I was making for dinner) which took the toaster oven as a victim. I also slipped coming out of the shower, ripped the shower curtain off its hooks and cut my knee up pretty badly with the fall. And, inspired by this new found sense of independence, I decided to convert the extra bedroom into my office, but ironically discovered that the shelf and desk I purchased suggested two people were needed to assemble them. And worst of all, I have found myself coming home at night and talking to my cat. Just to have someone to talk to. I am beginning to worry, not only that I probably need a Life Alert button, but that I am on the threshold of becoming the epitome of doom for a single woman-a crazy cat lady.

So while I had begun my descent into this lowly fate, accepting the possibility that my fate may just be to pick up knitting so that my furry babies always have sweaters, I saw this in Huffington Post today and immediately decided that I will sooner move into a convent than end up old and alone with just cats.
It's quite tragic and grim really and I don't mean to make light of it, but the article reported on a 56 year old "reclusive" British woman, Janet Veal, who had pulmonary health issues which most likely resulted in her death at home. But by the time her body was discovered, she was being eaten by her pet cats and dogs. It becomes even more heartbreaking when the article goes on to say that some of her pets also had died of starvation and the poor conditions that were caused after her death.
I suppose in addition to the horror of this tragic situation, I felt pained to think of the solitary life of this woman who felt the need to surround herself with so many animals to fill the voids. And it made me think of how, just this evening, I was so excited to get home and sit on my couch with my cat and watch TV together, hearing her soothing purr in the background while Abby Lee Miller yells as tweens.
And of course I started to research singledom, and found propaganda including an article from UK's DailyMail that reported on a study that said "Women living alone were at increased risk from alcohol-related deaths." (Ok, no more drinking of bottles of wine while indulging in Netflix marathons.) And an article from Huffington Post that reported on a study that suggests that people younger than age 65 who live alone have a 21 percent higher risk of death. Great.

Now while I'm confident that I have enough wonderful friends and people in my life-including the Director of the show I'm currently in-who would come looking for me if I was gone for more than 12 hours, I couldn't help but relate to the tragic report about this woman and become even more panic-stricken about living alone following reading those other articles. But I'm sure I'll be fine........I'll just chew carefully, watch my step getting out of the tub, and look into Life Alert.

My cat would never try to eat me. Is this the face of a cat who would try to hurt you? ;-)