A Cat Named Minnie
“Maeve said that everyone should have a cat named Minnie.” – Edith Konecky
Edith Konecky was an American novelist in the mid-twentieth century. She said this about her friend, Maeve Brennan, who was an Irish American essayist from the same time. Maeve was a central figure in Kate Bolick’s book, Spinster: Making a Life of One’s Own.
I did not know who either woman was until I read about them in Kate’s book.
Spinster examined the pleasures and possibilities of remaining single. Kate lead with her own experience and wove in the lives of women writers like Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Edith Wharton. I studied the works of these women in college. But I had no idea that they paved a different path by deciding not to settle down and get married before the second wave of feminism made it OK—and they talked about it.
I picked up Spinster from Elliot Bay Bookstore in Seattle, Washington the summer I got divorced. I felt lost and overwhelmed. So I went to the bookstore. I stalked the stacks and looked for anything that might help me make sense of what I was going through.
The relationships section was no help. There, were books that told me how to put a relationship together, but none to help me make sense of one once it was apart.
There were no books about divorce. Unless I had kids, which I didn’t.
Next to the relationships section were the women’s studies and feminism books. There, I found books that challenged anything considered “normal,” books like Spinster helped me feel less alone.
Months later when I was settling into my life in Lausanne, Switzerland, I got to that part of the book and squealed—I have a cat named Minnie too!
It was probably a coincidence, but me reading that book with a cat named Minnie on my lap felt like it was meant to be.
For a moment, the fog of transition lifted. I remember feeling like I was in the place that I was supposed to be in—with the cat I was supposed to be with too.
xo,
Laura