L.L. Wohlwend

I have a new purple chair, which is really an old purple chair, a hand-me-down from a neighbor. She tells me the chair is from a hotel in town, though she doesn’t know which one. It’s a swayback (I think) with those long unfurling arms, and it is incredibly comfortable. The neighbor just says, “Good lumbar support.” I’d agree.

Here’s a picture. I cropped it as close as possible—my apartment is in a STATE right now. As you can probably see, the chair is worn. A lot of tushes have sat in that seat, I’d bet, if what my neighbor said is true.

About fifty eclectic people call my apartment complex home. We’re joined together by a landlord who generally picks tenants who are quiet and stable. A good thing. There are college students, the middle-aged, lots of single hermetic types, (myself?!) and a few older, closer-to-retired-than-not folks. It’s a quiet place, rare for Albuquerque, and even rarer for complexes in general. On the whole, it’s been a good place to live these last four years, though I find myself wanting to leave now for the first time since I moved here. But that’s another post.

A fair number of people in the complex know who I am, and I tend to get a lot of offers for furniture castoffs from neighbors who are moving or redecorating, including the table I’m writing on. (Which is originally from Neil Patrick Harris’s family restaurant in New Mexico before it closed. Provenance!) Sometimes these offers are great, like the chair and table. Other times they’re annoying. When I’ve been offered clearly used mattresses and frames, broken down TVs, electronic gadgets that don’t work, I think, really? What universe made you think I’d dispose of your trash for you?

But my neighbors really know me for my cat, Vincent.

Vincent and I stroll the neighborhood, aka, the apartment complex courtyard, together most days. Vinny has had a lot of health problems, which my neighbors ask about. He’s in renal failure and we do subq fluids twice a day. When he doesn’t show up in the courtyard for a few days in a row, people worry, ask if he’s all right. And that’s nice. Vinny likes it too.

The thing is: My cat loves people. He has the brain of a cat, but the heart of a dog, and he always tries to walk with whomever comes and goes. When someone ignores him, I admit it, I judge. There’s one guy who always pays Vinny all sorts of attention when his girlfriend is around and then whizzes on past when he’s without her, breaking my little guy’s heart.

At any rate, because people often think of me when moving, I have quite a mismatch of furniture that fits my lifestyle right now. In addition to the chair and table, I have a cornflower blue loveseat with white snowflakes, and a weird 1975 vinyl chair and table set. (Want it? I hope to sell it. It was made by Madison Industries in Kansas, MS. The same place that made Kirk’s captain chair all those years ago.)

And though I am seated on the purple chair as I type this post, the chair is already more Vinny’s than mine. He often jumps up while I’m trying to read and worms behind me, effectively pushing me off.

He looks like this afterwards:

But I don’t mind. I think to love a cat is to love that part of its personality that owns you. That owns the chair. That owns the simple love of a good life, and an expectation that the good stuff should be yours. A cat knows to deserve the purple chair.