Geneen Roth - The Craggy Hole in My Heart and the Cat Who Fixed It: Over the Edge and Back with My Dad, My Cat, and Me

Table of Contents

To my mother,
Ruth Wiggs
For love

There is a crack in everything, thats how the light gets in.

LEONARD COHEN

Praise for The Craggy Hole in My Heart And The Cat Who Fixed It

This is a totally brilliant bookbeautiful and fierce and sweet and, at times, very funny. Geneen Roth walks boldly, bravely into the excruciating truth of loves losses, and lifes losses, and the healing gift of an open heart. She renders each moment of this tale with illumination and flair, astonishing psychological and spiritual insight, and gorgeous writing. I was utterly blown away.

Anne Lamott, author of
Operating Instructions and Traveling Mercies

A great read about love and how to live with it.

DailyNews

Wonderfully entertaining... Once you pick it up, you cant put it down.

VisionMagazine

Stellar... Roths witty and self-deprecating personality comes across on every page.

PublishersWeekly

Roth writes with candor and humor and does not spare herself the barb of her own self-awareness.

BookPage

One

WHEN MY FRIEND SALLY CALLED TO TELL me that I needed a kitten, and fortunately, her cat Pumpkin was pregnant, I said no, absolutely not. I didnt want a pet, I didnt like cats, and I didnt want to love anything that could die before me.

I was thirty-three years old, single, and living alone in a house with a garden, three leaky skylights, and a crooked path to a sheltered beach in Santa Cruz, California. After seventeen years of struggling madly with emotional eating, and being as insane as anyone Id ever metId gained and lost over a thousand poundsId finally crawled out of the compulsion by giving up dieting altogether. More recently, Id settled at my natural weight, written two books, and begun teaching national workshops about breaking free from emotional eating.

But my obsession with food was a walk in the park compared to the chaos that ensued whenever the possibility of love walked into my life. At the time of Sallys call, I was in a relationshipI use that term looselywith Harry-the-Rake, a self-confessed lothario, who alternated between wanting to move in with me and telling me I was too fat. I was convinced that my heart was either on permanent sabbatical or missing some essential ingredientsthe ones that allowed normal people to take risks, to discern the bad guys from the good, to say come closer, hold me, go away. And I was wary of opening to anyone or anything that would depend on me to come through. I didnt trust myself to show up. I didnt think I had the capacity for big love.

Pumpkin gave birth to two kittens whom Sally immediately named Blanche and June. My mother, visiting from New York at the time, wanted to see them. At two hours old, they looked like wet weasels, and I wasnt impressed. My mother went straight for the white kitten. Take this one, she crooned, as she stroked the slicked-back fur of the shut-eyed rodent, but I wasnt taking anything so fast.

A few weeks later, Sally called and said her husband didnt want a white cat, and so Blanche was mine. Usually, I am the one who bosses people around, but Sally was completely sure of herself, absolutely positive that having this pet was a precursor to having a life. So I told her I would take the kitten on one condition: if I didnt like being a cat mother, I could return it in two weeks, like a pair of gloves from Macys. She agreed.

Its not that Id never had a pet. My grandmother gave me a parakeet named Cookie when I was seven. She rode around the house on my shoulder, sat on the desk while I did homework, and pecked at my eyelashes when I closed my eyes. One day, my brother opened the front door and Cookie flew out of the house. I cried for weeks. I decided then that the next thing I loved was not going to be able to fly away. We settled on goldfish, but the one we called Tallulah got out of the bowl somehow and flipped around the house. My mother and I ran after her with a strainer, but we couldnt catch her, and she died under the brown paisley couch. Then there was a puppy named Cocoa, who pooped in my fathers slipper right before he stepped into it one Sunday morning, and by Monday, she had gone to live somewhere else.

When she heard that Sally wanted to give me a kitten, my friend Sophie told me her pet story. After her mother died and her husband left her for another woman, she thought she was going crazy the kind of crazy where a psychotic break was two weeks away. On a particularly rough day, a group of friends tried to make her feel better, but she sensed their fear. The fact that her best friends couldnt be with her sorrow made her feel even more frightened, more alone. Then her dog, Squeak, jumped in her lap and fell asleep. In that moment, she says Squeak saved her life. He cut through the drama, walked directly on the fiber of feelings, and stayed there, as if pain and grief were no big dealas natural as chasing squirrels. His relaxation dissolved her fears of going crazy. After that, she was left with a broken heart, and as much as that hurt, she knew it would mend.

Though I was glad Sophie had her dog, Id heard these sappy tales beforea boy and his dog, a girl and her parrot, the wolf who saved the family from a fireand didnt see what they had to do with me. I still didnt want a cat.

During our first few days together I refuse to be charmed by Blanche, although every time I turn a corner, she is there, crouching behind philodendron leaves, or stalking an ant or a dust mote or my big toe. When I say no, she doesnt hold a grudge. When I push her away, she comes back. Blanches affection doesnt waver if my hair sticks straight up in the mornings or if I am having a fat day. She seems to be looking beneath the surface of things at some backward-spreading light I am not aware of.

A week after Blanche arrives, my two-year relationship with Harry-the-Rake ends when he falls in love with another woman. Flinging myself on the bed in a paroxysm of sorrowwhat will I do, where will I go, who will ever want meI notice a cloud of fluff inching across the quilt until it settles on my heaving chest, wheezing a low, gravelly purr. Its difficult not to be melted by such total acceptance; its hard to keep insisting that the world is a terrible place.

On the eleventh day, I admit I am smitten and tell Sally I will keep the cat.

Once I cross over, every single thing about Blanche enchants me, and I am positive that no one has ever had a cat this adorable. Then I start to worry that I love her because all kittens are irresistible, but when she gets older, I wont love her anymore. I still believe love depends on what you look like.

Within a month, Blanche has about ten thousand nicknames: Pooters, Banana, Wig-Wig, Moochy-Mooch, Fuzzy-Wuzz, Petunia, Mr. Guy and a Half, Sweet Potato, Booch Pie, Blue, Moo, Dandelion, Blanchebananche, Peachy Canoe and Tyler Too, Curly-Whirl, and on and on. Every day, a different name.