How to Find Love in the Newspaper

By Anna Sykora

"Cathy, how can you bear coming home to an empty apartment?" Aunt Phyllis waved her teaspoon like a baton, and a waiter stepped up. "I'll have another bagel," she preened in her husky contralto. Her raven hair showed no taint of grey, though she'd added a third chin.

"Aren't you dieting?" Cathy chided.

"It's for you; your face is so thin it's starting to suck. All I found in your fridge was tomato juice."

"I don't have time to cook anymore."

"You come home to a bottle of juice. You need an animal, I tell you."

Grinning, the waiter brought the bagel, and Phyllis helped herself to the plumper half.

"A dog would die of loneliness."

"So get a cat, or two."

"What would they do all day?"

"Sun themselves, rip the furniture. You need somebody waiting for you — like Gus, Max and Jonathan." Phyllis kept two Persian cats and a Lhasa Apso in her cluttered apartment, unlike her bland, blond niece, who she believed was letting accounting eat her life. Cathy's one-bedroom in a sliver high-rise had the pared look of a tourist hotel. "A Maine Coon's affectionate, and you don't have to brush them. I saw them on Channel 13."

"You're right. I need the company."

"There has to be one man left in Manhattan, Cathy, who isn't married or gay or a loser."

"I've tried everything..."

"In the meantime, buy yourself a cat. I'll look in the New York Times for you. The world is full of deductions, dear, but it's love we need at home."

The black tabby with white cheeks came strolling the length of the grove of legs and stopped in front of Cathy's low-heeled pumps. Looked up, she winked, and Cathy gasped; the well-upholstered breeders grinned. Their faces fell when she confessed her working hours; they'd already turned down a trial attorney.

"But I have a toy for her." Pulling a catnip mouse from her purse, Cathy dangled it in front of the kitten. "I had a cat when I was a kid. I know how to make her happy." She dropped it, and the kitten carried it off under a rocking chair, where she chewed off its nose.

Dawn liked tunnelling under the rugs, chasing roaches, and looked out the windows. When Cathy got home, Dawn greeted her by rubbing against her legs. What a joy, a reliable joy to feed her, brush her, clean up after her. Soon Cathy couldn't fall asleep without Dawm curled in the nook of her armpit.

The kitten taught her games like "You squeak under the blanket and I'll dig you out." Cathy screwed together a climbing tower with platforms, a cube-shaped cave and a scratching post; and even as she lifted it upright, Dawn scampered up to the highest platform, waving her tail.

She found bottle caps in her briefcase; she found Dawn herself in it. "Take me with you," pleaded vivid green eyes. The kitten would wail when Cathy unlocked her door, wail when she waited for the elevator, wail while she rode it down.

Cathy's latest ad in the back of New York Magazine brought her a sheaf of responses. She picked out the "good-looking broker, ready to invest one-on-one."

Good-looking, muscular, dark and intense, Rob wore Armani suits. He owned a condo in Palm Beach and a scarlet Porsche, and he wore Porsche sunglasses driving his car.
He'd worked for three firms since finishing school, while she'd stayed with the same accountants. He persuaded her to shift her IRA to the mutual fund he promoted.

Though fun in bed, he seemed distracted. Was he hiding anything important? Charming as any salesman, he could turn his attention off like a phone. Whenever he visited, half-grown Dawn withdrew to the back of a closet.

"I'm so glad I made you buy your kitty." Phyllis poured more cream into her coffee. They were sitting in a booth at the Loving Spoon again, eating sesame bagels.

"I should've before, but my first cat died when I was nine," Cathy confessed.

"Dear, you have to get over these things, or you miss out on life's little goodies." Phyllis smeared her buttered bagel with cream cheese.

"Dawn seems lonely. Should I buy her a kitten?"

"You could breed her and keep one, sell the others, and make back the fee... Please, Ricardo, we need more cream cheese."