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The most Monday Monday to ever Monday. One of my subscribers sent me this message earlier that made me giggle:

I do feel a tinge of optimism, actually, and it’s because I’m back in my own after something that could almost be described as a staycation.

One of my friends spent the past week abroad and needed a catsitter. Who better to enlist than the girlfriends that refuse to be tied down by responsibility?

Meera and I have catsit Moo for a weekend before. He is quite the character. He’s fat and fluffy and snuggly and warm — especially when he wants you to feed him. He makes his needs known, whether he wants food, play, or answers to the unknown noises outside. He’s a simple guy, ditching sophisticated toys for cardboard boxes and (his favorite) a reusable Walmart bag.

Most importantly, Moo has never spent a night alone. The first time we took care of him was just for a weekend. I was nervous because, ever since having to leave a sleepover early in third grade, I am allergic to cats. Having Meera as a sidekick meant if allergy meds wouldn’t work that I could go home at any time. Thankfully, I learned I could sleep over and wake up mostly unscathed, so long as I wouldn’t rub my eyes. Even if I did, the worst I would feel would be slight congestion and itchy eyes. We had a ball.

This catsitting tenure would last a full week. My friend technically lives nearby, but her apartment is an inconvenient distance away based on public transit. We packed as if we, too, were traveling abroad, filling our backpacks and carryons so we wouldn’t have to return home. I hate to give rideshare apps more money, but this is where we are.

My friend’s apartment is fabulous. Being there really felt like being in a Girl Apartment, function and form mixing beautifully the way her and her roommate (and Moo) do. Tasteful wall art, drawers filled how a home-organization TV show host would stuff them. I had no trouble getting comfortable in the unit.

I might have gotten too comfortable, but I saw no alternative because of where she lives: right by Myrtle-Broadway. My non-New Yorkers might know this subway stop because of the trio businesses right off the stop:

Twitter users know this intersection because it has been posted enough online to make a surprisingly informative Know Your Meme entry. The stop is the intersection between the M and J/Z trains, two elevated train lines coming together to a somewhat lawless place. In an otherwise safe neighborhood, this intersection is home to loiterers, solicitors, and other roving characters. Although there are some fun businesses (a club right outside the train, a lesbian coffeeshop/bar co-op, a WingStop with a sign advertising to the above-ground train platform with arrows pointing to their food below), I don’t really hang around here unless I’m seeing my friend.

The odds were stacked against me this week:

I was sleeping in, sleeping early, sleeping sleeping sleeping. It’s disarming to be close to home but not close enough, unable to look at this as a full getaway or a true staycation. It’s not like I’m even in a completely faraway part of the city, but I’m not close enough to feel like I can get home easily. Maybe it would be different in the summer or when I’m not stuffing tissues in my pocket. Why go outside when I have HBO, a fuzzy couch, and a fuzzy companion?

I could not think of anything more entertaining than chilling under a blanket watching Mad Men (I finished the first season — FLAWLESS! I’m still shook at the character that had to go into labor without even knowing she was pregnant) aside from chilling under a blanket scrolling through my phone. I rarely motivated myself to leave the house in daylight hours, only leaving at night when I had preexisting plans. My gym streak was fully washed. I felt so strange the whole week, bailing on everything and struggling to respond to messages.

At least I had something to pet. Or maybe that’s why I was that way.

I did not grow up with animals. My mom got Bean when I went off to college, a puppy replacement for a real girl. Once Ben did the same, she is an empty nester that is happy to revolve her life around her life around a different helpless creature than the two she raised. Bean gets all the love and attention a creature could get, usually dropped off at my Nonna’s when my mom can’t be at the house.

This is the kind of dedication I’ve come to expect from pet owners. One of the first (adult) pet owners I became close with was in New Hampshire. Hannah’s adorable doodle Dylan was always under consideration, whether it was picking a restaurant with dog-friendly outdoor seating or going out close to home so she could make sure Dylan was all good at dinnertime.

Pets are needy, but they pay us back in love. Why wouldn’t you want to take care of something so cute? They understand us in a way no one else can.

The price of this symbiosis is responsibility; it is so easy to drop everything and everyone else when you have someone needing you at home. However, in this fight against being an elderly person in your early 20s, pets make all of this so much easier. It’s funny that the childless cat lady stereotype is associated with immaturity — someone homely and reclusive enough to avoid children — when it has the potential to age you into true elderly behavior. Unlike kids, cats don’t need you to shuffle them around to various commitments and activities. You can just sink into coziness.

Many pet owners are cool, functional people with robust social lives. Against all odds, they balance it all. My friends that are pet owners are like this because they leave the house to see me. Pets don’t have to make you a homebody, but someone inclined to homebodydom can fast-track themselves into isolation when there’s something cute nuzzling against you.

Pets can be such an alluring reason to avoid people or cut your interactions with them short. Why sit through a conversation when there is an oftentimes silent creature that doesn’t speak a human language? One that you are taking care of and making its life as positive as it can be?

So if you are one of the youths I detest, a young person that decries clubbing and rejoices in early bedtimes with your significant other, make yourself useful and get a pet. I will respect your wannabe-elderly sensibilities more if you have a valid reason to stay home.

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