Sleeping with Cats: A Memoir
Marge Piercy
Language: English
Pages: 368
ISBN: 0060936045
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Marge Piercy, a writer who is highly praised as both a poet and a novelist, turns her gaze inward as she shares her thoughts on life and explores her development as a woman and writer. She pays tribute to the one loving constant that has offered her comfort and meaning even as the faces and events in her life have changed -- her beloved cats.
With searing honesty, Piercy tells of her strained childhood growing up in a religiously split, working-class family in Detroit. She examines her myriad friendships and relationships, including two painful early marriages, and reveals their effects on her creativity and career. More than a reminiscence of things past, however, Sleeping With Cats is also a celebration of the present and the future, as Piercy shares her views on aging, creativity, and finding a lasting and improbable love with a man fourteen years younger than herself.
A chronicle of the turbulent and exciting journey of one artist's life, Sleeping With Cats is a deeply intimate, unforgettable story.
strong willed. Sometimes we each see the other as imposing his or her will. We are both sensitive and used to rejection and may perceive it where it doesn’t exist. But we remain truly committed. We are lovers now as much as we were in 1976 when we began. We still find each other interesting companions. Woody, raised in the suburban middle class, is more socially skilled and polite and respecting of social glue. I am more abrasive, more political. The opinions of others mean far more to him than
dig a grave. Many times since, he has suggested filling it in, but I was unwilling. I felt, with all the weight of superstition, that if we filled it in he would die. Now that he is dead, we did our best to bury him in the frozen earth eight inches deep in snow with more falling on us. We put in potting soil from the shed, what dirt we could break loose. It is a very makeshift grave, so we put a plank and cinder blocks on top to keep coyotes from digging him up. We will finish the job when there
of industrial wilderness between the streets of little houses and the factories. By my later childhood, it filled up with new houses we played in as they were being built. Then they were finished, rows of identical two-bedroom houses speedily sold to veterans and their new families. We called that row Babyland. Soon we were baby-sitting there. I discovered sex with these girlfriends. It was more a game than anything else, but a pleasurable one. The first time I had an orgasm—I was eleven—I was
the other direction, there was an old gravel pit near a smaller lake where I often saw massasauga rattlers sunning themselves. I had no fear of snakes and left them alone, simply admiring them. I never bothered them and they never bothered me, although a couple of times, I inadvertently came within inches of their dusty sleekness. Past that were meadows I was fond of and past that were farms and apple orchards. Tom showed me the old trails through the woods. To this day I dream of those woods,
depressed to be interested. Then I got sick on my travels and half forgot him. The last week in May, Robert was in Germany and Wayne came while I was not yet well enough to manage by myself. The very first night, things reached such intense hostility that I locked myself in my bedroom, hiding there with the cats until the day he was due to go into the city to leave. He wanted me to sign over to him part of the land, so he could live there with his girlfriend, whom I had never met. He felt that