08/04/2024
HERE'S TO ALL THE "CAT LADIES"
Here is to my Aunt Jessie Sloan, the original Cat Lady, and her partner Marge Norris. Who became famous in Oyster Bay Long Island for living in "The Cat House" tending to hundreds of felines.
My Aunt Jessie would sometimes come out from Oyster Bay in her convertible and scoop me up from the bucolic Breattystown, New Jersey to go on adventures.
Once in 1966, she arrived in our driveway and announced to my parents John and Barbara Sloan that she was kidnapping me. Jesse was the youngest of the Sloan children, born in 1919, a strong independent woman who eventually career for and lived with her mother, my grandmother, an abstemious, aristocratic, and magnificently noblewoman.
So off we went, down the road, top down on a beautiful summer day. Jesse was a bit unconventional and I love that about her. She owned many iterations of the same breed of Pekenese, the latest was "Skoochie." Jessie was the President of The United Hospital Fund on 5th Avenue in New York City, right next to historic Tiffany's. She was ahead of even Gloria Steinem in her independence and her quest for education and women's equality.
Light me a cigarette, will you honey? And so, at her urging, I carefully removed a fag from her cigarette pack and tapped it on the dash. As I leaned forward punching the cigarette light in until it clicked, I turned to give her a knowing smile, as this was forbidden in my house even as my mother smoked three packs of ci******es per day.
We ventured to New Hampshire to see the rock formation, "The Old Man in the Mountain," (which collapsed on May 3, 2003.) Then it was off to "The Jack O'Lantern resort for some sleep. The next morning we were off to Mt. Washington, where we rode the
The Cog Railway to the summit of 6,800 feet on a coal-fired steam engine.
I will never forget my Aunt Jesse Sloan.
Here's to all the "Cat Ladies" out there.
In the summer of 1973, about two dozen cats were left to starve on West Main Street, Oyster Bay , when the owner of a house moved abandoning the cats that had been living outdoors amid piles of debris and a derelict car for years. Left to fend for themselves, the cats were roaming the streets and ...