Joanne Marie Erickson sat on her couch in her Playa Del Rey apartment last Saturday contemplating what she would do without her home of 23 years. Her eviction is set for Friday, Feb. 9. Erickson wanted her cat Muriel, who was meandering through her apartment, to remain with her. Maybe she should live in her 20-year-old VW bug, which has neither heat nor air conditioning. She could sleep in the back seat, and Muriel’s litter box could be placed on the floor of the front passenger side. But the more she thought about it, the more impossible the scenario appeared to her. “I can’t live on the street,” she said.
By Monday, as a winter rainstorm drenched California, she’d changed her mind again. She was prepared to live in her car. But she wanted to spare her indoor cat life on the streets of L.A. “I have to give Muriel up for adoption. I don’t care about me,” she said on the phone. She was weeping.
