'Where Is My F****** Cat': Susan Orlean on Nailing the Tipsy Pandemic Tweetstorm

Twitter isn't always the most pleasant place to hang out these days. But this weekend, for a few precious hours, the platform brought pure, unmitigated joy to millions of people, thanks to a series of viral tweets from Susan Orlean, the esteemed New Yorker writer and author of "The Orchid Thief" and "The Library Book."

Orlean has a knack for taking a seemingly straightforward subject and using it to tell a much larger story. On Friday night, the topic — ostensibly — was the fact that she'd had one too many glasses of rosé at a neighbor's house.

Drunk, Orlean found herself on the hunt for some candy, Tylenol and a snuggle session with her cat, Leo. As is so often the case in such vulnerable moments, all she had was her phone. And so began the epic, typo-laden Twitter tirade that the world needed.

While screaming into the social media void from her bed that night, Orlean tapped into something many of us are feeling: the collective "we" is done with this pandemic. And Orlean somehow made us laugh our asses off while delivering her message.

Susan Orlean spoke with KQED's Lily Jamali, host of The California Report.

KQED: Take us back to Friday night. Your tweetstorm was a cultural event. Were you aware of that while it was happening?

To tell you the truth, I wasn't. Much as I am ashamed to admit that I was drunk enough that I wasn't really paying attention to the impact of what was going on. I was lying in bed.

Most of the lights were off. It was early. I think I got into bed at about 8:30 because the room was spinning and I felt pretty out of it. I climbed into bed and I had my phone next to the bed which, I know, is a terrible thing because of the temptation to grab your phone. I just started tweeting. I think sometimes you can feel on social media that you're simply yelling into the wind.

There's no immediate sense of it being heard. So it can feel —  especially if you're not reading responses — like it's "notes to self." You're just typing away. It was pretty dark in the room so my typing was not my finest. I have to say, I'm usually a really good typist. I'm very fussy and I correct my errors. That wasn't going to happen. I was not in that state of mind.

Well, on behalf of the entire Twitterverse, thank you for baring your soul, typos and all. Let's talk about the morning after. What went through your mind when you saw the response?

I woke up, looked at my phone, and was astonished. A friend had texted me and said, "you're trending." And I thought, "I'm trending? I'm hungover!" I had a headache. I suppose that's no big surprise. I was absolutely shocked when I saw the response. I've been on Twitter a very long time. And now and again, you write something that gets a lot of response. But I think one of those tweets had over 100,000 likes and thousands of responses. It was really overwhelming and caught me completely by surprise. I really was kind of fascinated by it. I went back and read all the tweets. Some I had no memory of having written, so it was a very unusual sensation.

OK, I have a couple of questions for you from Twitter. @PDizzle asks: "What was her beverage of choice during the drunk tweetstorm?" It's well-established at this point that it was rosé, right?

It was. It was a light summery rosé. It's embarrassing to get so drunk on something like rosé. The mystery to me is how I got so drunk, because it was rosé and I don't believe that I drank two bottles myself. I don't really understand it. But I saw rosé the next day and I didn't flee in horror.

That's a good sign. The love affair continues. @pdizzle's follow-up question was: was it a box wine or a bottle? 

It was a bottle, and it was actually a very nice rosé. My neighbors were serving it and it was good. Again, I'm not suggesting that drinking to excess is a good idea but it was at least a quality beverage.

Since your cat makes an appearance, @pamelawu asks: "Where was your cat?" Tell us that story.

Very early in the morning, my neighbor — whom I had no idea was on Twitter — texted me and said, "I'm sorry to hear your cat is lost. We just saw a gray cat on our property. Is that your cat?" And I said no. My cat was in the living room and I was in my bedroom. My annoyance with him was that I wanted him to be in bed with me. He had not gone far away. But in the universe of being drunk and being in bed, anything other than in bed with me — he could have been on Mars.

That's right. You have one job as a cat. Am I right? 

That was his job! Like any cat worth its salt, he wouldn't come when I called him. So I had to wait, and he did finally show up, but he gave me a look that was rather judgmental. He looked at me like, "you're a mess." And I had to just take the punishment.

Last question off Twitter is from @boozeedee who wants to know the story behind this tweet: "Hahaha very funny whoever put the stool softener right next to the Tylenol"

Right before I went to bed, I thought, "I'm going to have a hangover and I better take a painkiller before I go to bed."

Most of the lights were out in my bedroom and I made my way into the bathroom and opened the drawer and grabbed what looked to be the Tylenol bottle, which is just a big white CVS bottle. And I pulled it out and started to open it and suddenly realized it was stool softener. I dropped it like a hot potato and grabbed the next big white plastic CVS bottle, which was indeed the Tylenol. But I was so annoyed. I thought, "who would do that? Who would do that horrible thing of putting those two things right next to each other?" They're almost indistinguishable. So I narrowly averted disaster.

Sounds like it. I know you've had some time to reflect on all of this. What did you learn? What's your take away from everything that that's come of this?

First of all, I think that we're all really worn out. We're sick of bad news. We're sick of being locked in with our families. We're sick of being frustrated and I think that this tapped into that feeling that we're all kind of spilling over.

Secondly, I think people respond to things that are authentic. It's not that I'm proud of this, or that I think you should get drunk to where you're literally going to bed at 8 p.m. I don't, in any way, endorse that. But the ruminations that followed were all very real and unfiltered, and I think that as a writer, it's a thing to be reminded of — that people do actually respond to emotions that are genuine.

And I think the other thing I learned is that two glasses of wine is enough.

For people who are not familiar with your day job, you are a writer at The New Yorker and a very accomplished author of — most recently — "The Library Book," about the 1986 fire at the L.A. Public Library. It is an incredible work. @mayrazanza asked on Twitter: "What's her vision of the new library post-COVID?"

It's a great question. And this is a really odd moment in the timeline of libraries because they've always been a refuge when things have been difficult.

During war, during crises, libraries have always been the one place that you feel you can go and have a place to work, a place to be warm, a place to be cool in the summer and to find out what you need to find out. This is very, very unusual. You could probably count on one hand the number of times the L.A. Library has been closed in its history. It just doesn't happen.

What is it going to mean post-COVID? With luck, when we have a vaccine and we are able to share space together, libraries should be able to return to the function that they've had all along. My guess is that there's going to be a long time where we're sensitive to hygiene and cleanliness when sharing spaces. I know libraries are really champing at the bit to reopen as soon as they possibly can, and I think they want to return to doing what they do, even if it's with some extra attention to issues of public health.

Is there anything that I didn't ask you that you want to say?

I do want to say I love my cat.

Do we know your cat's name?

Leo. He's a beautiful cat. Um, and, I love my family, even though I was raging about them. And I also love candy-coated fennel seeds, even though I suggest that they had let me down.

But, you know, I wanted like a Snickers bar, and candy-covered fennel seeds are not a Snickers bar. It's not drunk candy. Drunk candy is chocolate. It can't be something that's good for you. That's counterintuitive. I will still eat candy-coated fennel seeds on occasion, but I'm going to make sure we have something else in the house just for emergencies.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.