Ears
When I sent around pictures to my family of my new kitten, I held him under his armpits to let his body dangle, baring his bulbous milk-belly, showing off his length as if I were a man displaying a fish I’d caught for my Hinge profile. As if the presence of this baby animal was a source of pride, something I’d earned. My grandfather took one look at his vacant face, the gargantuan ears shading his tiny skull, and commented: “That cat can HEAR.”
Greeting
For years, when Lansie and I lived in the same building, I’d ask her to catsit because it was just a matter of taking a few flights of stairs. I’d tell her: here are the two bowls, the two litter boxes. She’d say: I trust you because I love you, but you say you have two cats and I have only ever seen the one. Dexter would not come out of hiding for any person other than me or Andreas for the first half of his adulthood. Every now and then, when I watched him come trotting up to a new person, singing and flirting with his stretchy back legs, I’d well up, thinking how far he’d come.
Misrepresentation
We saw him on Craigslist first. I agreed we could start looking at kittens and I wanted an orange one. I’d met really doofy, sweet, docile orange boys growing up—toms with names like Tyler and Cheese—and I felt like that was the speed I wanted. His foster mother had named him Mitchell after the redhead on Modern Family. In the photo on the listing, Mitchell (“Mitchell”—it never felt right) was sprawled out, fast asleep with a beatific expression on his face, little-spooned against a young girl in a yellow Cheerios t-shirt, so zonked that his limbs were all draped akimbo against each other. We took the train to East Falls to meet him. He was very small and very cute and very much did NOT “love to be held like a baby,” as the listing said. I was willing to go home and mull it over but Andreas had fallen deeply, suddenly in love, and the foster mom was very ready to take advantage of that; she produced a clipboard out of thin air like a magic trick, encouraging us to sign on the dotted line to adopt him, ushering us into her car to go to the shelter and make it official.
Height
There’s a bit of folk wisdom that a cat is either a tree cat or a bush cat—that is, when they feel threatened, they either feel the need to get up high above everything or to hide under something. When we brought him home to our loft studio, he would scale up as far as he could: chair to countertop to refrigerator top to perch on the dividing wall separating the kitchen area from our bedroom area, dramatically underlit like a tiny dictator. I woke up countless mornings to his guileless face peering down at me from five feet above. During a holiday sale two years ago, I splurged on a seven-foot cat tree for him. He leapt it like a panther, that balletic agility, his body a poem. It turned out to be his penultimate Christmas.
Quirks
You learn to read body language when you have cats, but he never learned to properly speak it; most cats puff up their tails when they’re terrified, but his tail would puff up when he was excited, like when he saw his favorite foods (we once had to chase him around the apartment after he stole a floret of steamed broccoli and ran away with it growling like he’d poached a rare bird). He loved to be up high but he also loved to open cabinet doors; I had to use makeshift child locks to stop him from napping in my kitchen drawers near the mandoline and mixing bowls. I’d often go into my bedroom closet for a dress and find him snuggled into a drawer he’d nudged open for himself, my black clothes coated with orange fur. He’d meet the gaze of my reflection in the bathroom mirror and we’d have entire meowed conversations to each other as I got ready in the morning. He went down stairs like a wonky marionette—both left limbs at once, then both right limbs—religiously to greet me when I got home at the end of the day. I watched him soften to strangers year by year, getting more curious about new people, but better still was the way he only increased his affection for me. Toward the end, if I wasn’t petting him enough, he would physically grab my hand with his paw and place it onto his head so I’d take the hint.
Names
He was so fast and restless when we first met him at the foster home that I wanted to call him Dash. Dashiell. Andreas didn’t like it. I suggested Toby (I’d been watching The West Wing), but I worried that the name would be too matchy-matchy with the vowel rhyme—here are my cats, Jovie and Toby. Within two days of having him, I made a batch of red velvet cupcakes. I’d just put them in the oven and turned around to see that he’d launched his whole stripey body into the still-batter-slicked mixing bowl. When I tried to remove him, he grabbed at the bowl to try to prevent himself from being dragged away, growling, claws bared, face splattered with red. I’d been watching The West Wing, but we’d also both been watching Dexter.
End
Dexter got sick about a month ago. I noticed he was sneezing—something I always found a little charming since he’d sneeze like a water sprinkler, tfft-tfft-tfft-tfft, head moving progressively further to the side with each burst. I noticed this wasn’t just a sniffle, though; he’d get big cartoonish snot bubbles, a green that matched his eyes, and instead of just giggling I made him a vet appointment. He’d lost a lot of weight, but the bloodwork came back normal, so the vet put him on a two-week antibiotic. A lifetime of anxiety and somehow, loving him made me an optimist; fourteen days, twice a day, I pried open his mouth to dose him and assured him he’d be fine. But he didn’t get better. He was still low-energy and uninterested in food. I made him a follow-up appointment. The night before that appointment, he jumped up onto the bed next to me and I noticed he was struggling to breathe. I texted a video to a veterinarian friend of mine, who told me it was likely just congestion, and that a middle-of-the-night emergency vet wouldn’t be able to do much more than what they would be able to do for him in the morning. When I woke up I found he’d peed in the bed, and I knew it wasn’t spite but weakness. I put him in the carrier. He started panting. I know, buddy, I told him, it sucks to go back to the vet so soon but don’t be nervous, we’re gonna make you better. I brought him out of the car and into the building, gave our name, sat on a bench. I felt him thrash in the carrier so I looked in at him. I remember screaming: “he’s not breathing.” I remember the speed with which the vet tech took him out of my hands to bring him to the back for CPR. It was the last time I saw him alive.
Problem
If you’ve ever brought your pet into the vet, chances are you’ve sat in the waiting room getting more and more nervous, maybe even unnecessarily nervous, because you’re hearing someone in an adjacent room crying over a sudden loss. Last week I became that stimulus. I screamed in the waiting room and they ushered me quickly into a private office and shut me in, presumably so my splotchy, distorted face wasn’t the first thing visitors would see. But the sliding door wasn’t a match for my wailing. My sobs ripped out of me, my body wracked and bent, my arms around myself as though they were trying to hold the pieces together. I had a momentary clarity that I might be scaring someone else. I thought about whether I should make myself stop. It was moot; I couldn’t if I tried.
Absolution
I spent a week feeling like snakes were nesting the pit of my stomach, just roiling with guilt. Was he so scared that by bringing him to the vet, I caused him to have a heart attack? And even if he was going to die that day, why couldn’t I have let him be, so he could let go peacefully at home? My friends and loved ones reminded me that I did the best I could with the information I had, that I did right by him for the entirety of his short life. I couldn’t hear it; the fear I’d killed him was louder. But over the week I remembered every time in his life I’d needed to give him a bath, or move him to a different apartment, and how even though each time my heart broke for how scared he must have been, he never held it against me—in fact, he turned to me for comfort when it was over. It was never taken as something I was doing to him, but something that only I’d be able to get him through. And if it had to happen, as horrible as it was, I’m glad I was there. I’m glad he knew I was trying.
Next
His whole life he had one whisker on his left cheek that was black at the base and white at the tip, a duochrome flourish I used as a mindfulness exercise whenever I was sad and snuggling up next to him: no matter what else has happened, look for it, it’s still there. When I was sure his body could no longer feel pain, I plucked it and put it in a tiny box. I removed the bow-tie collar from his neck. I paid to have his ashes returned to me. I reached out to Andreas to ask if he wanted some of Dexter’s ashes, and he told me he didn’t feel comfortable dividing the remains for his own vanity, but that he’d like to be there when I inter them. I haven’t gotten them back yet but I like thinking about where I’ll put them, planted with the roots of a butterfly bush—something sufficiently orange and fluttery—where he’ll permanently lay in the sun, spreading out and settling in and continuing to bring more and more joy the further he roots in.
Yours in survival,
Arielle
Three Things Bringing Me Joy
Shared whimsy.
A group of my besties is planning an upcoming weekend trip just because we found a silly brewery where the lodging has THEMED ROOMS. “Vanessa and Arielle will have to duke it out for the ‘Dark Princess’ room,” someone (rightly) said in the group chat. I love a theme, something intentionally designed to force a vibe, or that requires a costume. Speaking of which:The Chappell Roanaissance.
THANK YOU everyone for catching on to how much goddamn fun this li’l femme is. I tried to see her live a little over a year ago after rocking “Pink Pony Club” on every drive in summer 2022. I finally did see her live in October of last year; I went alone because I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to go with. When I walked into the venue it was a SEA of girls in pink cowgirl getup, and that’s how I realized that she releases a theme/dress code for each stop on her tour so fans can dress up together. I love that she’s everywhere now, because it means the next time she comes around, it’ll be a party.The Rumpus Room.
I was not the lucky duck who managed to purchase this Rumpus Room globe light but goddamn it makes me smile.
What I’m Reading
[B]efore the Chinese figured out what gunpowder was for, they'd thought it could be used as an immortality elixir. How did they found out they were wrong? she asked me. The most logical way possible: it blew up in their faces, and ever since then they've used it for fireworks. And the truth is that when I see particularly beautiful fireworks, I really do feel immortal.
—Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez