the one about my dead cat
ok - let's just get it out of the way!
This newsletter’s cadence is not unlike throwing a Molotov cocktail into 152 windows and hiding until it’s safe to do it again.
Hi :)
It’s been months Charli XCX first shat on my assertion that this summer was a Carmela Soprano Summer. One must acquiesce to culture and, honestly, I have never been more proud to be a childless, gorgeous idiot in my thirties. I couldn’t have been more chuffed than I was when I found out that Charli had her birthday this year at Tenants of the Trees, a bar where I famously was told by a man, “I got engaged just to spite you.” I love men and their little dramas!
“I was a brat before brat was brat,” I will tell the retirement home nurse as they change my diaper.
So anyway. Not that anyone is knocking down my door to make a collage and yell in serif font, but I haven’t written a Like Like in months. I’ve been feeling self-conscious of the hiatus, but I don’t know, I just didn’t really feel like it. Not in a lazy way, but in a I-need-to-protect-my-peace-and-I-am-comfy-with-having-nothing-to-say way, which makes me feel like maybe the 39 weeks of therapy is actually making a dent in something other than my bank account. Maybe if I stay on this track, I can stop googling whether or not my body will ever let the score run out.
I haven’t written because a) I didn’t want to and b) about a month ago, Joey, my beloved pet and stinky homegirl for the past 15 years, unexpectedly passed away. I really, really loved that cat and now my grief is “bringing up some things,” as they say.
I thought my sadness over the loss of her would be measured and dignified, but it’s a refractory heartache and I feel it so deeply that even I am like, “umm ok, cool it babes.” I feel shame over of the lack of control I have over the mourning process and it feels like there is no end in sight. Bursting into tears at work over a cat? Yikes! Having strong feelings about things that aren’t fixable? Weak! Did I even cry when (insert other event that is totally incongruous but I choose to compare it anyway)? Hypocrite!
When you were young, did you ever have a dying balloon in your house and you’d do that thing where you’d hit it over and over, trying to keep it from touching the floor for as long as possible? Easy, yet exhausting after a bit. I can often do the same with my feelings, judging them and batting them away before they find a place to settle. It’s a talent, really. Having feelings about my feelings is my specialty.
Hot tip: If you intellectualize (and mock) your own feelings you never have to feel them!
I am trying to let myself sit in this, though. I miss my living, breathing, shitting friendship bracelet. Joey’s absence is either discreetly gnawing at me or lying dormant until I walk into a room and my lizard brain experiences the brief disorientation of reassembling my reality into one in which she is not a part of. Long gone is my chunky little friend who never judged me for my complicated human feelings. The cutest and most unwitting audience member to the most secret scenes of my life. Scenes I’d never rehash on the internet, but ones that would always end with her and all of her heft on top of me. The moments when I was at my worst were also the ones that, so help her god, called for making muffins on my chest. Show me an SSRI that can fix what the nonsensical and unconditional love that my cat somehow managed to fix. You can’t!
I will miss Joey’s aloof demeanor which gave her an almost ethereal, all-knowing kind of vibe, occasionally suspended when she wanted to chase something or cuddle. She was a diva who didn’t really give a shit about anything - an energy I will sorely miss having around the house. I just let her be her little self and she let me be mine and we were happy to do that together forever, pretty much.
I have been avoiding writing about her because it feels uncanny and one-dimensional using words and visuals to describe a relationship that didn’t require them. Outside of it being up to me to keep us both alive and fed, it was a pretty symbiotic relationship built on instinct, trust, and Cheeze-Its. (Marriage is actually not that different, or at least it shouldn’t be.)
I have been avoiding writing about her because I feel protective over the overall experience of losing her and I feel timid about giving anyone even the most remote opportunity to judge me for any of this. I’ve been forced to wonder where I learned to feel ashamed when I am sad, which only makes me more sad. I’ve wondered what other people do when they feel this way, when it feels like they keep stumbling into new mirrors in their funhouses of grief.
I told you it’s bringing up some things.
So up until now, I’ve been searching “cat” in my phone in the middle of the night and favorite all my favorites of her (there’s always a new favorite). I huff her scent on all her favorite places to lounge. When it feels like I am literally erasing her when I vacuum the house or when lint roll my clothes, I let myself cry. I open and close the email about how much a jeweler will charge to make a necklace with her ashes. I open and close the tissue paper where I keep a lock of her fur, taking pains to not lose a single strand.
I have written and deleted this entire email at least three times. However, I am going to press send on this depressing little email. I’m not only going to be sad, but I’m going to be sad in public. It’s called art - look it up!
Tonight, I am going to think about my dead cat and miss her with my whole self even if it feels v dramatic and self-indulgent. Even if it’s not very Julia of me. Even if, Kim, there are people that are dying.
Summer’s over.
♡ Joey forever. ♡
2009 - 2024
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Really beautiful, Kat. I feel all of this (esp the bit about using words and images for a relationship that didn’t operate on those terms) — transcendent. Joey forever 🖤