A Quiet Moment With My Anxiety-Ridden Cats
Marty has been lying with his belly up more recently. Marty’s my cat, if I haven’t already told you about him. I have three cats actually, but I’ll get to them in a second.
Marty is notoriously nervous. He’s by far the largest of the three cats, and he’s also the biggest baby. All he wants is love and attention, but he gets spooked as soon as you approach him. He’s been like that since we got him as a 8-week-old kitten. He hid behind the toilet in the bathroom and hissed at us, but the only way I could calm him down was to put him in the pocket of my scrubs when I got ready in the morning.
But right now, Marty is lying in the sun with his legs spread and his belly up next to Roger.
Roger is everyone’s grampa. He’s a senior cat that is at least 8 years old (we round up to 100) who lived on the street his whole life until he was rescued by our new BFFs Molly and Dan. When we brought Roger home, Marty was so viscerally stressed out that he peed blood everywhere (even on me) for a week and sent himself to the ER twice. Meanwhile, Roger stayed firmly under the bed for 7 weeks, only coming out at night when he was sure that our feet were no longer on the ground. Roger cried in fear, Marty cried in pain, and I just cried.
But right now, Marty is lying in the sun with his belly up, and Roger just noticed I sat down on the couch and ran over to sit on my lap. I’m typing on my laptop, so he settled for snuggling up against the side of my leg.
Tina, the first cat we got, is the most sentient of the three. She has different meows and sounds that mean different things, like she’s trying to speak to us in sentences, and she requires much more attention and mental stimulation than the boys do. It usually stresses her out if we don’t play with her enough, and she’ll stand in the corner and yowl until one of us makes eye contact with her. But right now, she’s hanging out in Dalia’s office and waiting patiently for Dalia to be done with work so they can play.
I’ve always said the most difficult part of having pets is not being able to explain things to them. When I put them in a carrier to take them to the vet, I can’t explain to them that we’re going to be back soon, or that it’s to make them feel better.
I can’t explain to Marty that I can’t give him a piece of my dinner because it will give him diarrhea.
I can’t explain to Roger that I’m not going to hurt him, I just need to cut his goddamn nails because he is slicing us to bits.
I can’t explain to Tina that I’m in the middle of a meeting and can’t follow her around the house for 15 minutes only to end up exactly where we started.
I focused so much on the fact that they don’t understand words that I completely missed how they understand literally everything else. They learn so much, like the sound of their food can opening so they know when it’s dinnertime, or how to fuck with the big plant in the living room so we stand up to shoo them away and they can steal our seats. One thing that they’ve managed to do that my big monkey brain hasn’t is how to find some peace.
In this moment of calm they’re all having, it’s inviting me to take a second to get a fucking grip. It’s hard to be alive ~iN tOdAy’S cLiMaTe~, but it’s also hard to be alive full stop. My guy Roger was eating trash and hiding from rain and snow and coyotes, and yet he was able to assess his surroundings and find peace. Marty and Tina’s little spidey senses tell them that any sound is a threat. Do you know how many sounds there are in a city? A lot! That’s stressful! And yet, they still find a sliver of sun to lay in and roast their beef.
Sure, cats don’t have to pay taxes that fund wars they don’t agree with and spend hours on the phone with health insurance companies begging them for mercy. No one is arguing that being a cat is harder than being a human, but every living thing just wants to survive.
I’ve been having such a difficult time grappling with balancing being an ally with being a martyr, calling out negativity with highlighting positivity, with fighting for peace and protecting my peace. I don’t think there will ever be a right answer, despite the fact that everyone believes that they alone are correct and the world would be so much better if everyone thought like them. No one will ever be able to explain the complexities of the world, I just have to learn from observing.
So right now, I’ll join them here in this peaceful existence until I fall down another morality spiral. Or until they realize it’s dinnertime. Then all bets are off.