🎧 Listen to Sarah read this installment of Cured.
The decision to get another cat isn’t one my family necessarily agrees with. Six months ago, I had a kitten that had been taken from her mother too young and not socialized properly, and I ended up rehoming her.1 When I tell my sister about trying again, she says, “Oh, Sarah,” her voice redolent with concerned disapproval. My father responds, “Oh, okay” with encouraging bewilderment. My mother says, “Are you sure?” and proceeds to recap the highlights from the kitten saga.
A therapist would likely say that my reasons for getting another cat aren’t sound. To some degree, I’m using him to prove that I really have healed from serious mental illness. There’s plenty of other evidence: teaching is going well, and I’ve started doing publicity for my memoir Pathological. But having a cat, a creature I bond with and take care of after being so unwell and feeling so hopeless I couldn’t live independently for five years, would be something akin to water-tight evidence.
I’m also making the mistake of believing this cat will make me happy. The internet says his breed are some of the friendliest, sweetest, cuddliest cats in existence. In the photo, his sweet face says he’d never attack me. Never. It will be perfect.
When I pick him up, his owner takes him out of the carrier to show him to me. He’s a Birman tabby—sweet-faced and stocky with white-gloved paws, deep-blue eyes, and a champion floofy tail. (Birmans were originally temple cats, bred in Burma to catch mice, so the monks didn’t have to deal with the vermin. Tabby cats have stripes on their legs and markings in the shape of an m on their foreheads.) His father is the number four Birman in the world and the number one Birman Tabby. (Yes, cat shows are bizarre and cruel. You can read about my experience attending one here.) And big—nine pounds.
He’s too shy to be a show cat; that and the markings on his back paws aren’t quite long enough. His shyness is also why he wasn’t adopted with the rest of his litter.
He submits to her but with a little sass. He doesn’t seem shy. Confident, actually. A little bossy.
She puts him back in the carrier. We sign the requisite papers and talk for a bit. I open the carrier and poke my head in. He hisses at me.
I jump back. “He hissed.”
“Oh, just ignore him when he does that.”
There’s still time to tell her I’m not going to take him. She assures me he “never bites.” I pick up the carrier, pay, and thank her.
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