hunkering in the darkness with my cats

I

The cat in Mortal Shell (2020).

When analyzing the data from the beta testing of the dark fantasy game Mortal Shell, developer Cold Shell noted that 43% (150,000) of their players stopped to pet the cat. Clicking on the cat starts a cut scene in which both you and the cat hesitate then enjoy a moment of connection. If you pet the cat, you receive the “Purrfect achievement.” One player on reddit found a strangely appropriate softlock. “When initiating conversation with the merchant you can accidentally swing into the prompt for the cat,” the redditor remarks, “which will then prevent you from being able to select yes or no on the merchant screen, preventing you from exiting or moving. You can only pet the cat.”

II

Roger’s cat, Buddha.

I’ve hunkered in my basement apartment with my cat Buddha for the majority of this dark winter. Buddha spent the early months of his life consoling me as I processed my trauma following the death of another cat Templeton from FIP (Feline Infectious Peritonitis). Since then, he’s helped me live through the stress of my pre-tenure years, the death of a close friend from cancer, my struggles with anxiety disorder and OCD, the ups and downs of several chronic illnesses, and the agonizingly slow dissolution of a relationship after 12 years. During my most anxious evenings of the pandemic, when I need connection the most, I would call out for him. Without fail, he responded within seconds, curling up by my side and letting me scratch his belly while he purred. And he lives up to his name. When I’m scared, I focus on his huge, beautiful, yellow eyes. It's become one of my mantras,  and it never fails to center me.

III

Major Tomcat, from Wasteland 3 (2020).

Wasteland 3 features an “animal whisperer” skill that allows you to charm cats and most animals in the game. These companions follow you and engage in combat. By far, I found the most effective fighters to be the cats I encountered. One cat, Major Tomcat, can be charmed by offering him a cigarette. He is also killed quite easily. “He runs around the battlefield like a maniac,” says one redditor in a thread lamenting that Major Tom is too much responsibility. The original post complains that “[h]e just refuses to stop dying like an asshole, and my heart can’t NOT savescum [repeatedly saving until a favorable outcome is achieved]. It’s too much. Is the only thing to do is just to tell him to f*** off in base and hope he stays there?”

IV
It became clear early on in the pandemic that cats could be infected with the virus. Doctors recommended that people testing positive for COVID isolate themselves from their pets in order to prevent spread. Of course, that would be easy for people who aren’t living alone. But I couldn’t help worrying about what would happen if I got sick or died from the disease. One evening an edible I’d ingested gave me a bad trip. My heart rate increased, and as a paranoid state started taking over, I felt that my consciousness was a wave and it was dipping in and out. I thought I was having a stroke — an assumption I’d made given the reports of younger people having strokes from COVID. I meditate and I’ve taken cannabis. I’d had the same experience before, and been fascinated by altered states of consciousness, but the pandemic put me in a fundamentally different mindset. I panicked, called an ambulance, and insisted that I be taken to the emergency room. As I waited for the ambulance to arrive, I once again panicked about what would happen to Buddha. He was clearly concerned for me. Would he rush out into the cold when the medics arrived? If I died, would he just slowly starve alone in the apartment?

V

Spider-Man, the cat from Spider-Man: Miles Morales, doing his venom swipe.

For me, the true hero of Spider-Man: Miles Morales is a bodega cat also named – appropriately enough — “Spider-Man.” You meet “Spider-Man” during a mission in which you’re asked by the bodega owner Tom to rescue him. The mission is incredibly annoying. The cat constantly runs away from you, dashes across narrow walkways, and hides in the most inaccessible crevices. If you rescue him, then go along to finish the game, you can unlock the “Bodega Cat Suit” which includes a backpack for “Spider-Man” with a matching Spider-Man mask. Like Lying Cat from Saga, Master Ren from Monstress, and Streaky the Super-Cat from Supergirl, "Spider Man" speaks to our tendency to anthropomorphize cats in the form of fantasy or super-hero characters. Yet cats also inhabit their own worlds. When performing a venom strike takedown “Spider-Man” takes a paw-swipe at our enemies — suggesting that, however small his contribution, he too wants to save his home.

VI
Buddha has had his fair share of illnesses. He has feline herpes, which made his eyes swell up as a kitten. He sneezes, which I’ve attributed either to herpes or to the dust in my basement apartment. One day last July, he started urinating in small amounts all over the apartment. He’s often a very tidy kitty, so I was instantly concerned. Over the phone, the vet thought he might have a urinary tract infection, but he looked like he was in a lot of pain and was disoriented. I rushed him to the vet. The vet quickly saw that Buddha had a blocked urethra. Blocked urethras are terrifyingly common for male cats and easy to treat if you do so quickly, but they can become deadly in less than a day, and often recur. Buddha had to stay at the vet for the rest of the week with a catheter. I was distraught that entire week. My brother, niece, nephew, aunt, cousin, and two second cousins have all been diagnosed with COVID. My aunt had to be hospitalized for it. My grandmother died in June from Alzheimer’s, and her condition was undoubtedly exacerbated by her isolation during the pandemic. I imagined Buddha would be yet another victim of this horrible moment in history. (He’s fine, don’t worry.)

VII

I remember regretting a lot of the assumptions I made about my first cat Boo when I had to euthanize him in 2004. As his muscles visibly relaxed, finally giving into the drugs that would gently usher him into the unknown, I realized that I never truly understood him. He was, as we say in Midwestern America, ornery — but he also had a dignity that I never acknowledged before. I sense that a lot of the pleasure we get from them comes from the ways they ultimately evade our attempts to domesticate them. One moment they’re a family member; the next, suddenly and inexplicably wild. The philosopher Jacques Derrida famously describes a scene in The Animal That Therefore I Am in which his female cat stares at him naked, gazing particularly at his penis: “[i]t is as if I were ashamed, therefore, naked in front of this cat, but also ashamed for being ashamed” (4). How much does this odd shame — experiencing unease in front of a cat who may or may not feel what we think she feels — underlie the relief we feel when seeing Mortal Shell’s cat, our joy at giving “Spider-Man” a cat mask, or our frustration when Major Tomcat dies once again? As I spend yet another day of this endless long winter with Buddha, I enjoy the comfort of his companionship while also wondering what I’m missing underneath his soft fur.

For more in our “Shortest Day, Longest Night” series, read Blake Reno’s essay on time and friendship in Majora’s Mask and Tof Eklund on depression, death, and survival in Iris and the Giant.