black cats with author Natalie Harris-Spencer + a week of family ghosts
ESSAY SIXTEEN: "IN AWE OF CATS"
There.
Over there.
Do you see? That light.
That thing that just moved.
And that one.
Now, over. There.
Follow, follow.
from a 2019 art exhibition at Fleisher Art Memorial in Philadelphia
Now, rest. Let's listen. Do you hear it, too?
AFTERTHOUGHTS
Already living a life saturated with animals, my lockdown included many additional hours with pets as well as hearing (and seeing) the lives of other pet families. I even assisted with hosting a screening of the Quarantine Cat Film Festival at a freelance gig and laughed like the thousands of others at the viral video of a Texas attorney stuck in a cat filter on Zoom during court, a possibility singular to 2020.
from dailyhive.com
Over the years, I've worked as a petsitter for dozens of families with cats.
I also was employed in a veterinary kennel in high school where I was fired after a few months when I didn't show up the weekend after I met an animal who was quickly put to sleep. I'd offered some lame excuse that I forgot about the shift because of a school football game, but really I was fearful about having to witness another death and didn't know how to express this to my employers. I looked at them with hardness. How did you meet such buoyant life and then watch them depart without locking yourself in the laundry room to cry?
Maybe the permanent staff hadn't grown beyond this primal reaction, but learned to cope. That it was okay to do just that. Perhaps "smoking breaks" were actually excuses for the nurses to circle the block and let out tears of their own.
This season is about our proximity to death, cultural practices on encountering the afterlife, how brief and renewing our experience on earth is. Around this time of year is also when I enjoy looking to the bravery of horror and psychological thriller writers, those who embrace the darkness a human psyche can descend into with honesty, compassion, and creativity.
from Natalie Harris-Spencer's website
Along with being the family for celebrity cat Pepe, Natalie Harris-Spencer is an English writer, digital editor, and blogger living in America. Her work has appeared in Hobart, Allegory Ridge, the Stonecoast Review, The Dark City, The Satirist, and others. She is the winner of the Stubborn Writers Contest, the Hummingbird Flash Fiction Prize, and she was selected by Oyster River Pages as one of their Emerging Fiction Voices. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Stonecoast, and she is the Editor-in-Chief of Aspiring Author. She is currently working on her debut novel. Natalie enjoys surprise in fiction. And tea.
photo of sweet Pepe from Natalie Harris-Spencer's Instagram page, unaware of being a UK sensation
Speaking with Natalie made me reflect on the cats I grew up with, all of whom have passed away and who I see as part of my ancestors. Here is our first cat, Norton with my late father, also a writer, at his desk.
And here is a FaceTime with one of the two brother cats, Willie, who we adopted after Norton died. Willie and his brother Jordan are both gone now. My mother recently rescued another brother pair of (black!) cats who were found on the grounds of the Marydell Faith and Life Center by a childhood friend. Now, the family who rescued the cats visit her and the brothers, creating a network of care established through the occasion of the cats.
I notice this connection often made possible between humans and nonhuman animals whenever I walk my dog, Ziggy. There is now reason for strangers to stop and chat, for smiles and coos to be flung towards us in openheartedness rather than the typical predation a woman in New York may become accustomed to. Like Natalie's relationship with football fans across the world because of Pepe entering their lives, animals function as essential and constructive members of our communities.
"He might not be a person, but that doesn't make him any less living," writes Harris-Spencer in the story she reads at the end of the episode inspired by her relationship with Pepe.
READING LIST: ANCESTORS
For Halloween, I'm reading the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe (of course) and also just started Katherine May's Wintering: The Power of Rest & Retreat in Difficult Times. So far, the book has been highly instructive on how to embrace our fallow seasons and in particular what this time of year can offer: the proximity to those who have come before us, the lessening of light, and all of the essential quiet available to us in a day.
I made a short film, Final Curtain Call, inspired by the life of my late great uncle, who I never met but grew up hearing stories of. We had our premiere in NYC this past week and are continuing to raise funds to bring the film to even more festivals in the future. Our hope is for the short film to be made into a television series.
If you'd like to watch the film, please email directly and I can send you a private link.
I also have a new poem coming out with Reckoning Press's special issue, Our Beautiful Reward, in response to Roe V. Wade being overturned. My poem is called "Roses in Washington Square Park." You can pre-order the book here.