Jack and Billie

who will never read this

There was a brutal and unrelenting storm in Toronto during the winter of 2022. It was less like a storm, really, and more like a constant onslaught of snow and wind and remarkably unpleasant weather that generated a feeling of claustrophobia and a total admittance to mother nature’s force.

Something we don’t do enough of, in my opinion.

I remember sitting in a friend’s living room the night before I was meant to trek back home to Vancouver and receiving an email that my flight had been canceled “with no potential for rebooking or refund.” Something adolescent and panicky took possession of all rational thinking as I ran to my friend’s bedroom, where I sat on the floor against his desk and called my mom, sobbing. Snotty, heaving, wracking. I desperately missed home and I was hit with an amnesia level of realization that these systems we exist within are fragile; that I was 3300km away from my mother and that a simple digital message was all it took to prevent me from returning to her.

The earth reigns supreme, and if she wants to blanket herself in a cemented duvet of snow, I’m staying put; Christmas can be canceled with a snap of her almighty finger.

I spent the holidays alone in my cold, cold apartment. I watched a disastrous Netflix series because it queer-baited me. I drank Baileys before noon and ordered ramen takeout four times and marveled at how firmly I felt like the only person on the planet. How barren and deserted the streets can become during that final, liminal week of December.

My mom and I, of course, spoke very frequently on the phone, from our respective solitude. Both a bit melancholic but trying to find the silver linings in this forced pause. I discovered that there was a deep, slimy part of me that was enjoying it. The rotting of it all.

I said to her, on one of these calls, curled beneath 3 blankets, my phone nestled between my ear and my hood, “as a gift to myself for this bullshit, I’m gonna treat myself to AirPod Maxes.” (????? absurd and illogical. I hate over-the-ear headphones). Mom laughed at my pull to consumerism; at the child-like whining for a dopamine rush in the form of a $400 product. She was currently cat-sitting for a good friend. (another stab in the possibility of all this was that we were meant to be playing house in an actual house instead of stepping over each other in her beachfront studio). And she said something to the tune of, “well, having these two cats here have made this a lot more bearable and less lonely. What if you got one?” My turn to laugh. But it only lasted for about 10 seconds before some fierce fantasizing took its place. The parental approval (albeit less needed at 22) and the breadth of my temporary loneliness resulted in me having two dependents less than a week later.

Jack and Billie are, in many ways, my most favourite things. Like someone madly in love, I can’t really imagine my life without them. Gross.

In the 3 years I’ve lived with them, I’ve endured tragedy and bliss in their most extreme. During the latter, they were a fantastic addition. During the former, they kept me afloat. It’s true what many have said: that having something to nurture and keep alive softens the blow of sadness. It provides a primal-like purpose to keep waking up and a responsibility to maintain these creatures’ innate livelihood. For that, I’m profoundly thankful.

I am also endlessly tickled by their teachings. I am in awe of how gentle they are. Of how tolerant and observant and alert they are. Of how both wise and stupid they are all at once. Of how their fur has slowly rusted from months of sun exposure through my big bay window. Of how much they love each other, with no strings or grudge-holding or conditions or questioning.

I’ve been reading more Mary Oliver recently, who is one of the great praisers of this earth at its most pure. Her appreciation for the beauty of animals and their magical ethos has been on my mind a lot. It’s something I return to often when I write, the natural world and my wiggly pull to it. I feel excessively disassociated from it in this concrete place and there is a small amount of relief in having two cats jumping (literally) off my walls and stomach; who have no context for human progress and invasion. Who perceive my apartment as the entire world and who remind me of a primordial reality. And see it as enough.

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I Happened to be Standing by Mary Oliver

I don’t know where prayers go, or what they do. 
Do cats pray, while they sleep half-asleep in the sun? 
Does the opossum pray as it crosses the street? 
The sunflowers? The old black oak growing older every year? 
I know I can walk through the world, along the shore or under the trees, with my mind filled with things of little importance, in full self-attendance. 
A condition I can’t really call being alive. Is a prayer a gift, or a petition, or does it matter? 
The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way. 
Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not. 
While I was thinking this I happened to be standing just outside my door, with my notebook open, which is the way I begin every morning. 
Then a wren in the privet began to sing. 
He was positively drenched in enthusiasm, I don’t know why. 
And yet, why not. 
I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe or whatever you don’t. 
That’s your business. But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be if it isn’t a prayer? So I just listened, my pen in the air.

I have lived in my apartment since August of 2021. A rental market stung by the pandemic allowed me to snag a one-bedroom and live semi-comfortably with a scant salary. Those walls have seen me morph and squirm and distort and expand through a formative four years (and, by proxy, my 20s).

What a gift it is to have a sturdy home base. To have permanency; a place to explode my innards and rest my head. To experience love and grief and fury and delight and great sex and great laughter and great growth. It is a sit-com existence, to have a space where friends open the front door without knocking. A space where they can dance and spill beer and use weird things for chairs and nap before work and shower after soccer games.

Petra’s pre-Quetzal rest

Intrinsically connected to this home are Jack and Billie, who unknowingly stumbled on all 4 paws into the arms of an enormous handcrafted family. They have 25 parents, many of whom have a key to my apartment dangling from their belt loop. They are being ballooned and adored by a loud, loving, cuddly crew of kids who will generously drop by to feed them dinner if I’m unable. Who stayed with them when I traveled across the ocean, when I escaped to the woods to write, when I moved away for a month and most notably when I had to frequently fly those 3300km to see my mom when she got sick. When I couldn’t specify how long I would even be gone for because we didn’t know how long she had left. It makes my eyes drip with gratitude, to know so solidly that these sweet, sweet friends would show up with genuine willingness and support. Reinforcements during a wildfire.

These sweet, sweet friends who sent me photos hourly of Jack and Billie. Who cleaned my carpets and sheets, and who stocked my freezer with goods for my wobbly return. Such a goofy twist of fate how spoiled I am to know these people. And how equally spoiled I am to know these cats.

Mom and Jack fighting over oatmeal

Jack and Billie will never read this because - as HARD as I’ve tried - they cannot read. But I hope they somehow know how foolishly happy I am that my memories from the last 3 years are spotted with their movement and stillness.

Loneliness is a tricky fucker. I will once again voice relentless recognition for not knowing her very well. But I am also not immune, and in fact I’m very sensitive to her whims when she comes knocking. Especially during these bleak months of winter when darkness coats the city streets before dinner. When the holidays do their funny work of making everything a little more cheerful and also a little more depressing, particularly for those of us who stay put on December 25th and don’t wake up in a home with more than one mouth breathing under its roof.

But there is a certain type of wizardry in having animals for roommates. They bite loneliness softly and tell her to go back to bed, headless and unmoored. Maybe I talk to myself more than most. But I like to think Jack and Billie are listening, pretending to nap between my feet, with one eye open to see what’s going to happen next.