For the cats who live in parks, in alleys
I’ve mentioned this before, but on Fridays I leave my own beloved kitty (getting up as early as I can to feed her a nice breakfast) and head out to our local cat shelter, where I give more breakfasts to the shelter’s resident rehabilitating cats.
These cats are surrenders or strays, pets no one wanted, and there are so many of them. I walk among the cages; this one, newly come, cowers behind his scratching post; that one turns her head quickly as I approach. From everywhere they arrive: that one found in a garden, feet frostbitten; this one from a city park, hips hollowed. I used to think my city a city of glass and am surprised to find it is not, a flight of geese overhead and below, in corners, flashes of stray-cat fur.
There is a good deal of fur, a lot of stray cats. I Google, and find article after article: 20,000 feral cats, 34,000 abandoned cats; my city is replete. Peer down an alley; check out the garbage cans — are you watching? — small feet hardscrabble on the cement. Unlock a door; open a window, and out one will tumble, twisting his body cat-style in the sun.
I would like to think these (to me) newfound inhabitants see my city as I do, a place of home and comfort. Rescued cats spit at me, though, so I know that’s not true. A heartbreak: you would never react this way if you were comforted, not this quickstep-and-retreat, the way they huddle backwards, trying to hide from my sight.
We are helping, but it is hard. In 1903, Thomas Lipps wrote about empathy, Einfühlung, “infeeling.” It is a complex emotion, he wrote, requiring vision. You can never really know another, so you must imagine; you must picture it, other lives and other experiences. The task is difficult, mentally strange. It opens up new spaces in your mind, your heart. It is scary: your heart widens, but will it break? You watch, careful, as your world changes.
Once you have achieved empathy, though, you can never forget it. The world now seen can never be unseen. I think of the streets near my house, and it is like the city has grown; there are corners in it at which I have never looked. So many places I have never laid eyes on, not real eyes, not these eyes. It is sad, maybe scary. A new door will open, and my heart will crack. I will turn; there will be a shadow, a sound on the cement, and my ventricles will shatter.
It is hard, but we are helping. In the main room, there is a cage, larger than normal because it contains two cats, Coco and Chanel. Sand- or sun-coloured, they are improbably named for a luxury they never had; they were found in an attic with fifteen other cats (open a window). I unfasten the cage (unlock a door). The cats retreat, wary. Then the breakfast is in; I shut the door quickly, grabbing the litter box to clean it. One of the sand-cats, Coco or Chanel, is sitting on a perch. The lock clicks, and she hops down, watching the food, but watching my fingers. A tiny splinter forms in my heart, but she is inching towards the dish. She is coming forward, a little, just a little. Perhaps she knows. Perhaps she sees me watching. She is learning that this is a new space, maybe. That this is a new world.
