A Cat in Captivity Still Has Seven Lives
Part I — Flora and Fauna
Calico fabric
I always find her in the same spot: asleep under the hood of our car.
My grandmother says, “Little animal! He’s looking for heat.”
And I say, “He is a she.”
In my language, cat is a feminine noun.
When I name them, for a moment they’re all females.
Tricolour cat, chromatic sex.
X chromosome:
Does tricolour mean female?
Does it mean one in every 30,000 males?
Does it mean I should dye my hair?
A ringed tail peeks out from the waste container opposite our garden gate.
I wonder, why is femininity like the refraction of light?
I wonder, what does it taste like, the breast milk from a mother who feeds on rubbish?
Where do cats give birth in this city?
That night I dream that there’s a cat giving birth in my bed.
I lie down next to her, in blood-stained sheets.
As I stroke her back, I whisper,
it’s a girl it’s a girl it’s a girl
Pest control
For a long time, it’s all been rites and swollen gums around here.
Rodents lose their incisors.
The soles of our feet bleed from all the walking.
We stay very still: no longer is anyone bothered by the smell of rat poison.
Sisterhood
My mother saved her, the queen of the night — armed with a toothpick, she exterminated an army of white insects one by one.
Now the queen of the night starves the carnivorous plant; my mother, in an attempt to mediate an impossible symbiosis, becomes an ambassador of peace and spends the day catching flies to feed her — even though she knows that the plant no longer has the strength to chew or digest anything — .
At night, the sweet floral scent invades the house like tear gas; I choose my side, hold my breath, plan my retreat in time.
My mother opens the windows and I close them.
Nothing can save us now.
Gardening for beginners
Nobody has ever brought me flowers. I’m not sure I know what they smell like, real roses.
The cat walks beside the plants on the balcony; he walks, indolent, through a forest of root-bound and flowerless pots: a small cactus, a carnivorous plant, a catnip.
I look at him and it occurs to me that I would like to give you flowers, but I wouldn’t know which to choose, I wouldn’t know how to keep them alive forever.
The cat now climbs onto the windowsill, looks down and runs along the wall from one end to the other with the enviable confidence of a tightrope walker.
I make a mental list of all the plants I have killed for a lack or excess of care.
Part II — Captivity
Gravity
Which ribs protruded from Eve’s side when naked?
Which rib was the first to tear her skin apart like a daughter?
A body that is known to have been mute since birth never weighs enough.
A body that is known to have been mute since birth tends towards the void, absorbs hoarse voices and whispers.
In this way, I pursue the appropriate volume for my body.
Tell me: what is light enough, the ideal frequency of the self-induced vomiting?
Breathe through the nose
Breathing through the mouth has its advantages: the cold air numbs fragile voices, and one never gets sick from the sweet smell of cat poison.
One has to open her mouth to vomit up all the hairballs, especially in spring; one has to close her mouth to say woman.
Loose lips sink ships.
Evasive (play at 86Hz)
I have hidden it among the song of the cicadas
the secret
the abandonment
the excuse
the noise
(heat)
now, rain falling on dry soil
silence of trees.
I will be able to say that they loudly took the secret away with them;
I will be allowed to speak of the passing of the seasons with resentment disguised as nostalgia.
I will say,
“we’ll have to wait until next summer”.
Fabric scissors
Put a body against a backlight and trace it.
Then cut it out along the edges: a dotted line, a silhouette.
— A dashed line is as long as you want it to be — .
And repeat. Infinitely.
Until the silhouette blends in with the dot and the scissors don’t get it quite right and the body, out of pure absence, has no choice but to wear itself out.
Fugitive
As soon as I get home, I hang the “wanted” notice sign (from the inside, behind my glass door): the absence of a subject in the sentence gives me a head start.
Part III — Courtship
Social emotions
How I wish I could purr the word love, tame my instinct.
I show my teeth and meow in front of the mirror, until I have no choice but to bow my head down and walk away with my tail between my legs.
Communion
To take communion in body and blood
(your body, my blood
and vice versa).
In every wine stain
I see a roadkill.
Tell me:
How can I multiply fish?
Does it count as a miracle if I do it?
I imagine a golden chalice where there is a plastic cup,
blood where there is wine, and a blonde Virgin
cradling a dead cat
where there is only a woman
drinking alone in a room.
And all because I did not want to say ‘mother’
If I can write offspring
it’s because I always write
about things I don’t know:
and then I name it failure when the bark
of a diseased tree turns yellow,
then I say reptile and point
to a couple kissing on the street.
I think of the verb to descend and then
I think of the eyes of an animal in captivity.
I can, however, write offspring
and confirm that it means fiction, conquest;
and that to descend is to look for a crack
in an unbroken mirror,
or to cover with make-up the tooth marks
that embellish the skin of my abdomen.
Limited capacity
From all this talking, I’ve ended up emptying every form.
I have left only a gap: just about big enough to fit a woman.
The only border that remains is the contour of my hands on other people’s skin.
Sorry: there is no space left for a you in this empty language.
Fire
I have waited for the evening to fall, for the fire to burn with pastel-coloured flames, for every cat to take refuge under the hood of a car.
Then, only then, I have brought my hands to my lips, and turned them into a firewall. I have opened my mouth wide until I have heard my jaw creak.
The white walls of this room have turned ash grey.
I wish you had been here to hear it.
Note
Text written to mark International Women’s Day.
The theme of nature was used to interweave wild and tender images with the social and cultural collectively shared experiences of women: resilience, love, power and patience.
Spanish writer
