Day 85: Good night, sweet kitty

I try to keep my journal entries here somewhat related to my projects and the question I’m exploring of “Can I make a living building things I love?”, but sometimes, it’s hard not to make exceptions.

Last night, I found out that one of the cats that I lived with in Austin got hit by a car and was put down due to her injuries. I had written about her and her brother Chile in my post about living with 40+ people.

Arya was the most affectionate cat that I’ve ever met — sure, her way of showing love was clawing the shit out of my arm, but she also sat patiently and let me trim her claws so that we could cuddle without me looking like a self-harm aficionado.

Her favorite place to hang out was on people’s shoulders. She’d climb her way up there, and then just perch, assuming her rightful place where she can look down on all of us inferior beings.

She loved everyone freely, which was annoying because sometimes I’d want to hang and she’d peace out for better options. There was a period near the end of my stay at the house when she didn’t come by that often (I had left for the holidays for a long time so she was probably over me), and then suddenly, she showed up and I was happy to see her. That is, until she started making these gagging noises and threw up all over my floor. I got a bunch of paper towels, cleaned up after her, asked people in the house whether they fed her anything weird, and returned to my room only to find her starting round two onto some of my towels. Then she disappeared, officially making this an abusive relationship.

She and her brother were super tight and they liked to nap in our kitchen underneath the fridge door because that’s where the heat came out. Although she was much smaller than her brother, she’d put up a good fight when they play-fought. Then they’d go off and find little boxes and bags to hide in.

I felt tremendously sad when I learned that she had died. Her departure has no practical impact on my day-to-day life because it’s not like we were FaceTiming on a regular basis with her telling me about how she found a sick new spot to nap in and how she finally beat her brother in a wrestling match, but I’ll miss her deeply nonetheless. RIP Arya.