Kaia

Male, gray, short-haired, “tabby” wrote the veterinarian on the paper form. “Kaia” said my husband and I let him choose the name. He was born because a cat escaped from a house and returned pregnant. We found out that there were kittens for the choosing and took a train to the house and went down a basement where the kittens had to negotiate their tiny living amongst a couple of massive dogs and other adult cats. The owner thought the best was a cute white one with blue eyes. We disagreed. We wanted a female and looked at the gray, black and white kittens trying to guess, and Kaia (who was still nameless at the time) came out to say hi and tried to climb my leg. He seemed to have gigantic ears. He looked like he was probably male, but we didn’t care.

We took a taxi to the train and a train back to the city and our new kitten felt too small and weightless inside the carrier we bought. He didn’t like the ride back home, he was scared. We got back to our building and Jason realized we didn’t have litter, so he went across the street to buy it and I stayed in the lobby, sitting on the floor. I unzipped the top of the carrier just enough to put a finger through and pet Kaia’s head. He liked it, and relaxed, and started to purr.

It felt important to have a cat of our own, for the first time. For several years we lived in a tiny basement with a small window and we couldn’t afford any other living being. Not even a plant (not enough light). Once, our landlord went away on vacation and asked us to take care of his fish: a beta in a glass bowl. Jason was happy. He learned about beta fish online and worried about room temperatures and food amounts. He put the fishbowl on the ledge of our single tiny window and tried hard to make a connection. He would tap on the glass and get his face close to the fish and get excited if the fish seemed to change color or look back at him

A few years ago we were finally able to live in a normal size apartment with normal size windows and we made sure, immediately, to get lots of plants. Jason took care of them lovingly, the same way he worried about the fish. What a thing, to have a window, and to have the view of a tree. It’s easy to find a bit of comfort there, looking at the leaves tremble in the light. Toronto is an expensive city. Many people live in basements. Windows can be a luxury. They felt like a luxury to us; a little victory of our own.

Two and a half years ago we decided we could also afford a cat. Seems like many young and youngish couples these days don’t have kids, and have cats. We love children, we would love to have children. My parents had my sister and I in their early twenties; what an unthinkable thing to do these days. We live under the ghost of precariousness. I’m scared of climate change. I take walks in parks full of beautiful toddlers and marvel at the courage and the hope of their parents. They seem so sure that there will be a planet and a future; they are so full of faith. And now those toddlers, including the sons and daughters of my friends and family, are a reason to fight so they do get a planet in the end, just like we got to enjoy one ourselves.

So we didn’t get a baby yet but we got Kaia with the gigantic ears. He would fit his whole body inside one of Jason’s shoes. He would climb and sleep through the night on Jason’s pillow, above Jason’s head. He was playful and destructive and full of energy and a handful. He killed some of our best plants. Ruined our couch. People promised he would quiet down after getting fixed, or after two years. He just got chubby and remained a handful.

Jason likes to keep a glass of water next to the bed when he sleeps. Kaia likes to push things over a ledge with his paw and see them break, so Jason has been violently awoken several times, completely wet.

Kaia waits patiently for me to wake up on my own. I open my eyes and see him standing there, looking at me, just waiting. If he wants to wake Jason he dives into his legs under the covers like a fox diving into the snow. Kaia is sweet to me and rough with Jason but I think Jason is his favorite.

Kaia likes to hide behind things and jump when you go by. He jumps with the front legs stretched out and taps you softly without using his claws. If he guesses that I’m walking towards the bedroom, he races to get there first and hides behind the laundry basket and wiggles his bum ready to attack. He gets me half of the time. It kills me to see the top of his ears hiding there, so sure that he’ll surprise me.

It’s fun to get to know him and realize how much he is like other cats and how much he does things no other cat would do. If you live in a big city you get to see the squirrels and the racoons and the birds but maybe your only real relationship to any nature (besides trees, in parks) is your pet. And if you have a pet you realize there’s not a massive difference between their heart and our heart, their brain and our brain. We are more intelligent and complex, but they are full of curiosity and playfulness and have a complexity of their own. They have quirks. They give affection, get stressed. They are individual and irreplaceable. And we are aware of this because we get to live with them and know them, but it’s also true of tigers and foxes and crows and wolves and martens and oaters and whales. It’s true of cows and pigs.

I used to teach in small villages in Mexico, far from everything. The people in those communities have a close relationship with the natural world. It’s an incommensurable luxury. They open their windows to the forest, to the mountains. There’s a deep injustice in the lack of resources: the way electricity, medical care, education, infrastructure, roads, food security, security from violence, are far and hard to come by. But there’s luxury in the sheer amount of beauty. They live in beautiful places. Our cities will never get close. So I was there and loved walking those mountains and will remember forever those landscapes, but it wasn’t until we got Kaia that I understood better how rich the planet is: full of creatures of all sizes that have individuality and curiosity, that play and give affection and feel pain and are irreplaceable, just like us. If Kaia dies, we’ll be heartbroken. And it should be unbearable to think of all the other animals already dying all at once. I believe dying is a natural thing, for us, and for all the other living beings in this planet. It’s the unnatural part that gets me. The size of the slaughter. The mass extinctions in the oceans and the forests and the jungles. The chickens and the pigs living their whole lives in tiny cages without sunlight, overfed and full of hormones, their value measured only in pounds and squeezed with brutal efficiency. We got lucky living in this planet among so many other sentient beings. Even if we get to survive ourselves, we would be so alone without them, so diminished. We got to exist among incalculable complexity and beauty and it’s all getting replaced fast by greed and consumer goods; we’re getting a rotten deal, we are losing so much, so rapidly, but we seem sleepy and untroubled. It feels good to come home to Kaia. He always comes to the door. When something scares him, he hides behind Jason’s legs with a gesture I recognize in little children and in myself when I was little. It feels good to protect him. I also want to protect the other, nameless animals and what is left of their world, which is our world. The devastation is so swift and powerful, and the timelines are now so urgent and closing on us so quickly that just recycling and being a vegetarian, while corporations keep on plowing through, is a form of denial. We are left with this impossible task because if we want to save the world (and it's the whole world on the line) we can’t just change ourselves, we have to change the world. What a tired thing to say and what a difficult thing to do, or even start to do. And while I write this Kaia probably sleeps and when he does you can pet him and he will purr in his sleep, and the squirrels are fat and happy and multiplying and the last of the autumn leaves tremble in the trees and the world still exists.