My Cat Is Moving to Her Ninth Apartment by Minyoung Lee
Managing editor Audrey Bauman on today’s bonus essay: In this essay Minyoung Lee explores movement and time, but finds a lodestone in her meticulous, well-traveled cat Matisse. Welcome to this space Lee has created, where the sun is shining, the sounds of traffic are faint, and Matisse is napping on the windowsill, still unaware of her impending move.
My Cat Is Moving to Her Ninth Apartment
I accidentally ran two red lights on my way to pick up my cat from the Houston SPCA. I was that girl who had begged her parents for a pet—a cat, specifically, furry, purring, just aloof enough to not feel overwhelming—and had killed many hermit crabs, chicks, hamsters, and tadpoles in the process. In 2008, in my first adult apartment out of college, I finally had my opportunity to adopt a cat. I wouldn’t let some traffic lights stop me.
I wanted a calico cat because I’d read calicos were good luck and brought money to the home. I was superstitious enough to believe in such things. I brought home one out of the three calico cats that were at the SPCA that day to a studio apartment that didn’t even have a couch. I named the 10-month-old girl, Matisse.
I’d done my research beforehand by reading Cats for Dummies, as one did those days. “Cats are territorial,” the book said. “Let them adjust to the new home by letting them explore one room at a time before having them warm up to you.” So I locked Matisse in the bathroom, the only room I had with doors that closed, with her food, water, and brand new litter box. I’d intended to leave her alone for a full day, but I couldn’t resist. I let myself in. Trying to ignore the white furry thing as much as possible, I crept inside the bathtub with a book. Matisse climbed over the bathtub, landed near my legs. I avoided eye contact. She walked towards me, her nose perked into the air above her.
No. Eye. Contact. No eye contact. No. Eye contact.
Until Matisse flipped over, showing her shaved belly, pink underneath the fluffy white fur, having just been spayed at the SPCA. Her front paws floating above her, she kneaded them, left out, right bent, left bent, right out, over and over again. Her purrs filled the bathtub, ringing through the whole room.
***
Since I brought Matisse home, I’ve moved nine times, across six cities, four states, two countries. I’d jumped from job to job, company to company, to grad school and into employment then unemployment and back. Matisse moved with me for eight of those moves. She developed her own routine and coping mechanisms along the way. Whenever we moved to a new apartment, she jumped on the highest point she could get to, which was usually the top of the kitchen cabinets. She’d stay there for several days to weeks, watching everything happening below her, until she felt safe. Then she’d never go up those cabinets again, enjoying her new home, splayed across the floor wherever the sunbeam hit.
One apartment she moved to didn’t have a high point she could easily access, which seemed to upset her a lot. She peed on my bed to let me know. I got her a window perch that she could hop up and see everything below her, and she became her regular self again.
***
If I’m honest, Matisse was not my first choice cat. There was a little white cat with gray ears and tail who was shy and sweet. She wasn’t a calico, but she charmed me enough for me to forgo all the good luck that a three colored cat could bring to my home. But when I came back the next day to pick her up, she was already adopted. I was left with Matisse, and I think she knew.
“Are you sure you want this cat?” the volunteer asked when Matisse seemed lukewarm about my presence. “You guys don’t seem to get along all that well.”
Yes, I was sure I wanted this cat. I wanted this cat because she was once my second choice, and I didn’t want her to be anyone else’s second choice after that.
***
In Korea there’s a concept called 역마살 (yeokmasal), which is the curse of being a nomad, wandering the world and never being able to settle into a home. Wanderlust was never considered a blessing. Being able to stay close to your roots was the best life you could live. Some say 역마살 is hereditary, one that can only be released from through resolving the curse that was placed upon you. And this could be true. My grandfather had wandered, from what is now North Korea to the South, unable to go back home once the borders closed after the Korean War. My father wandered, choosing to complete his schooling in the US and bringing us with him, then going back home to Korea again, a changed man. I wander too because the constant state of unsettling is what I’m familiar with. Always keep belongings light, boxes ready and stored in the back of the closet. Don’t let the roots seep in too deep, the heart nestle in too far. Keep your passport current. Keep your documents in order. Like the wind, like the wind, like the wind.
Cats are territorial, tied to a land rather than to people. That’s why cats will sometimes come back to their old home even after their humans decide to move to a new place. I don’t know if I’m supposed to be like a cat in this way, where wandering is definitely a curse. I don’t know what is my nature, if humans are supposed to even have one. Maybe I too simply need a high place to perch, at least for a little while.
***
The skies of San Francisco blazed red all day because of wildfire smoke that hovered over all of the US West Coast. My Twitter feed filled with orange and red photos of all of the Bay Area shocked and appalled, texts from friends asking one another “is this okay?” It was decidedly not okay, but I really needed to get ready to move. We’d just signed a lease to a new apartment in Oakland, one with air conditioning, a private porch, and cheaper rent—amenities that I didn’t think were important until the pandemic forced me to stay isolated from the outside world. It aggravated my dust mite allergies, brought forth an economic recession, and exaggerated the effects of climate change bringing heatwave after heatwave to the city with the coldest summers in the Northern Hemisphere—all at the same time. I needed to move but the air outside was hazardous to breathe. When would this be over? When will all of this be okay? No one knew, and that’s what made it difficult.
What did Matisse think of all this? She definitely wasn’t thinking about moving again, mostly because she didn’t know.
The first toy I’d bought Matisse was a little squirrel plushie, named Mr. Squirrel, which she sometimes kicked, sometimes licked, and sometimes used as a pillow when she napped. Mr. Squirrel moved everywhere she went. Matisse played with Mr. Squirrel now as a senior cat much like how she played with him when she was a young teenager. So Mr. Squirrel will move with us, because Matisse will be okay with him around. Her old scratching post, the only one that survived all the travel since it was her favorite, would not be moving with us this time. One day Matisse stopped using this vertical post and started to scratch horizontal surfaces, like the carpet. It took me a while to realize this was because Matisse now had arthritis, which made it difficult for her to scratch in a vertical position. I just thought she was keeping me from getting my deposit back on the apartment.
***
During the four years I’d lived in my San Francisco apartment, the longest Matisse has ever lived in one place, she developed arthritis, chicken allergies, and irritable bowel syndrome. It all happened suddenly and at once, too, right after she turned ten years old. The lowest maintenance cat in the world, no health problems for ten years, then one day, everything happened at once. With each new vet check-up we discovered something new. Complicated and specific symptoms that we treated with fish oil, limited ingredient diets, and a monthly vitamin B12 injection under her skin. Seemingly unrelated symptoms that could be summarized by one root cause—old age.
Matisse grew into a senior cat in my dream Victorian apartment with a bay window and a view. (I’d always wanted to live in a San Francisco Victorian apartment with a bay window and a view.) Her first symptom of aging was an ingrown dew claw. She’d never needed her nails clipped before, a fastidious groomer herself, never letting her claws grow too long. The vet said sometimes as cats age their nails grow differently, and they may start needing help with their grooming. With each vet check up after that, we found new symptoms of her aging, more torture for the cat with each visit. But she still looks up at me with her big, round eyes that make her look like a plush toy. I have to remind myself she is closer to a geriatric retiree than a kitten kneading for milk, despite the neoteny that convinced the ancestor of my species to forever take care of the ancestor of her species.
Every time we visit, the vet tells us she has great teeth. This happened since she was a young cat, a strange source of pride for me, someone who does absolutely nothing to contribute to the health of Matisse’s teeth. The vet still tells us Matisse has great teeth even now, but adds the caveat—for her age. She hasn’t prescribed anything specific for us to do anything with her teeth yet, so I assume Matisse will never have any problems with her teeth until the day she dies and won’t need to use them anymore.
Because of her arthritis, Matisse can no longer climb on high places. We bought her little steps so she could reach her window perch and sleep on the human bed. In the apartment in Oakland, Matisse will not be able to climb up on the cabinets to feel safe. She will be moved to a new territory without a safety net.
Does she know this is because of her age?
Does she understand time?
Does she know I worry about the day I’m home alone with Mr. Squirrel?
***
Will we be okay? Nobody knows. The experts don’t know. History doesn’t know. The dinosaurs who knew have already turned into chickens that we shape back into dinosaurs and eat with honey and mustard.
***
I don’t think Matisse knows much about time, or whether the world is ending, or if we’ll be okay. I don’t think she knows she’s aged and that means she is moving closer to her death and further away from her birth. I do think she knows it hurts whenever she jumps on and off from a high place. She knows she likes flowing water and wet food and a clean litter box. She lets me know she needs these things and sometimes even more, like toys, a comfortable spot to curl up in, a safe place to hide. Maybe that’s all we need too, in the end. I like to remind myself of this.
***
As a child, I loved writing letters. Every time I moved to a new city, a new country, friends promised to write. For a while we did. We exchanged news, pictures, little gifts and trinkets. I started a stamp collection and quickly filled up albums. I had drawers full of letters from New Zealand, Japan, the United States. But over time, the letters thinned out and we would eventually forget the other existed. I don’t collect stamps anymore because all I receive now is junk mail and parcels I order for myself.
Of course, Facebook had replaced this function in my adulthood, and I “keep in touch” with all my friends I made in all the cities, states, and countries I’ve wandered in. But memory is tied to a place, and one becomes a different person when one occupies a different space. The person I was in Texas is not the person I am now in California. Time has passed but so has place. Sometimes the friends’ paths converge, especially those who also wander like me, and we meet at a new place. We meet again, be friends again, get to know this new person in this new place. But the old people are gone, they no longer exist. They just happened to be the people who introduced us to our new selves now.
Like the wind, like the wind, like the wind.
***
In high school, a teacher gave us homework to imagine our ideal future as an adult. I said I wanted to live in a studio apartment in a cool city, with a cat and a fancy espresso machine. I achieved everything I’d wanted from that dream, and even more. I lived in a one bedroom apartment in a cool city, with a cat, and a coffee machine, but mostly because I don’t drink a lot of espresso anymore and I prefer drip coffee.
My teacher had asked if I was living alone in this studio apartment, whether there was any family there. I told her I didn’t even consider it. What a strange question.
***
Matisse and Mr. Squirrel have been physically with me longer than most of my friends I’d made along the way. Eleven years is a long time for a cat. Perhaps for humans, too. For us cursed folk who wander the Earth, it might as well be forever. Four years was already too long in one place. It made it too difficult for me to leave. I make a mental note to leave sooner next time. It should be easier for me to move.
The day of the move, I sat in the empty apartment, in the corner I first sat when I’d moved in. I want to think I made an impression on the painted walls, the hardwood floors. But it’s difficult to tell. I bless the next occupant into the space, wishing her stability, loneliness that may be soothed by a cat purring by the window. May they make this place a home, even if temporarily. May the wind blow and clear the wildfire smoke from the skies, and for a moment, may we breathe in the sea breeze once again. May their cat have a high place to perch, if not the top of kitchen cabinets, a pillow they can share with their person on a high bed, and may that sometimes be enough. For now.
Minyoung Lee writes fiction and essays in Oakland, California. Her work appears or is forthcoming in TriQuarterly, Electric Literature, and Tor.com, among others, and has been anthologized in Best Microfiction 2021. Her prose chapbook Claim Your Space was published by Fear No Lit as part of the Submerging Writer Fellowship, which she won in 2019. She is writing a novel based on her experience working on an offshore oil platform off the Louisiana coast.
