THE CAT SHAPED STRANGER BY ASHLEY BLACK

So, a cat snuck into my life a week ago. I was walking down the steps to my apartment and it suddenly brushed up against my leg and started purring.

I had previously believed that all cats were evil. I was wrong.

She was all black, with a small white patch on her chest and a few gray hairs throughout her coat (so she had obviously seen some things in her lifetime). Her eyes were piercing and a greenish yellow hue, and she had a big floppy belly that looked like it had just held several little fetal kittens in it up until a few days ago.

I couldn’t brush this strange encounter off and leave it behind, it was just too good. So we let her into our house and she made herself at home right away. She loved us and was immediately comfortable with living with us, so it seemed.

We gave her food, water, and a lot of cuddles. It was nice having a little warm fuzzy thing in our house for a day. Yes fleas and diseases crossed our minds (slightly), but she seemed clean enough (we even gave her a little sponge bath).

Suddenly, we had gone from not having any pet, to having another (very small and furry) roommate.

But we soon found out that she was very restless. When any of us would leave the house, she would try with all her might to slip out the front door and escape- but we didn’t let her because we wanted to keep her as our pet.

This caused a bit of an internal dilemma for me. I thought back on the conversation that was had in Fried Cave earlier that day -discussing how there is this restless, frenetic, and almost uncontainable creative energy in those revolutionary people in their craft across all trades. It is not just passion they have, it is a state-wide forest fire.

I feel that same fire. It is like this fidgety thing embedded deep within my gut, always reminding me it is there.

It, nor I, can be contained or confined. If I were to have no way of channeling this energy, I would probably explode (metaphorically, but perhaps also physically?).

So I felt like, somehow, in some weird way, I saw myself in this cat. I know it is absurd,but I literally felt empathy for a cat. It was not our right to take her in and entrap her all to ourselves. She was an outdoors cat being confined to the indoors. She was a restless spirit that needed to be cut loose. I wanted no part in containing her spirit and confining it in boundaries I set against her own will.

And so I had this strange type of connection and understanding with this strange cat that just walked into my life, and then walked right out a few days later. But I am thankful for this cat. Thanks to this cat that I could feel with, I now have a greater understanding of myself.

I am a restless and relentless creative- I always will be until the day I shrivel up and die. There is no possible scenario in which that energy will be restricted, because I will find a way to set it free and let it roam.