Ghost Cats and Gauntlets


You get used to a cat being a presence, like any given movement or patch of appropriate color the right size in your peripheral vision could be the cat. Walk in the room, dark spot on the bed. Did you leave your t-shirt there or is it your black cat? Your eyes adjust, it’s the cat.

When I get tired I get minor hallucinations of movement. Might be something to do with the floating debris on my eyeball that I can see well due to nearsightedness. I see that stuff sliding by and my eye chases after it, imagines a more substantial source to the motion.

So sometimes I see a movement, not dark enough to be my alive cat Hecubus, and forgetting her recent passing, fills in my deceased cat Momo. She’s ghosting about my room, animated by the frailty of human senses and endurance.

This coming week is the most likely yet to cause me to flame out of my new job. Every day I work there I feel like my brain is being taken apart and put back together. My chest is hollow and my arms weak. I might find it easier with less direct oversight. With fewer interruptions from someone trying to catch my mistakes, I may be able to relax into things more. Or without close supervision I might get flustered with difficult customers and get shouted down, broken like a dog.

This weekend is half over and too fucking short. The shit we’re expected to do for the right to not be homeless, amirite peoples?

Comments

  1. StevoR says

    ^ I’ve had similar experiences with family cats after they’ve been put to sleep. Thinking I could feel them jumping up and cuddling up on my legs at night in bed like they used to. Bittersweet feelings. I always miss the ones that have gone. Always eventually get
    another cat (& or dog) as new individual family members.

  2. StevoR says

    PS. Thinking of you and best wishes for your new job. Hopefully if you explain things to them they’ll understand? Maybe?

  3. says

    Thanks for the support, StevoR! They came up with a way to ease this particular transition in training, so the last few days have been less gauntlety than I was expecting. Fingers crossed, think I might squeak through this crucible. Eye of the Tiger!

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