The Care and Feeding of Elderly Cats

Plus: a couple events, book reviews, and what are *you* reading?

Hello friends,

Thank you for being here. I hope your weekend went as well as can be expected, that you had at least some glimmerings of joy and glimpses of rest. If you’re not in the mood for reading this entire email, feel free to jump to the end and tell me what you’re reading and maybe check out links to a couple events I have coming up as well as some recent(ish) reviews?

---

Shraga

I’m apartment-sitting for my mom this week and taking care of Shraga, her 18-year-old cat that used to also be my cat. We adopted him when I was 14, along with Spartacus. My dad, who had for years refused getting a cat, was the one who pushed for us to get both, even though we had originally intended to adopt Shraga alone. But Spartacus followed him around the room they were being fostered in, had adopted him as a big brother, making them more or less a bonded pair whether Shraga liked it or not, and my dad recognized that. Sparty died a couple years ago. Shraga is ill, has been for a long time, with many of the usual issues that plague older cats.

I love Shraga for himself, of course—early on, because he seemed like such a person in so many ways, I invented an origin story that involved him being a gay English gentleman who played the violin who was cursed (blessed?) by a witch to live his days out as a cat. The violin detail was because of a tan splotch under his chin, where a violin bruise would be. I’ve known him for more than half my life. I’ll miss him when he’s gone (knock on wood).

But I also keep thinking about how eventually, when he does die (tfu tfu tfu), another set of associations that bring my dad back to me will disappear as well.

#

Being a caregiver with a cat is obviously different from being a caregiver with a person. Many people who require care can communicate their needs to you. They have varying levels of autonomy as well as agency over their bodies in a way that a frail cat—struggling under my grip as I (bigger, stronger) shoot 0.3 milligrams of syrupy appetite stimulant into his mouth—does not.

It’s not only their needs that people who require care can communicate, though. When I’m sitting there, living being trapped between my thighs, his scruff held in one hand, syringe full of liquid or pill in the other, I feel like a monster. When I was changing my dad’s bandages, ripping medical tape gently, gently, from his sagging thin skin, placing a new, clean pad where the tube entering his lung was, taping it down a little differently, on different patches of skin, to give the areas inflamed by the last placement some time to breathe—when I was doing that, my dad would sometimes wince. But he was also able to smile at me, to tell me it was okay, that I should continue. He was able to thank me, sometimes with tears in his eyes, for being able to do something he could not. I didn’t do it for the thanks; I was 15, then 16, and I wanted to help, in any way I could, so that he would live longer. I wanted to help my mom who was already doing so much. This was one, small thing that I could do. But communicating with and receiving reassurance from the person whom you’re caregiving is no small thing. It isn’t a one-sided endeavor. Care is given and reciprocated.

We often say that our pets know, that they can tell when we’re trying to help them, when we’re giving them medical attention they need in order to prolong their life or make them more comfortable. I suspect this is largely bullshit, mostly projection of a human desire for a kind of connection and communication that we can understand. On the other hand, I can’t deny the fact that even though I’ve now chased Shraga down to give him both pills and liquid squirts for a couple days, he hasn’t lost his trust in me. He still comes to me for comfort. Yes, he needs me for food, of course, and to clean his box and refill his water bowls; but he comes to me for comfort as well.

#

There are limits to care. To caregiving or caretaking. I couldn’t caretake my father out of his cancer, but I could spend time with him in the intimate ways that such care bring forth. I can’t caretake Shraga back to peak health, only try to make sure he’s as comfortable as he can be in his current state. My partner can’t caretake my body out of its limitations and chronic pain, only help me live with it.

Sometimes, I think that’s just not good enough. I wish I could have made my dad better, I want to give Shraga a longer and more comfortable life, I yearn for my own body to be fixed.

But it has to be good enough. It’s all we have.

---

Some things I’m doing!

• On May 7, at 5pm PST, I’ll be doing a live reading with a fantastic line-up at Beyond Baroque, a gallery in Venice, as part of the 7x7 showcase that’s been going on there. It’s also going to be streaming virtually, and you can register here!

• On May 18, also at 5pm PST, Debutiful, a podcast hosted by Adam Vitcavage, is hosting writers S. J. Sindu, Emma Copley Eisenberg, and me for a reading in support of the work TGI Justice Project, “a group of transgender, gender-variant and intersex people, inside and outside of prisons, jails, and detention centers, creating a united family in the struggle for survival and freedom.” They provide trans, intersex, and other gender-variant people with legal help, resources for re-entry, and other important material resource, and it would mean a lot to me—especially right now, with the wave of anti-trans bills crisscrossing the country—if you donated and joined us!

My latest reviews:

• Open: An Uncensored Memoir about Love, Liberation, and Non-Monogamy by Rachel Krantz (it’s really good! It’s also really about the complexities of sex and sexuality within relationships of all kinds, and how they can become intertwined with emotional abuse)

• The Family Chao by Lan Samantha Chang (I loved this book! It’s a slow burn, but all the characters are so wonderfully drawn that I wanted to hang around them even before the ~main drama~ started)

• Scoundrel: How a Convicted Murderer Persuaded the Women Who Loved Him, the Conservative Establishment, and the Courts to Set Him Free by Sarah Weinman (I really enjoyed this winding, slippery tale of an even slipperier trio, a murderer and his main enablers)

• Glory by NoViolet Bulawayo (this excellent novel manages to pull of this incredibly multiplicity of narrative voices and styles, and tells the alternately darkly hilarious, achingly beautiful, and horrifying story of a nation held hostage by violent leadership…which is relevant to a whole lot of places right now)

• Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos (I’m quite the Febos stan anyway, since I find her prose style both electrifying and softly tender, but quite apart from that, these personal essays are so lovely, and a wonderful reminder that our stories, all our stories, matter)

---

Your turn! What are YOU reading? If you want to share any thoughts/impressions from what you’re reading right now, please do!

Yours, etc.,

Ilana