After years of indoctrination from my native animal-loving parents, I arrived at adulthood wary of domestic pets. We didn’t have any when I was growing up. Instead, Mum would jokingly tell us to go outside and play with the skinks that sunbaked on the hot bricks or with the echidna that waddled through the garden. The native animals were not so keen on this, so I began collecting dead spiders and storing them in an old jewellery box, their limbs slowly disintegrating over time until they were nothing more than dust.
When I left home, we bought goldfish for our sharehouse, naming them after musicians we loved. Madonna was a quick-darting thing and Cyndi had bright-orange scales. They were low-maintenance pets, requiring nothing more than a pinch of food each morning and the occasional top-up of water. Even I could manage that.
But when the sharehouse ended, I insisted someone else take the fish.
Later, when I had my own family, my children lobbied regularly for a cat or a dog but we were living in rental properties, so I had an excuse. Then Covid-19 lockdowns started and instead of doing online schoolwork the kids used the time to present their arguments: one in the form of a book-length essay about the health benefits of pets and why we should adopt one of the kittens our friend was fostering; the other in a PowerPoint presentation full of images of sleepy cats curled up on chairs and doe-eyed kittens staring mistily down the lens, designed to soften my black heart.
And it did.
Horrified, I found myself agreeing. But I had some conditions. It had to be an indoor cat because I was still a native animal girl and couldn’t stomach dead things being dumped at my door. The kids also had to promise to feed it and change the litter. The three of us shook hands and made it official.
The day we collected the kitten in a borrowed carrier, both kids came with me. Driving home, my son sat in the back, talking to the kitten through the mesh grill. She miaowed all the way, little gulps of air and worry, and I wondered what I’d just agreed to. Online schooling stalled as my children spent their days sitting on a bed with the kitten. They watched, delighted, as she raced around the room, tearing it up with all the fearlessness and recklessness of a young child.
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The kitten was the perfect lockdown distraction. Even I could see that. But when the lockdowns ended and the kids returned to their busy lives, I was left at home with a cat that was no longer the delightful kitten we had adopted but now a stubborn tabby that dug her claws into the fabric of my favourite chair and scratched incessantly at my bedroom door. The kids forgot to be in charge of the kitty litter and food; instead of chasing after them, the cat began to trail after me.
When we moved into an apartment, the cat took a while to adjust. Now she uses the night hours to race from one end of our home to the other, sliding on my old childhood rug and riding it into the balcony door. She clambers up the furniture to the top of the bookshelf and then down again, landing on the piano with a heavy thud, and pawing her way across the keys, playing a sort of discordant song. I wait for her to stop, knowing she will eventually pad across the floorboards into my room, leap on to the end of my bed and circle around until she finds the right spot to curl up. There she will sleep for hours, tucked against my feet, waking me sometime in the night in the hope of a snack. I never feed her, but she tries every single night, and despite resenting the broken sleep, I admire her determination.
After nearly four years, we are still testing each other out. She annoys me most days, but then undoes me with her attempts to leap the height of the window to catch a fly, or the hours she spends by the screen door watching the world pass by. And now that we are often the only two at home, we sit together like an old couple on the couch, watching television or reading. She rests one paw on my leg as if she’s telling me to stay, and if I dare to try to wriggle free, she presses her claws in just enough to show me she’s boss. As if I could ever doubt it.