Ghosts and other Humans

“I'm writing a book on domestic violence and your testimony would be so valuable in making sure I’m depicting things correctly.” There it is. The “I'm.” What my owner calls a slap in the face.

I’ve heard her complain about it to her friends. “It makes me feel so small,” she says, “I’m in the meeting too, but it’s like I don’t even exist.”

On the screen, behind the virtual background blocking everyone from the intimacy of her home, she keeps a calm, practiced smile and focuses on her notes. She’ll be the one making sure those depictions are accurate.

I’ve only been her house cat for a year and I don’t know much about ghostwriting, but it seems to me like being invisible comes with the territory. Ghosts are not meant to be seen.

The author my owner is working with now is making her feel worse than usual. She’s a big-shot professor who writes “theorized fiction.” From what I’ve gathered between my naps, that means stuffing novels with scholarly theories. This author is currently collecting real-life stories for inspiration, and while she’s warm and affirming to her interviewees, but when it comes to my owner, she's brisk, cold, and transactional.

“One day,” my owner often says, “one day I’ll write a novel.” Of course, she already has. Five of them, a miscellaneous collection that sits in her bookcase without triumph. But I think I understand what she means. It has something to do with putting her name on it.

I find human’s obsession with names fascinating. Nothing’s real until they can name it. A name is an identity, a sign of belonging or ownership, a proof. I, for instance, have had many names in this lifetime alone. “The Cat,” “Ferdinand the Third,” “Milo.” I’m currently “Persi”, short for “Persimmon”, my owner’s favorite fruit. I respond to none of these names however, and they mean nothing to me. My drinking bowl is mine because I drink from it. Her novel should be hers because she wrote it, name or no name.

But the human world is tougher than mine, and pride complicates things. This “one day” of hers gives her hope. Or an excuse. Sometimes, in the late hours of the night when I’m fully awake and she can’t sleep, she scribbles in a notebook, writing down ideas for that “one day”. But she never lets me see.

My owner keeps the bathroom door open. When she first got me, I was a very nervous cat and she kept it open so I could see she hadn’t left. Now, I’m not sure if it’s for my benefit or hers. Who needs the most reassurance? Even so, she won’t let me see her writing. As if that was more intimate. As if I could tell the difference.

She lives alone, and, unlike my previous owner, she doesn’t share her troubles with me. I decode her moods through my senses, observing her face tighten as she opens an email, listening to phone calls with friends, feeling her heartbeat quickens when she speaks to her mother.

To her friends, she says she’s following her passion in its true form: not for the recognition or fame, but for the art of writing. That’s enough for her. And at the end of liquor-filled nights, she’ll even admit it makes her feel a little better than the rest. Certainly better than the author who accepts praise without doing the work. It’s like she has a secret weapon no one knows about, and she feels safe carrying it around everywhere she goes.

But lately she resents it. And she blames her mother.

Her mom has always been a woman of rules. Her childhood was a parade of corrections. “Don’t slouch.” “Suck in your stomach.” “Be a lady.” “A moment on the lips…” Sentences I’ve come to understand are far from ideal for the development of a confident adult. Surely, her mother said them out of love.

He favorite was “Show, don’t tell.” It wasn’t proper to boast about your accomplishments, or spend too much time taking pride in them. If you are good, her mother would repeat to her endlessly, people will notice.

My owner now knows: the world doesn’t work like that. She feels foolish for believing playing by the rules would be rewarded.

Sometimes, she cries. Quietly. Her back turned away from me. Other times, she picks me up and holds me. I let her, not wanting to corroborate the stereotype that us cats are heartless. She never goes out on those days. She stays home and makes herself invisible.

It seems to me that what my owner has in passion, she lacks in courage. The courage to be seen.

I’ve never met another cat, so I don’t know if it’s just me, but I believe we’re logical creatures: for a ghost to be seen, it has to be made visible. Not hiding behind a screen, or someone else’s name, or a “one day.”

What is it her mom always says? “There’s no use crying over spilled milk”? Or maybe it’s “You can’t have your cake and eat it too.” That woman clearly has a complicated relationship with food. Either way, taking ownership for what you want takes courage.

But maybe ghosts are only visible to those who believe in them.

I leap onto her lap and suddenly appear on her screen just as the interviewee finishes her story. My unexpected movement startling her, she lets out a small scream. The interviewee and the professor stop talking and look at her, as if noticing for the first time that she’s here.

“Sorry,” my owner says quickly. Then, because she feels she must justify the interruption: “Your story is very helpful. It’s important for us to write about this in all its nuance. What was going through your head when you decided to leave him?”

There it was. “We.” A quiet defiance that no one notices.

But it looks like the beginning of courage. Like a ghost finally finding her colors.