My New Cat, My Old Job, and Station Eleven

When manifesting is only half of the work

Eight weeks ago, I became the guardian of my first ever pet. She was a breeding cat before she entered my home. In her year of life, she only had one shot at motherhood, and it unfortunately resulted in one kitten who breathed embryonic fluid instead of air, and promptly died. I found out that it’s advised to leave dead kittens by their mothers to help them accept (grieve?). Worried that she was too traumatized to try again, she was made redundant, retired, and sold to me at a discount price.

We’re waiting to spay her, because, turns out, cat bodies also keep the score, and a trauma too close to another trauma may break them permanently. Every other week, she has been in heat. Tail low with anxious eyes and flat ears, she tries her best to yowl for another mate, desperately rolling around as her body itches to become impregnated again. I search in her face, her perfect, comically cute face, for signs of emotion. Is she scared that her body is betraying her? Does she desperately want another shot at motherhood? Is she insecure because she doesn’t have this innate sense of ownership? Am I projecting onto this cat who can only accept the motions of biology, and little else?

She doesn’t like to be petted. I am trying my hardest to respect her hard-set boundaries, to let her have her own personality, but it disappoints me that she doesn’t love me more. Each time she cowers, it breaks my heart. The penny dropped quite early on that this is what my mother feels constantly, and that this is what I have feared all along about my own possible approach to motherhood. Sometimes, you show them love in your own way and they just don’t want it. 

Speaking of rejection, I got laid off from my job yesterday. After five and a half years as a video producer for a digital media platform called Eater, I got cost-cut. I started this job with so much gusto - it was my cool New York job! I went into an office and chatted with smart people, rode the subway, spoke to some inspiring chefs and encouraged them to tell their stories. It felt like a fluke that I was even there, so my first years were full of anxiety about losing this magical moment. As the years went on and I became more interested in screenwriting, it served more as a constant that could hum along while I grew into myself as a writer and filmmaker. And hum it did, but some time in the last year, I became restless and realised a shift in myself that demanded a change. With each step towards the cliff, the jump became more inevitable but I kept worrying about what the fall would look like. It was either crash-landing and being broken into pieces or soaring into the sunrise. Two extreme scenarios that are designed to freeze you into doing nothing at all. 

So I guess the fates heard me, and I was pushed off. The first emotion is overwhelming fear with this loss of stability. It reminded me of every rollercoaster ride I’d been on, where the initial drop sending you falling - your heart is beating out of your chest, and the sudden loss of oxygen overwhelms you, your face slackens, organs swishing around inside. I walked around my apartment, surprised that it looked exactly the same. Didn’t my bed understand that I wasn’t a video producer at Eater? After years of insisting that it didn’t define me, I felt like I was suddenly missing a part of myself. A feeling that I know is false, but who am I to entirely deflect the mindgames of capitalism? 

So, like many film and TV enthusiasts, I looked to a distraction and tried to select something that might take my mind off of my raging headache. I saw Station Eleven and hit play with urgency. I’d seen it when it first premiered, and wanted to rewatch it at some point and the point was right now. I remember when I encouraged friends to watch it in winter 2021, telling them it’s a tough sit (it begins with a pandemic outbreak) but urging them to continue anyway, because it’s full of a hope that creeps under your skin. The world ends, and characters are faced with relentless worst case scenarios. They survive long enough to find out that “survival is insufficient”. They understand what remains when it all goes to shit, what truly matters and how this defines them as people. By the time I watched two episodes, my headache went away. 

Processing emotions as big as these is always a fascinating endeavour. I felt outside of myself and also deeply burrowed inside. I am curious what happens to me in these coming months, this coming year, and beyond. Every step I take from here on out feels significant, and I’m trying not to let that thought seize me in panic. I hope I can rise to whatever occasion and come out of it a better person, someone I will be prouder of. Someone with courage. 

At some point, I will remember to open my eyes, breathe deeply, and look around as I fly through the sky, limbs flailing around. Maybe, hopefully, I let out a squeal of delight too.