I ordered the kittens off Instagram

or rather, found the foster organization and sent them a DM, and the next day someone texted me about a frightened adult cat who needed to be “socialized,” which seemed apt. My roommates have both left our Crown Heights apartment to be with their families or significant other (Florida, Fire Island) but very politely shut down the request in our group chat— no mean cats please, only nice ones, but they for sure trusted my judgment, definitely of course.



After I attempted to tactfully reject the first cat, I was texted a couple days later with an image of two kittens embracing each other, twin crescent moons. I said of fucking course, please, yesterday. I picked them up from an SUV double parked outside my apartment, brought them up in a carrier I brought down to the car two minutes later, and returned to find them sitting on my roommate’s couch, sizing me up.

I don’t mind being alone. Alone means I can sit at a bar and read a book and listen to professors talk about their students or listen to a first date’s question answer question answer or listen to a bartender talk about why he decided to take out the circular tables and replace them with dark wood benches he made himself, how long it took, in the span of two weeks can you believe. Alone means I can walk the three hours home from work if I want to, across the Williamsburg Bridge, past the families on Bedford hanging out in synagogue doorways with their friends and their children, lights strung over the street. There’s comfort in the alone with everyone stepping across the subway platforms, avoiding the platform musicians, keeping our feet moving in the cold. Jay Street Metro Tech, Fulton Street, West 4th Street, et cetera. This is another kind of alone, obviously, afraid and alone without end or easement. I am lucky, so lucky. But still.

I also don’t really care about cats. They would generally rather spend their time with anyone else, and how they operate makes very little sense to me. I ordered the foster cats off Instagram because I was feeling dizzy thinking of being so alone in my apartment, which is maybe because I am unable to deal with my thoughts when things become difficult or just because it feels nice to have another being meet your eyes and justify that you have existed, you do and keep doing it.

Which they have provided, and then some. As of today, I have spent exactly a week with these two, who will go by different names when they are adopted in three days but I am now calling Boris and Natasha. I have never had the time to spend so much unbroken time with any two beings, human or otherwise, and they have come to trust me with their faces in my face and their bodies inside my arms and with slow, deliberate walks across my ribcage.

Boris is sitting on me as am writing this, where I am worrying his nose with my typing. For a few days I allowed myself to believe that I could keep this up when we are allowed to see people again, that I could be responsible, that I could keep another few lives alive. Being alone has granted me a little lapse in my standard operating procedure. I am allowed to hang up a phone call at my parents and say things like “fine. whatever!!!!!!!!!!” and not wonder if I am depleting parental goodwill. I am allowed to stir frozen yogurt into my coffee. I am allowed to continue speaking with people maybe a wiser me would resist speaking to so much. I am a small animal seeking comfort, and I am allowed to seek it in the small animals that seek me.