The Last Best Part of Every Day

Spoiler alert: it's about my cat.

Every day I have one perfect moment. It comes at the end, after I’m in bed and the lights are out. Depending on the time I actually get to bed, Robbie might be holding me (I went to bed on time!) or curled away from me (I stayed up late and he’s already asleep) but he’s always there.

In the calm quiet of our dark bedroom, I wait until I hear the sound of my cat coming to get into bed with us. Sometimes it really is a pitter-patter, sometimes she meows in the living room because she doesn’t know where we are, sometimes it’s the faintest shift of the floorboards. She faithfully sleeps next to me every single night. Honestly, I can never really fall asleep until she hops up onto the bed and crawls over our bodies (R sleeps between me and the door) to come get some pets and curl up against my body.

here is the cat in question, in her favorite place to be when she’s feeling independent (the back of the couch)

That moment when I feel her tiny cat body jump onto the bed is perfect to me. It happens every night, and every night it’s the simplest most profound feeling. And every night I think, I really need to write about this. Like I could write a poem about it, but honestly the poem is just: every night my cat sleeps next to me and it feels like the only solace in a broken world.

Maybe it should be a haiku:

our bedroom is dark
tiny cat paws on floor boards
she sleeps next to me

or:

every night my cat
faithfully finds me in bed
soft purrs in the dark

or:

perfect angel cat
jumps up on the bed to sleep
a nightly comfort

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Related and unrelated things I’m loving from the real world:

• The book Doppelganger by Naomi Klein. It was very worth the 15 hours I spent listening to it (I listen to audio books at 1.3x speed, so it was actually 11 hours? Idk math). It’s probably not exactly accurate to say I loved it because it was pretty intense and depressing, especially whilst TikTok was being banned and resurrected and Trump was being sworn in and Elon Musk was on live television doing a Nazi salute. But it did help me make some sense of the seemingly huge jumps people appear to make to get to fascist ideologies.

• This extremely accurate TikTok comment.

• Re: consuming depressing media during a depressing time, R and I started watching The Handmaid’s Tale. (I’ve seen it before, he hasn’t.) I know it’s just my attempt to normalize the shit-show we’re living through by giving my nervous system a chance to confront the very real fears in a ~safe~ environment (my couch) but what can I say.

• I recently discovered the artist? researcher? human Talyssa via her video about digital gardens, which is a very cool approach to creating a digital archive of notes / thoughts / materials. She popped up again today and I went down the rabbit hole that is her amazing website and all it’s offshoots. If you’re into non-traditional digital spaces I think you’ll like her approach.

• Lastly, a little shameless self promotion, my first YouTube video :,) Like & Subscribe!!!

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Xo,

B

p.s. The cat’s name is Waylon.