Old Stinky Cat and the Ferals: A Love Story in Nine Lives

Old Stinky Cat and the Ferals: A Love Story, Life 1

What does love mean and require in dying times? We are in the final phase of the global oil and gas regime of governance called #colonialism. Alongside its demise is the collapse of the biosphere that nourished life as we’ve known it for millennia. The two are really one. The sixth extinction is the logical conclusion of a world system organized around fossil energy, slavery, and ethnic cleansing. #ExtinctionRebellion.

The blood of Great #Mother Earth pulses and thrums and quakes as the next sun rises with blessings from #FatherSky. In my casita, the sacred passing of this phase now appears as the old stinky cat named Bella.

Bella’s fourteen or so. She tracks kitty litter on the floor, chairs, and dining table. I trip over her warm little body as she follows me from room to room. She likes to hide in the cabinet that contains the cooking pot. It is cute to see those shining eyes in the dark, but her favorite hiding spot poses concern: I live in #PublicHousing on food stamps in #PuertoRico, the world’s oldest colony, and I don’t have hot water on tap. #PublicHealthCrisis in daily practice alongside the #junta, the #FiscalCrisis that compels many to yell #SeAcabaronLasPromesas and #BorikénLibre.

Old Stinky Cat and the Ferals: A Love Story, Life 2

I received Bella from a dear friend, a professor at the University of #PuertoRico, the island’s college system that is also dying. My friend has two animal companions, and the three weren’t happy together. For this reason, my dear friend drove across the island of #Borikén to bring me Bella because she couldn’t provide the cat with a good life.

My dear friend came to have Bella after her human companion’s death. Actually, two humans who cared for Bella died in her presence. The curse of the cat or just passing coincidence? Neither. Life is for living, and death is a natural process of the human life cycle. #Death is the price of biological existence that enables a soul, which is #sacred and eternal, to grow and move towards #ascension.

Bella isn’t made for mean streets; she’s the domestic cat par excellence. She’s only known women, a quiet house, and #FancyFeast, a corporate, popular brand of cat food.

Old Stinky Cat and the Ferals: A Love Story, Life 3

Bella the old stinky cat eats #FancyFeast, which is made by Purina in St. Louis, Missouri where I lived for several months while contributing to #DecolonizeSTL, a grassroots movement that is working to dismantle a statue of #ChristopherColumbus in Tower Grove Park.

The statue was erected by Henry Shaw in the 1880s. It was the second statue of #CristobálColón erected on the lands now called the United States. The first, called “Discovery of America” by #LuigiPersico, was erected in 1844 outside the United States Capitol and removed after years of protest in 1958. #FuckColumbus.

A young migrant from England, Henry Shaw became an active colonizer of #Cahokia, the area now called St. Louis, as he aged from 20-40. He sold guns to rival #Native bands and white migrants moving west of the #Mississippi, the river known as the “father of waters.”

Henry Shaw owned people who were stolen and made into slaves, which he raped, and whose arrest and murder he sought when they fled his slave estate. Upon his retirement from his shop, he became a local banker and regional financier, investing in coal and land with profits he gained from his vast slave estate. #GenocideSoGentlemanly.

#HenryShaw is famed for founding the #MissouriBotanicalGarden, Washington University’s School of Botany, and the #MissouriHistoricalSociety, all of which are based in St. Louis, just like @purina, the maker of Bella’s favorite #kitty food.

Old Stinky Cat and the Ferals: A Love Story, Life 4

Bella, the #stinky cat, has been with me for less than two weeks. I gather she’s 14 or so. She eats @purina’s #FancyFeast, her daily bread, for breakie and dinner.

What will her #beautiful companionship cost me as we age and die together?

Smart question to ask as I now live in public housing in #Borikén, the world’s oldest colony often called #PuertoRico, on food stamps. Federal assistance from the US government and the local colonial authorities for food doesn’t cover #petfood. I count my #pesos as in dollars, quarters, and pennies closely, so this isn’t an abstract calculation but a genuine concern.

Today, a 24 pack of her fave food costs $16.99. This stinky old cat is used to eating two cans of Fancy Feast per day. That’s 730 cans per year. Tax here is 11.5%. So, to feed Bella on her standard feline diet, it costs a lot.

In exact numbers:

730 cans / 24 cans per box = 30.42 boxes per year.

30.42 x $16.99 = $516.78 per year.

$516.78 / 11.5% for island sales tax = $44.94.

$ 516.78 + $44.94 = $561.72 to feed Bella annually.

That can’t be right as in #moral, but the math is sound. I checked it twice. #DoTheMath.

Old Stinky Cat and the Ferals: A Love Story, Life 5

$561.72. That’s the price of old stinky cat’s diet per year. Holy crap.

I was given an animal companion called Bella whose feeding habits are more than fancy, they’re f*cking expensive — that amount doesn’t even account for the costs to the global environment.

Bella’s fave food named Fancy Feast is prepared and packaged in Cahokia AKA St. Louis, Missouri by Purina. It is then ferried to the world’s oldest colony, Borikén, whose colonial title is #PuertoRico.

That’s 2000 miles over river, land, and sea.

#MeOuch. These numbers hurt.

Where do the source ingredients such as tuna, salmon, and chicken come from? What about the modified corn starch, wheat gluten, and unnamed artificial flavors that enhance and preserve the food? How do these source ingredients make it to Purina’s factories?

#MeOuchMeOuch: what is the carbon footprint of the cans as they shuttle here to take up residence in landfills? If you’re as honest as I am you know it is lame and lazy to think the waste — 730 cans per year — is really recycled and that such a process is an ecological solution to #ClimateChaos, #ClimateChange, #ClimateCatastrophe.

Heaven help us, I haven’t even considered the humans who work in the factories, ships, etc. #MeOuchMeOuchMeOuch.

Old Stinky Cat and the Ferals: A Love Story, Life 6

How much money has been spent to maintain Bella’s luxurious existence over her life to date? She’s the old stinky cat who craves Fancy Feast twice daily who’s sleeping on my bed without permission. She just walked in, hopped up, and fell asleep on my #pillow. It’s cute but rather presumptuous. How do you reason with an old #stinky cat who you’ve known for less than two weeks and who squeaks in pleasure at your approach?

Yesterday I determined that it costs $561.72 to feed Bella @purina‘s Fancy Feast twice daily at today’s prices, including tax. #Gasp. How much has been spent on Bella’s food to date?

Let’s say Bella’s ten years old to make the math easy since I truly don’t know her age (though I’m not the only person to estimate 13 years or more). If Bella is 10 and she’s eaten two cans of #FancyFeast per day, that’s 7,300 cans over the last decade. Because I don’t feel like adjusting for inflation and #BlahBlah, let’s just say the food was $10 for a 24 pack over the duration of her long cat life so far (versus the $16.99 it is today). #OMG — that’s $3,041.67 without tax and excluding the environmental consequences of purchasing cans and food produced over 2000 miles away. That amount doesn’t account for other cat costs such as #kitty litter and vet bills.

I’m hiding the calculation leading up to $3.041.67 without tax and excluding the ecological consequences of global consumerism because #math scares me and most people. In fact, I’m so #scared of these numbers that I’m now hiding in the kitchen cabinet like Bella loves to do because that’s a lot of pesos that flow from the world’s oldest colony named #Borikén but called #PuertoRico to the heartlands of the United States #Empire.

No wonder we’re #PuertoPobre.

Old Stinky Cat and the Ferals: A Love Story, Life 7

#FancyFeast gets to the world’s oldest colony, #Borikén AKA #PuertoRico, via the great supply chain called globalization, which also produces the #GreatPlasticPatch in the world’s oceans. Globalization is just colonialism repackaged in #TetraPak and corporate #marketing.

Bella the old #stinky cat loves her Fancy Feast, reared as she’s been by its rich taste. She’s like rich white people who can’t stomach that their wealth comes from blood that other people bleed and have bled for centuries: she just doesn’t think about it. #EndWhiteSupremacy.

Bella meows too much, often starting at the very crack of dawn. Really, she’s saying I love you, I love you, I love you, and where’s the Fancy Feast? But to me, she’s noisy and dirty and speaks to public health issues I seek to solve. #ExtinctionRebellion.

Bella, which means the beautiful one, came to teach me to live and love through dying times. That’s why Bella was given to me by someone who can’t take her back, while I have a soft spot for the broken, the resilient, the misfit amongst us. Yet I’ve done the #math for her food and #kitty litter, and I can’t afford her care for much longer. #Heartbreak.

Old Stinky Cat and the Ferals: A Love Story, Life 8

Bella’s demanding. The old stinky cat meows all night, and I struggle to sleep given #trauma nightmares and #panic attacks that paralyze. Who knew we’d be a mismatch? We’ve similar traumas in a sense but vastly different habits.

As a #brave abused woman who fled my home after learning my husband is a sexual #predator, I’m bruised beyond belief. Any sound, even Bella’s collar, can startle me into a full panic attack. Petting her doesn’t seem to calm me in the night and early morning. She’s angel kitty at 12:30 pm but devil kitty at 5:30 am. My reasoning and request for #silence doesn’t alter her actions and #yowling. She’s rather set in her ways. #MeToo.

She’s domestic. I’m part #feral. I went #wild once. My ex is an engineer at @Google. I left him when I came to see the depth of his activities, and I paid the price of the racist patriarchy that masquerades as #leadership: three lawyers and more than $30K in fees couldn’t deliver me justice in the face of my ex’s lies, #hacking, and bankrolling. Example: I testified under oath for nine hours, while he never did. He just bided his time and paid his lawyers $1000 an hour, while I bled money I didn’t have and still don’t.

My former husband’s being protected by Google, just like #AndyRubin. I’m sure he’s well fed and fine financially. As for me and the old stinky cat? We live #scrappy and insecure in public housing in #Borikén AKA #PuertoRico, stuck between times of change. #Ascension.

Old Stinky Cat and the Ferals: A Love Story, Life 9

$9.99 and also made by Purina in St. Louis, Missouri. That's how much I paid for kitty litter. The cost was actually far more if you also calculate that I went to five local stores, mostly pharmacies, to purchase kitty litter and left empty handed on my first foray.

I live in a hidden valley without public transit in Borikén, the world's oldest colony that too many people call Puerto Rico. Because the population of the island is elderly and extremely medicated, pharmacies abound, yet there isn't a shop that sells kitty litter in casual walking distance from my home, which to me is 20 minutes. I spent more than an hour asking about kitty litter in my #espanglish that passes for shitty Spanish. No luck, no kitty litter.

I was so exhausted after my first adventure seeking kitty litter than I came home and showered my sweat, disappointment, and stink away and took a nap next to Bella, the old stinky cat who sleeps an average of 20 hours a day in my small apartment. (The other four hours are spent purring, eating, or yowling, the first I adore, the second I accommodate begrudgingly, and the third makes me batty.) I resolved to set off in the morning in my epic quest for kitty litter.

The next morning I walked to Walgreen's, which is more than 30 minutes away by foot. That's where I do the bulk of my food shopping because getting to stores that specialize in selling food like fruit and veggies takes 45 minutes. (That's another example of crappy colonialism whose story I'll tell another time using hashtags such as #Descolonización and #RegenerativeAgriculture).

At Walgreen's, I hit pay dirt: I found kitty litter for $5.49 and $9.99. I opted for the $9.99 option because it was ounce for ounce cheaper and the clumping variety, which is what I know. I figure I'll experiment another time, when it isn't 90 degrees and a 2.5 mile walk home in the hot, tropical sun. There's logic there, somewhere, buried in the numbers and mental calculation I performed on aisle 9 at noon.

Bella's an old stinky cat in the tropics. She pees a lot. I estimate spending $9.99 a month or more for kitty litter. $9.99 x 12 = $119.88 a year. Add 11% island sales tax, which is $13.19, and Bella's annual litter costs $133.07.

#NoShitSherlock, Bella's one costly cat: one year of care is $694.79. That's $561.72 for Bella's fave food, named #FancyFeast, and $133.07 for her kitty litter. Mind you, I'm not accounting for possible vet expenses nor damage to the global ecosystem.

In Spanish, kitty litter is called "arena," which means sand. I wish it were sand, as I'm on a small island purchasing kitty litter made of clay that, again, was "made" more than 2,000 miles away in St. Louis, Missouri by Purina, which also makes Bella's fave food called Fancy Feast. #HolyCrap.

Borikén is about 100 miles across and 35 miles wide. It is tiny, just like Bella. She's just a few pounds, a drop in the bucket when it comes to cat mass on this small island that is overrun with feral cats and iguanas, which aren't native fauna but pets gone wild. The cats stalk the plazas, looking for lizards, scraps, and birds. In my hidden valley, there are two people who care for the ferals. First it was three, now it is a twenty or more.

The dead bodies of iguanas litter the island's roadside like plastic bottles. They simply decompose on the pavement, melting in the hot, tropical sun, while living iguanas devour the leaves in the trees above and the broccoli in the garden at my public housing complex. Like pigeons, they're a plague, or so the locals say.

As for the island's insects? There's been a 98% reduction over the past 35 years. That isn't a typo. 98%. I have no words that carry the grief of those numbers, nor poetry to describe the spiraling impact of such a loss.

After Hurricane Maria, Borikén's feral colonies exploded, while it's human population shrunk by at least 130,000 people. Some studies posit that 470,000 people will migrate before the end of 2019 due to the effects of Maria and the island's fiscal crisis.

People just can't afford to live here, financially or emotionally. It is heartbreaking to see all the empty, rotting homes and mind-blowing to tally the costs for home repair. Plus, animals are an additional financial expense that families seeking to repair their lives and roofs can't cover.

As for me and Bella, the old stinky cat? I'm part of the social movement called #rematriation, which involves individual Boricuas reversing the island's migration pattern. I'm here to plan and more fully launch a migrating university, while I continue devising a method to put the honest price tag on violence and help folks elevate businesses dedicated to decolonization and reparations. #DecolonialBiznessWorld. There's that and this: I came to my father's ancestral homeland fleeing my former husband, first finding refuge in a safe house for brave abused women and now living in public housing in a hidden valley.

I fled my home, and Bella lost hers. Her people perished, first one human, then the next. Before we landed together, we were both lost or in limbo. We were made for each other.

Bella's an old domestic cat, and I'm a feral woman with body odor in the world's oldest colony. United we reside in public housing as the global regime of imperialism implodes. This whole situation stinks. At least, we're stuck and stinky together. #TheEnd.

Old Stinky Cat and the Ferals: A Love Story, Life Eternal*

I love Bella. She isn't an old stinky cat, though she's altogether too damn talkative in the midnight hours. She just needed time to heal, which she's had over the last month as my newest companion. As for me, I'm Latina PhD. I dress up my drama in pithy words, cry rivers, and then smile.

When she came to me, Bella's fur looked patchy, and she had two scabs, both near her neck. Poor thing, she'd been trapped in a bathroom for weeks in a home with two alien animals on the prowl. She'd almost lost her will, her last of #NineLives, in that sh*thole.

There she was, trapped in a situation she didn't create, given refuge by kind woman, my dear friend who's a professor at the University of Puerto Rico, who wasn't quite equipped to provide it. Of course Bella was stinky, skittish, scared. Now she's sleek and shiny. #MeToo.

I've never had a cat, much less an elder feline. It took me two weeks of immersive education to realize that cats are cats, and Bella was the new boss in my life even if I control the kitty litter and meal plan. True story, I also researched cats. The internet is made of them, yes?

We've been together a month now, and it is true love. Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I hold Bella's paws in my hand. Other times, she climbs on my chest to nuzzle my neck. Friends, no #friskies.

Oh, she's still too costly for the likes of me, but Bella likes hotdogs, not just #FancyFeast. In fact, she loves them. Annual cost: $77.56. I can work with that for now.

*These posts were supposed to number nine as in nine lives, however all cats go to #heaven. It is the universal law of good pussy. So, here's the whole shebang honoring amor eterno.