apple juice scars

my daughter turns five today. mothers of a five-year-old human probably still feel young, but as a cat mom, i feel ancient. i adopted suede on may 7th, 2021. her name was apple, and that’s not them being unique; her siblings were named cherry and grape. it was like selecting juice. in her picture online, she was being held up by her armpit and looked disoriented. i knew that was my kid. she has a little too much sass sometimes. not sure if she picked that up from me or if she was born with it. either way, who am i to judge?

i don’t know what my life would be like if i had never adopted suede. whenever she’s not in my room/apartment, it feels empty. i didn’t know how much faith i had in her to protect me if someone broke in, but i understood when she stayed at home for a couple of weeks in between my visits there near the end of the semester. i slept on the pullout in the living room with the tv playing the big bang theory, and the ceiling fan light shining right over my face. mind you, when she sees a bug, she gets me to notice and then runs away while i kill it. i don’t know why i trust her like she’s kung fu panda.

in all of the five years suede has been alive, she has never understood that her claws cause me pain. i have actual scars on my hand from playing with her. sometimes she sits on me with her claws out, and then when i say, “ow ow ow,” she moves around trying to figure out the problem while stabbing me even more. i don’t know how we’ve gotten this far without her realizing that my hand bleeding after she swipes it means bad. maybe my faith in her comes from the clear notion that she shows no mercy.