Chronicles of a Catsitter: Ithaca is Gorges

Mai Tran began catsitting in 2021 while Tran was on pandemic unemployment, often staying overnight in people’s homes. Tran has now cared for twenty-two cats and traveled to ten apartments all over New York City, observing the interior lives of cat owners and appeasing their neuroses. From home vet visits to black eyes to refugee cats, Chronicles of a Catsitter documents the most memorable days on the job.

I’m trail running around Buttermilk Falls in upstate New York, jumping over tree roots and water-slicked rocks. At the base, a full-size queen chats me up. “The water power here is not that impressive,” she says. “For real volume and height, you should go see Lucifer or Taughannock.”

I do my best to engage in hiking banter. When I emerge from a path, husbands and fathers speak on behalf of their families. They ask how many miles I traversed, or how far until the next waterfall, or comment on my speed around the bend. Forks in the road are prime spots for solidarity as we compare maps. I get the sense that people want to be exceedingly nice when they’re alone in the woods, and looking the way I do (benign), people love to see me coming. Sometimes I get nervous, although the animals are even more so. A deer crashes away from me; a snake slithers out of my path.

The running is slow, and I stop often to take photos or inspect native berries, which my crunchy partner would surely eat off the stem without first verifying their identity or washing them of dirt. After they moved in, I had never felt more like a lesbian in my day-to-day living, but also never more affirmed that I was a twink. I was scared of bugs, had absolutely no hard skills, and would undoubtedly die if left in the wild. I only existed to be cute and kind of bitchy.

I had escaped to Ithaca via a four-and-a-half-hour bus ride and a fortuitous catsitting opportunity, set up by my local friend V. At home, things were finally stabilizing “post-crisis,” with my partner’s self-deportation set far off in the abstract future. After two months of tending to it, I felt as if I could leave, or I wanted to ensure that I was still a person who could.

At the bus stop in front of Ithaca’s halal deli, V. was a sight for sore eyes in their Subaru hatchback. They scooped me up, and we drove through town, past yard signs advertising a women’s swim for hospicare and an (assumedly) all-gender bike ride for AIDS. Punk teens on the street automatically begged the question of whether or not they were children of Cornell professors. Seeing a huge black-and-white striped banner with a rainbow triangle, I learned about the “straight ally” flag.

We made it to the catsitting apartment, and I met Pleiades, an elderly cat who had been with his owner for years but was relegated to a small, dark bedroom. Annoyed with his kitten compatriots, who were more recently adopted, he was separated from them by a floor-to-ceiling mosquito net that had to be unzipped and zipped every time I entered or exited the room. I sent photos of the space to a friend, who quipped that the owner had a poster, flyer, and/or sticker for every social movement on earth. We found this ironic, given that we deemed Pleiades’ displacement from all other areas of the apartment, for two new and shiny cats, unjust.

During my week-long stay, V. enlisted me to help weed their 16′ × 9’ community garden plot. It seemed as if everyone in Ithaca gardened—no manicured lawns, just overgrown herbs, trellises, and a fixation on biodiversity, spotlighted by fireflies at night. A farmer’s market stand boasted that their gooseberries were “child-picked.” I sent my partner photos, and they reported that red bell pepper seeds had sprouted in our sink. They moved them to a plastic cup on our windowsill. From the Ithaca garden, I cut them rosemary, lavender, and sage, which I would later deliver via bus and subway, in a jar filled with water.

Back at Buttermilk Falls, a park ranger steps to the side so I can pass. I think about the metaphor that V. shared from couples therapy, while we were kneeling and squatting in the dirt. “Everyone has their own lawn to take care of,” they said. Sometimes lawns overlap, and those parts can be cared for together. If one person falls, another can step in. V. said my friendship has presence. V. said I am good at taking care of my own lawn.

After completing the predetermined loop, I peel off my socks and hang my feet in a swimming hole. Children scream at the darting minnows. I brighten my screen and text my partner to let them know I will return a day early. I’m anxious to see what’s happened while I’ve been away, if anything. I wonder if I’ll come home and think I felt something like respite, or a regulated nervous system. “What if you just stayed here forever?” V. had spouted, the same daydream I casually toss to my lover.

My heart aches. I think I love it here, but soon I’ll be tired.