humAnImAl dIspossessIons 129she is, Cassie responded to these dynamic forms of creaturely becoming
with striking attentiveness. I had been warned through popular parenting
discourse and pedagogy against the “dangers” of allowing animals to com-
mune with newborns, but Cassie drew me away from such enforced dis-
tinctions when, in the first days with this newborn child, she enacted such
keen sensitivities toward our new creature. Anyone who had known Cassie
across time, or who knew the legend of her becoming, was amazed by how
this “wild” cat had become friend, ally, and in some critical ways parent to
other (human) beings. She has played no small part over the last years in
the pedagogy of our human child, in the teaching of relational boundaries
and care, and in the formation and flourishing of a queer family unit.
As I type bleary- eyed through increasingly achy fingers, I hear Cassie’s
howl and can so easily envision her own now blind and arthritic body navi-
gating the well- charted paths toward food, litter, and rest. She is undeni-
ably old and a very different creature from the ones she has been across the
many stages of our lives. (We are aging together, but her body is stiffening
much faster than mine and transforming in ways more readily apparent.)
4.1 Cassie and infant child together, adjacent in repose. Photograph by Julietta
Singh.