My Cat Changed
Their Identity
by S.B. Julian
My cat decided
to self-identify as human. Human he is, in his
own view, whatever the real world might think.
The real world (the human-humans with whom he
lives) is a nest of wrongthought and denialism,
in his view. To be human-identified is his "right",
and his most strident miaow repeatedly proclaims
it.
Two-spirited and species-fluid, he orders take-out
(taken out of the fridge at any time of day or
night), and claims ownership of any napping
surface (humans' bed, laundry basket, front porch,
all keyboards ...). Everyone else is a mere
settler on the furniture.
He reserves the right to change his identities
and his pronoun-wails at will (e.g. from king-cat
to queen-cat, fur-baby to stalking lion,
butterfly-batterer to couch potato). It's his
right, the wail-miaow reminds us.
When identifying as Hunter, he de-colonizes the
garden of rats. When cats of other persuasions
enter the garden he avails himself of the right
to hate-screech, and then de-platforms them off
the fence -- although no other cat is allowed to
utter hate-screech. His "positionality"
is that the one privileged group is himself. He
has no time for any confounding variables, and
won't tolerate any concept-creep around it. At
least you could never accuse him of micro-aggression,
it's macro all the way with him, er ... them.
Perhaps he (sic) suffered betrayal trauma in his
kittenhood, we think. Or maybe he has Borderline
Personality Disorder due to some early
stigmatization while still in the litter. We are
committed to being tolerant. There could be a
heartbreaking victim-narrative here, a real one;
there's no deepfakiness about Chief Cat.
I think I heard a miaow just now; it was the take-out
order miaow. Do we respond too quickly to their
demands, we humans ask each other? After all,
look how obese they're getting.
But wait -- sorry -- forget I said that. We don't
do fat-shaming here. Fat beings are just other-shaped
... at least, that theory is as reality-adjacent
as we dare to get.
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