Lost Cat E-Book

Mary Gaitskill

• Herausgeber: Daunt Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

'Gaitskill writes with such authority, such radar-perfect detail.' -- New York Times'Last year I lost my cat Gattino. He was very young, at seven months barely an adolescent. He is probably dead but I don't know for certain.'So begins Mary Gaitskill's stunning book-length essay, the closest thing she has written to a memoir. Lost Cat begins with the story of how Gaitskill rescued a stray cat in Italy and brought him to live with her in the US, where he went missing.As she explores the unexpected trauma of her loss, Gaitskill describes how she came to foster two siblings, Caesar and Natalia, two inner-city children who spent summers and holidays with Gaitskill and her husband. The joys and ultimate difficulties of this relationship lead to a searing examination of loss, love, safety and fear, and how our limited understandings brush against our unlimited hopes. Gaitskill applies her razor-sharp writing to her most personal subjects yet.'Stubbornly original, with a sort of rhythm and fine moments that flatten you out when you don't expect it.' -- Alice Munro

Leseprobe

 

‘Gaitskill writes with such authority, such radar-perfect detail.’ New York Times

‘Stubbornly original, with a sort of rhythm and fine moments that flatten you out when you don’t expect it.’ Alice Munro

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ALSO BY MARY GAITSKILL

Bad Behavior

Two Girls, Fat and Thin

Because They Wanted To

Veronica

Don’t Cry

The Mare

Somebody with a Little Hammer (Essays)

This is Pleasure

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Lost Cat

Mary Gaitskill

A Memoir

Contents

Title PageLost CatAbout the PublisherAbout the AuthorCopyright

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Lost Cat

LAST YEAR I lost my cat Gattino. He was very young, at seven months barely an adolescent. He is probably dead, but I don’t know for certain. For two weeks after he disappeared, people claimed to have seen him; I trusted two of the claims because Gattino was blind in one eye, and both people told me that when they’d caught him in their headlights, only one eye shone back. One guy, who said he saw my cat trying to scavenge from a garbage can, said that he’d ‘looked really thin, like the runt of the litter’. The pathetic words struck my heart. But I heard something besides the words, something in the coarse, 4vibrant tone of the man’s voice that immediately made another emotional picture of the cat: back arched, face afraid but excited, brimming and ready before he jumped and ran, tail defiant, tensile and crooked. Afraid but ready; startled by a large male, that’s how he would’ve been. Even if he was weak with hunger. He had guts, this cat.

Gattino disappeared two and a half months after we moved. Our new house is on the outskirts of a college campus near a wildlife preserve. There are wooded areas in all directions, and many homes with decrepit outbuildings sit heavily, darkly low behind trees, in thick foliage. I spent hours at a time wandering around calling Gattino. I put food out. I put a trap out. I put hundreds of flyers up. I walked around knocking on doors, asking people if I could look in their shed or under their porch. I contacted all the vets in the area. Every few days, someone would call and say he had seen a cat in a parking lot or behind his dorm. I would go and sometimes glimpse a grizzled adult melting away into the woods, or behind a building or under a parked car.

After two weeks, there were no more sightings. I caught three feral cats in my trap and let them go. 5It began to snow. Still searching, I would sometimes see little cat tracks in the snow; near dumpsters full of garbage, I also saw prints made by bobcats or coyotes. When the temperature went below freezing, there was icy rain. I kept looking. A year later, I still had not stopped.

SIX MONTHS AFTER Gattino disappeared, my husband and I were sitting in a restaurant, having dinner with some people he had recently met, including an intellectual writer we both admired. The writer had considered buying the house we were living in and he wanted to know how we liked it. I said it was nice but that it had been partly spoiled for me by the loss of our cat. I told him the story and he said, ‘Oh, that was your trauma, was it?’

I said yes. Yes, it was a trauma.

You could say he was unkind. You could say I was silly. You could say he was priggish. You could say I was weak. 6