08/28/2024
Jasper’s fur is a beautiful bluish gray that glistens silver in the sun. Lately he’s been having bouts of an anguished kind of howling which occasionally result in him attacking his companion Anabel. He never hurts her, but it disturbs me seeing fur flying and hearing the squeals of my feline children. And still, the disturbance is exasperated as it feels like a familiar expression I echo deep within myself.
Yes, yes, I know I’m personifying an animal’s actions and I know they don’t feel the way humans do, but are we really that different?
The cat experts say these are signs of boredom and restlessness. But I play with them multiple times a day. I change out their toys and try to be creative with their enrichment. I’ll even occasionally let them wander outside.
Yes, I’m personifying now and maybe it’s just the tone of his howls, that resonate the echo chamber within myself, triggering a primal urge to escape, to run, to surrender to the wild primal instinct to escape to devour.
I realize this content doesn’t clearly align with the images portrayed, but my recent trip to Italy gave some of these gnawing ancient echoes a foundation, a source of solace in recognition. All of my life, I’ve held on apprehensively, protecting myself through the unease caused by the feeling that the ground could be pulled away from underneath at any minute.
After 30 years, the return to my ancestral homeland, as an adult walking on the worn stones of century old towns and cathedrals, the ground felt just a little bit more sure. When I was floating effortlessly in the heavily salinated Mediterranean, I welcomed in the ghosts. A lineage of blood, who shared the primordial howl deep within their bones.
So we howl together until one day our kin will create a land where they can feel free to express their true wildness and feel a sense of surety in the ground beneath their feet.
