Claire Foussard & Yoko
I have been a lover of cats (and all animals) for my entire life. Having grown up in a home with two wonderful kitties, I really felt the absence of a feline presence when I moved to upstate New York for college. In my senior year, a friend told me about a family in Buffalo that had just found an orphaned little gray kitten near their house. They couldn't adopt her due to an allergy in the family, and I just knew that I needed to give her a home. I went to pick her up the next day. She was only 1.5 pounds and totally covered with fleas, but she snuggled up next to me and purred for the whole ride home.
When I took her to the vet, they estimated that she was born on July 18th. My jaw dropped… We share a birthday! As soon as we took care of the flea situation, she slept for about 10 hours straight. When she woke up, itch-free, she showed us a whole new side of her personality. She was very observant, spunky, and a little bit of a prankster. As she continued to grow, I realized that she was very different from any other kitten I had known. She is an extremely adept communicator, totally obsessed with food, and highly frustrated by closed doors. She loves to snuggle but only on her terms. The shock of white fur on her chest eventually developed into the shape of a heart, and I suspect she knows exactly how cute she is. She often exudes a “You can look but you can’t touch,” kind of vibe.
My roommates at the time had never lived with a cat before, and she won them over pretty quickly. We had a big group of friends that loved to come over and shower her with affection, and to this day I think she is most comfortable laying belly-up in the center of a room full of chatty women. I have never had a Facetime or Zoom call that she hasn’t boldly interrupted with a headbutt to the camera, especially when she recognizes the voice of the other person on the line. Though a sweetheart most of the time, Yoko can also be a bit of a con artist. She soon learned our schedules and would wait patiently outside each bedroom door every morning, meowing desperately to convince us one by one that she hadn’t yet had breakfast and she was indeed starving. After scamming her humans out of 3-4 extra meals a day, she started to get a little chunky and we figured out that she had been outsmarting all of us. Now that I live alone, she just sits on the edge of my bed waiting for me to open my eyes, and then licks my face and nibbles my earlobes incessantly until I get out of bed to hang out.
I decided to name her Yoko after one of my favorite artists, Yoko Ono, because I felt as though many of Ono’s works embody the easeful yet anarchic essence of feline life. In fact, I think there’s an argument to be made that all cats are Fluxus artists in their own right. It wasn't until I got home and introduced her to my roommates that my friend reminded me of the classic Rosemary Wells picture book about a little gray cat by the same name. It was kismet! Just like her artistic namesake, Yoko the cat loves yelling inappropriately and is very happy living in New York City (though she much prefers Harry Styles to John Lennon). She spends long stretches of her day sitting in the window intently watching pigeons fraternize on the fire escape. Her favorite treats include deli meats, sashimi, and cream cheese. No matter how much money I spend on fancy cat toys and furniture, nothing captivates her attention more than a loose twist tie or a sheet of crumpled tissue paper. She is an aloof little weirdo, but coming home to her antics after a long day out on the town has been the greatest privilege of my adult life!
Claire is an independent curator and art historian based in the East Village. Her work is centered on the mindful and sustained promotion of emerging artists from traditionally underrepresented communities, with a particular focus on the Inuit artists of Kinngait Studios in Nunavut, Canada.