Katrin Bichler & Zelda
After spending 10+ years as a cat lady minus the cat, being the aunt to my roommates’ cats and my friends’ go-to cat sitter, I finally decided last year to get my own furbaby. Still a little ambivalent, I was looking for cats that were on the foster-to-adopt route, and thus I stumbled on Zelda’s Petfinder profile. Figuring that if I came to the conclusion, that I don’t have the capacity to be a cat-mum again I could at least provide a good intermediate space until she found her forever home. The profile said that apart from being very sweet she was also feisty and might need an advanced cat parent because she didn’t get along with the other cats at the rescue and no one really knew how her character would unfold once she felt secure in her environment. As it was still high-pandemic, I hopped on a zoom date and once I saw this little lady prancing around my screen, I immediately fell in love.
Upon her move in I was still a bit apprehensive, hoping that “feisty” wasn’t code for: will destroy your life AND furniture. But after hiding under the bed for five minutes she came out purring, exploring her new environment and immediately taking up her habit of sleeping at my feet. Easing up more every day, she was soon riding on my and my roommate's shoulders through the apartment like a queen surveying her realm. And to prove me wrong in my worries, she turned out to be the most precious and easy cat: no chewing up my many many plants, and when she’s hungry in the morning she will come and cuddle instead of meowing up a storm or suffocating me with her fluffy butt. She’s friendly and curious about everyone she encounters and (mostly) knows when to use her claws and when to not. So when the rescuer checked in and asked if Zelda has found her forever home, I immediately said, “yes! Yes, her home is with me!”
“She is the center of everyone’s attention and love and will remind you of this if the attention stops for a minute or two.”
When Christmas came she spent some time alone with the exception of a cat-sitter checking in on her and she experienced a fit of what I now know as separation anxiety. With the support of the rescue organization we worked through it, and girl, did I learn a lot about how anxiety works. How it can make you act in a way that will push away the things that you most desperately need: love and security. How it can physically wind you up like a coil spring without release, how it can make every sound and every movement seem like you’re under attack. While she responded to everything we did to make her feel at ease, one of her Aunties (aka one of my roommates) suggested a cat psychic. Even though she seemed to be doing better, I got curious and thought the worst-case scenario is that it might be a fun story to tell.
Well, surprise! The psychic didn’t turn out so well. She came up with some cock-and-bull story, made up from limited information on the intake form, which did not match up with my experience of Zelda at all. She claimed that Zelda was very, very unhappy and that something was seriously wrong with her brain on a physiological level. Further, she suggested that Zelda will have to be on medication permanently, that she did not consider me her mum, since “she doesn’t have a mother” and that she disliked her name and would rather be called something that reminded her of flowers and forests. (To this day I wonder where this rescued Bronx-parking-lot street cat encountered a flower meadow in the woods. I guess that will forever remain one of her many mysteries). I wish I would have brushed it off more easily, but have to admit it really affected me to think that Zelda might be unhappy with the life I had to offer. In one of our many kitchen-table chats, my roommates came to the rescue and calmed me down. We laughed about it, deciding that the least I could do is provide Zelda with a second name to her liking: Iris.
Since then Zelda-Iris has returned to ruling us with her brand of sweetness and unbelievable sass, wrapping her fluffy, fluffy paws around everyone who enters our door. She is the center of everyone's attention and love and will remind you of this if the attention stops for a minute or two. When I’m out I will either get Zelda memes from one Auntie or see Instagram stories of her collecting kisses on the dining table (which she is not allowed on when I’m home) from her other Auntie. And with absolute certainty, I can say that “feisty” was code for a new part of your life that you wouldn’t want to miss for anything, even if she’s destroying your furniture.
Katrin Bichler is a designer for a product development company in the Navy Yards, where she is exploring the social impact of design and information technology. If Zelda allows it, she spends her free time taking her art practice off the screen, be it weaving, painting with bioluminescent bacteria, or writing children’s books about the bumblebee paradox.