Milisa Burke, Questor & Gizmo
Left to right: Questor, Milisa, Gizmo
I’ve had pets or lived with other people’s pets all of my life, except for a five-year stretch before I met my little buddies. When Questor and Gizmo came into my life in 2014, I was nursing a broken heart from a terrible breakup and had spent a year working nights from 2am to 10am, so I wasn’t in a great mental space. I had a friend who was moving to Australia to be with her husband and couldn’t afford the thousands of dollars it would cost to bring both cats with her. I had mice in my apartment and missed having cats, so I talked it over with my then-roommate and Questor and GIzmo came to live with us.
My work schedule synced up with natural cat hours, which helped me deal with the endless torture of trying to adjust my body clock. We all slept most of the day, and they were the only other beings in my life who were up at the same time as I was, except for one coworker with the same night schedule. A few months later I changed roles at the company I worked for and moved to daytime work. This freaked Questor out and he spent a few days crying in the morning because he didn’t understand why I was sleeping. It didn’t make much of a difference to Gizmo who had glommed on to my roommate and spent most of her time in his bedroom. Questor became my best pal while Gizmo put up with my existence.
Questor and Gizmo are both brownish-grey tabbies, while Gizmo has a white bib and white sock feet. They’re not siblings but are the same age, and look similar when you see them from behind. One time, Questor had been chilling in bed with me while I was watching movies. I hopped out of bed to go to the bathroom and then spotted him in the living room. Figuring it was just the regular fickleness of cats, I turned to go back into my room where he was still sleeping on the bed and almost had a heart attack thinking he could teleport. Then the cat in the living room turned and I realized it was Gizmo, and that I was just an idiot.
Several apartments and roommate situations later, I now live alone with just Questor and Gizmo. Questor is pretty happy with having me around all the time; I’m not sure he ever got used to me going to an office every day since I worked from home when I worked nights. In the before times, when I would leave he would run to the apartment door and cry for about an hour. No matter what time I came home, he would sense it was me and not a random roommate and run to the door to greet me. Gizmo has adjusted to the fact that I’m the only human she can get attention from and will follow me from room to room. When I’m preparing to go to sleep, she hops onto the bed and sleeps next to my head after doing a circuit that includes disrespectfully running across my pillows and legs.
“He meows a lot, and I generally say that this is punishment for all the overly talkative exes I had that I used to wish would shut up.”
I’ve told others that I was prepared for lockdown because I’m naturally an introvert and have spent a lot of time on my own engaged in solo hobbies. One major reason I’ve done so well through the pandemic is Questor and Gizmo. I’d already gotten through tough emotional times with them as my companions, and having them around has really helped with getting through this. Especially being able to hug them, against their will, when I was feeling particularly down. They have always innately known when I’m having a hard time and will come hang out near me, or lay against me, even though neither are lap cats. Before the pandemic happened, I had been incredibly depressed because I worked in online content moderation and was seeing terrible things every day. I would come home after work and lay in bed with the lights off, unable to engage with the world. A cat would appear and hang out in bed with me for a while before running off to go do whatever else they did somewhere in the house. Those tiny moments of comfort really helped me get through the trauma I was experiencing every day.
Questor is a shy but loving polydactyl (6 toes on every foot). He thinks I should always be on the couch, where he spends most of his time sleeping next to me while I work or watch tv/movies. Questor meows when he feels like I’ve spent too much time in bed and should be on the couch. He will dart into my bedroom, scream for a bit, and then howl from the living room until I’m in my proper place on the couch. He meows a lot, and I generally say that this is punishment for all the overly talkative exes I had that I used to wish would shut up.
Gizmo is super outgoing and loves attention. Whenever there’s a new person in the apartment, she runs over to them and starts meowing and asking to be petted. She’s almost always silent with me, though she’ll meow every few months. Her current favorite hang-out spot is on the cabinets above the fridge which are about 8 feet from off the floor. I constantly forget that she’s up there, and will be cooking or looking for a snack when I feel eyes on me. I’ve let her know time and time again that I don’t appreciate being frightened when something suddenly moves out of the corner of my eye, but she still does it.
Milisa Burke is a tech worker who deals with copyright infringement. She’s based in Brooklyn where she can be found nerding out about film, testing out recipes, or wiping dust and cat hair off her bicycles.