You can't care about everything at once.

On pussycats, and the weight of seeing the world with an open heart.

We fed the stray cat again.

Triton moved so slowly, whispering a soft “pusspuss” till she relaxed enough to pause and assess the food. A pouch of ‘planet friendly’ goop I scoured the shelves to find. The only one that claimed ethically-caught tuna (as I stood in the supermarket imagining the wide eyed fish being ripped from the water - the same tuna I refuse to eat myself.)

She gulped it down in a frenzy, checking behind her every few seconds for some permanent lurking danger. So skinny; her bones traceable through scruffy white fur. So beautiful, too. A black patch on one green eye like phantom of the opera, but a phantom of the alleyways.

Then to our surprise, she stayed. Sat right outside our back glass door, black-tipped tail curling around her feet. Taking a momentary respite from the vigilance of street life. She watched, slow-blinking at the warm indoor light, at our cat Rumi who gets coddled with cuddles and endless bowls of gourmet biscuits¹. The cat I love dearly; rescued as a newborn after being abandoned in a dumpster and adopted into our family.

Me with Rumi, my little Sufi mystic and feline daughter.

Rumi and this stray like to sit on either side of the glass together and purr, so we’ve named the newcomer Friend Cat. And for a while I thought, how wonderful, to keep this sweet, starving kitty close. To feed her and offer a refuge, some solace from whatever aches fill her days.

But then, I remembered all the birds also who find haven in our garden. Wrens and honeyeaters who drink the passionfruit blossoms at their leisure. And the blue tongue lizard who lives under the deck. All of them are the reasons Rumi is kept indoors or leashed. And I know this little white wanderer would readily kill them all, desperate as she is.

Because the fact is she’s a menace. An adorable yet deadly species who kills up to 30 animals a day. As a report from the Biodiversity Council shows, roaming pet cats alone kill 546 million animals a year in Australia, 323 million of which are native.

Friend Cat is a sweet-faced apex predator who never belonged here on this land. Doesn’t belong anywhere, anymore.

This is the paradox of care.

We now live in a system of complexity that cannot allow all life to thrive simultaneously. Which lives matters more? This is the most difficult / dangerous question. The stray cat, or the honeyeaters that pollinate our gardens? Our pets, or the tuna, chooks and livestock that are killed for their food? The homosapiens responsible for industrial agriculture and factory farms, or the land that requires biodiversity to sustain life?

I imagine nature never intended a hierarchy, but rather a series of reciprocal relationships. And today, all the original ecosystems are so off kilter that it’s hard to understand who should get cared for anymore. Humans have become the ultimate apex predators, playing god in our misled dominance over existence. Forgetting that life was never meant to exclude our own death. But oh, the heartbreak of it all.

As the sun finally sets, Friend Cat picks up her tired body and slowly pads back to the street. A final look at us, perhaps in thanks for the meal, perhaps in longing for more. Or perhaps I anthropomorphise this creature’s experience through the eyes of my pitying heart. I don’t know what moves through the mind of a cat. Don’t know when she’ll come back again. Don’t know what the right thing to do is.

As I contemplate her little life, my heart breaks with the weight of so many overlapping layers of care. And Triton, seeing my tears, and wordlessly understanding it all, whispers to me, “maybe it’s for the best?”

---

1. All brands of far less ethical origins, purely because the vet said it’s better for her oh-so sensitive dumpster digestion. To which I continue to turn a morally blind eye and swallow my guilt as I purchase in bulk. I am no saint.