These days I take great care of my 20 year old cat, Sami, aka Sami Frey, aka Sam Peckinpah. I sit on the floor next to him, several times a day, to encourage him to eat. Sometimes, secretly from the other cats in the house, I give him light nectars, things that were once forbidden. I talk to him a lot, even though I know he is deaf. He looks at me with his big eyes, a little lost, and when I get up, he follows me. It dawns on me when I read, and I read often. I brush him so that he is beautiful, and proud of him. I take pictures of his crossed paws. Cat paws move and surprise me, that’s how they are.
I sometimes tell myself that I am wasting my time, the time of efficiency, the time worked, but this thought disappears quite quickly, because taking care is undoubtedly what has the most meaning in these torn days. by war, defeats, climate change, injustices of all kinds. Some people suggest I have him euthanized. But why ? He’s not in too much pain, he’s just old, he’s just alive. His fatigue is alive. Isn’t he like us?
I only see exhausted bodies around me. Heads lowered towards the snowless sidewalks, necks worn out by the weight of helplessness. Give him medical assistance in dying, they tell me again, an expression that has become so commonplace that it has been used everywhere for some time. I am not against the concept, far from it, nor the gesture. But I would like to hear about assisted living a little more often.
I would like someone to talk to me about political aid to save the planet. I would like someone to tell me how to shake off denial in the face of a government that despises us if only by its lack of class when it addresses us. I am sensitive to language, it’s my life. I listen to that of my old cat; I’m practicing translating animal language, and it brings back to my mind all those elderly people who died at the start of the pandemic. I remember a commentator who said that well, at 75, people have had a long enough life, they can leave and make way for young people. I knew that our society suffered from ageism, but here I was falling from a height. It was actually during the pandemic that I learned that I was really old. We haven’t recovered from it, I don’t think. Worse, it seems to me that we have learned nothing.
When I stroke the old cat’s head, I begin to imagine other ways of living that welcome the unproductive and the trembling, the great fatigue and despair. Wouldn’t that be where we should start (start again)? Listen to the poor, the desperate, the sad, the misfits? Without trying to normalize them, however, because we see it every day, we have reached the limit of this vision of what a good life is.
On the contrary, we must look in their voice, even in the absence of voice, for possibilities of overthrow of power. The unfortunate fantasize, writes Romain Huët in his book Such violent fatigue. The political futures of exhaustion. Obviously, they do not submit meekly to what they are given to live by. In short, the tired subject is a minor, jerky and intermittent light. Like these fireflies which Pasolini tells us are the metaphor of wandering souls who never stop digging and scratching the dominant order of the world.
I will be told that taking care of an old cat in no way constitutes an action leading to any revolution. I’m not so sure. Because it is a gesture made in the margins, precisely. One of the countless tiny movements that allow thought to seek, even find, a future that would erase the violence from our world. This gives me knowledge that deviates from what is asked of me. Like writing, thinking, disobeying and learning every day that it is no longer possible for us to make suffering invisible. That they must be transformed into political weapons, however small they may be.