You’re not supposed to write about your cat or post pictures of your cat, on your various professional digital places.

This is advice that I have heard/read/seen multiple times. When you stop posting about your cats — or I guess your dog, or your kids — it shows the world that you are Taking Yourself Seriously (TM).

I have also seen plenty of the opposite advice: post about your “real” life, a little bit, to show you’re human. Versus being what, exactly? Although I guess we did just learn that potentially aliens are a thing.

And then there are the people who are ONLY on social media for the pet photos and basically get mad at you if you post anything else. There are also a few people in this world who love my pets so much that they want them to have their very own social media accounts so they don’t have to wade through all the rest of my garbage. (I’m not doing this.)

So, my distillation of all of the above is: I do whatever the fuck I want. This was a spirit that my cat Jack embodied in every fiber of his being. It made him an asshole and difficult to live with at times, but I also admired his utter self-possession— as I believe all people who love cats do.

Jack died suddenly last weekend, just before I was supposed to take the second part of a very cool online weaving class. I literally had skeins of yarn on my lap, which went flying everywhere as I ran to Jack while he issued two extremely loud caterwauls. This was both the first time he ever made that sound — he was filled with disabilities and troubles, one of which was that his vocal chords didn’t allow him to meow properly, he squeaked — and his last, thanks to his bum aorta, which I’d known about for ten years, but for whatever reason chose that morning to quit.

I’ve written a couple of times about Jack — his life spanned my first marriage, my single years, and, in its largest segment, with me and the new dad I found for him — as he pretty much assumed was my main goal while dating. In his later years, he (surprisingly) became a fan of Maggie the dog. The week before he died allowed her to lick his head. Just once.

This is the first time in my adult life that I don’t have a cat at home. It’s not a situation that will last forever — left to my own devices without a feline silently judging me, lord knows what kind of a degenerate I’ll become. But for now I am writing about my cat in professional places, and I am sharing a couple of other pieces I’ve written about my cats over the years:

Regarding My Lie About My Three Cats Reflecting on my time when I was one cat away from becoming a crazy cat lady, in the most generous interpretation.
In Praise of Imperfect Pets This is Jack’s origin story — he had three legs, which you’d have to know for context on the title. I was also married to my first husband when I wrote this, which is a little strange to read now.