Shedding Season
The year is almost over but the rivalry between the cat and me persists. She is an unusually difficult cat, which, to be fair, is something that has been said about me as well. When she was two, she decided that she was done with grooming. Just like that — done. We stuffed her into a carrier and brought her to a groomer anyway, for her fur sheds something mighty, but when we got there she struggled like a beast possessed, and the groomer said: sorry, not happening. I congratulated myself on finding a workaround when a friend referred me to a home groomer some years later. Three thickset women showed up at my house, barely pinning the cat’s front and back paws down, as she screamed and writhed throughout the session. They couldn’t believe how much trouble she was. When I apologised, embarrassed, they added on a difficult cat fee. It was fifty bucks. The cat ignored me for days after enduring the indignities of grooming, and when I pretended indifference, she sat on my handbag, maintained eye contact with me, and let her bladder go.
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I only have one goal this year. I just want to trim her nails before the year ends. She detests any form of grooming and whenever I so much as pick up the nail clippers, she disappears into an unreachable spot under the couch. But her claws, if they’re not trimmed, grow curved and inwards, the sharp points pressing into her paw pads, slicing her skin open as she runs across the kitchen floor. She fights me every step of the way but we both know it has to be done. This is for your own good, I hiss at her, crouching on the floor, my hair sweaty and crazed, as she sneers at me from her spot just out of reach.
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Cat claws are made of two parts: the quick, and the nail. The quick is clustered with blood vessels and nerves, and you want to cut the nail to approximately 2millimeters of the quick. Any deeper and pain blooms. Her resistance isn’t simply a matter of bad attitude, it’s also fear. The blade comes close to the promise of pain, she flinches pre-emptively, she yowls and twists on my lap, and just like that — she’s gone.
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With barely a week to go, I become single-minded. I wait for her to snooze, then sneak around the dining table, on all fours, creeping up to where she’s curled on the chair. A paw, lazily extended, drapes off the side: I take it between my thumb and forefinger, massage the paw pad gently. She yawns, her entire body extending, the individual toes stretching out, a claw peeking, my blade held close, and a schnikkt later, she’s alert and bounding off, too fast for me to catch. One claw down, nine to go.
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The assault on her nails continues all week. Each day, I try to make it through at least one claw, though I’m not always successful. My friend, who runs a pet store, gave me a pair of angled pet clippers, which apparently work magic. With them, it’s easy to get a quick grip on each nail, measure out the harmless keratin, and snip. They’re a game changer, it’s true, but even with them, even when I manage to get her claw in the right position, it’s no guarantee. I scratch the good spot under her chin, stroke her ears, move her stealthily onto my lap. But when she realises what my true intentions are, she starts wriggling, and it becomes too precarious to make the cut. With only five days left in this awful year, more than half her claws remain to be blunted. As she runs away, I see the dried blood winking at me from under her toe pads, a reminder of all the ways we hurt ourselves without realising how.
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It’s not like her nails are going to magically regenerate in January, my girlfriend says. You can still cut them then. I’ve shown up for dinner with scratches all down my forearms, simultaneously a sign of protest and failure. The cat’s defences are up; she’s been avoiding me all week. She sleeps with one eye open, which is not a thing I thought possible. I know, I know. Time is a man-made construct. There’s no concrete reason to accomplish this by the year’s end. If I let it be, for just a week or so, she’ll let her guard down, tentatively admit me into her affections, relax into deep-bellied sleep again. But I have failed at so much this year, I don’t want to fail at this too. No matter how ridiculous and trivial it seems, I want to achieve at least this one thing. It’s for her own good, I repeat, but the look on my girlfriend’s face tells me I’m not fooling anyone, least of all myself.
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Three days to go. Four claws left. I get a special comb, meant to imitate the rough texture of a cat’s tongue, and she’s warily enchanted. It’s marketed as a bonding tool, something that builds love and trust between cat and human. The reviews online gush about how effective it is. I watch as the cat approaches it, sniffs, and rolls over, her instructions clear. I go over her back, her tummy, her neck, and the little patch of fur between her ears. She tenses for a moment, then lets go, vibrating happily. With my other hand, I use a baby-safe wet wipe to clean the dried food stuck in her whiskers, carefully wipe off the crusty blood on her paws. The toes where the claw has been trimmed are already beginning to scab over, the paw healing slowly. The angled nail clipper is lying atop the piano, a few steps away. If I get up to retrieve it, the moment will be lost. I look for someone who can pass them to me, but no one is around. Before me, the cat purrs. It’s a deep, motorcycle sound, nothing like the adorable cartoon meows that make up much of kitty PR. It’s better. These purrs rumble down her entire length, visceral satisfaction revealing itself as her head arches back and presses into the comb. She twists around and licks my thumb, a sandpaper shock of approval. Then, she puts one paw on my knee, slowly and deliberately. We are at the end of the year. A year that has betrayed and surprised us at every turn. We carry unreasonable yet persistent hopes with us into the new year, we want, desperately, for things to get better. What shape this better takes, we can only guess. The models of security and structure we have once relied on have tripped us over; we’re facing not exactly a blank slate, but a tightrope. We can only take one step after another, hoping, praying, not looking back. The cat’s claws are retracted, her paw soft on my skin. I lower my face to hers until we are nearly level. She’s not the sort to nuzzle me, but neither does she move away. We blink at each other, waiting for the future to arrive.
