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Mai Tran began catsitting in 2021 while Tran was on pandemic unemployment, often staying overnight in people’s homes. Tran has now cared for twenty-two cats and traveled to ten apartments all over New York City, observing the interior lives of cat owners and appeasing their neuroses. From home vet visits to black eyes to refugee cats, Chronicles of a Catsitter documents the most memorable days on the job.
It’s late August, and I’m lugging a duffel bag to the Bronx to stay with my friend M. for a week. She’s recovering from a breast augmentation, and I’ll be taking care of her cats and helping out with the groceries and household chores until she can lift things.
I arrive at night, the same day of the surgery. M.’s friend E., a beautiful actress on strike, lets me in and takes me up to see M. She’s groggy but has enough energy to show me her new boobs, which look great, as all boobs do. We order delivery from a chain burrito place, and E. explains UFO conspiracy theories to us until she has to leave, which is when M. gets up to explain her house to me.
Dear Mister Poe,
At the end of this month, we will be reaching the conclusion of your one-year lease. I wish I could say that I am sorry to see you go.
I’ll admit that I was initially impressed by your literary credentials and surprisingly fine taste in furniture. Due to your patterns of negligent and disruptive behavior, however, I am unable to return your security deposit.
Within the past three months alone, the violations of your lease and our community standards have included:
- by Psyche Film
The documentary “Israelism” explores Israel’s centrality in American Judaism.
The post The Jewish Community Rupture Over Israel–Palestine appeared first on The Intercept.
- by Richard O Prum
If one takes off the dustjacket of the first edition of Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things, the clothbound cover bears the foil legend ‘WORK AS IF YOU LIVE IN THE EARLY DAYS OF A BETTER NATION.’ Such is the reverence his work receives in his homeland of Scotland, this slogan went on to be chiselled into […]