Cats have never been my animal of choice. I grew up with them; I love them; I am very allergic to them; I need my animals to follow me around the house and never leave me alone; I have never had a cat of my own.
The only tattoo I have solely in honor of another being—at this point—is for a cat. A year ago today, Ocho, one of my closest friend’s cat died suddenly. At just under a year, he was still just a little kitten. Meghan and I had spent a lot of time together over the end of 2021 and the first five months of 2022, so I was well acquainted with Ocho. We were buddies. We played aggressively. To the point of bleeding. His murder mittens got me every time. He’d come running at me with no warning, latching onto my ankles, knowing that I’d pick him up and play with him in a way no one else did. Although, maybe, he just hated me and was trying to ankle bite me right out of the house. I’ve never loved a cat more.
Loving someone who doesn’t belong to you and grieving them is a wild thing. I grew up with cats who’ve been kittens grown into old ladies. I spent years loving and playing with them. It’s not that I didn’t love them, I did, but Ocho was different. Grief is sadder when they die young and out of the blue. He didn’t suffer, but everyone who loved him did.
My relationship with Ocho was so much deeper than even his mom knew. Meghan and I met at a really weird time for both of us, and our lives collapsed into one another. For more than a few reasons, I spent a lot of nights at her house. Her home and she herself became my safe haven, and that has never really gone away. I have never felt peace the way I do with her in her home; she is just that kind of human, and her pets are just like her.
I have a history of night terrors combined with sleep walking. They had never plagued me in adulthood. I thought I’d left them at my parents’ house. I think the combination of coming into myself truly, feeling peace and safety for the first time, starting to deeply heal, and the amount of stress I was under created the perfect storm. The night terrors came back.
I don’t like to think of myself as a dangerous person, but I grew up in violence. It’s hard to leave that behind. On more than a few occasions, I’ve had to choose violence to survive. Unfortunately, under certain circumstances, violence is my body’s natural reaction. My brain moves fast and has always stopped myself before doing what I do not want it to do. None of these had been tested when another person was involved and I was asleep.
For the first time in twelve years, I started having night terrors. In Meghan’s house. Really bad ones. They were memories of moments I actively try to forget, and if you know me, you know I don’t shy away from much.
Meghan is strong and capable and intelligent, but she is also kind and gentle and sensitive, though most don’t see it. Her strength is rooted in a quiet self-assuredness, coming from a foundation of stability and love she’s known her entire life. My strength comes from the complete opposite. Listening to her talk about anything has always filled me with such hope because she’s proof that goodness exists. We are so very similar in so many ways, yet we couldn’t be more dissimilar. When I look at her in her life, I see the possibility of what could have been for me if everything had been different. I’m not jealous; I’m fiercely protective. For some reason, she has deemed me worthy of existing in it with her. All of this to say, I have loved her from the moment I met her, and all I’ve ever wanted to do was shelter her peace and safety and sense of hopeful optimism. It’s not my job. It’s my privilege as her friend. My greatest hope for her is that everyone treats her better than I ever could because the world needs her and people like her, and I don’t want anything jading her heart.
Nothing is scarier than wanting to protect someone from everything, but the only threat to their safety is you. That’s where I was at. I was the danger.
I will never know when they started or ended, but I know the first time I realized what was happening. The night terrors had returned. Except at 30, I had more memories to be scared of than I did at 17.
This story is one of my greatest shames. I would love to never tell it. I will because I love Ocho and his memory deserves it.
One night, I couldn’t tell you which night, but it was deep into the night. Houston had fallen silent. The house creaked in the way old houses do. Nigel was asleep at Meghan’s feet. Ocho slept on the pillow next to her. The winter air blew outside. It was the kind of night perfect for deep sleeping, and all four of us were. Then, I wasn’t.
I woke standing over her with a fist raised and my other clenched at my side. I don’t know what I was going to do if I was going to do anything. But I knew there were two tiny paws kneading my chest and a kitten shaped head rubbing against my chin. I immediately knew. My body seized up. I breathed in and couldn’t let it out. I started shaking as tears dripped from my jaw. I looked at her peacefully not snoring, laying on her back, completely unaware of the danger I had just posed to her. Nigel didn’t even raise his head, but he was looking at me in his soulful way.
Ocho bit my collarbone hard.
I breathed out.
I stepped back and looked down at him. He gave my hand a little bite and lick before he curled up by his mom’s head. Her hand reached for him, and they snuggled in closer. I backed out of her room, turned around, walked into the kitchen, grabbed the garage keys. I walked out the back door, down the stairs, and into the garage. I didn’t even turn on the lights when I shut the door behind me. I laid down in the middle of her garage workshop and sobbed. The full self, feel it in your body, pure grief kind of sob. I had almost hurt the one person in the world I would have gone to the ends of the world to protect. She had the perfect life, and I had arrived to ruin it. I was the thing she should worry about, and I had done nothing to protect her from me. The what ifs flooded my mind. I know what great harm I am capable of conscious by choice. Asleep by guttural reaction? That had never been tested, and I was horrified for her. I was also selfish: fearful she would hate me, and I would lose someone who I’d come to need, and I don’t need people.
Eventually, I stopped sobbing when the first bird sang. I sat up, realizing I’d left a me-shaped sawdust angel in the middle of her garage. I grabbed the broom, sweeping the sawdust into chaos again. I took a shower in the garage shower because I’d taken some sawdust with me, and it would be weird having to explain sawdust in the sheets. I crawled back in bed and stared at the ceiling until my alarm went off and it was time to make coffee.
One of the first things Meghan said to me that morning was my hair looked curlier than it had when I went to bed. The day began like every other day I spent the night. Except Ocho was a bit cuddlier with me than usual. Not a single ankle bite.
I was distant for a few days and found my evenings too busy to spend the night. But when I did see her, I started telling stories about what I have done in moments where I’ve chosen violence. I told her I had bad nightmares and sometimes my PTSD makes it hard for my body and mind to communicate, and that has historically led to unpleasantness. I didn’t sugar coat anything, but I also left out quite a bit. She met stories of some of my worst moments with the same grace and compassion she always has. She told me to just be me and not be afraid for her. She kept telling me she’s very strong and tough, which I already knew, and she could take care of herself, which I already knew. But I never wanted her to have to around me, and I really never wanted her to have to protect herself from me.
Eventually, I spent the night again. The first three times, I didn’t sleep at all. I stared at the ceiling the entire time. The fourth night, Ocho curled up on the pillow touching my shoulder and face, so I drifted off to sleep. I went a week without a night terror. The second time I remember having one, Ocho nibbled my ear until I woke up. He did it every time. He kept his mom safe. He gave me enough security to fall asleep, hopeful that I wouldn’t be a threat. I never have been since. To Meghan or anyone else.
This past winter, the night terrors started colliding with insomnia and tactile hallucinations. Oh, it was a rough few months. I wasn’t sleeping. When I would I’d have horrendous night terrors. When I’d wake from them, I would physically feel whatever traumatic event I’d had to watch in my sleep. I was losing my goddamn mind. Ocho had long been gone, and all the reasons I spent so many nights at Meghan’s were no more. Then one night, the worst night, laying in my own bed, I felt like I was dying in a prison of my own body unable to move or escape what was one of the worst tactile hallucinations of my life. Ocho walked across my chest and curled up on my pillow on my shoulder. He nibbled my ear. He broke me out of my prison, put me back into my body. The tactile hallucinations disappeared all at once, but he got up and I felt him walk away.
The nights I can feel their hands start touching my body and their breath on my skin and the pain bloom like Moonflower planted in my soul, Ocho walks across my chest. Every time, he curls up and nibbles my ear, staying with me until every touch and breath is gone. Then I feel him walk away. The Moonflower wilts in my soul as Ocho takes the darkness my pain needs to bloom with him.
I don’t believe in God or ghosts or an afterlife. I believe my brain is fucked up because of trauma, and it’s doing its best to servive. I also believe Ocho knew what he was doing, and my soul has decided to keep him alive on the nights I still need him.
Ocho was such an asshole. I have scars on my ankles from where he bit me. He gave Meghan and I so many heart attacks when he’d find newer and cleverer ways to escape the prison we call a house. I hate bugs, and yet I’ve crawled under her house so many times to pull him out. I would wake up to him biting me in the middle of my back at night to play with him. But he gave the best snuggles. He was always full of vim and vigor, triggering laughing fits. He just knew. Every time. He knew when I needed him. He knew when his mom needed him. He was perfect, and I miss him every day.
I tattooed his name in the place he just loved to bite as a reminder of all that he had done for me. I had no idea what he would go on to do. He saved his mom from me. He has saved me from me so many more times.