POETS SQUARE

A cat lover’s chronicle.

Cat rescuer Gustafson makes her book debut with a warm memoir about loneliness, love, and her unexpected connection to feral cats in the Tucson neighborhood of Poets Square, where she moved with her boyfriend during the Covid-19 pandemic. At times, tending to 30 howling, mewling, starving cats felt overwhelming: “I was spending a lot of time crying, a lot of time feeling like my heart was too small and too tender, a lot of time wishing I could disengage, wishing I had not been the one to find these cats.” Besides feeding them, she took them to be neutered to prevent litters of kittens added to the population—not only around her house, but in other neighborhoods, too. She became known as the cat lady, the person others turned to when they found injured cats, or just too many. Without quite knowing why, she posted adorable photos of the cats on social media; surprising to her, the Instagram site attracted followers and contributions. When she filmed a video about cooking a miniature Thanksgiving dinner for stray cats, the TikTok post went viral. Rescuing cats and working at a food bank, Gustafson discovered that the experiences of being unhoused, friendless, and hungry were not limited to cats. Just as the felines outside her house fought for the food she put out for them, the people waiting hours for food distribution often lashed out in anger at not being able to afford “the most basic of resources” to keep themselves and their families alive. While her cat rescue work has given her “a community, a sense of rootedness” and purpose, it has also given her “an intimate knowledge of suffering, a witnessing,” she writes, “I never meant to inherit.”

Affecting testimony to the need for caring.