JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

To detoxify from Wednesday’s emotional overdose, I proposed that we take a break from the news and social media for 12 hours. Understandably the chat group was quiet for the duration, besides reporting on our latest experiments in making food more edible. This way I avoided hearing of the latest contender in the Ultimate Douchebag Reality Competition: another self-own, who assured everyone that their entire family and their staff had been tested for Covid-19, reminding us ordinary people who have no access to the test that the privilege is reserved for the powerful. Meanwhile we hide in our houses, washing our hands till they are raw, disinfecting surfaces, worrying about how long this lockdown may last and whether hunger and mental illness will kill us if coronavirus doesn’t.

Everything is heightened. Something triggers outsize reactions in us every half-hour. The most ordinary experience takes on a strange intensity. I watched a Rohmer documentary on the changing landscape around Paris in the industrial age and paint drying on a wall is more exciting, but I was riveted. I watched My Night With Maud, the quintessential philosophizing blah-blah-blah movie, and I kept going back (rewinding, we used to call it) because I had to hear (well, read) every word.

My cats are pleased to have their human servant at home all the time, and the building cats get their twice-daily feedings on schedule, but I was worried about the stray cats living in the garden behind the mall. Fortunately my friend who lives around there agreed to bring them kibble whenever she ventured out. If she can’t go out and nobody feeds them, I remind myself: They’re cats. They’ll manage.

I cannot say that to Tracy, Mother of Cats. One of the many homeless cats she looks after was sick. The village guards said he hadn’t eaten in a week—they thought he might have a fish bone stuck in his throat. A cat who doesn’t eat for more than a day is most likely ill. The cat looked to be on the brink of death, so Tracy put him in the car and dashed to a veterinary clinic she knew was open, passing through several checkpoints along the way. Whenever police asked her where she was going she showed them her quarantine pass, pointed to the sick cat, and cried: “This cat is dying!!!” If you’ve met Tracy, you know that resistance is futile and for your own good you should just get out of her way. She made it to the vet, who found a giant infected crater in his gums, which must’ve been excruciating. As long as the cat was anaesthetized, the vet also neutered him for free. The cat is now recuperating at Tracy’s house. No doubt the cat is receiving more concern and consideration than our volunteer doctors, whose willingness to risk their lives has been officially priced at P500 a day.