Wild Inside: WILD -- A Collaboration Project of Artists and Writers with Women in the Visual and Literary Arts

WILD--A Collaboration Project of Artists and Writers

with Women in the Visual and Literary Arts 

For the WILD collaboration, I had the opportunity to create with my amazing friend and talented artist, Jessica Parsons. Inspired by our shared experience adopting cats from local shelters, we worked together to celebrate and honor the cats our families have each adopted, totalling nearly a dozen to date (not all at once!) In her painting, Feral, Fear All, Jess captures the haunting grace of feral cats in the moonlight, while my piece, Wild Inside, was inspired by my daughter's adopted cat and the outside cat who seems to have adopted her. 

Exhibition at Sabine Street Studios Aug. 6 through Sept. 12, 2026

Wild Inside

The cat visits my porch in the evenings, when the sun goes down and my tv goes on. Uninvited and unbothered, she pushes up against the window, her meow so loud it can be heard through the glass, while my inside cat watches, fascinated by this nightly apparition, the ghost of wildness—a cat without a monogrammed bowl or a basket of toys.

The inside cat takes his food at his leisure, little circles and triangles of salmon flavored joy. He picks and chooses, batting bits across the floor and under the rug. But the outside cat greedily consumes it all, leaving only the flimsy paper plate. Sometimes she disappears for days, and I imagine the other lives she must lead. I feel a pang of envy at her freedom, her choice to stay or leave.

She hisses at people, but not at the cat, the indoor one who never ventures outside where she lives. She prefers it that way—an inside the window boyfriend, kept behind glass, perfect in his silence. When she presses her nose to the pane that separates them, she can imagine he offers only compliments and declarations of love, his eloquence never in question or marred by awkward silence.

When he falls asleep, purring contentedly in his fluffy pink bed, she sits, wrapping her tail around herself. Her golden eyes stray to the screen, lured by the flickering images. She’s fascinated by reality tv, like the catnip it is to me. We watch as the people on screen fall in love, then bicker and clash, claws out, with a yowling that threatens to drown out meaning. But we’re safe, the cat and me, on the outside looking in. With a flick of her tail, she blinks at me like she understands. The show ends, and I change the channel to a documentary about birds, but she’s not interested, turning away to stare up at the streetlight or the moon, I can’t tell which.

The next morning, I’m surprised to see her back on the porch. I’m holding her plate of food when she suddenly leaps, front paws clasping and teeth flashing, to capture a bird out of the sky. A look of satisfaction gleams in her eye as she eats her breakfast. Not little triangles after all. For a moment, I forgot cats are wild.

I go back inside.

Cats have nine lives, they say. But I only have one. Like a caged tiger treading the confines of its enclosure, I know this space. I’ve paced it for years, invisible lines that hem me in, tightening the outline of my existence. And I can’t escape, even when I scratch at the soft surroundings, the plush carpet and upholstered furniture. I can feel my ears flattening back, my hackles up, my back arching, trying to make myself bigger. I want to dig my nails in, sharpening my claws and my sense that there is more, that I am more, than what’s inside.