This blog post is by Morgen D., Synapse Team member, who recently interviewed author Courtney Gustafson (Poets Square: A Memoir in Thirty Cats) at Martha Cooper Library.
Courtney with members of the Synapse Team
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Jusdina and Matthew, Synapse Team members
Morgen
You demonstrate such vulnerability and honesty regarding your mental health journey throughout your book—you reference topics including childhood panic attacks, adolescent mental health diagnoses, fluctuating self esteem, disordered eating and body image challenges, imposter syndrome, and shame. Could you tell us about how and why you decided to include these aspects of your personal story in your book?
Courtney
Man, that’s a lot of issues when you line them up like that. The trick of this book is that you think you’re getting cat stories but a lot of what you’re getting is actually me, and my brain, and trying to make sense of the world through the lens of feral cats. So that means you get a little bit of all the weird things the brain can do, from anxieties about doing the right thing to questions about identity when your life is changing in significant ways.
There are quite a few places in the book—many of the parts that reference all those issues you listed—where I really stumbled writing it. A lot of those topics, especially references to disordered eating and self esteem, weren’t part of the original proposal for the book. I would go into an essay draft planning to write a cat story and I would find myself stumped, like I couldn’t figure out what story I was actually trying to tell, or why it mattered. And inevitably, every time I hit that block, it turned out to be because there was something I was trying to avoid saying. There were parts of myself I was trying to leave out. I went into writing the memoir thinking I could curate myself as a character in it, that I could avoid publishing some of the things that felt too personal. But it became the obvious trick, every time I couldn’t puzzle out what I was trying to do in an essay, or every time I read back my own draft and it sounded flat: the answer was to be more honest about myself in it. Confront the thing I was trying to say. The result was writing about a lot of things I hadn’t initially planned to, and parts of that were uncomfortable, but at some point in writing a memoir you have to accept that you’re putting a version of yourself into a published, physical object that will exist in the world, and people will do what they want with it. And the response has been incredible. The book has gotten a lot of praise for its vulnerability, and so many readers have reached out personally to tell me how they’ve connected with it. I think writing a memoir and trying to censor yourself in it is like going to therapy but lying to your therapist: you can do it if you want, but what’s the point? If you’re going to do it, you might as well bare it all.
Morgen
One of your chapters is named after Bubbles, the first cat you owned, who you adopted in Massachusetts in college. You write, “I’m certain that Bubbles saved my life. In my most critical moments I would remind myself that I had to stay alive for Bubbles, that no one else would tolerate his wild love the way I did” (p. 95). How has loving Bubbles, and all of the subsequent cats who have touched your life, impacted your mental wellness since? And despite the emotional challenges of your work, do you draw strength from your animal interactions and relationships?
Courtney
Oh, Bubbles. I wrote that part of the book and I was so anxious about sharing it because it felt almost embarrassing, that there was a time in my life when it felt like the only reason I had to stay alive was an enormous cat who bit me every day. But it has turned out to be one of the lines that people quote back to me most; I had no idea how many people have stayed alive for their animals. And that’s not ideal—ideally we all have mental health resources and support systems and bright thriving lives with lots of reasons to keep living them—but I think it also says so much about the role of companion animals in our lives that so many of us have been in that position. And ultimately, a lot of suicide prevention is just harm reduction. In your darkest moments you don’t need to fix your whole life; you just need to stay alive until morning. Cats can do that. Bubbles did that for me.
One of the biggest lessons I learned from Bubbles—and what the essay about him is really about—is that we need more than animals to really thrive. We need people; we need community. I’ve known and loved so many cats since Bub. I’ve lost cats and grieved cats; I’ve saved cats; I’ve spent moments with happy, purring cats that have made me grateful to be alive. But the best thing I’ve gotten from my work with cats, the thing that has impacted my mental health the most, is people. I’ve found and built incredible communities of people who are now my closest friends, people who share the same values and do the same work, people who have taught me so much and mentored me and supported me. I’m grateful every day to no longer be alone in my carport with thirty cats. They were a reason to stay alive—and that can be enough, for a time—but they also helped me move toward a version of my life where I don’t need to search daily for something that will get me through the night. I’m glad to be here.
Morgen
Speaking of the amazing furry friends you’ve encountered, the “Incomplete List of Names [You’ve] Given Cats” at the end of your memoir is an absolute blast to read. Some hilarious examples of names include Hot Pocket, Shrek, Ham Boy, Crunchwrap Supreme, and Toyotathon. Can you tell us about how you went about naming the cats you’ve cared for, and how naming them impacted your relationship with them and your work?
Courtney
You can name a cat anything! That’s something my partner says in the opening of the book, and it’s one of the ways my relationship with him really changed my thinking as I faced the sudden challenge of caring for thirty cats. It turns out you can just inject joy into anything you do. You can add silliness! You can make it weird! And you have to, to survive the hard emotional work of animal welfare and community organizing. You will see sad things over and over and over again. You will work so hard to save a cat that ends up dying. Ninety percent of the time you will feel like you’re up against a never-ending tidal wave of grief, a series of great insurmountable systemic challenges, and any form of joy is a small shield against that. You can name a kitten Tony Hawk and get him a little skateboard. You can name a colony of feral cats after every type of cheese you can think of. Any fast food menu item, any make and model of car, any cartoon character or celebrity or constellation of stars: those are cat names waiting to be used. Small joys.
I think it says something, too, that so many people love my silly cat names and remember them and use them for their own cats. I get a lot of messages from people who have adopted cats and want me to name them. I’ve seen shelters on the other side of the country name cats after my cats because it makes them more adoptable. People are looking for silliness and joy when they’re scrolling social media, and they latch on to it. Joy will recruit people to the cause. Joy will convince people to care. It can be a hard balance, to convey the urgency and seriousness of the work without making it feel so hopeless that people immediately disengage. I see so many organizations trying to recruit supporters from a place of guilt and obligation and tragic stories, and I’m just not really interested in that. Good, sustainable community work happens from a place of hope and joy and solidarity, and sometimes that means getting together to assess some sick cats and saying, “Listen, this is going to be sad but we get to name these cats” and then naming a cat Toyota Rav 4 and giggling about it. You create the silliness you need and it sustains you.
Morgen
In your chapter ‘In This One the Cats Don’t Survive’ you write: “For all that cat rescue work has given me—a community, a sense of rootedness, a purpose outside myself—it has also given me an intimate knowledge of suffering, a witnessing I never meant to inherit” (p. 151). You describe the debilitating grief associated with the work. How do you practice self care amid the emotional toll this work takes on you and your co-rescuers?
Courtney
I try to be so careful with how I answer questions about self care, because I think a lot of talk about self care takes up such a diluted definition of it. So much of the advice for taking care of yourself or preventing burnout is like, “Take a day off! Take a bubble bath! Buy yourself a treat!” And that’s nice, if what you need is one day of rest. But I tried that, and it didn’t work, and then I just felt bad. Like, “I rested for three hours and drank a cup of tea, why do I still feel burnt out?”
Real self care for me is about forcing myself to do the things I often don’t want to. Self care is setting hard boundaries. Self care is going to therapy. Self care is processing the grief and trauma of doing this work so I can keep doing it sustainably. I took a long break after my cat Monkey died unexpectedly last year—the same day I turned in my final edits for the book, actually—and it felt insane at the time, that I could just stop doing the work for a bit. But I couldn’t do it well anymore: the grief of losing Monkey brought up the accumulated grief of several years of nonstop work in the community, and I started to realize that I had tucked most of that away without learning how to process it. I thought I had this hardness about me, that I could handle a lot of tough situations that other people couldn’t, and that I could do it all without a break. It turns out the break will come for you eventually: you can either be intentional about taking the breaks you need, or your body and brain will force you into it.
This essay, more than any others in the book, is the one I’d edit a bit now if I could. There’s nothing untrue in it—it’s kind of a bleeding-on-the-page account of exactly how I was feeling about grief at the time I wrote it—but my understanding of those topics has evolved so much since then, and I’m grateful for that. I’ve heard from so many folks who work in animal welfare or social services or community organizing who tell me how relatable that essay is, how much it encapsulates that feeling of trying to rest but knowing how bad everything is and that you should be helping more but you can never fix it all even if you never take a day off for the rest of your life. The addendum I would add now is that a crucial part of the work is learning to live with that feeling and take care of yourself anyway. It’s crucial to have a community to share the work with. It’s crucial to have people who will call you out when it’s time for a break. Of course, we’re all responsible for figuring out what’s sustainable for ourselves, but we also need more than self care—we need communities that step up and care for each other. Part of my responsibility now, as someone who other people look to as a more experienced rescuer, is modeling self care and community care. Part of my job is looking out for the newer volunteers who are taking on one challenging case after another, and witnessing hard things, and trying to do it all, and being able to take them aside and say, “Hey, are you taking time off? Do you want to talk about how hard that was? Can I cover for you tomorrow so you can chill?”
Morgen
Our team appreciates how candidly you address seeking professional help for mental health challenges in your book; you reference your therapist at multiple points throughout your memoir. Could you describe how this type of professional mental health support has impacted your life, and your work with Tucson’s feral feline community?
Courtney
I didn’t think twice about mentioning therapy in the book, and I’ve been surprised to see how many readers have thanked me for sharing that candidly. On social media, I’ve also shared before that I’ve been diagnosed with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) and have tried a variety of medications for depression and anxiety. I’m fortunate to have grown up in a family where we talked pretty openly about seeking help for mental health. My dad is a social worker who works with psych patients, so I understood from a young age that sometimes people need professional help for their brains. That was never taboo to me.
But while it didn’t feel radical to me to talk about being in therapy, I am regularly reminded now that it does make a difference for a lot of people who grow up in families and communities where seeking help for mental health is still taboo. It feels like such a small, casual action, to talk about finding a therapist or trying a new medication, but a lot of people still need to see that normalized. I just started a new psychiatric medication a few weeks ago! I started seeing a new therapist in the last year and it has made a big difference! I’m grateful for people in my life who talk candidly about their experiences with seeking inpatient mental health care, or trying new treatments for treatment-resistant depression, or the challenges of trying to get help but running into insurance issues or intolerable medication side effects. I think there’s been somewhat of a shift toward encouraging folks to ask for help with their mental health, but what that “help” looks like can be so opaque.
I will say, broadly, that I wouldn’t be here today without the professional help I got as a teenager and young adult. And then there was a time when I thought that was as good as it gets—that the best I could hope for from mental health treatment was staying alive, and kind of just white-knuckling it through life. It has only been in the last few years, when all the challenges of working in animal welfare and having a social media platform and putting a book into the world forced the issue, that I sought out a new therapist and started feeling open to re-exploring some mental health diagnoses and treatments. And it turns out that everyday life can be a little easier, and relationships can be stronger, and I can keep working with cats and writing books from a place that feels healthier and more sustainable.
Morgen
Your chronicle of Sad Boy and Lola’s love story is so heartwarming and heart wrenching, and we know many readers are big fans of this precious pair. Would you please share a little more about these feline sweethearts and the other special bonds you’ve observed among the cats?
Courtney
The greatest love story of our generation! Sad Boy and Lola are two of the original thirty cats I found living on our property, and they were so closely bonded. One of the things that immediately fascinated me about the cats—I was always staring out my windows at them, watching them like a tv show—was their social dynamics, trying to parse which cats were friends and which cats hated each other, which cats would tolerate each other for a meal but would slap each other in the face if they got too close. It’s still one of my favorite things to observe when I start trapping at a new colony of cats; sometimes, for example, if you trap the most confident cat first, the other cats will be too scared to go into the traps without their confident leader. So much of trapping and caring for community cats is kind of anthropological, learning to understand their behaviors and dynamics.
But Sad Boy and Lola were above any of that. They loved each other, and only each other. And it didn’t really make any sense; there was no reason for it. They were wildly different ages, so it’s not like they grew up together. It’s not like they only ever knew each other; there were dozens of other cats they could have interacted with. It made it more special, that Sad Boy and Lola were these giant feral cats who hated me and hated all other cats and never left each other’s side. They protected each other and groomed each other and took turns eating so the other could keep watch. There was this really pure sweetness to their bond that felt so special to witness, and in the book I juxtapose that witnessing with some stories of my own romantic relationships. The question is kind of: can we learn things about human relationships from watching feral cats? There’s risk to anthropomorphizing cat behavior, and that’s not what the essay tries to do, but in the essay about Sad Boy and Lola I essentially realize that two creatures can find this really simple joy and comfort in caring for each other and being together, and that my previous efforts at and understandings of romantic love had been pretty warped. It was extra special to share Sad Boy and Lola’s relationship on social media and see so many people in the comments seem to come to the same realization.
Morgen
Your documentation of Sad Boy and Lola’s relationship was definitely a popular feature on your @poetssquarecats accounts. In fact, a lot of your content has been extremely well received, even going viral like the cat Thanksgiving dinner video you reference in your book! How do you prioritize mental wellness in regard to your social media work?
Courtney
The intersection of mental health and social media is such an interesting one. I think social media in general is probably a net negative for mental wellness for most people; I definitely could stand to spend less time scrolling and more time away from my phone. But I’ve carved out this really wholesome corner of the internet, I think, where most of the people who engage with my content are big fans and big cat people who have followed my work for years and have really lovely things to say. When I first inherited thirty cats and was trying to figure out how to save them, the overwhelming feeling at the time was isolation. I was doing it alone. It was during the pandemic, so I wasn’t even inviting friends over to help or leaving the house in general. When I started sharing photos of the cats on social media, and people started commenting on those photos—people would ask how the cats were doing, and how I was doing, and how they could help—it was really like a lifeline. It was a form of connection that I really needed at the time. And since then, it has grown into this wonderful, supportive community that has repeatedly raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for animal welfare and mutual aid and has helped us buy our home. The folks who follow my content online have been there to celebrate when cats got adopted and they’ve been there to grieve when cats have passed. I don’t take it for granted that I have over a million people on social media who support my work.
But the internet is a weird place. TikTok, especially, has an algorithm that pushes videos to the “for you page,” or FYP, which means that people watching my videos may not be the right audience for them. My videos get pushed to people who hate cats, or hate women, or hate me specifically. The comments get insane. People are always surprised when I say I get death threats, but if you’re a woman on the internet with any sort of platform, you’re getting death threats. Sometimes it’s comforting to know that if I’m grieving a cat that has passed, many other people are grieving with me, but just as often I can be grieving a cat that has passed and my DMs are full of people who think I should have tried harder to save the cat.
Even people who are genuinely well-intentioned can make things pretty surreal at times. When Sad Boy died two years ago, I was in bed mindlessly scrolling TikTok, trying to distract myself, and I kept finding videos that other people were making about him. Within hours of his passing, a nail artist had made a full set of acrylic nails with Sad Boy’s face on them. And they were beautiful! But sometimes there are these bizarre moments of thinking: “My dead cat is on a stranger’s fingernails?” and I do wonder how that kind of thing affects my own brain processes, how I’m handling grief. I think some experiences are necessarily different as soon as you share them with an audience. There were times I would be in public and hear my own voice coming from someone else’s phone, talking about my own dead cat. There are people I’ve never met with tattoos of my cats on their bodies.
I don’t have any real insight on the solution to any of that. Having a platform of wonderful supporters inherently means also reaching people who will react negatively. Sharing my work and my cats inherently means that I share the hard parts, too. I don’t have hard rules for myself, in terms of screen time or how often I block people, but I have gotten more comfortable taking breaks and letting myself figure out what works. Increasingly, there’s a lot I don’t share on social media. I haven’t posted on TikTok in a while. I’m glad to be at a point where that feels okay to do.
Morgen
You describe your work as lying “… somewhere in the dissonance between what animals need from us and what we want to give to them, the tension between wanting to help cats and wanting to feel like we’re helping cats” (p. 206). How can an interested individual with little-to-no experience get involved in the work in an actually helpful way?
Courtney
Find the people who are already doing the work! That’s the advice for any cause. Whether you want to be spaying and neutering cats, or fostering kittens, or walking shelter dogs, or whether you want to be sharing groceries with your community or hosting a book swap or advocating for healthcare reform: whatever the cause, connect with the people who are already doing it. Learn from them. Build together. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel.
In animal welfare specifically, I see so many well-intentioned people who want to start their own rescue or sanctuary, but they have no experience. You don’t have to do that! You probably shouldn’t! You can start by volunteering in a shelter or fostering under the guidance of an experienced rescue. You’ll not only gain so many of the skills you need and meet so many people who share your passions, but you’ll also get a better understanding of what the community needs and what resources already exist, and who you can connect with to build something great.
If you’re interested in getting involved in Trap Neuter Return (TNR) work here in Tucson, a great place to start is with the Humane Society of Southern Arizona’s Community Cats Program. They make volunteering really easy and accessible—there’s no time commitment to get started, and you can do a quick orientation and then come out to shadow other trappers to see if it’s a good fit for you. It’s a lot easier than how I learned, which was sitting alone in my driveway googling “how to trap a cat”.
If you want to learn more about TNR in Tucson or try it yourself, you can email communitycats@hssaz.org. Maybe I’ll see you out there!
