Teaching Cats Equity
Cats
The kibble hits the ledge with a sound like rain on a window, and Moxie’s ears rotate before the rest of him does. He is already on the arm of the couch, already calculating the distance between the cushion and the wooden shelf that runs along the wall near the ceiling. The Human stands below with the bag in his hand, placing the small brown pieces one by one along the narrow surface, spacing them out like he’s planting something.
Bagheera watches from the floor. She is lower than her brother, which is where she usually finds herself in these moments. Moxie has always been the first to move, the first to climb, the first to bat something off a counter and watch it fall with that expression he wears, the one that suggests he is conducting important research. Bagheera is still growing into her long black coat, which catches on things and weighs her down in ways Moxie’s sleek brown tabby fur never does. She approaches problems the way she approaches everything: by sitting very still and staring at them until they make sense.
“Go on,” the Human says, stepping back.
Moxie does not need the invitation. He launches from the couch arm to the bookshelf, then from the bookshelf to the narrow ledge, and his body is a fluid thing, brown stripes rippling like water over stone. He snatches the first piece of kibble and crunches it with his back teeth, already eyeing the next one further along. The ledge is barely wider than his paw, but he walks it like a road.
Bagheera watches him eat the second piece, then the third. She jumps to the couch arm. The bookshelf is next, and she makes it, though her long fur snags against the spines of the books and she feels one shift beneath her. Then comes the ledge. She stretches. Her front paws catch the edge, claws digging into wood, and she pulls herself up with effort that Moxie never seems to require. But she is up. She takes a piece of kibble and it is the best thing she has ever eaten, because she earned it by climbing.
They work their way along the ledge together, and the game is good. Bagheera’s legs burn with the effort of balancing, and twice she nearly slips, her coat swinging beneath her like a curtain. But the kibble keeps appearing under her nose and she keeps eating and the Human watches from below with the soft expression, the one that means they are doing the thing he wanted them to do.
When the ledge is cleared, the Human sits on the couch and takes out the brush.
Moxie drops to the cushion beside him, expecting his turn. But the Human reaches for Bagheera first, lifting her gently onto his lap, and begins working the brush through the long black fur behind her ears. The bristles catch on a knot and Bagheera flinches, then relaxes as the Human works it free with patience, stroke after careful stroke. He brushes her sides, her belly where the fur mats if left alone, the feathery plumes along her back legs. It takes a long time. Bagheera purrs and the sound vibrates through the Human’s hands.
Moxie sits on the opposite cushion and watches. His tail twitches. He has been waiting, and the Human is spending all this time on his sister, pulling the brush through her coat again and again while Moxie gets nothing.
When the Human finally sets Bagheera down, he turns to Moxie and gives him three quick scratches behind the ears. That is all. Moxie stares up at him, waiting for more, but the Human is already putting the brush away.
Something about this feels wrong to Moxie. He looks at Bagheera, who is licking her newly smooth flank with contentment, and he feels the hot compression in his chest that comes when the world distributes its gifts unevenly. Three scratches. Bagheera got minutes of attention, and he got three scratches.
But then he thinks about it the way he thinks about the ledge, slowly and from different angles. His coat is short and sleek and never knots. It lies flat against his body and requires nothing. Bagheera’s fur tangles, mats, pulls at her skin if no one tends it. The Human gave Bagheera more because Bagheera needed more. Moxie’s three scratches were not less. They were enough.
His tail goes still. He accepts this.
Then the Human picks up the kibble bag and walks to the other room, the one with the soft carpet where Maisie stays during the evenings. Moxie and Bagheera look at each other and follow, padding side by side through the doorway.
What they see stops them both.
The Human kneels on the carpet. Maisie sits in front of him, the empty socket on one side of her face like a door permanently closed, the clouded eye on the other side aimed at nothing and everything, her nose working. The Human pours kibble directly onto the floor in a generous pile right between Maisie’s front paws. He does not place it on a ledge. He does not make her jump or search. He simply gives it to her, and she lowers her head and begins to eat.
Moxie sits in the doorway. Bagheera sits beside him. They watch Maisie eat, Maisie who bumps into walls, who cannot find the water bowl when someone moves it two inches to the left, whose world is sound and smell and texture. Maisie, who would starve on the high ledge.
The pile in front of Maisie is larger than what either kitten received. Moxie notices this. Bagheera sees him notice it, sees the calculation run behind his eyes, and waits for the protest that would normally come, the swat, the attempt to steal.
But Moxie thinks about the brush. He thinks about how Bagheera needed more and got more, and how that was right. He looks at Maisie and understands that this is the same thing, extended further, to its necessary conclusion.
His tail goes still. Bagheera’s does too.
The Human scratches Maisie behind her ears, and she pushes her head into his palm without pausing her meal. She purrs, and the sound fills the room like a low warm engine.