Hello, Cookie!

on senior cats, quiet friendships, and the ordinary miracles of companionship

Cartoon image generated by ChatGPT at the author’s request (June 20, 2025), based on a real photo of Cookie and Jay Manuel sharing a head-bunt

1
I’ve been taking care of Cookie for twelve years now.

She’s not my cat, technically. She belongs to a friend who rescued her after a rough start in life, a history marked by skittishness and hesitance that still shows in her body language even today. Cookie is, as one might say, an indoorsy cat. She is a cautious observer, slow to trust, easily startled by loud sounds or sudden movements, and prefers the predictable, the gentle, and the calm.

And yet, despite all this, or maybe because of it, she’s also one of the most quietly affectionate beings I’ve ever known.

2
Every time my friend travels, I move in. It has become a kind of ritual. I pack a few clothes and my books, and I settle into a new rhythm, dictated not by deadlines or meetings but by Cookie’s small and steady routines: eating, sunning, curling into herself, watching birds from the window, and sleeping pressed lightly against my legs like a warm comma.

There’s a simplicity to the way Cookie lives, but it would be wrong to call it simple.

She is remarkably intelligent, for one. Over the years, I’ve taught her a few tricks: not for performance, but more as a shared language. She knows how to high-five. She knows when I’m about to read, and will trot quietly over, curling up on whichever magazine or book I’ve laid out for the afternoon. She seems to know, too, when I’m upset, or distracted, or thinking too much. In those moments, she comes closer, but never too close, just close enough that I remember I am not alone.

She is, in every way that matters, my friend.

There is something particular about living with an animal who is not “yours.” It forces you to attune differently. You have no illusions of control. No desire to train or mold. You simply observe, adapt, and learn: until, slowly, you begin to inhabit their world alongside your own.

In my case, that world involves a great deal of silence.

Cookie doesn’t meow much. She communicates in soft gestures: a flick of the tail, a deliberate blink, a paw placed lightly against my knee. She moves slowly, purposefully. She spends most of her time either resting or watching. And as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize that I do too.

We’re both, in our own ways, a little wary of the noise. We both like quiet mornings. We both prefer a room filled with light but not voices. We find our comfort not in acts of doing, but in the quiet presence of simply being with one another.

Living with Cookie reminds me that presence is a practice.

3
There’s an old Zen saying that goes something like: Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. I’ve always loved that. It speaks to the idea that even after some deep revelation or shift in being, the world does not transform into something radically new. Instead, it becomes something more deeply known. More quietly held.

That is what living with Cookie feels like.

She is not dramatic. She does not perform affection. But every night, when I lie down to sleep, she hops gently onto the bed, does a small circle at my feet, and curls up beside me. She stays there, pressed against me through the night, until the morning light filters in. I sleep like a rock (always have), and she must like that about me. I don’t stir, I don’t roll. I become, for her, something stable. Something warm.

And maybe that’s the secret of our friendship: we ask nothing of each other except what we already give.

4
In my work, I’ve been talking and writing a great deal about attention: as resistance, as care, as a political and pedagogical stance. Cookie has taught me that attention is also a kind of love. Not the grasping kind. Not the possessive or the performative kind. But the kind that notices.

The kind that watches how she steps softly onto the arm of the couch.

The kind that hears the subtle change in her breathing when she’s asleep and dreaming.

The kind that learns her rhythms, when she eats, when she wants to play, when she prefers solitude.

There is a radical humility in caring for an animal, especially an older one. Their needs are not spectacular. They do not congratulate you for meeting them. But in attending to those needs, in being present to their presence, something changes in you. You soften.

You remember how to listen.

5
Cookie is about 14 or 15 now. A senior kitty. She moves a little slower than she used to. Her fur is still soft but a little thinner. Her naps are longer. Her eyes have the same brightness but are cloudy, and it takes a second longer for her to respond when I call her name.

Time moves differently in the presence of animals. More elastic. More tender.

There’s a certain grief in loving a creature whose lifespan will not match your own. But there’s also a grace to it: a reminder that connection is not measured in years, but in moments.

And we have had many.

Twelve years of shared weekends. Twelve years of winter nights curled up on the same blanket. Twelve years of unspoken rituals: the morning stretch, the paw tap at the edge of my book, the high-five we do in exchange for a special treat.

If I am a better person today than I was a decade ago, Cookie deserves some of the credit.

6
In The Lives of Animals, J.M. Coetzee writes, “There are no bounds to the sympathetic imagination.” And yet, the world we inhabit often discourages us from practicing that kind of imagination, especially toward nonhuman others. We are conditioned to treat animals as lesser, as background, as utilitarian.

But Cookie has never been background to me.

She is a presence. A friend. A mirror, even.

In her I see slowness, gentleness, attentiveness, survival. I see how trauma lives on in the body, and how healing does too. I see how affection can be tentative but enduring. I see how love, real love, often lives in the smallest things.

And I wonder: what would our world look like if we took more seriously the intelligence, emotional life, and companionship of animals, not as projections of ourselves, but as beings in their own right?

I don’t mean this sentimentally. I mean it ethically. Politically. Philosophically.

Living with Cookie has helped me imagine other ways of being. Other ways of learning. Other ways of living in relation.

7
Sometimes, when I am reading or writing, Cookie will settle beside me, stretch out one paw, and rest it gently on the open pages. She doesn’t care what I’m writing about. She doesn’t care about arguments or footnotes or the shape of a sentence. But she knows I’m there. She knows the page matters to me. And that’s enough.

When she does this, I stop.

I stop writing. I stop editing. I stop thinking about productivity or coherence or structure.

And I just stay there, with her. Warm. Still. Present.

These are the best moments of my day.

These are the moments I want to remember.