Essay, Interrupted (By Kitten)

A foiled attempt to be somber

The following is the beginning of an essay draft I meant to polish up and send to you yesterday. It was serious, and heartfelt, and by way of a content warning, I want you to know that it contains mention of gun violence, and that it veers off and does not conclude.

If you hold on, there will be kitten photos. I promise. There weren’t supposed to be, but, famously, the best-laid schemes of mice and kittens go oft awry.

***

I am writing about Abraham Lincoln. It is the Fourth of July, 2025.

I got up early, fed the big cat and the new kitten, played with both (separately, as the former wants nothing to do with the latter), made oatmeal, took out the trash, lit a few candles and opened up the windows for some fresh, humid Chicago air on a day that will likely prove stormy.

In nearby Highland Park, one of Chicago’s beautiful suburbs – the type with Frank Lloyd Wright buildings and Frank Lloyd Wright-ish buildings and a high school that looks like a college, or a John Hughes movie high school – it is the third anniversary of the mass shooting that saw seven die and 48 sustain injuries.

My friend Gayle Brandeis owns a bookstore over there called Secret World Books, and she’s giving a workshop this weekend for people who seek solace through writing. Gayle is an author, a poet and a light. She and her family moved to Highland Park two months after the massacre. She seeks, always, to help.

I am down in the city, and I am writing a biography of Abraham Lincoln. I have a very busy full-time day job, one that does a lot of things around healthcare, sometimes inclusive of responding to mass shootings. I don’t remember Highland Park as well as the first big one after I started the job. October 1, 2017, the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Las Vegas.

I am tired. That’s nothing new, for any of us.

To research the president who led the country into and through the Civil War is not so much an escape from our times as a deeper dive into them. This is not to compare that occupant of the White House to the current one. But it does explode the silly notion that “we used to talk to each other” and “discourse used to be polite” until…until, what? The advent of the Internet? Of rock ‘n’ roll music? Of the telegraph?

To study history is to study fact and mythology, and to see where one begat the other. It goes both ways, sometimes.

This country has, in ways implicit and explicit, always been at war with itself.

33333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333tudy history for many reasons, and one of them is the notion that by paying attention to the past, we can avoid its pitfalls in our present and future. That so few of our elected leaders and fellow voters choose to engage in this practice to any meaningful degree is no argument against our continuing to do it, and to encourage others to follow suit.

***

It was a solemn meditation, and it was heartfelt, and I was starting to feel more and more upset and I would’ve worked it out in the essay, whatever I wanted to say to you in total, but it was – as I think you can surmise, based on the 3333333333333333333 etc. and the headline – unceremoniously interrupted by a kitten.

This is Charlie. He’s from the streets. He’s new.

***

To be a writer is to dive deep, focus intently, and - more often than not - only be taken out of one’s creative reverie by some sort of signal. An alarm helps. The chiming of a gentle bell, if one can rig up or simulate that sort of thing. A child or partner calling one’s name. Or a kitten jumping on your shit when you were really, maybe getting somewhere, or at least that’s what you tell yourself when you fuck off for the rest of the day and try to distribute equal amounts of treats to your two cats (you have two now, you absolute lunatic) and maybe you also have a snack or three and take a nap and have sex and look at a butterfly or imagine looking at a butterfly and listen to pieces of several podcasts.

***

It is the fifth of July, 2025, and I am still writing about Abraham Lincoln. I am always thinking, or reading, and sometimes even writing, about Abraham Lincoln. Inevitably, as I read and write and think about Abraham Lincoln, I think about today, about these days, about where we are and where we’ve been and where we may be going.

Like so many authors before me, I am attempting to consider serious subjects while attempting to raise a goofy cat. My boyfriend claims that there are two kinds of cats: cave cats and tree cats. I am, we agree, a cave cat, as are so many authors: fond of darkness, of coziness, of alone time, of one-on-one time.

Charlie is, as it turns out, a tree cat. A party animal. He wants to soak up the sun. He wants to cuddle, except when he wants to romp. He wants to befriend every living being in this abode, including the older cat, Polly the Demon Queen, who can’t stand him unless he’s a couple feet away and not making direct eye contact with her, in which case she can deal with him. They have napped in this way and have never had physical contact.

I keep them apart as much as I can, though they see each other through a baby gate and Charlie often escapes from his nursery, which is meant to be my office and library and one day may be these things. Charlie is recovering from ringworm (A rash! Not an actual worm! It’s basically athlete’s foot! I wash and disinfect everything a lot!) as well as a cold and also an eye infection. He is responding well to his medications. I began charting the schedule of dosages until it became a habit, and now I just do it. (Okay, I still have every dosage scheduled on my calendar.)

Charlie doesn’t give a shit about history, unless we define survival-focused pattern recognition as history (which for humans, it certainly can be.) Charlie cares about the now. Play with me, now. Feed me, now. Give me fresh water, now. Don’t make me go to sleep even though I’m falling asleep while trying to still play or eat or drink fresh water, now.

Is this now an essay about learning to be more present and less worried thanks to the influence of a kitten? No, that would be stupid. Everything is fucked except for the many lovely things that aren’t, and we must cherish the lovely things and acknowledge the fucked up things and do the best we can with what we have, but you know that, and loads of other authors have written about that and will write about that, and when the dictator-in-chief is shipping innocent people off to concentration camps abroad and building others domestically, it’s fair to fucking say that we don’t have time to minimize shit in the service of a twee little tale about a kitten.

I’m just telling you that I meant to write to you about serious things, and I’m sure I will in future, but this creature distracted me from disturbing professional, personal and cultural memories by stomping on my keyboard.

What a luxury it is, and a privilege, to be able to write these words to you. To be permitted, for now, to do so. Nothing is off the table when a mad king sits at its head, his salivating minions on either side, tasting his food, spoon-feeding him the garbage he craves: pain, suffering, the tears of parents and children torn from one another. Monsters can eat anything they like and live.

The best-laid schemes, indeed.

***

Please take care of yourselves as best you can. I always say that. Perhaps it sounds like a hollow sentiment. I don’t mean it as such.

Not a one of us truly knows the totality of what happens in another person’s life, particularly as we cannot peer into the depths (or shallows) of each other’s minds. I will surmise that if you are here, reading this now, that you are not inured to the pain of those around you, and that you care a little bit.

I am thinking of you, and of us all.

Thank you for being here.

Sara Benincasa

July 5, 2025

Chicago, Illinois