Panza

We feed a stray cat. I named her Panza, which means belly in Spanish. Panza is a female cat who comes twice a day for food and to hang out in our backyard. She lies down on our patio furniture as if she purchased it with her savings, she owns every inch of our deck. She struts, sunbathes, and scratches anything she can with ease, licking and sharpening her claws one after the other.

One morning my husband confessed he fed the cat we had spotted for some weeks lying next to our tree. But this particular morning she came closer to the house while my husband did his yoga routine. She meowed at him through the glass door and he opened it to feed her cat food, an easy task since we already feed two indoor cats.

Needless to say she now comes daily, standing next to the same glass door with her impatient and demanding glare, tapping the glass if we dare to be slow. It’s been almost a year since she got this amazing deal, yet when we open the door and kneel to place her dish out she scurries away, all the attitude she throws at us protected by the glass door vanishes while she hides under the outdoor furniture. We thought her fear of us would eventually diminish. She occasionally lets us pet her, but she is not comfortable with either of us. It feels strange, mostly because our indoor cats are unusually friendly. How we wish she would get closer, but she will probably never warm up to us and it’s ok.

In fact it’s more than ok, I realize how much she reminds me of myself. How much I love people but how uncomfortable I can feel sometimes in social settings as if I needed a glass between them and I like Panza. And even though I don’t run under a couch like she does, and can carry on socially in a “normal” way, inside I do feel like hiding. Hiding myself from strangers, and even from people close to me. Only a handful of people outside my family truly know me. After years of hating myself for this, nowadays I prefer it that way.

What an ambitious goal to fully get to know oneself. It’s a work in progress for me, and today Panza has helped peel yet another layer by allowing me to see myself in her.