Together We Stray, 40" x 40" diameter, aluminum metal print, scanned image of intermingled cat and human hair, cat litter, dandruff, 2016
Together We Stray marks the death of our beloved companion animal Chester cat.
When I was sixteen years old, a stray cat, who I would later describe as my “soul-mate,”walked out of the bushes on our family’s farm and into my heart. We instantly bonded and I began caring for him and when it became apparent he had no home we adopted him. He had lived a hard, rough-and-tumble farm life and we later learned from a veterinarian’s examination that he was lucky to be alive at all (an XRAY image showed tiny pieces of buckshot from a hunter’s rifle lodged in his skull). Happy with his indoor life of retirement, he was the grandfather figure to our other adopted cats, grooming and caring for them. He had the kindest soul. Together over many years, we traveled, moving from home to home until we finally settled on the very same farm that Chester once roamed. Home again, we would go on supervised walks outside, traversing the farm, taking in the sights and smells and enjoying the warm sun on our backs. He lived 22 long years and it’s impossible to describe the deep sense of connection we shared, or the deep sense of loss we felt with his passing.
Before he passed, I saved tufts of his hair from his daily grooming. After he passed, in a process of mourning, I co-mingled and combined his tufts of hair with strands of mine and laid them down on an open flatbed scanner. I turned off the lights in the room and scanned our hair, not knowing what the results might be. When the scanned image appeared I was surprised to see tiny bits of stray cat litter and dandruff that had been caught in both his hair brush and mine, encircling our tufts of hair in a sea of blackness, like a vast sea of stars in the cosmos.
Together We Stray, helped me in my process of mourning and visually conveys contradictory feelings of both loss and connection. I like to think we are still roaming together, linked by the stars we are all made of, interconnected with all the rest of life in this vast multiverse.
When I was sixteen years old, a stray cat, who I would later describe as my “soul-mate,”walked out of the bushes on our family’s farm and into my heart. We instantly bonded and I began caring for him and when it became apparent he had no home we adopted him. He had lived a hard, rough-and-tumble farm life and we later learned from a veterinarian’s examination that he was lucky to be alive at all (an XRAY image showed tiny pieces of buckshot from a hunter’s rifle lodged in his skull). Happy with his indoor life of retirement, he was the grandfather figure to our other adopted cats, grooming and caring for them. He had the kindest soul. Together over many years, we traveled, moving from home to home until we finally settled on the very same farm that Chester once roamed. Home again, we would go on supervised walks outside, traversing the farm, taking in the sights and smells and enjoying the warm sun on our backs. He lived 22 long years and it’s impossible to describe the deep sense of connection we shared, or the deep sense of loss we felt with his passing.
Before he passed, I saved tufts of his hair from his daily grooming. After he passed, in a process of mourning, I co-mingled and combined his tufts of hair with strands of mine and laid them down on an open flatbed scanner. I turned off the lights in the room and scanned our hair, not knowing what the results might be. When the scanned image appeared I was surprised to see tiny bits of stray cat litter and dandruff that had been caught in both his hair brush and mine, encircling our tufts of hair in a sea of blackness, like a vast sea of stars in the cosmos.
Together We Stray, helped me in my process of mourning and visually conveys contradictory feelings of both loss and connection. I like to think we are still roaming together, linked by the stars we are all made of, interconnected with all the rest of life in this vast multiverse.