Nine-Nine was not part of the plan. She appeared at my mom’s house in Belize and, for reasons none of us fully understand, kept coming back.
At first, she was simply a visitor. She hunted mice around the yard, which my mom appreciated. But she was also affectionate. She let my family pet her, and she purred. What began as a practical arrangement became something harder to name. A cat no one had gone looking for had found a place in our lives.
A few weeks after she started coming around, Nine-Nine became pregnant. On October 7, she gave birth to five kittens. Suddenly, the story was no longer about one cat who happened to visit. There were six lives to think about.
The easy version of this story would be to say that we adopted her, or that she adopted us. I am not sure either description is quite right. Nine-Nine is an outdoor cat with a life I know only in part. I do not know where she came from, where she goes, or what she would call this arrangement if she could. I only know that she returns, accepts my family’s affection, and has become someone whose well-being matters to me.
I should be honest about something. I am not there. I live in Las Vegas, and most of what I know about Nine-Nine comes from my mom, my sister, and my brother. That has not stopped me from worrying about whether she is eating enough and who is checking on the kittens. Here at home, I have four cats who live like kings, and one queen. I know exactly what they eat and where they sleep. With Nine-Nine, I know almost nothing, and I worry anyway. She has no idea I exist. And still, she matters to me.
I have been thinking about that word: belonging. We tend to speak about it as though it is a status someone gives us. We belong to a family, an organization, a community, a place. Someone decides whether we are inside or outside. But what if belonging is less about being claimed and more about being considered?
As a curandero, I spend a lot of time paying attention to relationships, especially those we overlook. When I approach a plant, I try to notice what is happening around it. Sometimes a bee arrives, and I leave the plant alone. The bee needs something from it too. That small encounter reminds me that the world is not organized around what I want to take from it.
Nine-Nine has brought a similar question into my life. What does it mean to care for a living being without making that being mine?
I could tell myself that she earns her place by catching mice. Humans are very good at finding a useful explanation for why someone deserves to be welcomed. But now there are five kittens, and they have done absolutely nothing to earn anything from us. They have simply arrived. I find that worth sitting with.
Of course, a cat is not a person, and I am not going to pretend that her choices can explain human relationships. Still, her presence has made me notice how quickly I turn a relationship into a question of ownership, usefulness, or obligation.
I encounter similar questions in my work with people. We speak about belonging in families, communities, and organizations, often as though declaring someone welcome is enough. But what happens when someone needs more than we expected? When they make a mistake, disagree with us, or can no longer offer the thing that first made them useful? Perhaps belonging is not something we can announce into existence. Perhaps it is revealed in what we make possible for one another.
Ancestral healing practices have taught me to think about care as a relationship rather than a performance. There is what I intend, what I do, and what the other living being actually experiences. Those things are not always the same. Paying attention means being willing to find that out and to change how I show up.
I do not know what will happen as Nine-Nine’s kittens grow. They may stay close to the house, or they may one day make their way elsewhere. Caring for them will not give any of us the right to decide their whole future. There is tenderness in that, and some discomfort too. We like to know where a relationship is going before we give much of ourselves to it.
For now, there is a mother cat at my mom’s house in Belize and five little lives who have made that place more complicated, and more alive, than I expected.
I am grateful for their presence, even from thousands of miles away. And I am still wondering what it means to care for a living being whose life will never be mine to claim.
Nine-Nine, meanwhile, has five kittens to raise. I doubt she is particularly interested in my thoughts about belonging.
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