Scarred Discrimination

A little under three years ago, I moved to a studio in Downey to live closer to LA. The apartment complex I chose had a bunch of neighborhood cats. When I first moved in, I was dating a girl who wanted to help out these cats. She found a local Facebook group that helped spay, neuter, and adopt stray cats, which helped reduce our complex’s cat population in half.

A resident favorite of my property manager is Tarzan, who managed to stay after the adoption wave. Because I have cats in my home and these apartments have screen doors, my cats and outside cats would naturally hang out at my door’s threshold, especially late in the evenings when the summer nights were hot.

Tarzan appears to have glaucoma. I have never seen this in a cat and I had never seen this in a person outside of Fetty Wap or maybe a random encounter that I had forgotten about. Tarzan would hang out with the property manager and lounge around by the stairs, the pool, and sometimes my unit.

Initially, I was hesitant to like Tarzan. I tried my best not to get too close with outside cats, as fleas or mites may spread to my cats, and I have no idea what Tarzan or the other cats do all day. After settling in a few weeks into my studio, I mentioned Tarzan to my twitch stream and described his eye. A chatter dubbed him Kitty Wap and my perspective of him really changed.

For some reason, I thought his disfigurement was a result of something aside from being born with it. Like he had a battle scar from a terrible fight. But even if that was the case, should that really change my opinion of this cat? I had thought of him as a terrifying and maybe vile creature, when he really was a sweet cat that was pretty trusting of humans. Even my neighborhood homie, who has lived here his whole life, thinks Tarzan is freaky looking, terrifying.

The pictures in this post were captured after my girlfriend and I had started leaving cat food outside for him and other cats. After a month or so of leaving some kibble outside, Tarzan and his girlfriend, and even their kittens, have regularly hung out and even sprung forward towards my door whenever I am heading out.

I have volunteered at no kill shelters, I have seen the homeless problem in Chicago and in LA, and I myself have battled with disfigurement and discrimination. Upon reflecting on all of this, it is disheartening that I myself could learn and experience so many of these things and still hold prejudice against a stray cat.

I have a lot of memories of inaction or apathy when it came to being physically different. I’d like to expand on them in a future post, especially with how it was combined with being culturally different. While we are allowed our prejudices or dislikes, we should remember others could irrationally and unfairly feel the same way about us. For now, I’d like to sign off and leave with the message that the neighborhood cats are well fed and happy, and that there are always opportunities for compassion.