if walls could talk

Michael Bussell, Erika Hickle, Emma Pryde

July, 2019

 

 

My parents would keep their two cats in the basement when they went on vacation. I’ve always felt bad about that. If you tried hard enough you could trick yourself into thinking they’d be happy down there; lots of hidden nooks to crawl in, bugs and spiders to hunt, comfy piles of laundry to nap on.

After a rain storm one of those cats never came back inside to the house. In her grief, my mom called a pet psychic to get answers. The woman on the other end of the phone claimed that our cat was taking a trip and would be back one day. He needed a vacation too, apparently. My mom asked the psychic why our cat would leave us. We fed him and took care of him and gave him a warm and easy life. The psychic told us our cat didn’t like the dark, and he hated staying down in the basement. We never saw that cat again.

There are corners of the crawlspace where his memory is crystalized by pieces of fossilized shit. I found some installing this show, and it made me happy to think of how much he must be enjoying his holiday.