Jared Shurin’s Shelfie
These shelves sit on my dresser in the bedroom.
These are my daily notebooks. They cost £2.95 from Muji and they are decidedly unserious. I’ve been using these since December 2017, as you can see. They’re dog-eared and torn and full of post-its. Several of them are held together with tape.
My handwriting is indecipherable, which is fine, because the contents are boring. To-do lists (incomplete), meeting notes, doodles. A few heavily-underlined words that may have, later, cured into a fully-baked idea. The ghosts of diagrams to come. I learned a long time ago that my brain likes it when I write. I take more thorough notes if I’m typing; I better process the information at the time if I’m scribbling. If I’m scrawling, I’m thinking.
There’s always one of these in my backpack. They join me on panels and travel with me on planes. I’ve had to feed one to a shredder after mistakenly taking it into a secure area. I’ve misplaced others on trains, in hotels, and in meeting rooms around the world. The historical record is unblemished by their absence. They are intentionally unintentional. Although useless in and of themselves, I enjoy seeing them in the morning. They’re gentle reminder of the adventures I’ve had and the work I’ve accomplished. They tell me that I do things.
The other item of note is the crochet cat. We have two of those in the house, one each for our cats at the time, purchased from a (now closed) cafe in Manchester. There’s a black one elsewhere in the house, perched on a bookcase because Harvey loved high places.
This little tortoiseshell is for Agatha, better known as Peep. She was a tiny, matronly, ferocious presence, and the center of our home. Her nickname — because cats gather names upon names — was the Duchess. She was possessed of the extreme hauteur found only in cats and landed gentry.
We ran a poor ducal household, and Peep was forced to reprimand us constantly. Dinner was never on time, I would work late, we would go on holiday, a passing car was too loud, the weather was too hot or too cold. She would keep close watch on our child at bathtimes, not trusting us on our own, and admonished us when we failed in any parenting duties. All our many errors would merit a series of aggrieved, squeaky set-downs. (The Merlin birdsong app confidently identifed her as a ‘Coot’, which tells you everything about her distinctive voice.)
Peep once ate a Post-It note to prove a point. I’m not sure what the point was, but she worked her way through the entire thing, maintaining eye contact the whole time.
I’ve had animals around me for most of my life, but Peep was the first pet that belonged to me. It was also the first time I belonged to a pet. Peep took great care of our whole family — even, begrudgingly, the other cats. But, most of all, she watched over me.
We had breakfast together in the mornings. She spent the day on a blanket beside my computer, so she could keep an eye on me (and show her butt to any important clients). She brought me all the tastiest parts of the mice, plating extracted organs for me to admire. Anne bought a rocking chair, and Peep took to it immediately, fending off all comers while impatiently waiting for me to join her in the evenings. She would curl up under my arm every night, and I would tell her stories; secret ones, only for her.
Peep’s tail never, ever stopped moving. It lashed back and forth, like the ticking of a clock. It added to the impression that she was always a little bit peeved with the world around her. When I was ill with Covid, the most ill I hope to ever be, I remember nothing about the passage of time. An endless fog of lying there, concentrating on forcing out every breath, and always the tap, tap, tap of her tail on my side.
Peep died almost exactly a year ago, and I am — very clearly — still not over it. After a long illness, she had a period of wonderful good health. Then she discreetly, tidily passed away one night. It was as if she wanted to spare us the trauma of ever having to put her to sleep. I am grateful to her for so much, but most of all for this.
Agatha
Being an animal’s person is a huge responsibility. They love us with furious intensity. You have to earn that love every day. You can’t bullshit a cat; they are immune to both reason and persuasion. You can only prove yourself worthy, over and over and over again. Be the best version of yourself and hope that is enough.
Anne recently gave me Esther Woolfson’s Corvus, and this passage struck me:
As it may be after any death, of someone, something close, we may lose a part of ourselves, however small a part, one that anchors or measures us, places us in our particular constellation, if not among the stars, then in our reflection on this earth.
I am so scared that I will forget Peep, or anything about her. And in that forgetting, losing a piece of myself. What if that small part of me that went with her was the best in me?
Our brief is to write about what it is on the shelf that’s most important to you, and why. The books on this shelf matter to me because they remind me of what I do and who I am. The cat is a reminder that, at least in someone’s eyes, I can always be better.
Jared Shurin is the co-editor of Shelfies. He’s also the editor of, amongst other things, The Elements of Dark Academia, publishing shortly from Vintage Classics.
Shelfies is edited by Lavie Tidhar and Jared Shurin.
Join us on Instagram @shelfiesplease.