Jackie Reviews: Lost Cat : A Memoir by Mary Gaitskill

I seem to have been turning often to short philosophical books recently and I have read and re-read the American novelist Mary Gaitskill’s powerful essay-length memoir, Lost Cat, over the past few weeks.

Gaitskill relates how she is persuaded to take care of a semi-wild kitten found at a local farmhouse whilst she is on a writer’s retreat in Italy. She then decides – and persuades her husband Peter – that she must take him back to the US with her because she has fallen in love with him against all her expectations and does not feel that she can abandon him: ‘Then one day he looked at me differently . . . it seemed to me that he was looking at me with love.’

Gattino disappears from their garden only a short time after arrival in the US and Gaitskill is devastated. She frantically searches for him over the next year, refusing to give up hope that he will return or that she will find him. Her emotional response to the cat’s loss is deeply entwined with the loss of her father and her relationship with two siblings from the inner city, Natalia and Caesar, who become regular visitors to their house during the holidays as part of a project to give them a break from their home environment. As she comes to terms with the possibility that Gattino will not return, Gaitskill reflects on her experience of love and loss, questioning her motives and feelings in relation to the children and her own childhood – all of which has been set in motion by the loss of this tiny cat.

Lost Cat was originally published as a Granta essay in 2009 but has been reissued by Daunt Books in a striking new edition. Gaitskill’s style is at times terse and at others lyrical, with startling insights and turns of phrase – it is a deep and thought-provoking piece of writing and I can highly recommend it.

You can request ‘Lost Cat’ here.