NOTES ON READING FROM THE AUTHOR:

I wrote “Cutting Claws” when I was just starting out as a twenty-two year old grad student, and I was struggling to adjust to life on my own in Spokane. I moved away from what was pretty much my whole life--my family, my then-boyfriend (now fiance!), and friends in Texas to start a new journey. My cat Kiwi was pretty much the only connection I had to home, and she became a source of comfort for me. Although I often used her as an excuse to stay at home and not go out or make new friends, ultimately it was Kiwi that convinced me to get back out in the world and see what I could do on my own. A lot has changed since I decided to open myself to the possibilities that living alone entailed. If I were to rewrite this essay today, I think in some ways it would look very different, though the sense of hope at the end would remain. Though I felt hopeless and scared at the time, in the end I found a lot of happiness in Spokane. I made some lifelong friends and surprised myself with my own endurance. When I look back on this essay, I see someone in the midst of fear and uncertainty. Knowing that I was ultimately able to find my way out of that brings me a lot of peace now as we all experience more uncertainty than I ever thought possible when I wrote this essay. I view the end of this essay as my reminder, even in the vastly different place I’m in now, that sometimes our own defenses block the most breathtaking views.

AUTHOR’S SUGGESTED MUSICAL PAIRING:

CUTTING CLAWS

This Saturday, we start at six in the morning. This is pretty typical for the cat and me, not the nail cutting—this is the first attempt—but getting up together. Believe it or not, six is already a compromise. If I pull the window shade up just enough for her to wriggle underneath it before I go to bed, she won’t bite my toes until six. It’s a compromise for her because she would prefer the whole window being open, and that I never sleep in the first place. It’s a compromise for me because I don’t like pulling up that window shade at all. Not that there’s anything wrong with the view outside, the burnt cedar trees wilting outside my old San Antonio apartment are a pale comparison to the towering grandfather pines that assert themselves here in an embrace of the city that stretches all the way up to the peak of the nearby mountain. This is small-town Inland Northwest at its finest.

“These trees are like magic,” I told my boyfriend over the phone about a week after moving in.  “It feels like this whole place is a secret I’m not supposed to know.” The outside view is not the problem. It’s the view from the outside in that I’m worried about. My bedroom window looks out over the winding street below, over old wooden houses and the pines and even the mountain. I bragged to my boyfriend about my view as he was helping me move in almost two months ago.

            “Kiwi will be so pleased,” he said.

            And she was, for the first two weeks or so of us being there. I left the shade open at all times and danced over to the window sill to kiss her smooth walnut head as she sat and looked out over it all. “This is your domain,” I said. Except for our first night alone—when the noise of my next door neighbor buzzing into his apartment at 3 a.m. sounded so much like my own door opening that I propped a kitchen chair under the door knob and stayed up all night watching it—we slept soundly. The complex was mostly secure, aside from a neighbor’s infuriating habit of forgetting to close the hall door behind her. Besides, with my parents and boyfriend tromping up and down the stairs with furniture the first week I moved in, it was hard for anyone to know for certain that I actually lived alone.

*****

            Around the third week living there and my second alone, I was walking up the street parallel to mine, paper bags from the nearby grocery store chafing on my wrists, when I saw her. She was a little older than me, thirty at the most, just sitting at a desk in front of her bedroom window, a few stories up in the duplex next door. She was only wearing a lace bra, a dark violet or burgundy, and deeply focused on the laptop in front of her. The sunlight made her dark hair look streaked with red. Then, from the white, sunlit space behind her, a hand appeared, falling on her shoulder. She started to look up, so I threw my gaze to the ground and kept walking.

I entered my apartment shivering as the deep-sown seeds of anxiety began to bloom once more in my stomach. I didn’t know her, but I knew what color copper her hair turned when the sun hit it just right, knew she had someone in her bedroom, someone who put their hand on her bare shoulder as a form of greeting. I knew the power of third story windows to make us feel invisible to the world, and I knew it was a lie.

            I closed my shade that night for the first time. I was woken up at three by a paw swatting my cheek and a demanding tabby chirp that did not cease until the shade was pulled up, just enough for Kiwi to fit beneath it. The compromise was made.

*****

            All of this to say that now, two months after moving in, with a vet appointment scheduled and a cat who will fishhook the lips of anyone who tries to confine her: the trimming process starts at six.

            Not that any actual trimming begins now. In all likelihood, we won’t get to that until much later in the day. At six, I just get the trimmers out of the kitchen drawer. I don’t draw attention to them as Kiwi circles my legs, chatting about the breakfast I owe her. I leave them on the counter and make sure we both eat something. Kiwi is a people-focused cat (“a mom-focused cat,” my boyfriend often interjects) and sometimes her asking for food is just a pretense for attention. I’ll scoop a cup of chicken kibble into her bowl only for her to give it a quick sniff, turn, and hop up into my arms, purring. If I skip a meal, it’s usually because I’m working. Or worrying. Or both.

            My boyfriend calls on FaceTime while I’m making scrambled eggs. I try to show him what I’m doing: the eggs bubbling in the pan, my messy morning hair, Kiwi chasing a string hanging from my pajama pants. By the time he’s seen bit by bit what he used to be able to see all at once, the eggs are burning. I set him down on the counter beside the nail clippers.

            “What’s the plan for today?” he asks.

            I tell him I’m trimming the cat’s nails, although I probably don’t say “The Cat” but “Kiwi” or “Keebles” or “The Gremlin.” She was “The Cat” much more often when we all lived together, when her love was divided between my boyfriend and me. We both worked from nine to six each day and didn’t worry about what she got up to while we were gone. Usually, we went out for dinner, which we could walk to if it wasn’t July or August, when taking more than a few steps outside made him cranky and caused the sugar in my blood to evaporate like sweat from my skin. We would come home to her happily curled up at the foot of the bed.

Now that it’s just her and me up here, things are a little different. She hunkers down on the chair across from me and stares when I won’t let her in my lap. She sinks a claw into my legs if I try to get up while she’s sleeping on me. When I get home from work, she licks my hand and crushes her forehead into mine. I tell people who invite me out I can’t go, I have to get back to my cat, she gets lonely. When it’s just the two of us alone, I hold her close and call her Lovey, the word my old British Girl Scout troop leader often used to refer to the stuffed animal I clung to at overnight camp.

*****

            We are not Kiwi’s first family. Before us she was called Gemma, most likely due to her big eyes that are green like emeralds. She belonged to an elderly woman, who surrendered her to our local shelter a little before Kiwi turned one year old. The volunteer at the shelter told us he suspected it had something to do with Kiwi’s tendency to fixate on people. She was a demanding creature, too much for an older woman to handle. After she was surrendered, they told us it took a full month before Kiwi was ready to be adopted again. She needed time to calm down. She had her own room at the shelter because she couldn’t get along with other cats, as she was prone to bursts of anxious energy that caused her to leap from wall to wall. “She needs a lot of love and patience,” said the volunteer. “She’ll probably never be a lap cat.”

*****

            This is not my first time being alone in a strange place. I left my family in Austin to go to college in San Antonio, studied abroad in Dublin, and completed an internship in Manhattan. I know how to take care of myself. As a Type 1 Diabetic I am disabled, but I’ve proven myself able on multiple occasions. Granted I’m slow to make friends, slow to recognize when relationships go from necessary politeness to true caring, but I do branch out wherever I go. I get my work done and go on the good hikes and see the fun museums and eat at all the famous restaurants. I know how to delight in being wrong about a place, in being surprised by a culture, feeling myself dissolve into the veins of a place and bump along to a heartbeat that isn’t mine for a while. For the most part, changes in scenery and people don’t bother me. Still, the one thing I’ve never managed to do, no matter where I live, is fully protect myself.

In Dublin and Manhattan the trouble was mild, problems needing no more rescue than a friend to pull me away at the club or a group of tourists to help me stumble home away from a date that kept pushing drinks on me. San Antonio was much worse. It involved a boy who was barely a man and my dorm room bed and purple bruises like stamps in all the places I didn’t like to share even with myself. The actual Title IX trial process took six months, but the taste of it all never left me. It taught me a sour lesson. Becoming a stranger in strange places means getting to know other strangers to survive, means keeping an open mind and assuming that the intentions of others are, if not good, at least manageable. I have to believe this at least enough to walk out my own front door each day.

But openness, if done completely, invites trouble. Especially when I am forced to have my vulnerabilities on display. The cord to my insulin pump hangs at all times out of my jean pocket. I carry my groceries uphill alone once a week. I can’t always stop myself from apologizing to everyone I meet—for being on the same side of the street, for asking for help in the store, for talking about myself a minute too long.

In my first few weeks in the new apartment, I thought that things would be different, that I wouldn’t need to be so afraid. After all, I had an entire country’s distance from where the worst had happened. But the girl in the window reminded me what I was hoping to forget: when you leave the window shade all the way up, people start to peer in.

*****

            When I told my boyfriend that Kiwi had taken to waking me up via biting and yelling every morning, he said the obvious: “Get a squirt bottle. Negative reinforcement.” He asks me about it again this morning while I make breakfast. “When did she wake you up?”

            I dance around the answer. “We caught a very nice sunrise.”

            He reminds me that the store is just down the street. “Just get the squirt bottle,” he says. “It’s not like she’ll be mad at you.”

*****

            So here is the part where I didn’t tell the whole truth. Kiwi wakes me up at six, yes, but I wake her up at two. We both go to bed around midnight most nights, which is when I finish working or worrying or both or whichever. I wake up shivering in sweat at two. The nightmares vary, but they usually end with something like arms squeezing tight around my waist, a pair of floating eyes rolling in stolen ecstasy in front of my face, a warm mouth attaching its lips to mine and breathing in and in and in until all of the air is gone from inside me. I wake up breathless and turn on the lamp. I get up and walk in a slow circle around my entire apartment, looking out the peephole into the hallway to make sure the outside door is closed. Then I get back into bed and message my boyfriend, who is always fast asleep, because it is four in the morning in Texas.

            “Another nightmare,” I say into the empty blue message space. Kiwi stretches a striped paw towards my shin and sinks in one claw: go back to sleep. I turn off the lamp and watch videos on my phone on low volume. Kiwi startles a few times at random creaks and cracks in the walls. “Shh,” I say. I stroke her head until she settles back down. “It’s only us.”

It’s not that I don’t know how paranoid I seem; how silly it is to perform unarmed loops of my locked apartment at night. None of the people who have tried to take advantage of me have ever broken into where I live. In the worst case, the case of the boy-man in my nightmares who takes and takes and never gives back, I invited him over. It was I who opened the door.

*****

I’ve never actually been the one to put Kiwi in her carrier. It’s always been my boyfriend who does the undesirable deed. He loves Kiwi, but he’s not quite as sentimental, not quite as fearful of losing some special bond between them. He knows how to throw a towel over her while she’s sleeping and hold her limbs tight while she’s still confused. Before she can retaliate, he drops the squirming bundle, towel and all, into the waiting carrier and swings the door shut. It seems harsh, but it’s necessary; the first time he didn’t get the timing right, his lip was swollen with scratches for a week.

I did try to help once, but it didn’t go well. We were picking her up from my parents’ house in Austin after a trip. It was my job to keep Kiwi’s limbs pinned against her while my boyfriend wrapped her up and got her to the carrier.

We were inches from the open door when she screamed. She screamed like she was being strangled, screamed a hand into existence that flew to my throat and took hold. I let her go immediately. Her claws found purchase in my boyfriend’s chest before he wrestled her into the carrier by himself. I backed away and leaned up against a wall, feeling as if I were holding it up with my back alone, keeping the room from collapsing in on us all.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered into the fragile space. I was surprised to realize I was sobbing, trying to avoid eye contact with my boyfriend. “I couldn’t watch you squeeze her,” I said.

I sank to my knees and tried to catch the breath that felt strangely stolen from me.

*****

Back when we lived together, it was my boyfriend who held me at two in the morning each night when I woke up with a similar feeling of being squeezed. It was he who reminded me that I was safe. With him, I never thought about whether the windows were open or not. I never minded who looked inside. I relished the opportunity to walk to the store with him, to truly be a part of where we lived. It was because of him that I doubted for the first time my willingness to pack up and leave once again, and it was he who encouraged me to go anyway.

Now, sometimes when we talk on FaceTime I open the window shade all the way and show him the view.

“Look at the pines,” I say. But I’m not sure who I’m telling.

*****

I have it in my head that if I can just trim Kiwi’s claws beforehand, our first solo carrier-debacle won’t be so bad. I’ve been putting it off for too long anyway, letting her tear up pills in the woven couch and shred the bedroom carpet. She’s wary of the clippers though, like she is with most New Things. She saw them once a few weeks ago and immediately batted them out of my hand, gnawing on the rubber handle until I took it away from her.

This morning, I tell my boyfriend that I just have to wait for the right time. I’m planning to do it when she’s tired and not too worried about what I’m up to.

He’s understandably skeptical. “You really can’t go wrong with the towel method,” he says. “And the vet can clip her claws for you.”

I know his is the logical answer. Still, for me it has to be this process. Besides, cat scratches burn in the moment they happen, but they all heal eventually. It’s not just about protecting myself; I think it’s about trust. I want her to see she is safe even without the sharpest parts of her, safe like I felt in San Antonio. And I think there’s something else in it for me. It feels like the first step in something important, like if we can get through this one hardship by ourselves then maybe we can see what lies beyond it, too, even just small victories. Maybe we can pull the shade up a little higher.

I pick the clippers up off the counter and take them everywhere I go in the apartment that day, waiting for the right time.

*****

The chance comes in the middle of the afternoon. I’m sitting at my desk, the clippers next to my computer mouse. Kiwi is curled up in a tight ball in my lap, snoring in little squeaking sighs. Finally, she shifts and stretches out a leg, her paw hovering next to my tensed fingers. I leave the clippers where they are for a minute and slowly take her paw in my open hand. She stirs a little, but doesn’t wake. I press down gently on her first knuckle, coaxing a claw from its sheath. I look to her again, but she’s still asleep. Finally, I take the clippers from the desk, careful not to scrape them across the wood, and position them on the tiny curved tip of her claw. Her eyes open just a bit. She blinks blearily. I squeeze the clippers and flinch at the noise, like uncooked spaghetti snapping, and pull back quickly, expecting retribution. Instead, I feel a rumbling on my thigh. She’s purring. She leaves the paw where it is. I take a deep breath and keep going.

She watches me curiously as I take care of the rest of her claws, but she never pulls away.

“There,” I say after I’ve finished. “All done.”

Slowly, like she’s testing something, Kiwi responds by reaching her paw up to the center of my chest. She rests it on top of my ribcage, on vulnerable skin. She extends her newly trimmed claws slightly so that they poke through my shirt but don’t quite graze me. It’s as if she’s asking me to examine them: how did we do?

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” I say, but for some reason I am whispering.

I sit still in this moment and feel, for the first time since moving, lucky to be on my own for a while. Kiwi looks at me with expectant eyes, green like emeralds and like pines. We wait to see what I’ll do next.