My Cat Is Trans

You can listen to me read this story here.

I GOT WILD, and tied a scarf onto Sasha’s collar. It’s azalea-colored, same as the band around her neck, both in velvet. They were sold as part of the same set, but separately—like the company was daring me to give her such gay neck-decor.

I’ll mention here that Sasha was assigned male at birth. I didn’t know it when I chose her through the Humane Society partition, and finding out didn’t change my sense that she was more suited to she/her pronouns.

Before I got her azalea adornment, I took Sasha to her first vet appointment, and the vet tech said that her sex was in question: Apparently, the shelter paperwork said that she’d had her testicles removed. But it also said that she’d had ovaries removed.

I’ve long had spectacular trans-dar.

The vet tech delivered this information like the very idea was c r a z y, even though cats, like humans, are sometimes intersex. And listen: I had never called the shelter and demanded to be put in touch with the sterilizing doctor to ask if Sasha had indeed had ovaries as well as testes, or if it was a mistake on her paperwork. Because while I’d noticed it, I honestly hadn’t given it a full second’s thought.

Trying to make everyone in the room comfortable about gender, as we trans often must, I stated calmly, almost apologetically, that Sasha was born with testicles, the empty, fuzzy bag of which was visible, and also used she/her pronouns. The veterinarian in the room set about vigorously examining her genitals to settle the question anyway.

“Sasha is male,” she said sternly, looking me very seriously in the face.

She repeated it multiple times. I couldn’t help but wonder if she felt that this gender lesson was especially important to impress upon me because I have a beard and was wearing ladies’ pants.

Because, I feel like even a vet who doesn’t know Sasha at all must know: Sasha does not fucking care about her gender. I met a trans person once, before I had a pet, who said that people were hostile and unapologetic about misgendering them (You can’t expect me to get your pronouns! Pronouns are too complicated!)—but super apologetic about misgendering their dog.

Though this trans human being was very much wounded by misgendering, the dog very much wasn’t. Oh! I’m sorry!, people said when they got the dog’s sex wrong. I’m so sorry.

Sasha doesn’t need her gender assignment to reflect her empty ball bag. My ancestors told me she was a “she”; even some rando who came over to buy something off Craigslist commented that she had Two-Spirit energy. When my friend Riviera came to visit, she said, without knowing Sasha’s genital situation, that she seemed like a girl; my friend Chris, similarly, shook his head when I asked if she seemed like a boy.

Again, it doesn’t matter to her, because she’s a cat. But also: My cat happens to be trans.