Patricia Lockwood Tells The Cut All About Her Cat Miette

Poet and author Patricia Lockwood talks to The Cut about her cat, Miette, who became famous on Twitter after threatening to jail her cat-mom for one-thousand years. "There’s something very pure about having that be one of your most retweeted tweets. Because nobody gets mad about it, everyone is just like — oh, I’ve met cats! That is how they are! Or like, This is what my cat does!" More:

On Miette’s three games:

Her three games are — the first is Rug, where she just runs to a fur rug and you pet her while she looks up at you with admiration. Her second game is called Rice, which is where you open a secret cabinet and allow her to lick a bag of jasmine rice that has been in there for two years. I don’t know if it secretes a sort of hormone or something where she’s like, Oh, I’m married to this bag of rice, fah-tha! So you open the little cabinet and she goes in there and she just licks the bag for as long as you hold the door open. We have literally no idea why. And Rat — she plays with a little rat that she’s had since she was a little kitten, when it was basically as big as her body. She just sort of sits with it. She’s like, I love this rat. I know we’re supposed to be mortal biological enemies, but I love this rat. I would never harm him.

On gratitude for Miette, and Miette’s gratitude:

I would literally jump off a bridge if she weren’t here. I’ve never been so devoted to an animal in all of my days. There’s something about — you feel like, with cats you’ve rescued who have health problems, they know. A little bit. And they’re, like, especially grateful. There’s just something about the feeling where you saved her life, and she’s like, I kind of know that. I know that you did that, and I just want to hang out with you all the time...