Baby Pepper
'I’ve always thought of myself as a dog person.'
I’ve always thought of myself as a dog person. That is, until I moved in with Masha and met Perchik.
Perchik means “pepper” in Russian—or rather, “baby pepper.” And the name suits him not just because he’s ash black but also because when I first met him, my eyes got red and swollen, tears prohibiting my vision, as if I had used an entire pepper spray can on my face.
I was always allergic to cats—or any animals, really—with rare exceptions. A quick Google search tells me that animals emit a certain protein that makes some people allergic, so it’s not the hair that’s the problem. But I knew that before I could even use Google.
Ever since I turned five and my grandmother’s preference for cats evolved toward the hairless type, I’d still turn into a crying, red-faced monster every time I neared one.
“How can you be allergic?” my grandmother used to yell in protest, as if my (natural) bodily reaction was an insult to her feline friends. “You are a liar!”
She’s known for such accusations, especially toward little children. Once, several years ago, I witnessed her scold my three-year-old cousin, who didn’t want to finish eating her borscht soup.
My cousin sat at the table, crying because she wasn’t able to string coherent sentences yet, her face conveying that if she ate another spoonful, she’d throw up.
My grandmother raised her arms in the air and exclaimed, “I am telling you! She’s doing this on purpose!”
In 2021, I lived in Georgia. A friend and his wife left their dog with us for a romantic getaway outside Tbilisi. I was overjoyed by the prospect of spending time with a canine creature.
Kate and I have always wanted to get a dog. But my mother (rightfully so) believed it would eventually become her burden.
“Who will take her for walks every morning?” she asked me.
“Me,” I’d say.
“And in the evening?”
“Also me.”
“And who’d be cleaning up her shit whenever she shits? Because you know, dogs shit a lot.”
“Also me. It’s my dog, I’ll take responsibility,” I’d reply, though with less confidence.
“And who’ll be paying for her treatments if she gets sick? And if she dies? And what if she gets hit by a car and is left paralyzed? Will you love her then? Will you love her if she is no longer mobile or eats your favorite book or scratches the furniture or pees on your MacBook?”
“Uh,” I’d say, “probably, yes.” Though at this point, I was not sure anymore that I wanted a dog.
My ex-wife and I sat on the second floor of our penthouse apartment that we paid $500 a month for (Tbilisi was that cheap at the time) and watched Sex Education on TV, Jessy-the-Dog by our side.
It took me two and a half minutes before I felt my throat clench and my vision become blurry because of the tears covering my eyes, pimples appearing on my skin.
We called our friends and said, “Sorry, guys. It’s just not working out.”
Jessy stayed with our neighbor, who shot pigeons with a pistol every morning.
All this to say that when I met Masha and learned she had a cat, I got nervous.
What if this thing gets serious? I remember thinking about my relationship with her. There was clear chemistry between us. But something told me that between Perchik-the-cat and Serge-the-new-boyfriend, the choice would be obvious.
Thankfully, Masha quickly resolved the allergy situation as with most situations—including my toenails, which grow as if on steroids and leave bloodied scars on Masha’s legs at night.
A simple swap of Perchik’s food from whatever he was eating to non-allergenic suddenly made me able to come into Masha’s apartment and spend more than five minutes in the same room with her beloved cat. This was convenient because once I realised Masha's fondness for the cat, I knew I wouldn’t stand a chance.
“So here I was,” I imagine Perchik saying in an interview, while licking himself, not looking at the documentary crew, “living my life with my human, all was good. Suddenly, this guy shows up.” He stops licking himself and looks into the camera, eyes wide, as if to portray the absurdity of the situation. “And I mean, like, why do I have to change what I eat? Maybe he needs to fix himself, so as not to cry like a fucking baby every time he sees me!”
And then he takes a beat and says, “My name is Perchik, and this is my Masterclass.”
Even though I have had decades of experience, I still don’t know how to be around cats. Come to think of it, the same goes for human beings, but I’ve learned to at least fake that. With dogs, it’s easy—no matter what you do, they love you. All dogs are needy, and that makes all humans who have dogs, regardless of their sex, abusive boyfriends.
“I want to play! I want to play! I want to play!” says the dog.
“Not now,” says the human, scrolling their phone. Then, they take a piece of paper, crumple it into a ball and throw it to the other side of the room. “Here, catch.”
With cats, it’s the other way around. They’re the abusers, and you’re the needy one, constantly chasing them around the apartment, demanding their love.
You take them in your arms, hug them, and kiss them and say, “ohmygodwhatacutieooooooooohhhhh,” and they wait patiently for a couple of seconds and then meow, “That’s enough. I said enough!” and scratch your right eye out.
It took Perchik some time to get used to me, though I am not sure he’s 100% there yet. Then again, I am not sure cats ever do get used to human beings, even though they’ve been around us for thousands of years.
I once read that dogs evolved from wolves around 30,000 years ago and then co-evolved with humans, which is why they understand our subtle emotions so well, and why we love them so much. It made sense for both parties to join forces—humans weren’t the strongest hunters or fastest animals, but we hunted in packs, and wolves could come in handy when chasing down a large animal. For their help, they got the scraps, and they learned to be happy with their lot.
Cats, though? What are they for?
If Perchik could talk and read my Substack, he’d probably ask a similar question. “What’s Serge for?”
For a significant part of our life together, I was unemployed and writing silly stuff online about myself—a sort of narcissistic coping mechanism. When I wasn’t writing, I’d regularly chase my feline stepson down the corridor, then catch him and hug and kiss him to his protesting meows.
At the start of our relationship, he’d hit me with his claws and leave bloodied stains on my arms. Now, as if accepting his fate and Masha’s poor judgment, he simply walks into the other room once I enter it and climbs under the bed, as if waiting it out.
When I think of it, some of Masha’s friends treat me the same way. Last week, when I proposed to Masha, one of her friends said, “Congratulations! Wait. So this guy – Serge, he’s like, what, forever?”
Perchik was born in a cardboard box under a bridge in Suffolk.
“A young cat with baby kittens was found under the bridge,” was how the Suffolk veterinarian described it, with emphasis on young, as if the cat in question was careless, off the pill, and her future was now in jeopardy.
What were you thinking?! the cat’s father must have yelled, a vein popping on his forehead, whiskers turning gray by the minute.
When I asked Masha how she got to have Perchik, she replied, “Oh, it’s simple, really. The veterinarian who brought him in was a friend of my ex-boyfriend’s brother’s ex-girlfriend’s sister.”
The mother’s fate is unknown, but the kittens quickly found themselves new families. That is, everyone except Perchik. He was the only kitten left at the vet, and, climbing all the way back to the opposite side of the box, he was waiting to see what Fate would bring him.
And Fate brought him Masha.
“The moment I saw him,” she recalled, “I just knew I had to take him!”
“Wait, but wasn’t he your only option?” I asked.
“Why do you have to ruin everything?”
My father once told me, “When you have a wife, you must love her kids,” which he does well, getting along nicely with his stepson.
Being only 25, my girlfriend doesn’t have children, not yet (though we’re working on it), but she does have Perchik, which comes as a close second.
Every time we go anywhere for longer than two hours, Masha anxiously bites her nails and says, “I wonder how Perchik is doing. He’s there all alone…”
To which I reply, “But he’s a cat. He likes being alone.”
Not that that ever solves anything, because Masha feels guilt for not spending quality time with him—much like, I imagine, she will once we have kids.
Still, it’s hard to define what constitutes as quality time for Perchik. You see those cats on Instagram who copy their owners’ behaviors (I was going to parrot the modern way of saying “parents,” but that term makes me sick because no, Masha didn’t have Perchik come out of her vagina, so no, she is not his mother) or purr affectionately when their human comes home... but that’s not Perchik.
Some cats might treat you as family, but Perchik treats Masha and me like he’s a rich Suffolk nepo baby and we’re his slaves. There’s a certain Saltburn vibe about him, if only in the sense that he walks around our apartment naked to Murder on the Dancefloor while Masha and I are fully clothed.
Mostly, he lives from food to food, staring out the window in between. His existence is pretty dull, but any attempt to make it more fun is met with strong resistance (read: meows that sound like GET THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME). He knows the words budesh kushat’ (“will you have food?”), and those are his favorite words in any language. Say them, and he runs to the bowl in the kitchen, and, let’s just say, there better be something there.
I always thought it was the biggest symptom of a lack of direction in life if someone created an Instagram account for their pet. But a few weeks back, I gave in and made one for Perchik (subscribe to @perchik.gr) and filled it with photos of him with captions of what I imagine he might be saying or thinking in his native Suffolk-feline dialect.
For some reason, none of it is nice.
I didn’t tell Masha that I’d created an Instagram but simply made one and followed her. Then I (Perchik) took a photo of the empty food bowl for his Story and tagged Masha with a question mark emoji.
Which, I am sure, is precisely what he would do if he had opposable thumbs.
Perchik is both Masha’s biggest source of joy and anxiety. People who know Masha can’t imagine her yelling or screaming at anyone—let alone getting anxious about things. She has the quality of a purebred horse: very controlled, elegant, always wearing mascara, always with a cigarette and a glass of Prosecco in hand. But before she started taking antidepressants, I’d jump at sudden yells coming from the living room.
“PERCHIK, CAN YOU PLEASE STOP THAT!!!”
Upon entering the living room, I’d discover that the couch was pissed on, the garbage bag was overturned, and Masha had the look of someone prepared to kill and eat whatever it was she just killed.
Other times, she and Perchik get along well.
They sit together on the couch, and Masha strokes his luxurious fur, muttering, “What a wonderful scarf you’d make, Monsieur Perchik. Just wonderful.”
The question of why we have cats is really a philosophical one. Why have anything? Jobs, relationships, material possessions, kids. I recently met a guy at ZIMA’s karaoke in Soho who had been married for ten years, and when I asked him whether they planned on having kids, he shook his head.
“Why not?” I asked.
“I like my freedom,” he said.
But what’s the purpose of having freedom anyway if not to fill it with something else?
I’m not trying to convince people to have kids—it’s a personal choice, after all, and an expensive, time-consuming, and selfless one at that—but neither am I buying the “freedom” argument. Freedom is pointless unless it’s deliberately avoided. People who say they want freedom really want the ability to choose how to escape freedom.
When it comes to cats, they are virtually useless and angry and avoidant and behave like assholes and have to be fed and looked after and shit and piss on your couch and get sick and eventually die and serve no practical purpose except an aesthetic one—but we have them anyway and love them because people need something to do and someone to love.
And that, I think, is a good enough reason to have a cat.
Because after a year of living with Perchik, I can’t imagine not having him. When people ask me whether I have kids or plan to have kids, I say, “I have Perchik.”
He’s what he is, but he’s also my son, and I love the bastard.
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"Dogs have masters, cats have servants" :) Congratulations Serge on your engagement, Masha is very lovely :)