The Kitten

By: Golan Shahar, Ph.D.

It was my last session of the day, and night had fallen. In contrast to my polished clinic in Tel Aviv, my clinic in Be’er Sheva sits in a run-down neighborhood, where cats move freely between parked cars and open stairwells. During the day, the noise is of traffic and voices, and of whining cats. At night, you hear what is close.

I like the Be’er Sheva clinic much more.

She arrived, as she always did, five minutes early. She was a second-year law student who grew up in one of the poorer neighborhoods in town. Athletic, good-looking, highly articulate. She came for low-grade obsessive–compulsive symptoms, and we had agreed to work according to a well-established behavioral protocol. Still, she constantly shifted the discussion toward her romantic relationship. Even though both parties loved each other, the relationship was in near-constant turmoil. They fought about what she called “things that never happen.” Always one small step away from breaking up.

We were supposed to be reviewing her exposure exercises from the previous week. But I didn’t mind the shift. I’m used to moving with patients between symptoms and the more neglected parts of their lives.

Midway through the session, we heard cats whining. It was a familiar sound in this neighborhood, but usually the sound came from outside. This time it seemed to come from inside the clinic.

“Did you close the entrance door when you came in?” I asked.

She couldn’t remember.

I opened my office door and looked into the waiting area. Two adult cats were stretched out on the sofa, unbothered, as if they belonged there. When they saw me, they sprang up and ran through the open entrance door and into the stairwell. I closed the door and returned to my chair. We resumed the conversation.

She spoke about her partner. Nothing changes, she said. Neither the love nor the hurt. They were stuck, and she didn’t know what would have to happen for her to make a decision.

I listened.

Then the whining again. Louder. Urgent.

I opened the office door. The waiting area was empty. No cats. I came back in. We tried to continue. The sound rose again, sharper now, unmistakably coming from within the clinic.

I opened the door once more. A small kitten stood just inside the entrance, pressed flat against the floor. It must have been left behind when the larger cats fled, leaving it trapped when I shut the door.

When I moved toward it, the kitten ran into the kitchen and disappeared behind the refrigerator. The patient stiffened in her chair.

“I hate cats,” she said.

I crouched and pulled the refrigerator forward. The kitten bolted past me and ran straight into my office, skidding on the floor. The patient stood up abruptly. I guided the kitten toward the entrance, careful not to touch it, and managed to usher it out into the stairwell. I closed the door and checked the latch.

The clinic quieted.

We sat down again. My attention wouldn’t settle; my body stayed alert. I kept thinking how easily we might have locked it in for the night.

“So you hate cats,” I noted.
“I do. I really do,” she said.
“And dogs?”
“I love dogs. I grew up with them.”
“So did I,” I said, smiling, oddly relieved, though I wasn’t sure why.

Perhaps the kitten left behind lingered in my mind. I asked about her partner’s childhood.

She told me his parents’ divorce had been vicious. Afterward, her partner chose to live with his father because he couldn’t tolerate his mother’s irritability and intrusiveness. I didn’t need to say anything. She saw the link immediately.

“And you?” I asked. “Does he remind you of anyone from your own childhood?”

She said he did, but in absentia. Her father, she said, had been the calmest, most contained person she knew. She loved that about him. Her partner was like that, she said. Except when she was anxious.

The session drew to a close. We joked about how, once again, we hadn’t gotten to the exposure exercises. She said she was determined to focus on them next week. I said nothing.

I thought about how easily something small can be left behind when larger bodies rush out, how loudly it must cry before we can’t pretend it doesn’t exist.

When the session was over, I locked the clinic and stepped outside. The stairwell was empty. Cats moved silently between the parked cars, slipping in and out of shadow. I lingered by the door for a moment longer than usual.

Golan Shahar is a Professor of Clinical–Health Psychology at Ben-Gurion University and Adjunct Professor at Yale University School of Medicine. His work bridges clinical and health psychology, psychoanalytic and existential theory, and poetic narrative. He has published extensively on depression and suicide, chronic illness, and stress, and has authored two books. His poetry, written both in English and in Hebrew, explores subjective, health-related experience, psychological suffering and resilience, and the interface between persons and their social environment, particularly in the context of health and medicine.