We’ve all been there. We spend hours upon hours with eyes glued to a computer screen filled with squares of human beings. Many are visibly tired. Some are forcing a smile. Others have their cameras turned off, only represented by a grey screen with a name. Then suddenly, we are graced with the unexpected attendance of an adorable, non-human creature. The day becomes a little bit better and brighter.
Who can hold back a grin or chuckle when a curious cat or nosy dog inserts itself into our virtual classes? The furry, sometimes scaly friends of our Zoom peers have given New School students and professors a reason to authentically smile in a virtual and disconnected world.
The New School Free Press spoke with New Schoolers and their beloved pets. Stay tuned for more…
Marina and the Pussycats
Marina Story is a third-year drama student at the College of Performing Arts at The New School. She lives in Flushing, Queens, with her boyfriend and twin cats, Nala and Simba. Story said that she was really happy when her two “geminis” entered their life in the pandemic.
“We literally love our cats so much. Like we are convinced that they could talk to us,” Story said.
She described the adoption process as having been long and emotional for her. Story said that she and her boyfriend had a back-and-forth with the kitties’ former owner, who had more cats than they could afford but felt too attached and was initially reluctant to give them up. When the owner finally decided to let the cats go, Marina came home that day to two charming new feline friends.
Being a new pet owner in the pandemic has brought challenges for Story and her boyfriend. “Because of the pandemic, it has been harder for us to get more affordable vet care because everyone’s going right now. Everyone got pets over quarantine,” Story said, noting that the specific cat food they wanted to feed Nala and Simba kept running out in the supermarket.
Story noted that Nala especially, always disrupts her acting classes. But she always gets away with it since she is just that cute, she said.
“We were meditating in one of our [acting] classes. Since my eyes were closed, I hadn’t realized Nala was staring directly into the camera for the past five minutes and that no one else was able to concentrate. So I finally looked up and I just saw all this in the camera, and no one else was meditating,” Story said. “So one, everyone just [watched] me meditating. And two, they just [watched] Nala so close to the camera. My professor couldn’t actually get mad because she’s just a sweetheart.”