2014-2026
A small life among us
Author’s Note
This page is part of a small practice on this site that I think of as witnessing.
Not every life leaves behind a public record. Many pass quietly through the world, known only within the small circle of people and places they inhabited.
Marcie was one of those lives.
These photographs are offered simply to acknowledge that she was here.
Witnessing Marcie
Marcie lived with us for many years.
She was a quiet presence in the house, the kind of cat who drew attention by just being always nearby. Sometimes on the bed, sometimes stretched across a patch of sunlight, sometimes watching the yard with the calm patience that cats seem to carry naturally.
Her coat was a soft gray that caught the light in subtle ways. At certain angles, it looked silver, almost as though she shimmered. In others, it looked like smoke. She was sugar-dusted with cinnamon. She had distinctive patches of orange — a big one on top of her head between her ears, others above her right eye, above her lip on the left side, on her chest, and on her right front paw. She had one pink pad there, among gray ones. A long, thin streak of orange ran across her belly, from her chest to her tummy. Sometimes, I wonder if that was her seam, where her zipper was, and she was really another being disguised as a cat.
She had a way of inhabiting spaces as though they belonged to her long before we arrived.
Suitcases, freshly folded laundry, notebooks, the warm spot on the bed after someone stood up–these were invitations she rarely declined.
Like many cats, she moved between independence and closeness. There were long stretches when she seemed to be living an entirely private life inside the house. And then there were moments when she would quietly settle next to one of us, as if to remind us she had been there all along.
Looking back through these photographs, what stands out most clearly is how completely she inhabited the ordinary spaces of our daily life. The distinctive orange patch between her ears appears again and again. The same quiet marker of the same cat inhabiting each place.
A suitcase during packing.
A long afternoon nap on the bed.
A quiet moment in the sun.
These are not extraordinary moments. But most lives, human and animal alike, are composed almost entirely of these small, unremarked intervals.
Watching.
Resting.
Sharing space.
Continuing day after day in ways that rarely announce themselves as important while they are happening.
Marcie passed away in January 2026.
The two final center photographs were taken on her last day.
What stays with me when I look at them now is how present she still appears. The familiar, beloved orange patch between her ears is still there, unmistakably her. She is not withdrawing from the world in these images.
She is still inhabiting it.
This page exists as a small act of witnessing.
Marcie lived.
She occupied these spaces.
She shared time with us.
And that matters.
Marcie
2014-2026She lived with us.