He Doesn’t Know There’s a War
I want you to meet a special Ukrainian.
His name is Tolik.
He once broke my television while chasing a fly.
I couldn’t even be mad at him. I actually found it funny.
There was something so honest in that moment.
No calculation and no awareness of damage.
Just a small creature completely absorbed in what mattered to him, and absolutely convinced it was worth it.
It reminded me he is also a cat.
I love him so much that sometimes I forget that.
I forget he doesn’t carry what I carry.
That he doesn’t try to make sense of things that don’t make sense.
He doesn’t perform or explain himself.
He is simply there.
He’s there when I’m working, when I’m tired, when I don’t have the right words.
During the worst nights, he climbs into my chest and just sits there.
Not purring, not moving. Just his weight and warmth.
“I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you.”
I didn’t rescue Tolik.
He was the one who rescued something in me that I didn’t know was drowning.
This guy taught me more about life than anything I’ve ever read.
Things that exist without needing to be seen.
In our human world, everything can turn into performance. Pain becomes something you show. Strength becomes something you prove.
But he refuses all of that.
And a creature that doesn’t speak taught me how to speak about my mission, about my country, without a single word of geopolitics.
To show something instead of explaining it.
Because sometimes explanation creates distance, and what we need is the opposite of that.
We need to feel close enough to care.
Would you think I’m crazy if I told you there’s no possible world for us without our cats?
They matter in a way we don’t know how to measure.
They carry something we keep losing.
A simple and real thing.
It stays.
I know someone is reading this with a cat nearby. Maybe on the keyboard. Maybe in that one spot of sunlight that moves across the floor every afternoon…
And your cat understands things you never will.
At the same time, it has no idea what it means to you.
And you do.
So tell me about them. I love hearing their stories. Their names. What they broke. Why you love them anyway.
When we talk about our cats, everything else is far away.
Except for a broken device here and there.
But even that somehow makes sense.
—Viktor
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I don’t know what tomorrow looks like for this journal, or for Ukraine, or for any of us.
What I know is that you gave this meaning it could never have had on its own.
Everything here is free and will remain free, because testimony from inside a war belongs to the world. If you want to stand behind that and help this record last, becoming a paid subscriber is what makes it possible.
If you can’t, stay. Your presence here is already part of the record.
As I was sitting here, very safe in my home, in a country I no longer recognize, petting one of our eight rescue cats, I decided to check my phone, and this is what came up. The universe knows exactly what it's doing, and when and how to tell you.
Thank you, Viktor, and I wish I could help in a way more than moral support, just please know that as much as I can give, I'm giving.
Let Tolik know that, on the other side of the world, a giant, cat-friendly Golden Retriever named Rooney sends woofs of love and support. ❤️🇺🇦🐾