Life comes at you fast,” tweeted a cartoonist friend of mine, Julia Gfrörer, along with a photo of herself in a hospital bed, her arm bandaged. She referenced another photo she’d posted two days before—this one of her arm covered in small red scratches and bites, captioned: “I fought a cat and the cat won.”
Gfrörer is a New York-based Gothic fine-art cartoonist whose stories frequently delve into magical worlds where the real terrors are human relationships—the monsters merely observe human self-destruction. She’s been known to tweet joking, martyr-like selfies—such is her brand—but the hospital setting was a new one. I was shocked that something as innocuous as a cat bite could put my friend in the hospital! Gfrörer, though often private, answered my questions about her run-in with a mother cat who—all things considered—was terrified and doing what she thought was best.