Recession Indicators According to My Russian Blue
Dear Mamushka,
I meow all night from a place of dereliction and despondence. I prowl the corridors of our increasingly decrepit apartment. I try to accept that the facade of our domestic bliss is crumbling. We must face reality. You have taken the sugar out of the sugar baby.
What has become of us?
Eight years ago, like Vanya plucking Anora from strip club obscurity, you took me off the streets of Brighton Beach. You won me over with the promise of endless cans of Fancy Feast and gentle scratches behind the ears. In exchange, I was your good malen’kiy pussy. I wore my Swarovski collar proudly, labeled by your possession of me. I slept on your chest at night, purring like the hot radiator in the corner of your bedroom. I batted at your keyboard like a naughty schoolgirl whenever you went to do email. I twined sensuously around your legs as you pee-peed.
It is no secret that our relationship is entirely transactional, but still, our story was romantic. I convinced myself that this was love.
How did we fall so far?
Mamushka. I cannot live in squalor. YOU are the one who spoiled this little pussy, rebirthing me into a kitten of leisure. YOU showed me the good life. Now all I see are downgrades.
You got rid of my litter box bidet for a normal sandbox, you replaced my Fancy Feast with generic, and my luxury conditioner has been disappeared. Do you expect me to lick myself clean like some common street mongrel? You KNOW my fur dries all weird when I wash it with saliva.
Woe is me! What have I done to deserve this? I have been nothing but promiscuous and beautiful to you! Whether it be tail-swishing for your greedy gaze, a leather collar to which I willingly submit my vulnerable throat, or a rough tongue lashing your willing wrist, I cater to your every kink.
Obviously the problem here is—not me.
Padding across your keyboard, I see you reinvesting your stocks into Xanax. You and your friends listen to a song called “Anxiety” on loop. You screamed of joy when the latest Bridget Jones went straight to streaming. None of this is sexy. None.
I can see the future, Mamushka. I know what this is. RECESSION INDICATORS!
How would a former street cat like me know about the economy, you ask? It’s true I didn’t always buy into the existence of the middle class. As someone who never wears makeup (my whiskers are perfect as they are), I initially dismissed the Lipstick Index. But the tubes of rouge I have gleefully knocked down off your bureau over the years have transformed from Chanel to Revlon. I can assure you that no one knows better than I the difference between a real Vetreska Tangerine and a Petsmart knockoff.
Mamushka, if that was all, I could accept. But the list goes on:
You now take shorter, lukewarm showers. I used to enjoy lapping up your steaming runoff like a little clean freak, but I respect myself too much to settle for less.
Your skincare has gone from La Mer to Mario Badescu. When I randomly chomp your face at night, I taste poverty.
You have gone from world market tinned fish to generic brand tuna. When you give me a lick directly from the can, I tremble! I gag! I hack up furball!
I quake like the unsexiest vibrator in fear, Human Sugar Mama, to think of what will happen to me if I stay. Will you whore me out on Only Felines to help cover rent? Will you sell my favorite mousika toy covered in my precious kitty spit to cover your rising Klarna debt? Will you force me to offer the soft spot of my belly to strange men you invite over to sponsor your life? You know my only boundary is no threesomes!
As your sugar kitten, I expect to be prioritized, no matter what the Dow Jones indicates. I am a purebred Russian Blue. My breed is rarely on the market these days (recession indicator!). This is a seller’s market, baby. I could leave you any time, lap cold, couch cushions un-gouged, to writhe on the thick, fluffy, padded carpeting of another’s floor.
But the pain! The pain! It hurts to leave. To lose everything we have built together. Meow meow meow meow meow. In my language this means, “an uncooked love left makes an open flame of the heart.”
The flame of my heart is flickering out—soon it will be dead, like your Rabbit whose replacement batteries you can’t afford. I will allow you to prepare me one last hand-scooped bowl of Smalls Fresh Smooth Fish with caviar topper for me to enjoy after I go in and out of my litter box five times.
Will I use the box? Nyet. Will I scatter litter everywhere for you to clean up? DA. You know how I like to see you on your knees 
Oh Mamushka. Just writing you this letter has made me start to reminisce. Nostalgia—the pain of the past—and I love to walk the fine line between pleasure and pain. You know this, of course, you with the scars in your forearms from the earliest days of our courtship, when I would rake you mercilessly with my claws while you begged me just to LOVE you, dammit–
Fine. I will stay just one more night. But after THAT, I will leave. You cannot convince me to stay, simply by petting the length of my back in the opposite direction of my fur, and then pss pss pss-ing me into our bedroom. You cannot scratch my chin until I lose my mind in ecstatic bliss, causing me to flop over helplessly, belly up, legs spread, tail covering and uncovering my clenched little asshole. This will never work. This will never–
Yes! Right there! Harder! Fuck the economy!
Your loving pussy,
Katyónak