Suki Has Already Seen More Than I Have

While I’m four seasons deep into BoJack Horseman with a double-cheese pizza going cold beside me, mentally negotiating which of the twelve PlayStation 4 games in my backlog I’ll start and never finish, Suki is somewhere on a mountain, or in a canoe, or standing at the prow of a boat with her ears flat and her eyes scanning for something worth investigating.

Suki is a cat. A traveling cat. Her owner—a redhead who is apparently also her best friend—takes her everywhere: through high passes, past blue lakes, across the kind of wide green terrain that makes you feel like the world is still mostly empty. And Suki receives all of it with the particular composure of a creature that has no concept of wasted time, only of the present moment and whether it smells interesting.

Over 200,000 people follow Suki’s Instagram. I understand why. There’s something about watching a small animal move through a large world with complete confidence that works as both comfort and reproach. She can’t book the trip herself. She doesn’t know what a backlog is. She just goes where she’s taken and finds it extraordinary every time. That’s not nothing.