Ideally, Daisy and I would live in a spacious house with outdoor space. Instead, she was content to tweet to 2D birds on YouTube.

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Daisy and I found these birds in June. Daisy is an overweight tuxedo cat with a kind face and the patience of a saint; her happiness is as important to me as my own. For 10 years, we lived with two other people and another cat in an apartment in downtown Williamsburg, Brooklyn. One of Daisy's greatest pleasures is watching the birds on the roofs of neighboring buildings under the warmth of the radiator. She is as low-maintenance as an expensive footstool, but her passion for ornithology is endless. For the past ten years, I happily watched my silent cat find her voice and release the predator inside, chirping and trilling to the birds outside, her jaw moving like an anime character .

But in August last year, we moved to another apartment, which is our own place, which provides us with space and quietness, but there are fewer vantage points for Daisy's bird watching. For a while, she wanted to see the birds outside the kitchen window, but the window sill was too narrow to fit her waistline.

As spring slipped into summer, I could tell that she missed the birds. For a while, we went through a morning ritual. I took her to the kitchen window so that she could see the outside world and cherish this intimate time because she screamed in ecstasy. It turned out that this solution was unsustainable-she was heavy and I had something to do-so I had to think of something else. Naturally, I turned to YouTube.

Search for "cat's TV" and you will find hundreds of hours of videos, which are shot in beautiful high-definition format, containing birds and other animals on the feeder or on the grass, in and out of the screen at once 8 to 10 hours. When I clicked on the first video I found ("My Garden Birds—Relaxing Natural Music for Cats to Sleep"), I didn't have much hope, maybe one or two birds were pecking a bunch of seeds, Then there is nothing for four hours. But the action on the screen immediately caught Daisy's attention. She parked herself on the floor in front of the TV and opened her mouth wide, like a child sucking in the plot of "Paw Patrol".

When a starling swooped to investigate some of the seeds on the log, Daisy slapped and snarled frustratedly at the TV. As each new bird appeared on the screen, she changed her approach, spreading herself flat on the floor, and then flopped in vain. Five minutes later, she recognized the grievance and returned to the chair where she had been most of the time. Nevertheless, I left the auto-playing YouTube, and occasionally stopped myself on the sofa to watch.

Because I am not a cat, I have no primal impulse when watching the video, but every time my lovely and round ward screams at her new friend on the sofa next to me, I want to know what they are doing for her. what. Obviously, she knows that these birds are two-dimensional, but when they seem to appear inadvertently, she is always full of energy, even if it is short-lived. One day I solemnly stroked her in an attempt to penetrate her thoughts, and it suddenly occurred to me that TV birds were funny because they were not me.

After moving, our world will inevitably shrink. Daisy’s happiness is now entirely my responsibility; she relies on me for food, water, attention, conversation, and general maintenance. For many years, I have thought that she would be happier alone, away from the depressed thumb of her cat roommate Crusty. Crusty is a true charmer, using her tendency to eat slowly as an opportunity for a few seconds. But now I want to know if she missed her past life, the cat-turf wars and the noisy crowds there. Boredom sometimes turns into loneliness, and for Daisy, the bird seems to have solved a problem I didn't even know she had. It didn't just make her prey hiss; it opened her world.

In the ideal version of my life, Daisy and I will live in a spacious house with outdoor space. I would rest on the chair parked on the brick terrace, while Daisy would explore a piece of grass, clamp a little mouse with her small jaw, and proudly show me the corpse. In this fantasy, our nature has not changed—we are still just two women living together in peace—but Daisy can live longer.

Watching Daisy watch YouTube reminds her of who she has the potential to become. As I watched, I also let the calm nature sound soothe my human brain because of its professional inertia and anxiety about what dinner I will do that night. The bird brought me into a world closer to the essential version of myself, quiet and farsighted, surrounded by beauty. In short: these birds let us both perform our best.

When I wake up now, Daisy is standing in front of the TV, staring at the screen, patiently and motionless. I made some coffee, prepared breakfast, then sat on the sofa and browsed the video until I found the video that met my requirements (flowers and green trees are my preferred settings). This is a ritual that satisfies the part that I need to be quiet—the part that Daisy doesn't need.

Megan Reynolds is a writer and editor living in New York.