Cat Sovereignty
Ongoing: 2022 – Present
An estimated 500,000 unowned, free-roaming community cats lurk within the margins of the New York City landscape, living, breeding, and dying in basements, parking lots, subway tunnels, backyards, parks, and wherever else can sustain their fragile existences. The roots of this cat crisis trace back to pressing issues of human inequity: gentrification, rising costs of living, housing insecurity, and inaccessible veterinary and healthcare services. This body of work documents engagement with these cats, their environments, and the humans who, despite limited resources, dedicate enormous amounts of time, money, and physical and emotional labor to fight for their survival. In collaboration with local cat colony caretakers and trap-neuter-return groups, these images consider how community cats exist between simple labels of wild or domestic, displaced or sovereign, protected or neglected.