Inside the Hidden World of Christian Patriarchy: One Woman’s Journey to Freedom
When cats roaming the property multiply beyond control, their sickness and suffering become part of the daily logistics Levings must manage. She feeds them, avoids the stench of their urine-soaked yard, and scrapes their bodies off the driveway after accidentally running them over. When her father steps in to euthanize them, Levings registers only relief. “I was no longer,” she writes, “overrun with shitting, disease-carrying cats” (211). The act is framed as necessary, efficient, and clean. Even in this small mercy, the cats remain unnamed, faceless, a teeming symbol of chaos she cannot quell.