Alrighty, this is rough translation from NPR, I'm Gregory Warner.

And today's story begins with a cat.

But she's a cat with a really bad habit.

She eats string.

This is my friend Elizabeth Sennius Backman, a playwright and professor in New York City.

The cat was dumped on her by a roommate, a flat town.

The cat's name is Indiana.

Or Indy.

And our solution to get her to not eat string is to let her have as much dry food as she wants.

I've never thought of myself particularly as a cat person.

I like them, but I have been so grateful to have another creature in the house with me, especially when I was sick.

When Elizabeth got COVID-19 in mid-March, and she could gasp for breath just from lying on the couch,

the obligation of having to get up and feed Indy became a kind of comfort.

Elizabeth couldn't leave her apartment, so she ordered cat food online.

But cat food was one of the things that Americans were hoarding.

And in the nights between the days of waiting for that order to arrive, she'd have stress dreams.

I think the equivalent of like showing up naked dreams, but in my dreams I show up and I have forgotten my mask,

and I'm breathing on people, and they're getting sick.

It was mortifying to me. I don't want to get anybody sick with this.

It's a horrible feeling that you could be a vector for this miserable thing.

So I guess I was in my third week of being sick.

The cat food order had still not arrived.

...