Dispatches from the Void. X.V.

Mowgli: Detects Imminent Departure. Loses All Swagger Mid-Strut.
Suspicious of Cardboard Boxes; Investigates, Then Retreats.
Rejects All Food Except Forbidden One.
Drafts Protest Manifesto Titled “No One Consulted Me.”
Side-Eye Now Legally Recognised As Warning.

Akela: Follows Celia Like A Cult Leader’s Shadow.
Demands Meaning From Ceiling Light.
Launches One-Woman Show: “Packing Is Violence.”
Weeps Near Biscuits. Claims It’s Method.
Refuses To Acknowledge Poe’s “Spiritual Proximity.”

Poe: Appears In Every Room Without Sound.
Stares Into Suitcase, Declares “Omen.”
Maintains Physical Contact With At Least One Wife At All Times.
Begins Writing Poem Called “The Weight of Fur.”
Growls When Not Looked At. Also Growls When Looked At.

This Week in Underland:

• The Pit, the Plan, and the Purring Dread:
  Visa submitted. Cats unravel. Celia contemplates existential ballast. Everyone pretends the house isn’t haunted.
• Felines Forecast Doom, Refuse Cardboard Compromise:
  Poe glues herself to wives. Mogs questions own confidence. Akela demands spiritual clarity (and pears). No packing achieved.
• Escape Plan or Act of Devotion?
  UK unaffordable. USA unthinkable. Thailand must work. Emotional stakes: high. Cat hair: everywhere.
• Love in the Time of Logistical Collapse:
  Still gay. Still trying. Still together.
  Visa gods, do your worst—we brought cats.

This week has been a whirlwind in Underland. We’re hurtling toward Thailand now flights booked, to-do lists multiplying, and no brakes in sight. Celia submitted her visa application (cue nail-biting), and as soon as it comes through, I’ll follow with mine.

Meanwhile, the house remains a tragicomedy of half-packed boxes, forgotten drawers, and feline mischief. We keep telling ourselves we have time, and yet we know—in that quiet, creeping way—you never really have time. Soon the pressure will hit like a freight train, and we’ll enter the hyper-focus zone that only true panic can summon.

The last two days, I’ve been sad. Not just tired or off, but that deep, aching kind of sadness that feels inexplicable until it’s not. It happens every month: two days of unraveling, followed by the sudden, almost cruel confirmation of my period. And while I’ve come to recognize the pattern, it never makes it easier.

Living in a female body is often a quiet battle. Not just the physicality of it, but the way it feels to exist in a world that demands so much from you silence, compliance, endurance. Add to that the daily heartbreak of watching what’s happening in my home country and around the world the violence, the stripping of rights, the way women, and especially trans women, are treated as disposable or dangerous or both, and it becomes a grief that doesn’t fully name itself.

I don’t know if there’s a clean line between hormones and heartbreak. Maybe I’m only noticing it more because I’m in that soft, raw place where sadness makes everything louder. Or maybe it’s all tangled together this body, this grief, this quiet fury. Either way, it’s here. And I wanted to name it.

Even with the sadness, I keep coming back to this: I’m so deeply grateful to have my wife. These emotional waves used to pull me under, and it wouldn’t just last two days, it would spiral into something longer, messier, harder to climb out of. But now, I have her. And that changes everything.

Things are stressful, yes. We’re in the middle of a huge, scary move across the world, with a mountain of logistics and unknowns ahead of us. But we have each other to lean on. And that makes all the difference.

What’s keeping us grounded—what’s keeping us us—is the ability to look each other in the eye and say, “This is insane… but it’s also amazing.” We’re doing something wild and brave and utterly ours. We’re getting to spend more time together than we ever have, and even in the chaos, we’re reveling in it. We’re laughing, dreaming, and making plans for the next chapter with a kind of giddy defiance.

It’s hard. It’s beautiful. It’s happening. And we’re doing it side by side.

xxR

I don’t really have much to add this week. Thailand is within reach. The excitement of an adventure with my wife is there—but it’s dulled by the pragmatics of what needs to be done: cat vaccinations, visa applications, vacating a house I’ve come to despise, all while living with my human, someone I adore. It’s a strange juxtaposition to inhabit.

The need to get out of here is becoming overwhelming—claustrophobic, almost. I know it’s just a house. Just logistics. Just tasks to tick off a list. But the energy here feels stale somehow, like everything is waiting to exhale. I’m restless, tense in my bones. Even the cats are acting out, as if they can feel it too.

Mogs is unsure—he struts in, then wavers, questioning his confidence. Akela follows me around, pressing meaning into the air. And Poe follows us everywhere. Silently. Wherever we are, she is. My little independent-devil-may-care-gremlin is suddenly insecure.

They sense the shift, the urgency, the coming storm of departure. It feels like a lot.

Some days I feel guilty for not being more excited, like I’m somehow doing it wrong. This is what we wanted. What we chose. But transitions are rarely tidy. Sometimes joy has to claw its way through the noise of fatigue and stress.

The pressure of this has to work is all-encompassing.

There’s no way we can go to the USA, not with Trump and his disgusting instigators waging war on diversity—I’d be in alligator Auschwitz before we’d even decorated the front porch. And we can’t stay in the UK. We just can’t afford the visa. Don’t have the necessary paperwork.

This has to work.

Maybe I’ll feel better once the visa is in my hand. I applied this morning. So, for now, there’s a large pit resting in my stomach. I carry it around like ballast—this pit. Not fear, exactly. Not quite grief. Just the weight of needing something so badly you can’t picture the alternative.

There’s no backup plan. No soft landing. Only forward.

I keep reminding myself: we’re not running. We’re choosing. And maybe the lines between escape and pursuit are blurrier than I’d like, but this is still ours. Our move. Our life. Our leap of faith, together.

I don’t need it to be easy. I just need it to happen.
Sooner rather than later.
—C x

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