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[Choi Bosik’s Press = Guest Columnist Park Joo-hyun (CEO, Jaedam Entertainment)]
Every so often a single line of dialogue cuts through the screen and quietly folds its arms around the bowed shoulders of someone sitting on a couch. I can’t claim to know every craft of visual storytelling, but every few years a script by Park Hae-young blindsides me — and that’s exactly how it feels when one of her lines lands.
The bleak, lonely premise at the center of JTBC’s Everyone Is Fighting Their Own Worthlessness sent a ripple even through a man well past fifty.
Tonight, one line from the show’s heroine, Go Yoon-jung, disarmed me. After learning she even borrowed from loan sharks to pay for her cat’s surgery, she says:
This is why I like the director.
Instead of blaming someone for an irrational, stubborn choice, she fully affirms that foolish kindness. In that instant, my mental clock rewound exactly 10 years to a cold night.
10 years ago, my two cats — the whole world to me — fell ill at once. One needed a catheter for cystitis and urethritis; the other had a twisted intestine and required emergency abdominal surgery. It was a hellish stretch. The cat who underwent the open operation developed peritonitis, and I made the painful decision to euthanize him. He crossed the rainbow bridge.
I returned to an empty apartment cradling a small urn that still seemed warm, and was greeted by another despair. The remaining cat, whose catheter had been removed, had a lower belly swollen to bursting. The local vet I rushed to was at a loss and raised euthanasia again. I had just scattered one pet’s ashes; I couldn’t send another away by my hand.
I panicked and ran to a larger hospital. A startled vet drained urine from the distended belly with a syringe and urged me to take the cat to a specialty clinic. At the specialty clinic the warning was the same: treatment would be expensive, and we should consider euthanasia.
The surgery was 3,500,000 KRW (approximately $2,625). I had already scraped my emergency fund dry paying the other cat’s bills. This was not a time to worry about a grown man’s pride.
I stood in the hospital corridor and called the friend I thought would be easiest to ask. I couldn’t bring myself to say, it’s dawn and I need money for a cat’s surgery—can you lend me some? So I kept it blunt: don’t ask questions; I’ll pay you back in 10 days. He lent me 3,500,000 KRW (approximately $2,625).
Money proved the most reliable physical force to extend life. 10 years ago, trembling like a sapling before a syringe and facing euthanasia, that cat survived. Today he is a dignified 13-year-old senior who sits proudly in my profile photo.
The friend who lent the money still doesn’t know his emergency fund paid for the surgery that saved my cat’s urethra and life. Maybe I’ll confess over drinks someday, but it’s kinder for his peace of mind if he never learns.
The embarrassed, frantic man who couldn’t tell the truth to his friend in the hospital corridor ten years ago may not have saved the cat so much as used the cat to save his own soul.
This is why I like the director.
The actress’s sweet line felt like a belated absolution for that reckless borrowing a decade ago. My heart fluttered. I smoothed the warm fur of the 13-year-old cat breathing evenly beside me. For an accomplice in this little fraud — extending life with someone else’s money — his breathing is remarkably peaceful.
#PetCatStories
#LifeWithCats
#BreathOfAnOldCat
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