My cat is “Grams” on Dawson’s Creek

Dawson’s Creek could be one of the most putrid TV shows to capture the minds of teens, young adults and cats. Yes, cats. My cats and I have taken to re-watching (yes, I’ve seen it before…multiple times) the teen WB drama Dawson’s Creek starting with season three (I’m a Pacey gal, so you gotta start there) and somehow spiraled into watching the rest of the series.

Perhaps my quarantined heart yearned for something familiar – a plot line I know by heart and characters with a little too much heart. Or my social secluded mind craved human drama (rather than the cat “will they or won’t they get along” drama in my apartment). Either way, it led to me sitting on the couch with Henri (full name Henrietta) announcing “Oh, Henri, Dawson doesn’t know about Pacey and Joey yet. This. Is. Going. To. Destroy him.” as Henri quietly looks at the screen and looks to me as I humansplain the plot to her. But she knows what’s going on. She’s seen this all before because she embodies the Grams character in Dawson’s Creek.

If somehow you missed the fandom of Dawson’s Creek, or perhaps you just had a life in the late 90s – early 2000s, Grams is the tough but kind hearted and forever wise grandmother of Jen (Michelle Williams), the “bad girl” who moved to Capeside after being cast away from her parents in NYC in hopes to straighten her out. She’s a voice of reason as well as one of those “follow your heart” types. Henri, quiet and comforting one moment, will then decide I’m behaving badly and bat my hand away. Her tough love only makes me stronger, so one day I too will have the confidence to leave the small town of Capeside for bigger and better things, but of course still retaining all my high school friends (who incestuously are also the loves of my life).

“Henri, why would Joey do this?” I exclaim as Joey (Katie Holmes) once again decides to break some boy’s heart who is head-over-heels for her in pursuit of… self-acceptance? I don’t even fucking know. But I would like to know why the hell every man who ever meets Joey Potter is smitten as if she’s fucking Cleopatra. She’s always pushing men away and doesn’t even have a sense of humor. I don’t even know why I’m so upset about this! Quarantine-brain – it’s a real thing.

At the end of the social distanced and masked nights, my Grams (Henri) grounds me in the reality that perhaps our friends are all we have. Through bad jobs and worse boyfriends, Henri and Monk (other cat, full name Laverne and the Pacey of the group) are there to purr and play with feather toys. They fain interest in the on goings of the Pacey, Joey, Dawson love triangle only because they know it makes me happy. Through all the work-from-home days and staying in nights, we live to make each other happy (I mean, the cats probably just want to make themselves happy, but I like to live the lie that they want me to be happy too). So until the day returns that I might find my own Pacey, the three of us will continue to drown our social lives in a sappy, over-dialogued, often-infuriating teen drama.