We repeat the names of our pets for their entire lives, always as if they have never heard us before. It’s similar to repeating ‘I love you’ to our lovers, every enunciation being the first and never being enough because they are precisely too much. The appearance of our pets is always astonishing, we lose them in broad daylight and then subtly, they cross our path unassumingly. We call their name and tell them, ‘we’re seen’ because who knew they were coming to us. They look to us and other times they don’t, truly there’s no way of knowing if or when they’ll come. Our call is that of an animals, we want them with their name and yet their name means nothing. They elicit their own name inside us and what we name is an absent solicitation. The bodies of pets don’t carry our signs, we are always calling them by their name because they shake them off when we’re alone.
