One week before the No Kings Day parade, I bought a faux velour pink and white-striped cat costume. Why? Because Portland made me do it. The costume wasn’t on my list of purchases to make. But after seeing inflatable animals dancing around the Portland ICE facility, I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to get dressed up, too.

What I bought surprised me. The frogs, squirrels, sharks and unicorns all made me laugh and even came in tall sizes. Yet no costume spoke to me as much as one I hadn’t even considered: a cartoon-inspired onesie that also doubled as sleepwear. I saw it, bought it and never looked back.

Part Pink Panther and part Cheshire Cat, the costume complemented the sign I’d made for the first No Kings protest I’d not attended. Zipped inside it, I would be transformed into a cartoon cat lady avenger ready to deflect evil with through absurdity and the power of an outrageous slogan: Fuck the fascist patriarchy and the idiot horse it rode in on.

That silliness saved me. News of immigration raids, the daily onslaught of “alternative fact” narratives, and a vow from the Texas governor to deploy the National Guard in Austin fed my anxiety like slow-drip toxins. The government was out to get me. With more calm than I felt, I packed a small bag with swim goggles, a mask and change of clothes in case of tear gas and pepper spray attacks and an expired passport with me to prove my identity.

Strangely, my one overriding concern the morning of the protest was not to ensure I was armed for battled, but to ensure I wore clean new underwear to match my costume. At least they’ll say I was classy. That done, I headed to the bus stop where I met a group of senior citizens. Suddenly my tilted world leveled into something like normal. Dressed Eddie-Bauer-style in sensible Bermuda shorts, running shoes, sun hats, they all carried protest signs with equally sensible slogans: Protect Social Security. Healthcare Not Wealthcare. No Faux King Way.

They complimented the cat suit though no one understood what it meant. Explaining that I represented cat ladies, I unfurled my sign with a grin and watched with some disappointment as they smiled politely. Boomers, I thought; but my eyes didn’t roll. An elder Xer, I was only a few years younger and slightly less gray than they were. The only things that separated us was a working life not yet ended by retirement and a generation’s worth of attitude.

Tensions eased after we arrived at the Capitol where I saw only police on patrol. Yet trouble still loomed as I felt sweat trickling down my back. The National Guard wouldn’t do me in, but the heat of a 90-degree day might. Yet even as I worried, allies quickly emerged. An inflatable octopus and shark waved from under a large shade tree like long-lost relatives. Shortly afterward, a young woman offered me a broken hand fan. You need this more than I do.

As Dixieland sounds from a small band drifted through the air, several people asked to take a picture of me holding up my sign. Very Portland, said one person. I’m making this into a card for my wife, said another. Was the wife a fan of opinionated cat ladies? And where had they all gone? I searched for signs of feline life in a crowd that would swell to more than 20 thousand.

Among the multitudes, I caught sight of a woman sporting leopard print ears and a short-sleeved leopard-print shirt. Surprisingly, no one else seemed to be wearing a full cat costume, though two women had donned the red cloaks and white bonnets of female characters from The Handmaid’s Tale. One carried a plain white sign with a single ominous phrase: Under His Eye. They spoke in literary metaphor: God was watching over them just as He did in the novel; but likely so were the Eyes, a secret, all-male police that hunted down dissidents. Next to them, I felt brazen.

The lack of a more robust expression about women’s issues—among the many other, non-gendered ones at stake—was disappointing. But it also made me glad for my hot pink faux velour. It was colorful and it was ridiculous and I knew it. The better, I thought, to call attention to a distinguished woman was herself called a cat lady then ran for president, only to be undermined by a corrupt system dedicated to oppressing—rather than empowering—anyone not in alignment with it.

Grateful for my broken fan and the water I had packed in my bag, I drifted to the Capitol gates to await the start of the march. Police cars and a line of motorcycles with flashing lights waited to escort us down Congress Avenue, with no sign of military vehicles or National Guard anywhere. Had the threat of deployment been a show designed to play on people’s fears the way it had played on mine? A few moments later, as people continued to stream into the Capitol, I heard a drumroll and a singsong voice scream Let’s goooooo! into a megaphone. The march was on.

Police cars pulled out of the street as the motorcycles roared to life. Dizzy from the heat, the world tilted. I hadn’t meant to be at front of the demonstration. Yet in that moment I knew it was exactly the right place to be. To my left, a young black man held an upside-down American flag while a dog on a leash dragged a woman along. Just ahead of me, a blue inflatable shark—whom I imagined was drowning in as much sweat as I was—moved with awkward but determined steps.

Megaphone Woman started up the chants. What do we want? Democracy now! At the very head of the parade, a long-haired woman in a cowboy hat, midi skirt and black high-tops deftly maneuvered on a skateboard. A progress pride flag—which included colors to represent the trans and people of color communities—streamed from a pole she balanced like an acrobat in one hand. Purple flames licking the sides of her high-tops, she was a butterfly on fire, crackling with the electricity of the moment as were we all.

Half-dazed by the heat and unable to think straight, I slipped into a reverie. We had begun at the Capitol on a standard protest route—down Congress Avenue, across the First Avenue Bridge then down to the grassy flats at the edge of the Colorado river. Baptized, purified and tempered, we would return from that place, but not as who we were because the structures from where we started would also be the ones we would leave behind.

The butterfly girl’s flag snapping in the wind that jolted me back into awareness. I looked up and saw my pajamas in the flag. My catsuit had finally met itself and found a place in what had yet to be born.