#deutobella

We fall

Aw, thank you!! This post also inspired this one, if you haven’t already seen it! (Bonus: a little fanfic, because everybody’s got a water buffalo Grizabella OC)

But you didn’t come into my askbox for reruns, anon, so let’s get into it!

Grizabella is a purebred Selkirk Rex, and her owner was a singer in a music hall/variety show act named Nellie May. As a kitten, she was given as a gift after a performance by one of Nellie’s admirers.

She grew up in the company of the troupe, rather than around other cats - a more nomadic version of Gus’ career, and probably from an earlier age. She gets her own act in the show - circus tricks, and meowing along to the melodies of Nellie’s songs as a “duet”.

By the time she’s old enough to think about finding a mate, the troupe is more well-established, and playing longer engagements at larger venues throughout London. Deuteronomy waits for her at the stage door and they hit it off, eventually he takes her to the Junkyard to meet the other Jellicles there.

This is Grizabella’s routine for a while, and it suits her - the theaters by day, sneaking off to the Junkyard by night. Then Dee proposes settling down. He’s the next in line to be Tribe Leader, he explains, which means he can’t be beholden to a single human (sidenote: this is also why, although Tugger canonically has a human home, Munk doesn’t - Munk is first in the line of succession). As his mate, and as mother to future heirs, she’d be subject to the same restrictions, living in the Junkyard and the surrounding villages full-time.

She accepts, and the show goes on to Glasgow without her. 

It sometimes hurts to think of Nellie, and the fact that she must assume that Grizabella left her for no good reason, but she throws herself into her new role, desperate to be liked and accepted by the Tribe, who have all known each other forever.

And, of course, no one becomes a parent intending to do a bad job of it, so she throws herself into the role of Devoted Mother as well. Everything works for a while, she truly loves and is loved by the Tribe and Dee and her boys, but eventually (there’s always an eventually), the collective values of Jellicle society chafe against the individualistic way she was raised. (”It’s like she thinks she’s human,” Dee’s old aunt would say with a sniff, just loud enough for Griz to hear.)

At first, her distance from the Tribe is the result of a compromise between her and Deuteronomy - she longs to travel and to find Nellie and the troupe again (her Tribe, she tells Dee emphatically, and he understands). So she goes off for a while (”Mama’s going on an adventure, my darlings, and she’ll bring you back presents!”), interspersed with trips back to the Junkyard as promised, and then off again for a long while. She even stows away on a train to Glasgow, but it’s years later and the music hall shows have fallen out of popular culture by that time.