From the album Nothing's About to Happen to Me
This is about living as a visitor in your own life. Mitski watches her house get colonized by creatures who belong more than she does, then goes to work to fund it all. The whole ecosystem thrives while she just pays the bills.
The white neighbourhood cat marking my house / It's supposed to be my house / But I guess, according to cats, now it's his house
The immediate surrender in that progression lands hard. She owns the house legally but emotionally concedes it in three lines. That cat has more claim than she does.
Gotta go to work / To pay for that cat's house
This flips the whole setup. She is not maintaining her home. She is funding someone else's territory. The labor that should create belonging instead cements her exclusion.
For the red-corseted wasp / Who lives in the roof / For the family of possums / For the bugs who drink my blood
Each creature gets more specific, more invasive. The wasp is corseted, possums are a family, bugs literally feed on her. They all have lives here while she just works and bleeds.
So that white cat can kill the birds
The whole chain of labor and life cycles back to casual violence. She funds an ecosystem where the top predator does what it wants. That is the system she maintains by showing up.
Ya, ya-ya-ya-ya
The wordless refrain is not joyful. It is the sound of going through motions, filling space where meaning should be. What do you say when your own life feels like background noise?
The song never answers what you hold onto. It just watches the cat mark territory and goes back to work. That refusal to resolve is the most honest thing here.