The Amazing Life of Cats (3 page)
I began to wonder if the point of superheroes isn’t so much the extraordinary feats they perform as the fact they have other lives as uncool males struggling for acceptance. Sooner or later most boys can relate to Clark Kent, geeky and rejected by the woman he loves. Like Clark Kent, every boy has an inner hero. His only hope of knowing a real live superman is to become one, a goal that sets most young men up for disappointment. As they grow older the search for Superman continues. Sports heroes, rock stars, billionaires. Yet the real hero isn’t so far away. He lies within.
Reluctant as I was to admit it, I was getting help from Cleo. She seemed to know when I was bottoming out, whatever time of day or night it was. A paw would slide down the crack of a door, she’d leap on our bed or sit nearby, not demanding anything. Purring patiently, she’d simply wait until I surfaced.
Even her destructive behaviour seemed to have purpose. It dragged us into dealing with the here and now. During the few moments I was yelling at her about curtain cords or toppled photo frames, I wasn’t eating my insides out over Sam. Infuriating, impish and bursting with affection, Cleo pulsed with exuberance. From the point of her tail to the tips of her whiskers she was one hundred per cent alive. There was more Sam in her than there was under the whistling skies of Makara.
But Steve didn’t seem to see it that way. Even though I’d explained how Sam had picked her out, I had the feeling Steve associated the kitten with the life we’d had before Sam died, not this surreal existence we were trying to eke out now. Adopting a pet without his consent was hardly a functional family thing to do. Besides, he came from a long line of dog people.
•
Steve unpacked his sea bag under Cleo’s watchful gaze. She appeared to be making an inventory of his clothes, noting which might be portable. His eyes slid sideways at her. I could tell he was thinking only one word. Mess.
One of the many differences in our personalities was our attitude to mess. I was, and still am, comfortable with quite a lot of disorder. Amazingly creative ideas can spring from piles of old paper and clothes you forgot you ever had. At least, that’s what I tell myself when I can’t be bothered sifting through them, which is almost always.
Steve, on the other hand, could have been mistaken for a graduate from the Zen school of the obsessively tidy. As a teenage bride, I’d strived to satisfy his craving for immaculate surroundings. Whenever he was due home from a week at sea, I’d rush around the house dusting skirting boards, straightening curtains and arranging rug tassels in parallel lines. I was a slow learner. It took years to realise that no matter how perfect I thought the house looked it made no difference to Steve’s perception. Oblivious to my efforts, he moved like a robot through the same routine every time he arrived home from sea: unleash vacuum cleaner, wipe benchtops, even if I’d cleaned them half an hour earlier, and unpack sea bag.
Just as I launched into a spiel about how much Rob adored the kitten, Cleo dived into Steve’s bag and emerged with the toe of a black sock between her teeth. Scurrying away, she tossed it above her head and jumped into the air. She caught it between her front paws with panache, before rocketing away full pelt, the sock trailing between her legs. One of her back legs stepped on it, bringing her to such a sudden halt she somersaulted through the air and landed on her back. I sucked a breath. The poor creature had surely damaged her spine. We’d have to take her to the vet. She’d writhe in agony. There’d be no cure. Unperturbed, Cleo wriggled to her feet, picked up the sock again and sprinted away.
Unimpressed, Steve trudged out of the room in search of his sock. It generally took us two days to adjust to Steve’s routine after he’d been away. His irritation with my inability to fold underwear neatly matched my annoyance with his insistence on checking pots after I’d washed them to see if I’d left any residual circles of goo around their edges. With the additional tension of an unwelcome kitten, domestic harmony was even more unlikely.
I’d read somewhere that seventy-five per cent of marriages fail after the death of a child. I wasn’t prepared to buy into that. Defying statistics was one of my specialities. But I was beginning to understand why so many relationships crumble.
Steve’s pain was no less than mine, but it was different, more internal. I grieved in wild expressionist brushstrokes, sobbing, wailing, accusing, wanting to be held. His sorrow was more orderly and restrained. Words, when he said them, were as carefully considered as dew drops on an orange in a Dutch master’s still life.
While Steve had been able to undertake the tasks expected of a man—identifying the body, the police interview and, tomorrow, an appearance at the court inquest—his ability to convey what was going on behind the fortress of his face had shut down. I was to blame for some of that. I should never have asked him to stop crying that morning after the accident. His gaze slithered everywhere these days, from curtains to carpet to rubber plant. Never into my eyes. When he asked if I’d go along to the inquest with him I refused. The thought of reliving it all in front of strangers was too much. If I’d had the courage to agree I’d have been a better wife. We were both at our most needy, yet neither had reserves to soothe the other.
Rob called us to the living room, where he was crouching over Cleo, dangling Steve’s sock. He tossed the sock across the room. Cleo chased it, caught it neatly between her teeth, trotted back to Rob and dropped it at his feet. She then sat neatly beside Rob and waited, staring up at him expectantly.
‘See? She can fetch!’
‘Only dogs can fetch,’ said Steve, swooping his sock off the floor.
‘No, you try it,’ said Rob.
Hesitantly, Steve flung the sock into the air. Cleo barrelled away and retrieved it, depositing it at my feet this time.
The kitten ensured we were all awarded equal time throwing the sock. She wanted it to be a family game.
‘Cleo can play sock-er!’ said Rob.
Her enthusiasm was limitless. The three of us were soon mesmerised by the wiry figure dancing to and fro after her sock victim. When it rolled under the sofa’s underskirts I was almost relieved. No way would she be able to slide into the two-inch gap between the sofa and the floor.
But I’d underestimated Cleo’s yogi-like flexibility. Without hesitation she flattened her haunches and wriggled under the sofa. It was like watching birth in reverse.
The silence that followed was unnerving. She was stuck under there. Seconds later, a single black paw appeared from behind the high back of the sofa. It was swiftly accompanied by another paw. With leverage from two sets of claws a face appeared, much narrower than the last time we’d seen it, the eyes half-closed, the ears reduced to mere flaps flattened against its skull. Clamped victoriously between its thin lips was the sock.
•
The sun glinted like a giant tiger eye as it sank behind the hills. The sky was turning pink with exhaustion. Slipping on a cashmere cardigan, I chopped chicken breasts. Risotto was bland enough not to offend anyone’s tastebuds.
Cleo lifted her nose and, like a connoisseur analysing the aromas of a rare Bordeaux, half-closed her eyes. Following my ankles as I moved about the kitchen, she produced a series of squeaks. Not the mews of a cat begging for food, but the demands of a priestess impatient to have offerings laid at her feet.
Gathering her up, I snuggled her against my chest and sat down with her on a kitchen chair. She strained wistfully towards the chicken but soon became intrigued by my precious cashmere cardigan. Simple sheep’s wool was of no interest to Cleo. Fibre removed from domestic goats and then painstakingly dehaired was another matter. She chomped on the wool around the middle button.
I disentangled her and lowered her firmly to the ground. Cleo sprang back onto my lap. Like a famished lion she dug her teeth into my cardigan. I tried to dislodge her. A sudden pain in my thumb as she sank a fang through my flesh. Not only had she ruined my cardigan but she’d drilled a hole in me.
Crying out, I stemmed the river of blood with a paper towel. When Steve saw my injury he was unimpressed: Cleo was doing a good job fulfilling his prejudices against kittens.
When we sat down to the meal the furrow between Steve’s eyebrows deepened as Cleo demonstrated how unwilling she was to understand the words ‘Don’t jump onto the table’. She attacked each of our plates, not to mention the tablemats, salt and pepper shakers and cutlery.
Heat pulsed up the back of my neck. My thumb throbbed. The effort of selling a kitten to a reluctant husband was taking its toll. I grabbed her and shut her firmly in the laundry.
‘She hates it in there,’ Rob whined.
‘She can’t ruin our lives!’ I shouted to drown out the yowls from behind the laundry door. Something about her jagged cries tipped me over a precipice. It wasn’t just the kitten, the thumb and the husband. The inquest was the next morning. Steve would come face to face with that woman. Policemen would prove her guilt. She would go to jail. I would finally have to accept Sam was dead.
Cleo’s yelps intensified. My body started shaking. Breaths came in shallow gasps. ‘I can’t stand it any more! She’ll just have to go back to Lena!’
Rob stared into his risotto and swallowed back tears. ‘You’re. So. Mean.’
Scraping back my chair, I reeled to my feet and ran to the bedroom. Sobbing loudly into the pillow, I knew Rob was right. I
was
mean. And out of control. A bad mother, hopeless wife, a failed human being in general. I longed for sleep to drop its blanket over me.
Instead, a boy’s hand touched my shoulder. ‘She loves you, Mummy,’ he whispered. ‘Listen . . .’
A bulk of fur nestled into my neck. The rhythmical growl of her purr roared in my ear. It was the deep primeval sound of waves rolling in on the black sand beaches of my childhood, the noise a baby hears when it’s in the womb. Wise and eternal, it could be the earth’s lullaby or the voice of God.
A cat’s purr is said to have a profound effect on the human body. Tests have proved purring reduces people’s stress, lowers blood pressure and helps mend muscles and bones. The healing powers of cats are increasingly acknowledged by the many hospitals and nursing homes that employ resident cat doctors. Regular doses of purring have the potential to repair heart tissue as well. Listening to her throaty melody, my chest filled with liquid honey.
Cleo nudged her head under my chin, stared at me with maternal concern and to my amazement planted her damp nose on my cheek. It was an unmistakable kitten kiss. Nestling into my neck, she stretched a delicate front leg across my face. I took the paw between my fingers, caressed it and watched the claws gently open and close. No threat of attack this time. The pads of her foot were softer than my fingertips. As we lay ‘holding hands’, our souls reached across the divide of species and shared a connection beyond words.
I awoke several hours later with Cleo wedged between the sheets, her head resting on the pillow beside me. She felt entitled to be there. Her motionless form, the peaks of her ears against the white cotton, the restful comfort of her breathing made me wonder if we hadn’t slept that way, human and feline, side by side, since Earth’s first dawn.
From Cleo, Helen Brown
What greater gift than the love of a cat?
Charles Dickens
T
he cat was less of a present and more of an afterthought by my father, who’d forgotten my fourth birthday on the Monday of a bank holiday weekend.
Having fruitlessly scoured Johannesburg for a present he finally found an open pet store with one solitary mangy kitten who was only four weeks old. The owner seemed happy to be rid of her and generously sold her for fifty cents, throwing in a litter tray, a bowl and some food. And so into our lives she came, and in the way only an imaginative four-year-old could, I decided for some unknown reason to call her Kewie (pronounced Q.E.).
She was my cat from the start. And being so young, and surrounded by numerous large dogs, she grew up tough. This toughness is probably what saved her when, only a few weeks later, she was knocked down by a car in front of our house. However, it was the second car two weeks later that really did the damage. She was discovered in a gutter when our neighbour tried to kick the ‘dead’ cat aside; realising she was still alive, he promptly rushed her to the vet. The accident left Kewie with a broken pelvis, a fractured skull and a motionless tail that had a forty-five-degree kink, her trademark forever after.