After Cleo

Disenchantment

Beware of charm in cats and men

A pair of sapphire eyes glinted through slits of the pet carrier as Lydia bore Jonah gently up the front path. Mary followed behind with the food and litter bags, and a leopard-skin cat bed. I was in charge of the kitten’s entertainment centre – a bag containing balls, fake mice and a ‘fishing rod’ stick with an imitation bird and a bell attached to the end of an elastic line. It seemed incredible that one small creature required so much equipment.

A royal retinue, we escorted the carrier and its inhabitant respectfully down the hallway to the family room. Lydia lowered the box gently to the floor. It emitted a squeak.

‘Shall we let him out?’ Lydia asked.

‘Maybe just open the cage door and see how he feels,’ I replied. ‘He might want to stay in there until he’s used to us.’

As Lydia bent to slide the carrier’s latch open, its door bulged then burst on to the floor in an explosion of paws and fur. Jonah bounced on to the carpet, looked around and shook himself.

With pale fur and huge dark ears overshadowing his arresting eyes, he was cuteness personified. The only things that set him apart from classical beauty were his stubby tail and his back feet, which were several sizes too large for him.

He was much bigger than Cleo had been when she’d entered our lives so soon after Sam’s death in 1983. Cleo had arrived when our family was torn apart by tragedy. I wondered if Jonah might play a similarly vital role, taking our minds off cancer and focusing us on the future.

After giving us a brief inspection, Jonah dived straight under the cane chair and peered out at us through the bamboo bars.

‘Oh the poor thing’s terrified,’ said Mary. ‘Let him stay there till he’s more comfortable. I’ll put the kettle on.’

I’d never imagined we’d end up with another cat, let alone a Siamese. It’s such a presumptuous breed with so many overblown stories in its background. According to legend, only the King of Siam (modern-day Thailand) and members of the royal family were permitted to own a Siamese cat. Whenever a high-ranking person died, one of these felines was chosen to receive the dead person’s soul. The cat would then be taken to live in a temple where monks and priests fed it the finest food off solid gold plates. The dead person’s relatives provided cushions made of exquisite silks for the creature to lounge around on. Apart from eating, lounging and looking beautiful, the only other responsibility the cat had was to attend ceremonies. I hoped Jonah wasn’t expecting that kind of life with us.

We tried to ignore him nestling under the chair, but it was like ignoring a peacock in a hen house. As Mary walked past with her mug of tea a paw shot out and batted her ankle.

‘He wants to play,’ she said. ‘Where’s that fishing line?’

The plastic bag rustled as she reached into it and removed the rod with impudent bird attached. As she trailed the bird in front of the cane chair, a paw sprang out and batted it . . . once, twice. The bell jingled a protest every time the bird was hit.

Lydia lifted the two front chair legs off the floor. Mary trailed the fishing rod bird into the centre of the room – and boom! Jonah surged out from under the chair and sprang on the hapless bird, grabbing it between his teeth and kicking it with his oversized back feet.

I’d been nervous of laughing since the operation. So many everyday activities – sometimes even just the challenge of sitting in an upright chair – caused jabs of pain so sharp they could take my breath away. But watching a kitten hammering the life out of a toy bird made me chortle so much I spilt my tea. It was a relief to know I could laugh again with no physical pain. In fact, it seemed to haul me back from fear and illness into a vibrant world in which life was continually renewed. Laughing at the kitten freed me up to laugh about everything else that’d been happening lately. It shook off the stale hospital air and brought me back to life.

Jonah sat back on his haunches and looked up at us appraisingly.

‘Do you think Cleo would approve?’ Lydia asked.

With his lanky limbs and masculine swagger, Jonah was the opposite of Cleo in almost every way. He was twice her size at the same age. His fur was pale as the moon, while Cleo had been black all over. While his coat was soft, his fur was coarser than Cleo’s. He was a thoroughbred from a pet shop. Cleo had been an unashamed half-breed from a friend with an excess of kittens. There was no way Cleo could mistake Jonah for a replacement cat.

‘How could she not?’ I smiled. ‘Do you know what Cleo would want just now? A saucer of milk.’

Lydia hurried to the kitchen, emerging seconds later and placing a bowl of milk in front of the kitten. Intrigued, he sniffed it, then dipped a front paw in the liquid, forming a succession of pale circles on the surface. Jonah raised the damp paw to his nose, sniffed again and shook his head in disgust. With a swoop of his long back leg, he toppled the bowl over, sending milk gushing over the rug.

Mary stood up to get a cloth from the kitchen. Lydia moved to rescue Jonah from the flood, but before she could get near him he galloped across the floor and shimmied straight up the curtains.

‘Here, kitty!’ I called.

Jonah hesitated for a moment, as if considering the invitation. But he narrowed his eyes and took flight like a trapeze artist, launching himself through the air to land on top of the kitchen dresser.

Knocked together by an amateur craftsman in the depths of the New Zealand bush in the mid 1800s, the kauri dresser had since become a live-in restaurant for generations of borer. Every time I opened a drawer, piles of sawdust were a reminder the dresser was another day closer to total collapse. I’d tried to get it renovated once by a ‘restorer’ who’d left a flier in the letterbox. He’d returned the dresser reeking of cigarette smoke and booze, and in even wonkier condition than it’d been to begin with. Photo albums went in the lower cupboards to keep it stable. Our best wine glasses went in the upper cabinet because they didn’t weigh much and would therefore be less likely to cause structural failure.

What I hadn’t counted on was a berserk kitten hurling himself on top of the upper cabinet. The glasses trembled ominously as he struggled to find his balance.

Lydia climbed a kitchen chair and pleaded with him to jump into her arms. He glared down at her and refused to budge. Sighing, Lydia headed off to the garden shed to get the ladder. Jonah watched intrigued as she gingerly climbed the ladder and reached out to him.

Just as it seemed she might catch him, he flew off the dresser, sending champagne flutes toppling over red wine glasses, which smashed into white wine glasses, shattering the sherry glasses nobody had used since 1970.

‘It’s a shame I’m leaving tomorrow,’ said Mary as Jonah plummeted toward the kitchen bench, her tone not entirely sincere.

The kitten, combined with the broken glasses and post-operative exhaustion, was suddenly more than I could handle. How stupid I’d been to fall for him, let alone give him a name. I hobbled off to the bedroom, shut the door, crawled into bed and slept.

I woke to the sound of bells jingling and an unfamiliar squeaking sound. Lydia opened the bedroom door and Jonah burst in with the fishing rod between his teeth. He leapt on the covers, narrowly missing the most painful parts of my body, and dropped the fishing rod in my hand.

‘He wants to play,’ said Lydia. ‘And I need to help Mary with dinner. Can I leave him with you?’

Using my stronger left arm, I lifted the fishing rod and flicked it across my thighs. The bell jingled as Jonah lunged at the fake bird and snared it between his teeth. His reactions were incredibly fast. I flicked the fishing rod in the opposition direction. Impressive and beautiful to watch, he leapt and caught the bird mid-air. The more rapidly I flicked the rod, the faster Jonah went. When I made the bird fly a metre into the air he jumped and pirouetted mid-air like a ballerina. A wind-up kitten on fast-forward, he caught the bird every time.

I was worn out in minutes, but not Jonah. He wanted the game to go on. When I put the fishing rod down, he picked it up between his teeth and pressed it into my hand. Fortunately, Katharine arrived home from school and succumbed immediately.

‘Oooooh, Mum! He’s adorable! ’ she cooed. ‘Can I take him for a while?’

Could she ever! Lifting him into her arms and carrying him out of the room, she swore to take on feeding and litter-changing duties for eternity.

To celebrate her last night with us, Mary was preparing a sumptuous meal of casseroled chicken legs and sponge-top pudding from the same Edmonds recipe book our grandmother used. Nostalgic cooking smells lured me out of the bedroom to lie on one of the green sofas and watch my sister and daughter at work. Side by side, they moved in easy rhythm, Lydia peeling vegetables while Mary whipped a sponge-top batter. Dinner would be forty minutes away, precisely timed for Philip’s arrival home from work.

Jonah amused himself by running non-stop up and down the stairs. Presumably he’d decided to take a rest from shredding the freshly laid carpet, after galloping around the hall, scaling the family room blinds and diving into the toilet.

As she folded the pudding batter over a dish of stewed plums, Mary asked if we remembered Cleo being this active. I had hazy memories of Cleo being a handful as a kitten. Maybe it was because I was physically weak this time, but Jonah seemed worse. Much worse. By the time Cleo was Jonah’s age, she’d morphed into a calm and reasonable young cat. I’d have no hope of keeping up, let alone catching him if I was alone in the house with him. Just watching him was exhausting. If we’d worked out a way of attaching him to the national grid he’d have kept an entire suburb alight. Maybe it wouldn’t be such a tragedy if Philip refused to keep him.

Lydia smoothed a white cloth over the table. Once the plates, glasses and cutlery were in place, she rearranged a bowl of flowers and lit a candle in my favourite candlestick – Mexican, lime-green pottery and covered with decorative flowers.

‘Oh Lydia,’ I said. ‘It looks gorg—’

Suddenly, Jonah sprang on to the table top sending forks and plates flying. The candlestick toppled and smashed to pieces. The only thing that stopped the tablecloth bursting into flames was the water from the flower bowl that was now weeping on its side, its floral contents scattered.

My normal, robust self would have laughed it off.

‘Can’t somebody calm him down?!’ I whined.

Registering my distress, Lydia scooped our vandal off the floor and carried him to an armchair. Mary resurrected what she could of the table arrangement while Lydia held Jonah on her knees, gently resisting his twists and kicks until he stopped struggling. Closing her eyes, she began to chant. Jonah pricked his ears forward, listened intensely and accompanied her with a gravelly purr. Tuned into an unseen world, cat and daughter drifted into a state of serenity . . .

Minutes later, the eyes snapped open and he was off bouncing down the hall toward my study. We soon heard the eerie harmonies of paws on a computer keyboard.

‘Stop him!’ I called to Katharine, who’d been lured downstairs by the cacophony.

As Katharine hurried toward my study, Jonah emerged looking thoughtful.

‘It’s okay,’ Katharine called. ‘He’s jammed your keyboard but I can fix that. Oh, and he’s knocked over the jar you keep rubber bands in but that’s nothing.’

Jonah trotted toward me, let out a mournful groan and vomited a coil of rubber bands on the rug.

‘Oh dear . . . !’

But he’d just heard the toilet flush. Nothing was more exciting for him than trying to bat the torrent of water with his paw. Turbocharged, he was off to the bathroom.

Watching his tail disappear, I tallied his score. Two champagne flutes and one red wine glass – smashed. One Mexican candlestick – beheaded. Carpet shredded on stairs, plus damp patch where rubber bands were vomited up. Merino beanie (brand new) – chewed and holey. Computer keyboard – jammed.

The dream of owning a kitten had become a nightmare. We’d been hit by a feline tornado that left nothing but destruction in his wake. If Cleo had in any way sent us this creature, it was as a cruel trick to remind us what a perfect family pet and guardian she’d been.

I convulsed with tears. Lydia protested and Katharine cried while Mary looked guilty, but there was no alternative.

The kitten would have to go back.

As I crept off the sofa and down the hall to find the pet carrier, I heard the front door key turn in its lock. Philip appeared with the ravenous look of a man who’s smelt chicken casserole at the end of a twelve-hour day.

‘Who’s this?’ he asked as Jonah trotted forward to greet him.

‘My biggest mistake,’ I said. ‘Would you mind taking him back to the pet shop in the morning?’

Jonah sat neatly in front of Philip, examined him closely, then stretched up a long front paw to pat his knee.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ Philip asked, as Jonah put his head to one side and mewed politely.

‘Hyperactive, neurotic, destructive, dysfunctional, vain . . .’

‘Vain?’

‘He’s like one of those fashion models. He knows he’s beautiful, and he uses it to manipulate people . . . just look at him . . .’

Jonah stared innocently at a spider on the ceiling. He was so perfectly coloured, and those eyes beaming out from behind their robber’s mask were exquisite.

‘What do the girls think?’

‘They want to keep him, but that’s easy for them to say. They’ll be moving out before we know it.’

‘You’re very dashing, aren’t you boy?’ said Philip, lifting Jonah into his arms. Jonah lay passively on his back for a few seconds, his outsized kangaroo feet pointing skywards while Philip tickled him behind his ears. Jonah returned the favour by licking his hand. ‘And affectionate.’

‘He’s exhausting.’

‘He’s just a boy,’ said Philip. ‘Let’s see how everyone feels after dinner.’

‘That’s the other thing. Remember how Cleo loved food? We could get her to do anything for a piece of chicken. This one refuses to eat.’

Philip carried him through to the laundry where a bowl full of dry food sat beside another filled with wet food, both untouched. He lowered Jonah in front of the wet food. The kitten sniffed the mound of fishy goo, licked it tentatively and began bolting it down.

Philip told me to go back to bed and he’d sort things out with ‘Fur Man’. Pet names already? He was bonding dangerously with the intruder. Nevertheless, I was too tired to do anything other than retreat to the bedroom. Lydia tapped on the door and brought in a tray bearing dinner.

There were only three sleeping pills left inside my bedside cabinet. I swallowed two with a swig of water and signed out for the night.

Before dawn next morning we woke to the sound of regular thudding accompanied by jingling bells – a noise that might accompany an invasion of morris dancers. Philip climbed out of bed. As he turned the door handle, the door swung open and in burst Jonah, fishing rod firmly snared between his teeth. He hurled himself on the duvet, placed the rod on my hand and stepped back expectantly. Philip smiled and disappeared off to the kitchen to make tea and toast.

Nestled on the blankets, Jonah purred like a machine, waiting patiently for the game to begin. I wasn’t in the mood to play, especially as he was going back to the pet shop in an hour or two. Jonah looked quizzically at me, then moved forward and touched my hand with a soft paw, its claws diplomatically sheathed. In the most gentlemanly manner, he was issuing an invitation. To wrap my hand around the rod and swing it through the air would involve minimal effort. Surely I wasn’t so mean-spirited I’d turn him down?

Sighing, I started swinging the rod with my good left arm, setting the pesky bird and its bell in motion. Jonah watched mesmerised for a few seconds, before adjusting his legs into the ideal lunging position. Anticipating his victim’s flight path, he quivered from side to side.

Watching the bird, his focus became intense, as though he was imagining himself inside the body of his prey, and was at one with its every swoop.Then with the grace of Rudolf Nureyev in his prime, Jonah launched himself into the air, catching the bird and bell between his teeth and front paws.

Once we’d started we couldn’t stop. Every lunge was balletic. There was no challenge the young kitten wouldn’t accept. Higher and higher he leapt until sometimes he seemed to pause mid-air in a single pose reaching for the bird. A study in cappuccino shades, with those flashing blue eyes, he was so beautiful. And so full of life.

I was falling for Jonah’s charms again.

‘Still going back to the pet shop are we?’ Philip laughed when he returned laden with mugs of tea and marmalade toast. Easing into his favourite chair, Philip sank his teeth into his toast. But Jonah had no intention of letting him enjoy breakfast in peace. With the bird between his teeth, the kitten jumped off the bed and laid the fishing rod at Philip’s feet before dipping his head and stepping backwards. He gazed steadily up at Philip.

‘You can’t turn him down,’ I said.

Feigning reluctance, Philip sighed and picked up the fishing rod. But he had no intention of going easy on Jonah. Philip had been an army officer trainer before I met him. Summoning up old skills, he flicked and spun the fishing rod at twice the speed I’d managed. Jonah rose to the challenge, leaping higher, running faster, springing on and off the bed so fast he became a blur of pale fur. Sometimes Jonah caught the bird, other times it was too fast for him.

‘Go easy on him,’ I said.

Philip held the rod still and smiled down at the kitten, whose only signs of exertion were his heaving sides. Once more, they charged into battle.

Philip stood up and twirled the bird in a circle around his legs with Jonah chasing a whisker’s length behind.

It was the raucous rough and tumble Philip had missed out on since Rob had left home. Man and cat made quite a pair. Whenever Philip tried to finish the game and put the fishing rod down Jonah picked it up and pressed it into Philip’s hand.

‘Someone’s got to work around here,’ he sighed, collecting Jonah off the floor and curling him around the blankets over my knees. Jonah emitted a strange sound through his nose – a cross between a cluck and a sneeze, a sort of ‘snitch’. A condescending noise we’d soon become familiar with, the ‘snitch’ was Jonah’s way of expressing disappointment or disgust. He hadn’t wanted the game to end.

‘Never mind, boy,’ I said. ‘You can have a rest with me now.’

Jonah looked at me with eyes that could melt an ice shelf. Purring, he stepped over the covers, carefully avoiding my sensitive abdomen and torso. He seemed to know exactly where he needed to be, nestled into my neck with his head on the pillow. Heaving a sigh, he sounded like a traveller who, after an epic journey, had finally arrived home. Who was I to argue?

* * *

When I heard Mary bringing her suitcase down the stairs, I felt a moist lump in my throat. It had been wonderful having her stay for the week. Philip was taking her to the airport. As he stowed her bag in his car, I burrowed in the comforting curve of her shoulder and thanked her for everything.

‘Take care,’ she said. ‘And good luck with that kitten.’