Christmas Cats: A Literary Companion

Steve Dale

Ricky, our talented Devon Rex cat, always liked to visit Boots Montgomery, the talented Tibetan terrier who lives across the hall. Boots knows the names of all seventy-five of her plush squeaky toys. No one on earth loves getting toys more than Boots; she can sniff out her toys and then proceeds to unwrap them.

The Christmas tree at the center of the living room is glorious, and veritably glows from the roaring fire in the fireplace on the other side of the room. It's two days before Christmas, we've been invited to share holiday cheer, drink, and gifts. Boots naturally finds and then unwraps her own gifts. Our dogs, Chaser and Lucy, appreciate the fact that they don't have thumbs; they don't even try opening their presents.

John, Boots's dad, says, "Hey, look at that!" as Ricky, our then-five-year-old Devon Rex cat, does a Boots. Ricky finds his present, and then begins to rip apart the impeccably wrapped gift.

"Now what's going on?" asks John, as he begins to laugh. Ricky is halfway through the job, but then he falls over; gets up again, sniffs the gift, and then right back on the ground. Now, he's rubbing his cheeks against the present and meowing. "It looks like Ricky's been over-served," John says.

Of course, Ricky wasn't inebriated, but clearly he was telling us what was in the package: catnip.

The next day, on Christmas Eve, Ricky makes one of his many TV appearances. The local morning news shows are desperate for content on these slow news days. Ricky fills time with a musical interlude, playing tunes on his piano.

The news anchors at WMAQ^-TV in Chicago aren't certain of exactly what it is that they're witnessing as Ricky casually pounds out his original jazz compositions.

On the air, anchor Art Norman says, "This isn't really a cat, is it?"

Art wasn't the first to wonder. After all, you don't see a piano-playing kitty every day. And you don't see a Devon Rex every day, either. To some, Ricky doesn't even look like a member of the feline persuasion. He looks like a cute all-white Gremlin from the Steven Spielberg movie, with ears far too large for his elfin face. And like all Devon Rex cats, Ricky is folicly impaired. He has a single coat of soft curly hair (it feels like a chenille sweater), and a big spot in need of Rogaine on the top of his head.

Ricky was socialized from a young age, just hanging out on my shoulder like a parrot (he always had a leash and harness on in case he wanted to jump off, but I never needed to use it). Ricky would regularly go with the dogs to the pet store, to the local dry cleaner, to rent videos, or to the bank.

On one visit to the bank, a woman commented, "What a nice Chihuahua." After doing my transaction, and about to depart the building, a bank security guard stopped me. I thought, "I'm busted; they'll never allow me to take Ricky here again."

"Are batteries included with that thing?" he questioned.

Before I could answer, Ricky meowed. "Oh, that's cute—must be from a new Spielberg movie," he said.

The reason I toted my cat to these places is that I sought to demonstrate that cats can be socialized, too, and they can learn. So, I taught my little maestro to use his paws to play a plastic kid's piano. But Ricky's talents weren't limited to the musical arts; he was quite an athlete. Like a super feline hero, he could leap in a single bound over a prone dog in a "down/stay." He could also jump through a Hula Hoop.

TV crews loved Ricky. And he loved them. He actually learned on his own to look for the little red lights on cameras, and to follow them. Ricky worked for treats, but like most natural-born performers, he really craved attention.

I've never added up all of Ricky's TV appearances, but his piano playing has been shown on National Geographic Explorer, and Pets: Part of the Family, various Animal Planet programs as well as nearly all of Chicago's local news outlets.

When Pet Project, a Canadian TV show, heard about our four-legged musician, they sent a TV crew to our home. They even hired a piano teacher—a real piano teacher—to further Ricky's career. This was Chicago piano instructor Diane Aitken's second television appearance. Her first shot was on The Oprah Winfrey Show,

conducting the studio audience and singer Luther Vandross in a sing-along of favorite Christmas songs.

She said that this was her first encounter with a student who purrs. In fact, at one point Ricky spontaneously began to meow as he played. Diane took it all so seriously. She stopped the taping. She picked Ricky up and looked into his eyes, admonishing, "You're no Luther Vandross—just play the song; we don't need to hear you." Amazing thing is, he listened.

Sounding very much like a piano teacher, she departed imploring with a straight face, "Practice, practice, practice, and one day you really will learn to play 'Three Blind Mice.'"

Ricky was a versatile pro. He could perform at pet stores, despite the fact that his piano and stage on a card table was more than once located across from gerbils. He could also perform outdoors. At the time, I figured if Garth Brooks can perform in Central Park, Ricky can play on the front steps of our condominium.

That's what Ricky was doing one day when a ten- or eleven-year-old boy with Down's syndrome walked by. He was enthralled with Ricky, staring expressionless and motionless for nearly five minutes. Suddenly, he began to laugh. We're not talking little giggles here; I mean big full-blown belly laughing.

His mother quietly told me, "Billy's father passed on two weeks ago. Everyone has tried to get him to talk, to react."

Just then, Billy, who was still in stitches, reached over to pet Ricky.

Ricky rubbed his face on Billy's arm, and nonchalantly walked up on his shoulder. Then Billy sat down and snuggled with Ricky, now in his lap. I don't know what secrets Billy shared, but he talked to Ricky for several minutes straight, sometimes laughing and sometimes crying. Just before he and his mom walked off, he looked at Ricky and said, "I love you," and then he kissed him. It's a kiss that I'll never forget.

That year, I remember Christmas was especially warm, at least by Chicago standards. It was about 32 degrees, and snow was falling lightly. Had I taken out his piano, it would have been the perfect backdrop for a chorus of "White Christmas." Instead we just slipped on his burnt orange sweater for a quick visit outside to play catch with the white beetles falling from the sky. That would be Ricky's last holiday.

The following summer, I lost my best buddy. He succumbed at a young age, as musical geniuses sometimes seem to do. He died of an all-too-common heart disease in cats called feline hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM).

As often happens with cats who have feline HCM, Ricky just dropped. One moment he was eating, the next moment he was dead. It's horrifying to see your beloved pet die. His tiny heart just gave out. Because of Ricky's HGM, the lower portion of his heart muscle was thicker than it should have been. Because of the thickening, his heart could not relax well or fill up with blood as it should have. If feline HCM is detected early, as it was with Ricky, a cat has a chance of at least a few more years of life, prolonged by medication.

When Ricky died, I felt as though I lost my best friend. I'm not sure I'll have another cat who knows what I'm thinking before I do it, or vice versa. Ricky and I had an astonishing psychic kind of connection. We were sort of the Lassie and Timmy of the cat world, except Ricky never rescued me from a well.

Every now and again I catch a rerun of Ricky on TV. I'm glad Ricky is still putting smiles on faces. But I don't need a TV rerun to remember Ricky. To some it might sound crazy, but a day doesn't go by that I don't think about Ricky, most especially whenever we have a white Christmas.