Cleo

Observer

A wise cat steps back from emotional response and observes without judgment.

Our first winter after losing Sam was particularly harsh. Snow draped itself over the hills across the harbor. Giant bruises of clouds rolled up from Antarctica and pushed against our windows. Rain pelted sideways at the glass. Wind tore our coats as we scurried down the zigzag, which had become a waterfall.

I gradually trained myself to drive under the footbridge. The first time I held my breath and focused on a triangle of harbor in the distance as the car hurtled down the hill. Next time, driving slowly up the slope, I allowed my eyes to drift to the bus stop and the curb Sam’s foot had left.

A reluctant spring arrived with spikes of yellow bloom. Reliving Sam’s last steps, I forced myself to walk down the zigzag and onto the tired wooden planks of the footbridge. Pausing in the center, I gazed down at the road. It was an unremarkable strip of tar seal. No stains, no hollows or irregularities. Nothing to indicate a boy had lost his life there. I hoped he hadn’t died frightened and alone.

I gave up scouring the streets for mousey-haired, thirty-something largish women with or without spectacles in navy coats. A Ford Escort parked on the side of the street was no longer an invitation to inspect its headlights. The damage would’ve been fixed months ago, anyway. It was probably beetling up and down hills, pretending it had never killed.

With warmer weather a gut-wrenching series of firsts had to be endured: what would have been Sam’s tenth birthday, closely followed by our first Christmas without him, then the anniversary of the accident. I’ve never been able to love summer wholeheartedly since.

Sometimes I’d been paralyzed with guilt if a few minutes went by without grief for Sam. A moment of laughter or happiness would shame me into thinking I was letting Sam down. But I gradually realized that being locked in a state of misery wasn’t helping Rob or honoring the life we’d had with Sam or the fact I was still alive.

With courage worthy of Superman himself, Rob had settled back well into school. Teachers whined about learning difficulties but the main thing was he seemed to have plenty of friends. While Steve and I hadn’t fallen in love again, we’d accepted some of our differences and were getting along better. Cleo was constantly springing out at us from behind doorways, reminding us life was too profound to be taken seriously.

I was beginning to relate to Cleo’s attraction to high places. Even if it was just a hereditary Abyssinian thing, the notion of taking a step above daily life and gazing down at it from a distance had compelling logic. I’d been doing it myself at night recently, standing at the top of the zigzag, the chill wind slicing my cheeks, and staring down at the glittering city. When observed from a great height, pain sometimes shrinks and subsides into the wider pattern of life. With practice and time I was learning it’s possible to disengage emotion occasionally and experience the serenity of a cat observing the world from a rooftop.

Gazing down at the grids of streetlights, I would wonder if a person’s life is packaged in a predestined design. When Sam was just two years old we’d walked through a picturesque old cemetery one morning. He ran ahead and stopped at a grave stone engraved with the name “Samuel.” Pointing at the headstone, he howled uncontrollably. I’d had to lift him, red-faced and sobbing, in my arms and carry him away from the place. He couldn’t even read at the time and had no way to understand the technicalities of death and cemeteries. How could a toddler comprehend so much, let alone experience a terrifying premonition? The memory of that day still makes me shudder.

The night sky that had once seemed so icy and indifferent would draw me into its magnificence. Maybe the cloak of space wasn’t empty after all, but full of profound energies humans have yet to perceive. Instead of limitless nothing, that giant bowl of stars could be where we’ve come from and the place we return to. So far away and yet intimately close. Light that had left those stars years ago traveled across time to enter the retinas of my eyes and become part of my experience. They were as close to me now as darling Sam, distant as the stars and yet an integral part of every breath. The sky, stars, Sam and I were closer than I’d dared imagine. Maybe that’s what Mum had been talking about when she’d said Sam was part of the sunset. Perhaps she wasn’t insensitive after all, but incredibly wise. When it’s my turn, maybe I’ll discover death isn’t a terrifying full stop but a return to the eternal mystery that is home.

With help from Jason and Ginny we plowed through another winter into a second spring. As nights grew longer, evenings after school were a favorite time for the four of us to get together. Ginny and I would meet in the garden and soothe the day away with a glass of bubbles while we watched the boys burn off the last of their energy before bedtime.

I’d gone along with Ginny’s dizzy act in the beginning. With her whacky earrings and fabulous hairdos, she gave the impression of being a blonde in brunette’s clothing. Nothing could’ve been further from the truth. I was amazed when she confessed to not only being a midwife but studying for a science degree as well. More important, she introduced me to fake fur and lent me some of her earrings, including some orange dangling Perspex lightning bolts that were beyond electrifying. Ginny taught me how to put false eyelashes on straight and to not be scared of platform shoes. She was becoming the friend I’d always dreamt of—zany, wise, kind and equipped with an almost psychic ability to turn up when needed.

Rob and Jason were bonded by their devotion to Cleo. They thought it was about time she had kittens. They were disgusted when I explained she’d had an operation.

“That’s so-o mean!” said Jason, shaking his head with bewilderment.

“Yeah,” Rob added. “Why didn’t you let Cleo have babies?”

Standing on the grass against an orange sunset, Ginny and I exchanged smiles. We’d become such close friends it felt as though we were living in an Antipodean version of an African longhouse. With one short zig of the zigzag between our homes, the boys ran freely from one house to the other. Even though Ginny and Jason lived in two-storied splendor, they seemed oblivious to our shabby kitsch.

“Well,” I said, “a cat can have babies three or four times a year. And if she had five kittens in each litter that means Cleo would have twenty babies in one year. Imagine twenty kittens running through the house.”

Rob thought that sounded fantastic. When I asked where they’d all sleep, Jason volunteered that at least one kitten could live at his house.

“They’d still have nineteen kittens left,” said Ginny. “And it wouldn’t be long before they were able to have kittens. They’d end up with hundreds and thousands of kittens.”

“Wow!” said Rob, turning to me. “Why were you so mean?”

I tried to explain the operation’s benefits. Without it Cleo would want to go out on dates. She’d get moody when we kept her inside. The vet had assured me having her spayed protected her from infections and some types of cancer.

“Nobody stopped you having babies,” Rob grumbled.

This surgical reproductive talk was reassurance we’d done the right thing in not revealing to Rob details of Steve’s vasectomy reversal, which had involved considerably more time under the knife and greater discomfort than Cleo had undergone. The patient hadn’t once complained, though his eyes sometimes clouded with pain. The surgeon reported that the operation had gone well, though it would be some time before we knew for certain if it had worked. After a stoic recovery, Steve had packed his suitcase and hobbled off to the ferry for another stint at sea.

Cleo tuned into the boys’ disapproval of me. Squirming in my arms, she demanded to be put on the grass. She stalked around the side of the house looking like Naomi Campbell. Watching her disappear I felt a momentary twinge of guilt. Perhaps a creature as graceful as Cleo deserved to populate the world.

“You should’ve let her have babies!” said Rob, harrumphing off down the path. “C’mon Jason. Let’s dig.”

The boys’ shared love of Cleo had expanded to other interests, including a vast excavation they’d undertaken in a corner of our garden so wild and neglected I’d barely noticed it before. Shaded with ferns and an air of forbidden mystery, it was a perfect spot for male bonding over a major dig.

Day after day they dragged Steve’s pickax and shovels out from under our house. The equipment looked huge and dangerous in their hands. Today’s parent would probably be sued for letting them loose with such man-sized weaponry. But the hole-digging enterprise really mattered to the boys.

A fireball sun was sinking over the hills. A shawl of frost nestled in the valleys. The city hummed companionably below us. When I asked Ginny if we should call the boys back to get them inside and fed she shrugged. Digging was obviously an important rite in the passage to manhood.

Even though I was tempted to swathe Rob in Bubble Wrap and protect him from every potential dent, I knew it would be a mistake. I had to ease up and allow him the freedom a boy needs to develop into a confident young male. The hole-digging mission went on week after week, much to Rata’s delight (the only expert digger among them). Perched on a branch, Cleo kept lookout for inadvertent birdlife while the boys swaggered like cowboys and exchanged grown-up cursewords below.

Nobody, including the boys, knew exactly why they were digging the hole. Its purpose changed all the time. They were tunneling through to the other side of the earth for a while, until they started feeling sweaty and wondered if they were getting too close to the core. Changing strategy a few days later, they decided to search for the chest of gold that Captain Cook had almost certainly buried there on his last voyage. A few days later they discovered an old wire mattress base under the house. They carried it outside and stretched it across the hole and made a lethal-looking trampoline.

I wondered if handling the moist weight of the soil was therapy for Rob. The sight of him spattered with dirt and flushed with satisfaction after a digging session reminded me of my grandmother. Mother of nine children, she’d spent most of her life on the same patch of farmland, and must have faced countless anxieties and disappointments. Whenever worry scratched at her innards she headed down her back steps, past the henhouse to her garden. The cure for every sorrow, she said, could be found on her knees on a patch of earth with a trowel in one hand. The ritualistic comfort of turning the earth was her psychotherapy. Deep engagement with her garden’s volcanic loam kept her earthed and connected to the planet’s ancient rhythms.

Though she’d long since moved on, I was beginning to understand her better now, especially since I’d spent more time outside while the boys were digging.

In a frivolous act of optimism I planted tulip bulbs for spring. To cover a seed with soil is to demonstrate faith in the future. Tearing out weeds, watering and nurturing the sleeping seed are acts of trust in Nature. When a green shoot appears the gardener experiences a similar rush to someone who has just created a work of art or given birth. Gardening is the closest some people get to feeling like a god. To watch a seedling sprout and unfurl into a flower or vegetable is to take part in a miracle. The gardener also learns acceptance of decay and death, to almost welcome a season of withdrawal as part of the cycle.

Cleo, on the other hand, had another way of dealing with life’s hiccups. She headed for high places. As we wandered down the path to inspect the boys’ earthworks, Ginny suddenly stopped and pointed a crimson fingernail at our roof. Perched on top of a chimney pot was a familiar silhouette.

“What’s Cleo doing up there?” she asked.

“Probably sulking about the operation,” I said. “She must be feeling pretty fit to get up there. Cleo!”

But our cat sat still as a statue against the orange sky, her back to us, her tail in a graceful loop over the chimney.

“Are you sure she’s okay?” said Ginny doubtfully.

“It’s her way of dealing with things.”

“Do you think she’s stuck?” asked Ginny.

“Maybe she’s enjoying the view.”

Cleo must’ve had fun climbing up there, but getting down looked impossible, even for an agile cat.

“Why do these things always happen when Steve’s away at sea?” I complained. Trudging around the side of the house to find a ladder, I suddenly thought of a new motto: “Keep one eye on the stars and the other on the ground to watch out for dog shit.”

Ginny, whose generosity knew no bounds, offered to climb up and get Cleo. But even a circus performer would think twice before scaling a ladder in fishnet stockings, platform shoes and earrings the size of post office clocks.

Thanking her, I leaned the ladder against the house and looked skywards.

Two tiny black ears stood out against the sunset. The ladder seemed suddenly frail and rickety—and far taller than I’d remembered.

As I climbed, a wave of nausea washed up from my knees to the top of my neck, threatening to burst out from the back of my throat. Vertigo had never had such a physical effect on me before.

“Shall I call the fire brigade?” Ginny called helpfully. I regretted glancing down. Ginny, her face turned up in concern, had shrunk to the size of a brightly colored beetle.

I reached the top of the ladder and edged onto the roof. Ex cept it wasn’t so much a roof as a collection of rusty holes holding hands, hardly ideal support for a not very petite woman.

“Here, kitty!” I called. The shape on top of the chimney remained motionless. The poor feline was frozen with terror. “Oh, Cleo! Don’t worry. I’ll get you down.”

The roof squeaked and groaned in protest as I crawled toward the chimney, my stomach churning. The thought was just occurring to me that if Cleo, an agile animal equipped with four legs, was having trouble getting off the roof it might be close to impossible for a lumbering vertigo victim.

“Hold on! I’m nearly there,” I called.

A pair of luminous eyes loomed above my head and narrowed to a bad-tempered glower. Cleo shook her head in a bored, dismissive manner. She rose gracefully to her feet on top of the chimney, arched her back and yawned. Without hesitation she sprang nimbly down to the roof, leapt across the rusty tin, jumped onto a nearby tree and slid groundwards, landing inches away from Ginny’s platform shoes.

“I think I’m going to throw up!” I wailed down at Ginny.

“You’ll be fine. Just take it slowly. Crawl back to the ladder, that’s right. Turn around. Watch out for the gutter…there you go!”

When I finally reached terra firma I took three steps and threw up in a hydrangea bush.

“Why didn’t you say you were scared of heights?” asked Ginny.

“It’s not usually this bad. I haven’t felt this sick since I was…pregnant.”