Dewey's Nine Lives

SIX

Cookie

“I have never been loved by anyone, not even my daughter or my parents, the way I have been loved by my Cookie.”

This is a New York City story,which maymake youthink it’s as far from Spencer, Iowa, as you can possibly get. But it’s not. In a way, it’s right next door. Because this is not the kind of New York City story you’re used to hearing. It’s not the kind with famous people, crazy prices, arrogant financial tycoons, or glitzy signs for Broadway shows. I admit, there’s nothing quite like standing in Times Square, looking at those glitzy signs. And there’s nothing like walking into Grand Central Station, standing on the upper deck, and seeing the night-sky constellations painted on the ceiling. I was standing near the MetLife Building, just outside Grand Central, when my friend turned to me and said, “You know, before this, I’d never seen a building more than twelve stories tall.” I looked up and the building, which seemed to be tipping over on us, was bigger than the sky. There’s nothing like New York City to make you feel small—or a part of something enormous and splendid, whichever you prefer.

But that’s not New York City. That’s Manhattan. New York City has about eight million people, and apparently only about 20 percent of them live in Manhattan. That’s what this story is about: the other New York. The city over the bridges and past the waterfronts of Brooklyn and Queens, past LaGuardia Airport and the baseball stadium and the site of the 1964 World’s Fair, past even the last stop on the subway lines. This story is about Bayside, a middle-class community near the Long Island Sound, where the traffic is relentless and the houses are crowded thirty to a block, though they still have porches and little front yards. It’s the kind of place a librarian might live in a room of her own, with her cat curled up in a window and sunlight falling on the floor. Which makes Bayside the perfect place for this New York story.

Or at least the perfect place to start, because Bayside is where Lynda Caira’s grandparents settled when they emigrated from Italy to the United States in the first decades of the twentieth century. In 1927, they bought a piece of land in what was essentially farm country and built a house. There weren’t many people in Bayside, Queens, then, but anyone who came by was welcome at the Caira table. When the WPA built the Long Island Expressway on the edge of their land, Lynda’s grandmother gave the men free coffee every morning—then paid off the cost of the land and house through the tips she made on her free hot breakfasts. When the expressway was complete, she cooked breakfast for the truckers who stopped by when they saw her light on at 4:00 A.M. Even in the 1950s, when Lynda was born, the house was often full of bags of corn and onions the truckers gave her in exchange for a meal. Often, when Lynda came down for breakfast, she would find a stranger or two at the table. It just wasn’t in her grandmother’s heart to turn anyone away.

When the city divided Bayside into urban lots, her grandmother (who ran the house after her husband’s early death) kept four plots just off a highway exit in the heart of the community. Lynda called it the Farm, because there were a hundred tomato plants, a vegetable garden, a grape arbor, and a small grove of peach, apple, and fig trees. Lynda’s family lived on the ground floor with her grandmother, who made wine and tomato sauce and still got up every morning at 4:00 A.M. to cook. Lynda’s aunt and uncle lived upstairs. Other relatives were constantly around for a visit. In the case of some relatives from Italy, the visit lasted five years, but her grandmother never considered doing anything other than rising early to cook for them all. Lynda’s father’s parents, also Italian immigrants, lived a short walk away. Other relatives were scattered on neighboring blocks. Bayside was filling up with houses, most bought by young families, so the backyard barbeques were always smoking and the streets were full of kids. The neighbors watched out for one another; the shopkeepers greeted the children by name. But the defining characteristics of Bayside, at least for Lynda Caira, were her family events: the large Italian meals, the communion dresses, and the week set aside every August for canning tomatoes.

At fourteen, Lynda went to work down the road at Gertz department store. After high school, she trained to become a medical technician. She got married, moved to a tiny four-room town house in the Bell Boulevard section of Bayside, about a mile from her grandmother’s house, and worked for a local pediatrician. Two years into the marriage, she gave birth to a daughter and gave her the most popular American name of the 1970s: Jennifer.

After seven years of marriage, Lynda Caira got divorced. The divorce was the right thing to do, and she never questioned her decision. Her parents took the news hard at first, but her grandmother, then in her eighties, told her simply, “If this is what you need, then I support you.” With her grandmother’s blessing, Lynda’s “sin” was absolved and, in time, her parents came around. She even kept two of her best friends: her former mother-in-law and sister-in-law, who sided with her in the divorce.

But that didn’t mean the divorce was easy for Lynda’s five-year-old daughter, who was old enough to know her life was changing but too young to understand why. Lynda’s neighbor suggested she adopt a cat to help Jennifer with the transition. The neighbor worked in a bakery, and the bakery cat—despite the health code, cats live in many of the small neighborhood bakeries in New York City to keep the mice away—had just given birth to kittens. There was a runt in the litter, and the mother cat refused to take care of her. If she didn’t find a home, the kitten was going to die.

“Sure,” Lynda told the neighbor. “Bring her home for me.”

The next day, the neighbor arrived with a tiny gray dust ball of a kitten. She was tennis ball-size and fuzzy, with little ears and big green eyes. She even trembled a bit as she stared around the unfamiliar room, her eyes wide with fear. How could anyone push this baby away? Lynda wondered. How could her own mother leave her to die?

They took the kitten. Jennifer, who was over the moon, named her Snuggles. The kitten was too young to be weaned, so Lynda and Jennifer fed her formula from a bottle several times a day. When she got a little older, they spoon-fed her liquids and soft food. Jennifer gave her constant attention. Perhaps a little too much attention, and certainly too much grabbing—she was only five—but Snuggles was nurtured with care and love from the moment she entered Lynda and Jennifer’s home.

She didn’t return the affection. She wasn’t a bad cat; she just wasn’t much of a . . . Snuggles. Some people have preconceived notions about cats: They are aloof and arrogant; they are self-centered; they are loners. Unfortunately, Snuggles fit the stereotype. It wasn’t that she was mean. She never scratched or hissed. She just wasn’t a social animal. She didn’t want to play; she didn’t want to be touched; she wasn’t emotionally invested in Lynda and Jennifer and, quite frankly, didn’t care whether they were home or away. Snuggles preferred her own space.

Jennifer was disappointed. Adults may appreciate the refined dignity (and quiet!) of a cat staring motionless out a sunny window, completely ignoring the world around them, but what kind of child wants a cat like that?

“I want to go to the baby orphanage!” she told her mother.

“We can go,” Lynda told her, “but you can’t bring anything home. We are already blessed with Snuggles.”

Tight-lipped consideration—is it worth protesting?—and then, “Okay, okay, okay, Mommy. We won’t bring anything home.”

The baby orphanage was the North Shore Animal League, the nation’s largest no-kill animal shelter. Located in Port Washington, New York, in the western section of Long Island, the sanctuary was only six miles from the Caira home in Bayside. Three or four times a year, Lynda and Jennifer would drive out to the sanctuary to ooh and aah over the baby kittens. They were cute, so playful and full of energy, but Lynda always managed to usher Jennifer from the building after an hour without adoption papers in her hand or a kitten in tow.

Until August 31, 1990. Just another summer day in outer Queens. Just another mother-daughter visit to the “baby orphanage” they so enjoyed. Jennifer was twelve that summer, so the two of them had visited the North Shore Animal League for seven years without giving in to the staring eyes, pink noses, and batting paws of the needy animals. But this time . . . a kitten meowed.

Immediately. As soon as they walked in the door. And she wasn’t just meowing. This kitten was stretching her front leg through the bars and screaming for attention. She was gray and black tiger-striped, with a white chest, a mostly white face, and huge bat ears that made her head seem tiny underneath them. She was undeniably cute, so cute, in fact, that Lynda made an effort to ignore her. But Jennifer was captivated.

“Oh, Mommy, look at this one,” she said.

Lynda kept walking, putting her finger into a few cages to play with the kittens.

“Oh, please come back and look at this baby,” Jennifer pleaded. “Please, Mommy. Look how she’s screaming. She really wants me to hold her.”

Lynda turned back and stared at the thin little kitten trying desperately to escape her big cage. A card on the front said: COOKIE. FEMALE. DOMESTIC SHORTHAIR.

“Okay,” Lynda said to the volunteer. “Take her out. Jennifer, you can hold her. For a minute. Then back she goes.”

Cookie had something else in mind. As soon as she was out of the cage, she leapt from Jennifer’s hands to Lynda’s shirt and, after a desperate scramble, wrapped her arms tightly around Lynda’s neck. Then she leaned back, peered up with her big green eyes, and howled into Lynda’s face. A volunteer came over to help, but the kitten clasped its paws together and wouldn’t let go. She was begging and pleading—for attention? For love? For a home? Whatever it was, the kitten was adamant. She knew what she wanted, and she wanted Lynda. It took two volunteers to pry the two-pound cat off her chest.

“Oh, Mommy,” Jennifer pleaded. “We have to take her home. We have to.”

“No, Jennifer,” Lynda said. “We are not taking her home. We have Snuggles. We cannot have another cat.” She wasn’t really worried about Snuggles. Snuggles didn’t care about anything, so why would she care about another kitten in the house? But their town house was small. It just didn’t seem big enough for another pet.

She was turning to tell the volunteers to put the kitten back in its cage when she noticed that it had on several colorful collars, each with a few tags.

“Why is she wearing all those?” Lynda asked.

“Those are for her medications,” the volunteer said. And then he told her the story of Cookie.

When she was five weeks old, Cookie was hit by a car. She was found bleeding in the road and brought in terrible pain to the animal league, which performed two surgeries on her broken shoulder. One set of medicine was for the pain in her shoulder, which hadn’t yet healed. Beneath the injuries were the affects of a hard life on the street with no mother to teach or protect her: malnutrition and bleeding gums, worms in both ears, parasites in her digestive tract, a left eye (now mostly healed) so swollen from conjunctivitis she could barely open it. They all needed treating. Then there was the gash in her hip. She had been sliced open when the car hit her, and the damage was so severe the veterinarian wasn’t able to fully close the wound. She had to be cleaned and bandaged several times a day, and much of her medication was to prevent infection. It had taken several weeks of intensive care, in fact, just to get her well enough for the adoption area, and even now she was relegated to the “solitary confinement” of her private, well-scrubbed cage. The poor cat was lonely, traumatized, and wounded. And she was only nine weeks old.

Lynda looked at Cookie again. This time, she noticed the encrusted eye and the awkward hunch of her shoulder. Her hip wasn’t bandaged, but she could see the matting of salve in her fur. She glanced at her infected ears, her poor backside. But what Lynda really saw was the hunger in her eyes. Cookie wasn’t Snuggles. In fact, she was the exact opposite of Snuggles. This cat wanted someone to care about her. She was desperate for it. When she reached a paw through the bars this time, Lynda was sure that Cookie had chosen her. Love me, she was saying, and I will love you in return.

The volunteer placed a hand gently on Lynda’s shoulder and said, “She’s never acted like that with anyone else.”

Lynda believes that to this day. Cookie chose her. But I admit I’m skeptical. After all, Cookie was probably reaching for everyone who passed her cage. I tend to think Lynda was the one who acted differently that day, the one who opened her heart to a wounded animal. It was Lynda who thought, I have to help her. I don’t know if she’ll live. But she’s coming home with me.

It really was a commitment, too, because Cookie really was sick. Her adoption papers came with a carload of medicine and a box of bandages bigger than she was. The animal league even told Lynda that if she couldn’t heal the gash in Cookie’s hip, or any of her other major ailments, they would take her back and let her live out her (probably short) life at the shelter. But Lynda wasn’t deterred. In fact, she was energized. Every day, she forced five or six pills down Cookie’s throat. Twice a day, she applied a salve to Cookie’s wound. Then she put a bandage over it and wrapped another bigger bandage around the kitten’s furry little bottom to hold everything in place. Then she gave her a hug, and a pet, and told her that she was loved. After a few months, Cookie healed. No more conjunctivitis, no more worms in her intestines, no more ear infections, and no more wound. When you looked at her, it was as if the car accident and illnesses had never happened; she was simply a beautiful cat.

Jennifer really, really, really wanted Cookie to be her cat. Snuggles was supposed to be her cat, but Snuggles wasn’t anyone’s cat. Cookie was her second chance. Every night, Jennifer took Cookie into her bed to sleep with her. She even closed her door so Cookie couldn’t get away. But on the fourth night, when Jennifer forgot to close her door, Cookie scampered out of the room, climbed onto Lynda’s bed, and lay down on one of Lynda’s pillows. Jennifer couldn’t keep Cookie a prisoner every night, and when she left her door open again, the cat ran to Mommy’s bed. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: When you give your heart to an injured animal, they never forget it. So when Lynda finally offered her the spare pillow, Cookie climbed onto that pillow and slept in Lynda’s bed every night for the rest of her life. She wasn’t Jennifer’s cat; she was Mommy’s cat. The poor little girl had been thwarted again.

Not that it wasn’t partially Jennifer’s fault. After all, she did dress Cookie up from time to time in doll dresses. Cabbage Patch Kid dresses, to be exact, since those fit best. And had the nicest accessories. The sole remaining picture of those humiliations shows Cookie on the sofa in a light blue shirt with white fringe and a comically small cowboy hat. Cookie’s facial expression can’t be mistaken: I am mortified.

Don’t blame Jennifer, though. She was only twelve. And Cookie may have been humiliated, but she was never harmed. She never protested. She never fought back. She wore the dresses; she played tea party; she was a good friend. She loved Jennifer despite the cowboy hats. But she worshipped Lynda. From the moment Cookie saw Lynda walk into the North Shore Animal League, she was Lynda’s cat. Or more accurately, Lynda was Cookie’s human. As Lynda always said: Cookie knew a sucker when she saw one.

But that wasn’t true, and Lynda knew it. She wasn’t being played for a sucker any more than Dewey played me for a sucker all those years. Yes, we were doting parents, but there was a genuine bond. It wasn’t a Snuggles situation; it wasn’t “give me the food and beat it.” Cats like Dewey and Cookie give as much as they get. The only difference? Dewey gave to a community; Cookie gave to Lynda Caira.

She gave Lynda love. She gave Lynda attention. She wanted to be nearby, to be underfoot, to be touched. No, she insisted on being touched. If Lynda left a room, Cookie followed her and brushed against her leg. She sat on her foot. She jumped on her lap. If she wasn’t getting enough petting, she nudged Lynda’s arm with her head, then twisted around to show exactly the spot where she wanted to be scratched. She loved to climb on Lynda’s chest and give her a kiss. That’s right, a kiss. Every few hours, Cookie would stretch up and put her lips to Lynda’s lips, like a young daughter shyly giving her mother a good-night peck.

Even when Lynda went outside, Cookie sometimes slipped out with her. Lynda tried to stop her, of course, but Cookie was smart. She hid behind the door, then rushed out as Lynda walked through, usually with a garbage bag in her hand. Once outside, Cookie would run. Lynda would drop her bag and chase after her, yelling for her to stop. Halfway down the block, Cookie would decide she’d gone far enough. She’d stop, turn around, and wait for Lynda to snatch her up. Then they’d walk slowly back to the house, Lynda telling her baby to never, never, ever do that again, and Cookie rubbing against Lynda’s chin as if to assure her, Don’t worry, Mom, I would never go too far from you.

For some people, it might have all been too much. But Lynda’s life was busy. After her divorce, she became the general manager of her family’s catering business. The business was embedded in the community of Bayside, supporting and being supported by the family and the friends who had sustained Lynda over the years. She worked fifty hours a week, even before an administrator at St. Mary’s Hospital for Children asked if she would donate a catered Christmas party for the nurses. She was so impressed with the hospital that the next year, in addition to the nurse’s party, she organized and catered a forty-dollar-a-plate fund-raiser. The first year, she raised more than twelve thousand. The next year, she convinced a soap opera star to attend—many of the soaps filmed a few miles away in an industrial part of Queens—and doubled the attendance and donation. Soon, she was raising more than fifty thousand dollars a year with her February fund-raisers and being written up in Soap Opera Digest as a favorite charitable event for daytime stars.

When she wasn’t working, she was at home preparing dinner, cleaning up, helping with homework, and trundling her young teen off to bed. Her parents would bring her armfuls of homemade spaghetti; her friends would take her out for movies and shows; but most of her time was devoted to Jennifer.

“You know how it is,” she told me. “It was all for my daughter. Everything I did was for her.”

I did know. When Lynda Caira talked about her life as a single mother, I remembered my own days of working fifty hours a week at the library. I remembered the weekends with my friends and the warm embrace of my family, how sheltered and supported I felt. I was happy. I had my own life. But that life, in a real way, was devoted to my daughter, Jodi. When I was working, it was to give her a better life. When I went to school to qualify for my director position, it was with the goal of making enough money to send her to college. Every moment, whether I was pounding away on a term paper alone in the library or trying to convince Jodi to clean up her filthy bedroom, I was thinking of my daughter.

And I know what Lynda means when she says that Cookie was there for her, because Dewey was there for me, too. Whenever I felt tired or frustrated, Dewey jumped on my lap. Whenever I wondered if the effort was worth it, or if I was making the right choices, Dewey forced me out of my funk and into a game of chase. Every morning, Dewey stood by the front door of the library and waited for me. When he saw me coming, he waved—and whatever was bothering me flew away. Dewey was here. He was waving. The world was good.

Cookie did that for Lynda. Whenever she came home, whether it was from a long day of work or a night out with her friends, Cookie was waiting on the ottoman near the front door. Every time, she followed on Lynda’s heel like a dog, waiting for her to put down her bags, straighten her things, and bend down to pet her. Lynda couldn’t resist. No matter how often it was given, she always enjoyed Cookie’s attention. She never held it against Snuggles, who continued to be standoffish. She never expected it from another cat. This devotion was something special, she realized, something that was Cookie’s alone.

Cookie loved fresh laundry, warm from the dryer. Lynda let her curl up in the basket at every opportunity. She couldn’t bear to kick Cookie out, so she often washed each load of laundry two or three times. (That’s what she told me the first time, anyway. Later she admitted, with a laugh, that she never rewashed.) Cookie was picky about pillowcases. Every time Lynda changed a pillowcase, Cookie jumped onto the bed to test it with a nap. If she didn’t like the new fabric, she’d whine and step off, waiting for Lynda to change it. Which, of course, she always did.

Cookie also loved to be in the kitchen when Lynda was cooking. She had a habit, in particular, of sitting on Lynda’s foot while she cooked at the stove. She loved Irish soda bread and pumpkin bread, and Lynda knew to cut Cookie a piece whenever she sliced one for herself. She also loved broccoli rabe, an Italian vegetable that connected Lynda with her childhood, her family, and those summers of homemade wine and kitchen-canned tomatoes in her grandmother’s house. Broccoli rabe looks like stringy broccoli, and its bitter taste is something most Americans choke down and endure. Even many Italian Americans don’t like the bitterness, although broccoli rabe is a staple of Italian cuisine. Cookie loved it. As soon as she smelled broccoli rabe cooking, she ran to the kitchen, stood on Lynda’s feet, and meowed until she was given a bite. Or two. Or three. Lynda never cared. She wasn’t lonely. Far from it. But Jennifer was having more meals out with her friends, as well as court-ordered weekends with her father, and it was nice to have someone to eat with every night.

It got to the point that Lynda noticed not when Cookie was with her but when she wasn’t. If Cookie disappeared for a while, Lynda often walked the town house looking for her. Cookie almost always trotted out after the first few times Lynda called her, but one evening she went missing for hours. That wasn’t like Cookie. It took Lynda a few tours of the house before she noticed the screen pushed out in the master bedroom. She looked out the window and there was filthy, disheveled Cookie trying frantically to climb the wall. She must have accidently pushed open the screen and somersaulted out the window. Fortunately, it was the first floor. Cookie had only fallen five feet. Still, by the time Lynda found her, her claws were broken and her paws were bloody from scrabbling at the rough brick wall.

A few years later, Lynda decided to finish her basement. Jennifer was now in high school, and without the basement, there wasn’t enough room in the little town house for her friends to hang out. The job would take a few days, and the workmen would be going in and out of the house, so Lynda made sure to lock Cookie and Snuggles in her bedroom before leaving for work. On the second day, after the workmen had left, she unlocked the door to let the cats out. Snuggles was sitting on the windowsill, disdainful as usual. But Cookie didn’t come running. And she wasn’t anywhere in the room. As she searched the closet and under the bed, it dawned on Lynda that sly, sneaky Cookie must have slipped out the door when she was closing it that morning.

She called to Jennifer. They immediately began searching the house, calling for Cookie. They looked in the closets, under the sofa, in the kitchen cabinets. No Cookie. Lynda checked the television cabinet and under her quilting supplies. She scoured the construction debris stacked in the basement. She examined the windows, but all the screens were locked. There wasn’t a single place she didn’t search, then search again, then search one final time.

“Ohmygod,” she told me, “I was absolutely hysterical.”

Jennifer was crying. Lynda was worse. Her Cookie had gotten out. The workmen had propped open the outside doors; they had rummaged around all day with drywall and saws and wooden studs. They had clomped and banged. With no way back into the locked bedroom, Cookie would have been terrified. Of course she ran. Why wouldn’t she run? And once she was outside . . .

Ohmygod, she was gone. She was such a baby and Lynda had cured her of all those terrible ailments and she had loved her and they had loved each other and ohmygod, how could she be gone? How could her baby disappear?

“Search one more time,” Lynda told Jennifer.

Twenty minutes later, hysterical and tired and desperately pushing pieces of drywall around the basement, Lynda heard it. At first, she thought it was her imagination. Then she heard it again. The faint sound of feet. Then a meow, very soft and far away. She scrambled through the construction debris, yelling, “Cookie! Cookie!” She heard the meow, still far away, like it was coming from the first floor. But how could that be? She had searched and searched and . . . she looked up and there, above her, was a fresh layer of drywall.

“Ohmygod, ohmygod,” she yelled to Jennifer. “Ohmygod, she’s in the ceiling!”

She climbed up on a small stepladder. “Cookie,” she called, banging her hand against the drywall. “Cookie!” She heard the sound of feet running toward her, then a faint meow. Every time she called Cookie’s name, she was answered with a meow from just above her head.

She called one of the workmen. “The ceiling,” she yelled into the telephone. “In the ceiling!”

“What’s in the ceiling?”

“My Cookie.”

“Your what?”

“My cat. She’s trapped in the ceiling.”

She was so hysterical, the contractor came straight over. Sure enough, Cookie had jumped into the partially completed ceiling and been sealed between the joists when the men applied the last of the drywall. The workman cut a hole above the window where the drywall hadn’t been sealed, and together he and Lynda, by banging the ceiling and calling Cookie’s name, managed to coax the kitten to the hole. Suddenly, there she was, Lynda’s little Cookie, peaking over the edge of the drywall. She looked around, as if seeing the basement for the first time, and then leapt down into Lynda’s arms, completely covered with dust and construction debris. Lynda was crying and kissing her, overcome with both horror and relief. Cookie didn’t care. She jumped down and ran off, as if she’d known all along that Lynda would find her.

Before he left, Lynda made the workman patch the drywall hole and seal every inch of the ceiling. She didn’t care that it was the middle of the night. She wasn’t taking any more chances.

The first bump in Cookie’s life began when Snuggles died. A tumor wrapped suddenly around her heart and lungs, and within forty-eight hours, Snuggles went from seemingly perfectly healthy to gasping for her last breath on the veterinarian’s table. It was over before Lynda realized what was happening.

Soon after, she noticed a tiny, stumbling kitten nosing around her front door. The cat was clearly too young to be weaned, but no mother was in sight, so Lynda started feeding her. She fed her on the front porch for nine months, with no intention of ever letting her into the house. She had Cookie. She didn’t want or need another cat. But after a while, she realized that Chloe—as she named the little runt—was being terrorized by the big hunting dog next door. Several times a day, he’d come barreling out of his house and chase her across the street, barking and rampaging and scaring her half to death. The neighbor didn’t like the situation any more than Lynda did. He worried his precious dog was going to get hit by a car. So he came up with the perfect solution: shoot the kitten with this hunting rifle. Needless to say, Lynda immediately brought Chloe inside and made her a house cat.

Cookie wasn’t happy about this at all. She was six years old, and she was used to having the house to herself. She didn’t attack Chloe—Cookie was not an aggressive cat—but she turned up her nose at the newcomer and refused to pay her any mind. Chloe was a shy cat, the kind with a habit of lowering her head and staring up at you with big sad eyes, and she readily accepted the role of second cat in the Caira household. She seemed to understand that she could live in the house, but only on Cookie’s terms. Cookie ate first. Cookie drank first. And Cookie was not sharing Lynda. That was the line, the one rule that stood above all others. Cookie looked scornfully if Chloe even tried to approach Lynda, and she wasn’t above smacking her once to let her know her behavior was not condoned. And if Chloe tried to jump onto Lynda’s bed? Unforgivable. One foot on the bedspread, and Cookie arched her back and hissed. She wasn’t much of a fighter, but she would have fought to defend that bed because Lynda—Lynda was hers. Lynda was sacrosanct.

Eventually, though, Cookie mellowed. She was a friendly cat at heart, and constant vigilance wasn’t in her nature. She was a lover, a happy-go-lucky companion, and once she knew she was still the love of Lynda’s life, she began to warm up to sweet, subservient little Chloe. Mind you, it took years. Three years to be exact. But in the end, Cookie and Chloe were wonderful friends.

The second bump came a few years later. Lynda had long since settled into a comfortable life: twenty years in her town house, seventeen years as a divorced mom, sixteen years managing a successful catering business, ten years with her beloved Cookie. After twelve years of fund-raisers, she had donated more than a million dollars to St. Mary’s hospital, which used the money to open a traumatic brain injury unit for children—the only such specialized unit on the East Coast. The next year, Lynda organized a fund-raiser for ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease), which had not only killed her aunt but was now affecting one of the soap opera stars who had been instrumental in helping her fund-raisers: Michael Zaslow. He had been fired by Guiding Light after his condition was revealed, and, as his health deteriorated rapidly, he told his wife that his biggest regret was not being able to see the friends he had made on that show one last time. Thirty-five of those friends showed up to see him at Lynda’s benefit, which raised more than twenty-six thousand dollars. Michael Zaslow died ten days later.

But even as she enlisted the help of her close-knit family and friends, as she always had for a worthy cause, Lynda knew her life was changing. With her father semiretired, the catering business downsized its work space and staff, adding to Lynda’s workload and putting an end to her fund-raisers. Her daughter was growing up and would soon be out on her own. Her grandmother died, and the family sold the house where Lynda had spent so many wonderful afternoons with grapevines, canned tomatoes, and a matriarch who never turned anyone away, from WPA highway builders to down-on-their-luck strangers in need of a cup of joe. It was as if her death closed the book on Lynda Caira’s Bayside, a community that had long ago paved over most of its orchards and grape arbors, and where nobody talked to strangers anymore—much less invited them inside for a meal. For decades the original immigrants had been leaving, squeezed by newer immigrants and refugees from the City, as the locals called Manhattan, looking for affordable places to live. As the century closed on the old Bayside, Lynda Caira cashed out. She sold her town house for more than ten times what she had paid for it in 1973 and bought a three-bedroom, two-story, stand-alone Victorian in Floral Park.

Floral Park was only seven miles away, but for Lynda Caira, it was another world. Bell Boulevard, the main thoroughfare in her old section of Bayside, was crowded with garish signs, electrical wires, and four lanes of honking traffic. Floral Park’s two-lane main thoroughfare, Tulip Avenue, was lined with independent stores fronted by orderly wooden signs: the bakery, the candy shop, the little independent supermarket, the lawyer’s office on the second floor. Founded by a flower seed wholesaler in 1874, who named all the streets after flowers, Floral Park was incorporated as a township in 1908, an occasion celebrated by a white-steepled library at one end of Tulip Avenue and the centennial gardens at the other. Every year, the front lawn of Memorial Park featured a Christmas tree, and a crowd always turned out to watch the lights come on, followed by hot chocolate at the Catholic church next door. A Christmas tree on Bell Boulevard in Bayside, Queens? With hot chocolate? Nevah.

For Lynda, Floral Park was heaven, a tree-lined Norman Rock-well town literally one foot across the line from the messy sprawl of outer Queens. Sure, you had to drive thirty miles in any direction to escape the nonstop sprawl of New York City, but here within that maze of highways and apartment blocks was a tiny patch of middle-class, Midwestern Americana. A place with block parties and green lawns, where children rode bikes while the adults ate hot dogs to the sounds of “Light FM” radio. It was a place where she could hang a “Sunny Days” wreath on the door of her gingerbread-trimmed Victorian and tend purple daffodils and black-eyed Susans in her finely turned flower beds. At the end of Floral Boulevard was a grand schoolhouse, straight from the first decade of the twentieth century. On the far side of the neighborhood, behind a thin strip of trees and a bird sanctuary—a bird sanctuary!—sat Belmont Park racetrack, home of one of the three biggest horse races in the world, the Belmont Stakes. On summer weekends, the echo of the race announcer was a pleasant murmur behind the hum of lawn mowers and the bouncing of basketballs.

On the corner of Chestnut and Floral Boulevard, a block from Lynda’s house, was the Bellerose station of the Long Island Rail Road. It was only a fifteen-minute train ride to Penn Station, but Lynda never went to the City. Maybe once a year, maybe, if there was a Broadway show she wanted to see. Like most people in Floral Park, her life was not oriented toward Manhattan. Most of her friends—even her best friend, who as a two-year-old had pushed infant Lynda in her baby carriage through Bayside—lived in Floral Park now. They had been raised in outer Queens and then migrated a few miles east to quieter streets and a more suburban neighborhood. In that neighborhood, they re-created for each other what Lynda’s family had been in Bayside: a community of support and love. She hadn’t moved far. Not geographically, anyway. The ten-mile circle of neighborhoods where Queens meets Long Island, after all, was Lynda’s world. She was overjoyed to have found her little plot of Americana right in the center of it.

Jennifer . . . well, not so much. She was twenty-three years old, still living with Mom in the house she had grown up in, and she was adamant that she would not move out of the old neighborhood. She refused to pack so much as a toothbrush; in the end, Lynda was forced to pay the movers to pack her daughter’s things.

Chloe and Cookie were worse. Especially Cookie, who was a master communicator. She used pushing, foot sitting, and tripping as a signaling system, and she seemed to have a different meow for every occasion. She had a meow that meant she was annoyed. A meow for when she was happy. A meow that meant Leave me alone. A meow that meant Come here. A meow that said I’d like some, please. A more forceful meow that said I want without the please. And, of course, a gimme, gimme, gimme meow for broccoli rabe. She even had a special high-pitched meow for when she really wanted Lynda’s attention, which sounded exactly like Mom. Lynda wasn’t so delusional to think her cat was really calling her mom. She assumed she was imagining that one. But whenever her friends heard Cookie whining for attention, their jaws dropped.

“Did she say mom?” they all asked.

“It sure sounded like it, didn’t it?” Lynda would say, flushing with pride.

Not this time, though. This time, as Lynda packed for the move, Cookie wasn’t pleading or questioning or kissing up with her “Mom” meows. This time, she was screaming at Lynda.

When moving day arrived, Cookie stopped screaming and disappeared. She had no intention, absolutely none, of leaving that town house. It took Lynda hours to wrangle both cats and shove them into their carrier. Cookie, in frustration, began to bang her head and rub her face on the bars of the carrier door. By the time they arrived in Floral Park, only twenty minutes away, Cookie’s nose pad was torn and covered with blood. Lynda could barely look at her. She felt so guilty.

When she opened the cage door, Cookie and Chloe didn’t even stop to acknowledge her. They ran straight upstairs and hid under the guest bed. Jennifer recovered quickly. Within two days, she met new friends and was right at home in Floral Park. It took Cookie and Chloe a while longer. Except for biological necessity, they refused to come out from under the bed. When Lynda tried to coax them out, Chloe retreated to a corner, and Cookie walked forward a few steps to complain. That was it. For three months.

And then, all was forgiven. Was it a few days after Cookie emerged from under the bed before the complaining stopped? Was it a few months? A year? I’m sure it took Cookie time to adjust, even after giving up her protest, but does it really matter how long? In the end, Cookie loved the new house as much as Lynda did. She loved it so much, in fact, that she couldn’t settle on a favorite spot. For a few weeks, it was the ottoman. She sprawled out there every night while Lynda watched television. Then it was the rocking chair. That lasted about six weeks. Then the top of the sofa, a dining room chair, the corner behind a piece of furniture, her little cat bed at the top of the stairs. Lynda was a quilter, and Cookie had several favorite spots in the new quilting room. For a summer, she fell in love with the bottom shelf of the bookcase. Lynda kept the shelf filled with quilts, which she made as presents for her friends and relatives. She made one for Cookie, too, of course. It had a floral pattern in the middle with alternating pictures of kittens and puppies around the edges. Cookie lay on a quilt almost every day, but she never lay on that one. Why dirty her special quilt, after all, when she could leave fur on something everyone else was going to sit on, too?

Eventually, the seasons changed. The leaves along Floral Avenue burst green, turned golden and red, then blew away in the winter wind. The horses raced around Belmont; the commuter train ran back and forth to the City. Jennifer spent more time with her friends and boyfriends until, eventually, she moved into a house three miles away. In her younger years, Lynda had thought about marrying again. She had male companions, but none of the relationships turned out to be what she wanted. She liked the romance, of course, but she never found anyone she wanted to share her life with.

“If a man came along now,” Lynda told me, “I’d probably tell him no, thanks.”

Younger women (and men) might look on that statement with skepticism—how can a single woman not want a man?—but I understand it perfectly. I’ve felt it for decades in my own life; I’ve just put it a little differently. “I only want a man,” I’ve always said, “if I can hang him in my closet, like an old suit I can pull out when I want to dance.” Give me the romance. Give me the fun and the dancing. Just don’t make me clean some guy’s whiskers out of my sink every day for the rest of my life. I’m perfectly happy, thank you very much, the way I am.

So I take Lynda’s contentment at face value, because I’ve experienced that contentment myself. And why wouldn’t she be happy? She was confident. She had a great kid. She was accomplished. She had friends and family and companionship from Cookie, who, through years of constant devotion, had come to know just about everything there was to know about her owner and friend. When Lynda was lonely, Cookie nuzzled her on the nose, kissed her on the lips, or sat in her lap. When Lynda was happy, they danced around the house. When she wanted to be alone (rarely), Cookie gave her space. When she was quilting, Cookie sat quietly beside her instead of batting at the thread (usually). It wasn’t just her moods; Cookie understood how Lynda was feeling. When Lynda wasn’t well, Cookie lay down on whatever part of Lynda’s body was hurting. If it was a stomach virus, she lay on Lynda’s stomach. If it was a knee ache, she lay on her knee. In her forties, Lynda began to suffer from spinal stenosis, a degeneration of vertebrae in her lower spine. Whenever the pain forced Lynda to lie down, Cookie crawled gingerly onto her back and flattened herself over the spot, a hot compress for the shooting pains.

Even when the problem was sleeplessness, Cookie responded. She sensed Lynda’s discomfort with the nighttime silence of Floral Park—not an easy thing to get used to after forty years in the noisy city—even before Lynda realized it. Every time Lynda stirred in her bed, Cookie leapt from her pillow to stand guard. If so much as a fly buzzed at the window, Cookie jumped to attention with her ears laid back against her head.

“Back to sleep, Cookie,” Lynda would say with a pet. Cookie would stare in the offending direction—usually the window—then walk around her pillow, curl into a ball, and fall instantly asleep. Lynda would lay awake, wondering, How can this little kitten love me so much?

Unfortunately, while her discomfort with silence receded, the pain in her back grew worse. Lynda focused on her exercise and diet. She tried to work less, even though she loved her job. She visited physicians, searching for treatments, but her back continued to deteriorate. When she was in pain, Cookie did everything she could to comfort her. She nuzzled her hand, kissed her nose, and settled onto her back for as long as Lynda needed it. Those eight pounds on her spine, so soft and warm, were like a heat bottle on her sore nerves, but they couldn’t stop the slow creep of bone decay. If she didn’t have surgery, Lynda’s doctor finally told her, she was probably only a year from a wheelchair. A wheelchair! She was only forty-seven years old.

It was a difficult time, although Lynda tried not to show it. She kept her regular routine, entertaining friends, visiting family, and attending her weekly sewing club. She supported Jennifer when she needed her. She worked full-time at the catering business until the day before the surgery. But at night, she often lay awake and worried, even as Cookie jumped to attention at the slightest stirring and nuzzled her side as if to say, Everything is fine, Mommy, everything is all right.

Then one day, as she absentmindedly stroked Cookie and thought about the surgery, a clump of fur came away in her hand. Lynda stared down at it for a moment, confused. Then she rolled Cookie over and looked at her. The cat’s skin was patchy and inflamed, and she was practically hairless on her belly and the inside of her back legs. “Oh no, Cookie,” she said. “Oh no.” Cookie was fourteen years old, and Lynda had recently been forced to admit that her hearing was beginning to decline. Now the poor cat had developed a skin condition.

Alarmed, Lynda rushed Cookie to the veterinary office. They performed a battery of tests but found nothing wrong. Finally, the veterinarian unhooked his stethoscope and looked at Lynda.

“Are you okay?” he said.

“I’m fine,” she replied.

“Are you sick?”

“No, but I’m having trouble with my back. I’m having major surgery in a few days.”

The doctor nodded. “How long have you known?”

“Six months.”

The doctor put away his instruments. “It’s not a physical problem,” he said. “It’s psychological. Cookie is so worried about you that she is pulling out her own hair to relieve the stress.”

Lynda looked at her kitten, at her sweet face and mangy belly and torn-up legs, and began to cry. Cookie had been a wounded animal in a cage. She had watched dozens of people walk past her every day. Out of all those people, Cookie had chosen Lynda. In an instant, it seemed, Cookie had dedicated her life to her. Lynda never understood the reason. What had she done to earn that trust? What had she done to deserve such a fierce and genuine love?

The surgery was over in a few hours, but the recuperation was long and slow. Cookie refused to leave Lynda’s bed. Not for a moment. One night, about a week after the surgery, Lynda became intensely ill. The house started spinning so badly that she felt sure she was dying. Terrified, she cried to her daughter for help. Cookie stared at Lynda, then looked at Jennifer, then stared at Lynda. She meowed a new meow—urgent and unsure. Instead of calling the hospital, Jennifer called her grandparents, who rushed over. But as Lynda’s mother approached the bed, Cookie jumped up and screamed at her. Lynda’s mother sat down on the bed; Cookie hissed and spat until she retreated, afraid Cookie would bite her. Cookie stood where Lynda’s mother had been sitting and spat and hissed even more. Her beloved Lynda was in trouble. Nobody was coming near her, Cookie had decided, nobody but her daughter and her cat.

It was only a case of severe vertigo, caused by the manipulation of Lynda’s spine during surgery, but it changed Lynda and Cookie’s relationship forever. I suppose change isn’t the right word, because I don’t think Cookie’s attitude changed that much. Revealed might be a better word, because for the first time, Lynda understood the depth of Cookie’s love. Yes, Cookie knew everything about her and did everything she could to make her happy. Yes, Cookie literally worried herself sick over her friend’s health. But that night, Lynda saw sacrifice. She saw that when it came to protecting her, Cookie didn’t worry about herself. She would suffer any harm to defend her friend.

After that night, Cookie’s love was insatiable. She lay beside her when Lynda was in bed; she sat beside her when Lynda sat up; she walked beside her when Lynda was finally able to stand. As part of the recuperation, Lynda sat in a hip chair, which was tall and straight like a baby’s high chair. Cookie learned to climb onto the back of the sofa, then onto the hip chair, then into Lynda’s lap. She would sit there all day. Reluctantly, Lynda would have to ask her mother or daughter to take Cookie away because the weight was too much for her recovering spine.

Even after her friend recovered, Cookie didn’t relax. Lynda could barely read a book because her cat insisted on sitting on top of it. She couldn’t open the door without Cookie running in front of her and trying to prevent her from leaving. Cookie never liked television. When Lynda had watched it before, Cookie wandered in and out of the room, sitting for a moment, then jumping up, agitated. Now she sat on the sofa with Lynda and watched. If Lynda wanted to lie down, she had to make room so Cookie could stretch out on top of her head. At exactly 10:00 P.M., Cookie would get up from the sofa, stand in front of the television, and meow.

The first night, Lynda was shocked. “Cookie,” she said, “what’s the matter with you?”

Cookie walked out of the room. Thinking something was wrong, Lynda followed. Cookie went straight to the bed. Lynda looked all over, but couldn’t find anything wrong. Eventually, she went back to the living room. Cookie came in screaming and led her back to the bed. It took Lynda a while to realize there wasn’t anything wrong. Cookie had simply decided it was time for the two of them to go to bed. From that night on, unless there was something special, bedtime in the Caira house was 10:00 P.M. Cookie insisted on it.

Not that there was much sleeping. Cookie was a bundle of nerves in the bed, climbing all over Lynda, playing with her feet, walking around on her pillow. She rubbed her nose on Lynda’s lips, her cheek, her nose, anywhere on her face she could reach. When Lynda turned off the light and closed her eyes, Cookie waited a minute and then ran a paw across her face. If Lynda didn’t respond, Cookie bent down and pried her eyelid back with her paw.

“Honey, I’m alive,” Lynda would tell her softly, closing her eyes.

A few minutes later, Cookie would rub her paw across Lynda’s face again. It happened every night, starting with the night after her vertigo. And it didn’t stop. Long after Lynda was well, Cookie continued to wake her every night to make sure she was alive. Lynda wasn’t annoyed. Instead, she was touched. She loved Cookie. She was dedicated to the little cat. But Cookie . . . Cookie’s whole life was defined by her devotion to Lynda. What a humbling and heartwarming experience, to be loved that way. Even if it was “just” the love of a cat.

But while Cookie was worried about Lynda’s imminent demise, Lynda was absolutely convinced that Cookie would live forever. She had lost her hearing—a test confirmed that—but otherwise she was as healthy and beautiful as ever into her eighteenth year. If she was slowing down a little, well, that was only natural. A clock could wind down forever, after all, without coming to a stop.

And then Lynda read Dewey. Jennifer gave it to her for Christmas, and (surprise!) Cookie even gave her enough space to read it. As she read the last few chapters, she became more and more upset until, she would write in her letter to me, she “became no less than hysterical.” Every sign of old age Dewey exhibited in his last year was happening to Cookie!

Like Dewey, Cookie developed hyperthyroidism. And like Dewey, she wasn’t very responsible about taking her pills. Lynda would think she had successfully pushed them down her throat, then find them scattered behind the furniture. She developed mats in her hair that were almost impossible to untangle, the result of the barbs on her tongue wearing down and preventing her from cleaning properly. And like Dewey, Cookie had taken a sudden interest in cold cuts, probably because they were loaded with salt. Lynda bought her a half pound of sliced turkey at a time. When she tired of turkey, Lynda switched to chicken, no matter how much turkey was left in the bag. Then Cookie stopped eating cold cuts. She didn’t want that old bird. So Lynda tried a whole, fresh-cooked rotisserie chicken. Cookie liked that. So Lynda shared a rotisserie chicken with Cookie every week.

Jennifer thought her mother was spoiling the cat, but Lynda didn’t agree. Dewey had broken her heart. She had cried every night while reading the last chapters on Dewey’s old age and death, thinking not only about my precious library cat but about her precious Cookie. She had seen the future, and she knew the end was near. Cookie was slowing down. She was walking with difficulty. She was struggling with her diet. After nineteen years of Cookie’s extraordinary love, there was nothing Lynda wouldn’t do for her cat.

That February, Cookie developed kidney and bladder problems. The vet took X-rays and endoscopies, a whole battery of tests. He put her on a strong course of medication, sparing no expense because Lynda would have it no other way, but there was no improvement in Cookie’s condition. In April, the vet stopped her treatment. He took her off her hyperthyroid medicine as well, since it was causing rashes on her ears and belly.

“She doesn’t need the irritation,” the doctor said.

He was telling Lynda to let her go, to give her peace, but Lynda couldn’t fully accept that Cookie was dying. The little cat still followed at her heels everywhere she went, eager to love and be loved. She still waited for her on the ottoman by the front door every evening when she arrived home from work. Every morning when she left for work, Cookie looked at her with big pleading eyes, like a young child, as if to say, How can you leave me, Mommy?

In July 2009, they celebrated Cookie’s nineteenth birthday. Lynda told her she looked forward to celebrating her twentieth the next year, but even she no longer believed it. Cookie had never been big, weighing just ten pounds even as a healthy adult. Now she weighed less than five. She had taken to spending most of her days under the kitchen table. Lynda moved her food and water to the kitchen, and her litter to the adjoining room. She had lost bladder control, but even in her frail state, Cookie would pull herself to the nearest object, a shopping bag, a pair of shoes, even Jennifer’s handbag to relieve herself. Cookie would never, no matter how sick, make a mess on the floor.

Lynda’s mother was convinced Cookie was staying alive only because she couldn’t bear to leave her friend alone. Lynda’s heart told her that might be true, that the little cat loved her that much, but she wanted to believe Cookie still enjoyed her life, that her existence wasn’t a struggle. She stroked her. She petted her. She fixed her broccoli rabe and rotisserie chicken and talked to her in gentle, loving tones. When Cookie could no longer walk the stairs, Lynda carried her to bed and placed her on the pillow that had been her special place for so long. Every night for nineteen years, Cookie had slept on that pillow. On the third night of carrying her to bed, Lynda realized that as soon as she fell asleep, Cookie was struggling down the steps to the kitchen floor. On the fourth night, she left Cookie under the table.

“Rest here, my little friend,” Lynda told her. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

Cookie never came back to the bed. A few days later, while Lynda was at work, Jennifer called crying. She had found Cookie on the kitchen floor, in a puddle of her own waste. By the time Lynda arrived home, Cookie was clean, but the energy was gone from her body, the depth and intensity totally absent from her eyes. She lifted her head to look at Lynda, her lifelong companion. Perhaps she even smiled, briefly and weakly, before dropping her head to the floor.

Lynda cradled her in her arms and, as tenderly as she could, eased her into the car. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered, as her mind raced and her hands trembled on the steering wheel. “We’re going to get some medicine and you’re going to be okay.” She kept talking, reassuring her, even as her voice was breaking and the tears streamed down her face. She knew it was the end, and she prayed it would be painless and natural. She prayed that, whatever happened, she would be there for her Cookie. Her last obligation, the least she could offer for a lifetime of dedication, was to make these moments as comfortable as possible for her precious girl.

And she did. She made it safely to the vet, although she could barely see through her tears, and she held Cookie in her hands, lightly and lovingly, until her final breath. She held her until the little cat glanced up one last time as if to say, I love you, I’m sorry, before she folded under and Lynda felt, with her soul as much as her fingertips, the very last beat of her heart.

I have never been loved by another human being, Lynda wrote in her letter to me, not even by my daughter or my parents, the way I have been loved by my Cookie.

I could tell, even from her brief letter, that Lynda wasn’t lonely. Her life was filled with happiness and love. I wanted to include a story like this—an ordinary story—because a majority of the letters I received where from ordinary people like Lynda. Why her, you ask? Because of that one beautiful sentence, which celebrated a kitten’s extraordinary love without a whisper of despair:

I have never been loved by another human being, not even by my daughter or my parents, the way I have been loved by my Cookie.

“I know that sounds strange,” Lynda told me, although after my life with Dewey, it didn’t sound strange at all. “It almost sounds sad, I know. But it is absolutely the truth. As much as my daughter loves me, as much as my parents love me, as much as other people have loved me, I have never felt . . . I have never felt what that cat felt for me.”

And that love was returned. I’m not saying Lynda loved her cat more than the other people in this book, because love can manifest in myriad ways, but she was the only one who said, “Thank you, Vicki, for doing this for Cookie. She was such a good cat. She deserves to have her story told.” She was the only one, in other words, who explicitly put her cat before herself, and I admire her for that.

“She was just your typical tabby,” Lynda admitted. “She was gray and white, the tiger markings, your little garden-variety kitty. I can’t say that she did any extraordinary things. I can’t say she was a hero. I can’t say she saved somebody from disaster.”

Not even Lynda. Cookie, after all, didn’t save Lynda Caira from illness . . . or occasional loneliness. This isn’t a story of redemption. It isn’t a story of need. Lynda Caira has been and will probably always be happy. This is simply a story about being chosen, about being loved so fiercely that it changes your life.

Dewey. Cookie. All the other cats that touch our hearts and change our lives. How can we ever thank them enough? How can we ever explain?

After Cookie’s death, Lynda wrote a remembrance of her precious cat. It closed with this: “There is nothing more to say—life will go on, although I will miss her each and every day! Jennifer will get married, I will have precious grandchildren, I will love and lose more pets. But one thing is certain: there will never be another pet who will be my best friend; there will never be another animal who could bring the joy that Cookie brought to my life.”

Amen.