Calico Serendipity Cato!
By: M Usama
Tags: Storytelling, Cats, Writer, Short Story Writing

Cinders were not my first cat. When I was about five years old, my parents got a pair of kittens for my younger sister and me. Immediately upon their arrival in our home, Blacky and Spotty made tracks for the hidden spot behind the sofa and refused to come out. With two youngsters poking and prodding at them, their hissing and spitting were appropriate, possibly life-saving, reactions. But my sister and I was so disappointed; we wanted to play with our new pets. I realize now that the kittens were nearly feral (wild), or poorly socialized at best; they preferred to keep their distance and within a few months they’d both disappeared.

Shortly afterward, our family embarked on the first of several moves. And while my parents indulged my love for animals as much as they could, my insatiable need for four-legged companionship didn’t mix well with the upheaval of boxes and moving vans. I took comfort in our dog Fluffy, a budgie named Sharpie, and what I suspect was a regular turnover of goldfish. A cat would have to wait.

But I could still read about cats. As I grew older, my parents faithfully turned me loose in the public library, where I invariably ended up in the pet section. I knew it blindfolded — cat breeds, cat care, cat training, feeding, grooming,

showing — finding and reading all the books they had on my favorite subject. Before I was a teenager, I’d read about Colette’s famous cats and knew about Heming ways multi-toed felines. I could tell Persians from Himalayans, Burmese from Siamese, Manx from bobtails. I’d read that tortoiseshell cats were believed to be able to see into the future and could impart that gift to a lucky child in their household. Dreaming over the dusty

stacks of books, I took flight into a world in which I was no longer a gawky, tonguetied child, but a powerful seer, always accompanied by my faithful animal companions.

Even history came alive when the right details were included. I discovered I had something in common with the infamous Cardinal Richelieu, who lived in the time of the witch-hunts of the 1600s. The Cardinal was an ardent cat-lover, a fact inexplicably left out of my social studies textbook. Although cats were linked to witches by superstition, the Cardinal ignored this in deference to the 14 cats that lived in a

special room next to his own bedroom. On his deathbed, the Cardinal made provision for all his cats, and their two attendants, in his will. Sadly, as soon as he died the soldiers of his Swiss Guard burned the poor creatures to death as vengeance for the many witches — and, by association, their cats — that Richelieu had put to death in his lifetime.

While my classmates discussed the legacies of great political leaders, I day-

dreamed about other more interesting things. Sir Winston Churchill, for instance, loved his cat Jock so much that he shared his bed and his meals with him. In fact, if Jock wasn’t at the table Churchill would dispatch a servant to find him and wait to begin eating until the cat arrived. And the great humanitarian, Albert Schweitzer, who was left-handed, sometimes wrote with his right arm rather than disturb his beloved cat Size, who liked to sleep on his left arm. He chose poor penmanship and pins-and-needles when his numb arm was finally released, rather than disturb her rest.

Being at the age where children begin looking toward their future careers, I

thought I might become a nurse one day. Imagine my delight to discover that Florence Nightingale was a great cat lover! Although she often complained that they messed up her papers, the comfort they must have brought her after long hours of difficult work apparently made up for it, because she owned more than 60 cats over the course of her life.

I spent a great deal of my childhood with my nose buried in books. I wasn’t picky — I read everything I could get my hands on. Adventure stories, romance, mysteries, westerns, science fiction, fantasy. Animal stories were, of course, the best. Black Beauty, Old Yeller, The Yearling, The Red Pony, The Incredible Journey,

Hurry Home, Candy, Born Free . . . the list goes on and on. Paul Gallico could only have written Jenny, one of the most beautiful and moving books ever written about a stray cat, out of a soul-deep feline connection. What a thrill to learn that authors such as Victor Hugo, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and H.G. Wells were cat lovers, too.

History records a few famous cat haters, too. The beauty of Brahms’ lullabies was forever tainted when I read that one of his favorite forms of relaxation was to sit at an open window and hunt neighborhood cats with his bow and arrow. It goes to show, I thought, what happens when you spend too much time practicing piano. Napoleon Bonaparte was supposedly once found nearly hysterical with fear, sweating and lunging wildly with his sword, all because a small kitten had entered the room.

Immersed as I was in cat lore, it didn’t take the place of real, living felines, but I made do as best I could. I got to know all the neighborhood strays and gave

names to all the cats that earned their keep at my grandparents’ farm: thin, unkempt, half-wild creatures that I coaxed and cajoled until they let me near enough to stroke them. Skittles and Tansy and Periwinkle and others I’ve long since for gotten. But I still didn’t have a cat of my own.

Finally, four moves later, as I was entering junior high school, we were ready to stay put. My parents purchased 80 acres of flat land filled with rocks, scrubby bushes, and poplar bluffs and made plans to build a house. After years of what felt like cramped city living, I had space to move and grow, fresh air to savor, and enough quiet to hear my own thoughts. I’d never liked urban living; I longed for wide-open spaces, birdsong, alfalfa-scented air, and silent, starry nights.

Construction started as soon as the snow melted in the spring, when furry crocuses covered the fields with their delicate mauve mirage. Leaves unfolded from the bushes and wildflowers sprang to life. Red-winged blackbirds called from the

lilacs; crows and magpies scolded us from the treetops; bluebirds perched on the fence-posts and sang to us of happiness. It was an exhausting summer for my par- ents, but I was so excited about this move. This time, I knew, I could finally have a cat!

Her name was Nutmeg. She was a silky-coated calico, glossy black fur patched with orange and white, her face a perfect bisection of black and orange. She was beautiful. She slept in my bed at night and prowled the wilderness during the day.

That winter, icy winds and a heavy prairie snowfall put construction on hold until spring, so our family lived in the basement of our half-finished home. My parents, my sister and I, and now a younger brother as well, lived in two small bedrooms piled high with boxes that wouldn’t be unpacked until the top half of our house materialized. Running water, plumbing, and electricity had been installed before winter hit, but it was still rough living by today’s standards. I loved everything about it — except the bugs. Spiders crept along the open beams above my bed, moths fluttered around bare light-bulbs, and in my nightmares, dark things slithered and crawled beneath my bed.

Our house was eventually completed and life settled down. Other cats joined our family. Two males belonged to my sister: a big grey-and-white cat named

Napoleon — wouldn’t the little general just spin in his grave! — and a fluffy ginger tabby named Butternut. For my part, I had two pure white, blue-eyed cats, April and Honeydew, both of whom were afflicted with the lethal white gene that causes deafness. I loved them for their beauty, those great azure eyes sparkling in a sea of snowy fur. But I couldn’t protect them from their disability and both of them were killed by cars they did not hear coming.

Then came Cinders. Unlike Nutmeg’s clearly defined patches, Cinders’ white and orange hairs were evenly dispersed throughout the black background, giving her the distinctive tortoiseshell coloration. Down her nose ran one thin, clear, white stripe. Her coat of ashes-and-soot was not as eye-catching as some of the more distinctive varieties of cats; in fact, she was actually rather plain. But as she grew, her fur became glossy and lush over lean, graceful muscles, and through her ordinary exterior sparkled a character of breathtaking beauty. She carried herself with an air of calm that spread and settled on anyone with whom she chose to share herself. And she chose to share herself with me.

The many fears and insecurities that arose during my tumultuous teen years were soothed by her peaceful purr and warmth. Looking into her eyes, I felt myself drift away from the troubles of the moment, carried off to someplace new, where I wasn’t a shy, skinny bookworm with glasses and braces. When she sought me out and took pleasure in my company I felt that, to her, I was more than just a kid. I was a person, someone special.

In the spring of 1977, as Cinders’ belly grew larger, my nightmare became real when a plague of forest tent caterpillars invaded central Saskatchewan. At first, as I walked down the driveway to meet the school bus, I tried to avoid stepping on them. But eventually I gave up the hopeless attempt, and instead began counting to see how many I would squash with each normal footstep. I quit counting at 100.

I’d never seen so many insects at one time and these filled me with a special kind of horror. They congregated in great seething clusters. They covered the highway in a slick, slimy film that could send incautious drivers skating into the ditch.

Their inexorable masses slithered over the fields, eating everything green in sight. They clung to the sides of the house, falling onto unwary passersby. Clumps of poplars and trembling aspen were denuded overnight, and the green fields turned brown and crisp.

As the armies of tiny Malacosoma disstria marched over the land, I focussed on the impending birth. I made a bed for Cinders and her babies, a box thickly lined with newspapers and old towels. I showed her the box and she obligingly curled up in it, purring her appreciation. I lived in an agony of anticipation, barely able to concentrate on my classes. As the time approached for her kittens to be born — cats have a 63-day gestation period, as I knew from my earlier reading — I could focus on nothing else. Finally, after weeks of tormenting slowness, the day had arrived.

And now she was gone. I searched high and low for her, in all the nooks and crannies inside and out, but Cinders was nowhere to be found. I squeamishly kept away from the low-lying bushes near the house; the great masses of caterpillars were heaviest there. But finally, all other possibilities exhausted, I squatted down for a look. There, protected on all sides by a dense tangle of twigs and branches, lay Cinders, curled around four newborn kittens. She looked up at me and chirped a greeting. About a foot above her, a horde of caterpillars approximately the size of a soccer-ball writhed and squirmed. Cinders gently detached herself from her infants, picked up one in her jaws and walked toward me.

“That’s my girl,” I said, reaching for her. But she scooted under my hands and ran toward the house. At the door, she stopped, set down her baby, and looked over her shoulder at me. As soon as I opened the door, she repositioned her kitten between her jaws and trotted into the house, straight to the bed I’d made for her.

She hopped into the box and gently set her mewling infant onto the soft towel. She must have been outside when her labor began, with no one home to let her in, so she’d chosen the best place she could for the birth. Now that I was home, she could bring them all inside where it was safe.

“Let’s go get the others,” I said, moving toward the door. But instead of fol-

lowing me, Cinders just looked at me then wearily sank down next to her infant,

shifting and curling her body around it as it began to nuzzle against her flank.

Cinders looked up at me expectantly. My heart fell. She wanted the rest of her babies. And they needed her. But she was exhausted. The message was clear: it was up to me to get them out for her. I walked back outside to the bug-besieged bush, got down on my hands and knees, and peered into the scrubby undergrowth. The remaining babies mewled piteously, bobbing blindly for their warm mother. Above them, the worms dangled and crawled in and out amongst themselves. I swal- lowed, closed my eyes, and sank down onto my belly. I made myself as flat as possible and wriggled in beneath the bush until I could grasp the tiny bodies. One after the other, I pulled them all out, shuddering at the nearness of the seethingmass inches from my head. Only when it was all over, did I give in to my panic. I danced around, shrieking wildly, shaking my clothing and hair, certain that I was covered with crawling caterpillars.

Once the shuddering revulsion subsided, I gathered the kittens carefully into

my arms, took them inside, and placed them against their mother’s warm flank.

She looked up at me calmly, her purr resonating in the small room. One by one, she nosed the rest of her little family, licking them roughly and pushing them closer to her side. As she settled, she once again looked up at me — not with gratitude but as if I’d simply done what she expected I would do. It dawned on me slowly that for once, I hadn’t shrunk back from an appalling task.

In that moment, Cinders gave me a rare gift. She showed me that I could be more than an insecure, bookish child, beset by fears both real and imagined. I

could, if necessary, be the heroine in a story of my own making.