A Dickens of a Cat

Brenda’s parents contacted us at The Center, desperate. They’d heard about our unique program for recovery from eating disorders. Brenda had already been in three hospital programs, including a critical care unit. One of these medical institutions put her in a straitjacket and tied her arms to the edge of the bed. Her parents said the hospital did this in order to force-feed their child.

At six years old, Brenda wouldn’t eat. She was starving herself to death with anorexia. While other children her age were playing and exploring and taking joy in everyday life, Brenda was obsessed with starving. Anorexia was literally sucking the life out of her. When her parents brought her to us, she looked like one of those children in a commercial for third-world sponsorship.

Her parents said, “We need help. We’re near bankruptcy. We’ve done all we know to do to help our daughter. And she just won’t eat. Will you help us?”

I had a team meeting with our staff at The Center. After careful consideration, we decided that we would say yes to Brenda. We decided we would do all we could to make sure she lived. We wanted to have an opportunity to give her what we felt she hadn’t received in the other programs or hospitals. We wanted to give her an opportunity not just to be treated but to be loved.

We decided beforehand that when little Brenda arrived we were going to get down on our hands and knees and play in our offices and do whatever she wanted to do. We weren’t going to try to force her to conform to our world. We were going to do something totally different and trust that it would help. Brenda could not afford to have her weight go any lower. But nothing else had worked, so our therapeutic approach would be simply to love her.

If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man, but it would deteriorate the cat.

Mark Twain

And so we did. We took turns sitting or lying on the floor, talking to Brenda, playing with her when she could play. Sometimes we wondered just how much she was able to understand, eating so infrequently. But we played with her, we talked with her, we listened to her, we loved her. We made as much eye contact as we possibly could, always trying to connect with her.

At first we could not tell if we were getting through. One day while I drove home, I began praying, “What else should we do for Brenda?” I drove by the local veterinarian’s office. There in the window was a sign that read: “Free kittens.” I found myself pulling into the parking lot.

Once inside, I was told at the desk there were only two kittens left, one of them the runt of the litter. Ed, the vet, brought out a cardboard box with an old towel on the bottom and two kittens curled up together in a corner. I could see that the littlest one was beyond being the runt. It was so small and sickly that it looked like it was going to die. I remember telling Ed, “You know, that’s just the one I want. Thank you.”

“No, this little thing is probably going to die,” Ed cautioned. “You really don’t want this kitten.”

So Ed gave me the runt and a tube of sugared gel. We were supposed to see if the kitten would lick the sugar.

I took the kitten the next day to Brenda and said, “Sweetheart, your job is to keep this kitten alive.” I put that pathetic little creature into her arms. She began to pet the kitten. She about wore the fur off that kitten, petting and petting her. From then on, wherever Brenda went, so went the kitten.

Just a few days later, little Brenda asked for food. The counselor who was with her at the time just about fainted. He came to me and asked, “What should I do?”

He did, and Brenda listed what she wanted to eat. We immediately went to the store and got everything she asked for. Then we sat in a circle, surrounding Brenda and the little runt of a kitten, and we all ate together. We all ate exactly what Brenda wanted to eat. It was difficult not to show how excited we were.

It might seem easier to make sense of this story if Brenda had been abused in some way as a child. That just wasn’t the case. In fact, she came from a family that loved her greatly. We came to discover that someone, sometime, had made a rude and hurtful comment that Brenda overheard. It was the kind of comment adults offhandedly make in the presence of children, assuming they are too young to comprehend. But Brenda understood very well when this person made the comment that Brenda would always be fat. That comment struck at the very core of her being. Incredibly determined, even at six, Brenda decided she was not going to be fat. In fact, the more they forced her and put her in a straitjacket and stuck IVs in her arms and tubes down her nose, the more Brenda had refused to eat.

I still get excited when I think of that moment. Little Brenda taught us something profound about release from the distortions of body and food and the lies of the world. She taught us that the way back home, and the way we create long-term change, is not through force but through love and acceptance.

While Brenda petted the little kitten over and over again, day after day, something wonderful was happening to the kitten, too. All of that touch was releasing growth hormones, and the kitten began to grow and thrive. Brenda’s love for the kitten was likewise releasing in her a desire to live and to thrive. So she continued asking for food. When Brenda was given something to love that was safe, that kitten loved her back in ways we didn’t fully realize at the time.

There came a time, of course, when Brenda and her parents were ready to return home and take up their lives, free of Brenda’s eating disorder. After they returned home, the kitten found a home with my wife and me. She became part of our family and had several litters of her own kittens. We called them “therapy cats” and gave them away to bring love and healing to other families.