W hen Chintzy, our male cat, died at age nineteen, Fraidy, the white cat, settled down to be our only pet. She had always been a dour cat, used to being a second banana all her life, and she seemed surprised at the attention she had never experienced before. She was enjoying her new status and would now jump up on our laps when we watched TV and even dared sleep on our bed at night, a privilege that Chintzy had made exclusively his.
My husband, too, made adjustments to our new pet situation. “That’s it! Just one cat, no more.” He knew more about cats than I did. I had grown up with German shepherds for pets; our cats had been relegated to catching rats and lizards outside. He was the one who had wanted cats, not dogs. “Cats,” he said, “are more independent and don’t need as much care and attention as dogs do. For one thing, they know when to stop eating, unlike dogs, who’ll finish all the food you give them.” It was true that we could go away on weekends and leave food and water for our cats and they’d be just fine. But overall, I found our cats to be aloof, demanding, somewhat arrogant creatures, unlike the exuberant dogs of my youth who had pounced on me when I returned home from school, and who had followed me around, begging for attention.
Soon after my husband’s decision to have only one cat, our eldest son, Chris, showed up holding a kitten just six weeks old. “Can she stay here for a little while?” he asked us. He had broken up with his girlfriend and was moving soon. The kitten was a long-haired tuxedo cat, with black fur down her back and white on her belly; part of her face was white; she had a crooked black mustache and was scrawny and a female to boot.
“We’ve decided we want only one cat,” my husband told Chris, “and you know we prefer male cats with short hair. Female cats are bitchy — remember Grandma Dinah’s Siamese that would piss on her clothes when she got mad? And long-haired cats shed, and they have fleas…”
Chris handed the black-and-white kitten to his father; it was so small it fit the palm of his hand.
“We just got rid of one cat; we don’t want another one.” The kitten crawled up his arm and made her way up to his neck. “And look at this long black fur.” She started to lick his cheek. “Well,” he said in a softer voice, “just until you get settled, and then you can pick her up.”
That never happened, of course. Kiki (a name given by the girlfriend) entered our lives when my husband and I were in our middle age and Chris was leaving for law school, our middle son was in college, and the youngest was in high school. It was a busy household with a very upset white cat who probably had hoped she would be the only cat, and who now looked at the black-and-white kitten as an unwelcome interloper.
Kiki, on the other hand, perked up when she saw Fraidy and quickly headed for her belly, wanting to suckle. Fraidy, a virgin cat without an ounce of maternal instinct in her, hissed and swiped her with a paw. Kiki tried again and again, and the white cat became hysterical, growling and carrying on until finally the kitten got the message and left her alone. For a couple of days the two cats avoided each other. But later on I saw Kiki sneak up on Fraidy, who was sunning herself on the fourth step of the spiral staircase. Kiki reached up and grabbed her tail, setting off another cat fight. Kiki took to waiting behind doors and pouncing on Fraidy, which left her even more frazzled, more nervous.
Kiki learned to be the perfect pet. When you picked her up, she purred loudly and snuggled up against you, thoroughly content. She would even bat your face with her paw, a friendly tap, as if to say, “Hi, there.”
She slept on our bed and, on cold nights, would crawl under the blanket to lie right next to me. She never resisted when I held her tight, and I did this often because I hated cold nights and Kiki was warm like a furry hot-water bag. She would wait a few minutes until she thought I was asleep, and then she would carefully disentangle herself and return to the exact spot I had picked her up from.
In the early morning, she would jump off our bed and run downstairs and out the cat door to do her business. Then her day began. She had breakfast; outside she would sit in the sun and groom herself — on what used to be Fraidy’s favorite sunning spot, the fourth step of the spiral staircase. In the spring, when there were many sparrows about, she’d catch birds and drag them into the house. She never killed them, and despite my hysterics over the flapping birds, she would continue to do this until the last spring of her life. In the afternoon, she moved back into the house to nap on the couch in the den or on our bed. In between all these activities, she’d search out Fraidy to bat her tail or whack her behind. In the evening, when we were watching TV in the den, she would climb up on my husband’s lap to sleep or play. They could sit quietly on the chair for hours, my husband doing the crossword puzzle or Sudoku and Kiki napping. “She loves you,” I would tell him. He’d shrug and say, “She’s a cat, she uses people.”
Meanwhile, Fraidy took to spending most of her time in our neighbor’s yard. One day, our neighbor called to ask if our white cat was depressed, because she spent most of her time sunning herself on their dog’s marked grave.
Fraidy developed cancer on her ears, and the vet explained that this often happened to white cats, since they had no melanin to protect them from the ultraviolet rays of the sun — just like humans. Fraidy developed black spots on her ears that turned into ugly sores. The vet lopped off most of her ears. “You must put sunblock on her ears and nose if she goes outside. In fact, it would be better if you kept her indoors.”
We decided to turn our master bedroom upstairs into Fraidy’s room, and put her litter box and food and water in the bathroom. She had a sleeping pad on the bedroom floor, and her sleeping blanket on our bed. We left the bedroom door closed to keep her in and Kiki out. I nursed Fraidy in our bedroom for the next four years. She thrived on this arrangement.
Kiki, however, was furious she had been driven away from our/her bedroom. One didn’t have to be a pet psychologist to know that Kiki was angry and jealous that her nemesis had the most important room in the house. She must have blamed me for her exile from the bedroom, because she turned cool toward me, preferring my husband instead. She didn’t hiss at me or resist when I picked her up, but for the longest time she wouldn’t purr. And she made no eye contact with me. When my husband held her, her purring could be heard throughout the house — as if she were saying, “I love him, I love him…but not you.”
YEARS LATER, LONG AFTER FRAIDY WAS GONE, I would look at Kiki and think, You and I are getting old. She started having difficulty jumping on our bed; sometimes she limped; she spent more time napping; and she would nip your hand if you touched her lower back the wrong way. But she always remained playful.
Chris had become a lawyer by now, and he moved near us with his new girlfriend, who wanted a cat. My husband, who constantly dreamed of simplifying our lives, volunteered to return Kiki, and they took her to their two-bedroom apartment. Kiki peed inside their shoes and on their clothes, including the leather jacket of the girlfriend, who, fortunately, laughed it off. Our son was not so good-natured, and one day he burst into our kitchen holding Kiki. Hands shaking, he handed her to us and said, “Take her, or else I’ll take her to the pound!” Unfazed Kiki sauntered to the den, jumped up on the couch, and began grooming herself. She looked smug, as if thinking, This is where I want to live. Don’t ever try to change my life again.
But changes did come. Kiki’s life revolved around our house and garden and a bit of the neighborhood — a small planet. The neighbors’ cats came and went; she had one cat friend who was also a tuxedo cat, but older; one day he stopped coming around. She watched Fraidy take the last trip to the vet. Kiki saw our house evolve: a bedroom becoming an office, the front yard acquiring a gate. She watched my husband and me gain weight, begin moving more slowly, and start talking about doctors and dentists more. She watched our three sons grow taller, and saw them come and go as they went to college, returned home, found work, lost a job, fell in love, fell out of love, or got married. And throughout all this, Kiki was a fixture for all of us, the one thing permanent in our lives.
She disliked the grandchildren; she did not like children touching her. The sudden uncontrolled movements of the young ones made her nervous. When she saw them coming, she would shudder with disgust and run off to hide in the garden or upstairs in our bedroom. This did not discourage the grandchildren’s awe, and they would shout excitedly when they saw her: “Look, Kiki’s here!” as if she were a unicorn, a rare and beautiful creature.
At one point, our ages were the same, mine in human years, hers in cat years. Her black fur had faded and picked up a reddish tint; my dyed black hair had done the same. I felt there was a bond between us, and it was a bond that went deeper than the color of our hair or fur. One night the bed was too high for her, and she fell when she jumped up. We found a footstool to help her. She had gum and tooth problems, and I ignored the vet’s suggestion to have all her teeth pulled out. She healed, and still had enough teeth to bite you with if you stroked her the wrong way.
She still preferred my husband’s lap to mine until the very end, but she knew she could rely on me. I was the one who took her to the veterinarian, who Googled her illnesses, who popped pills into her mouth, who brushed her thick black fur, who cleaned her remaining little teeth with a finger contraption, who gave her mercury-free people tuna or bits of steak, who cajoled her into drinking water when she was very ill. It was difficult to watch her grow old, like watching myself heading down the same path. And the fact of it was that Kiki had become so much a part of my life and myself that I couldn’t imagine not having her around. Even her naughtiness and arrogance had become lovable. I realized I loved this cat.
Sometime during the seventeen years we had her, a reversal of roles took place. Kiki ceased being our pet who tried to please us; she became the master, and we her servants who tried hard to please her, or at least I did. Until the end I was her nurse and secretary, jotting down her imagined missives in a blog, as if giving her voice would make her live a little bit longer, just a bit longer, even when she would look at me pleadingly as if to say, “Let me go. Stop forcing me to drink water and eat. I’m tired.”
SHE WOULD SPEND HOURS IN THE ROSE GARDEN under the bougainvillea bush, where she could watch and listen to the birds and squirrels. She stopped sleeping on our bed, preferring the den couch. Perhaps climbing up on the bed became a nuisance; perhaps being close to us, being touched by us, became an annoyance. She retreated from us and communed with nature.
One gorgeous spring day, Kiki was out in the rose garden — a black-and-white cat lying contentedly under the bougainvillea covered with brilliant red flowers. The rose bushes displayed huge blooms of red, yellow, and pink. I could hear the birds twittering in the bougainvillea. I had done all I could for her, including carrying her in my arms and whispering affirmations: You can do it. You’ll be well again. You have to eat. You have to drink so you’ll live. That day, Kiki was comfortable and happy in her rose garden. I went to my office to work. Then suddenly I heard a meow, and when I looked up I saw Kiki enter my office. She had something in her mouth — a baby bird, which she dropped in front of me. I jumped up; the fluttering of the birds always upset me. Kiki looked straight at me; she had an expression, something in her eyes. I realized the baby bird was her gift to me. I picked her up, hugged her tight. “Thank you,” I said.
Three months later we buried her in her beloved rose garden, next to the bougainvillea bush.