Nine Lives

     I saw a crow strutting across the ice of Stone Harvest’s pond last winter. It brought back memories of Oliver Twist. How he used to do the same. Always with a look of boredom upon his face. But he didn’t fool me. Bold and carefree, I knew my adopted boy was having the time of his life. It was only me who worried the ice would break and there would go one of nine lives. Lost.

     I named that cat after Dickens’s protagonist because he was an orphan and equally sweet, with the same instinctive trust in humanity despite having every reason to be cynical. But the legendary moniker didn’t stick for very long. Soon, it was just Ollie, and Ollie it remained ever after.

     Ollie was probably around four months old when I found him. Presumably abandoned by some person as kittens and cats too often are in this relatively isolated woodland. Driving home one cold afternoon in September, I had seen a streak of thundercloud gray running across the road and into Olga Olinda (Ol-Ol), the old, hollowed-out oak tree that I curled up and dreamed in when I was young and still visit on a regular basis. Curious, I stopped my car and got out. As I knelt and peered into Ol-Ol’s open trunk, Ollie stuck his head out from the small interior hole where he had been hiding and let loose with a demanding meow. I knew right then we were meant to be together.

     I was nervous though. I had two dogs. Both with no experience sharing their home with a feline. Anna, the yellow Labrador retriever, was a born hunter. On several occasions I had seen her catch hold of a squirrel and toss the hapless creature up in the air. Where evidently its neck snapped. As inconceivable as that sounds, I believe it to be true. Because every time I ever saw Anna do that, when the squirrel fell back down and hit the ground, it was already dead. I could not help but look at this kitten, who was not all that much bigger than a squirrel, and wonder if I was setting him up for the same fate.

     As for C-Jay, the Welsh corgi, he was no hunter. But, except for two yellow labs, Holly (who helped raise him) and Anna (whom he helped raise), C-Jay was consistently snarly when it came to getting along with other dogs. I figured there was a high probability he would be just as inhospitable towards a cat.

     On both counts, I was proved wrong. Anna and C-Jay immediately took to Ollie, and Ollie immediately took to Anna and C-Jay.

     Especially Anna. Right from the start, Ollie shamelessly threw himself at her and continued to do so until his dying day. Ollie worshipped the ground Anna walked on, and he never gave up on trying to persuade her that they should be more than friends. It is beyond me to explain why Ollie believed a member of another species was his one and only, but I suppose, as the old saying goes, love has its reasons.

     It was just the four of us for several years. Right up until I met the man who would become my husband. Richard is a dedicated cat lover. Consequently, along with him came a big, midnight-black cat with piercing emerald green eyes named Kilmer. I say “along with him,” but actually it was Kilmer who first moved in with me and my menagerie, serving as Richard’s advance man, making certain we four were acceptable housemates with no skeletons hiding in our closets. It took a while, but I am proud to say Kilmer ultimately gave us his stamp of approval and Richard the green light.

     I grew to love Kilmer as one of my own, but he did have some annoying quirks. To begin with, he had the loudest purr I have ever heard, and it was often accompanied by large amounts of drool.  To make matters worse, Kilmer was a happy cat. He purred and drooled at all times of day and night. Repeatedly, he woke me up in the wee hours with his thunderous purring and streaming drool. One time, when I was in a deep slumber and not quick to wake, I dreamed a mountain lion had broken into the cabin and was standing over me, giddily purring and hungrily salivating. Euphoric and eager to begin his dinner in bed.

     As if Kilmer’s booming purrs and downpours of slobber were not enough to interrupt my sleep, he made it his nightly routine to knead my resting head with his humongous claws. It hurt, but to my credit, I tried to take his chiseling into my skull as a compliment. I tried to convince myself that Kilmer was picking my brain for answers to the questions that plagued him. Which could only mean he considered me exceptionally intelligent. My attempt at self-brainwashing did not work, however.

     Then there were Kilmer’s bathroom habits. Ollie relieved himself outdoors, but Kilmer was more the indoor type and had to have a litter box. No problem, except that he always made such a huge production out of going. He would dig and dig and dig through his kitty pan, scattering its contents all over the floor of the loft that served as his restroom. Sometimes his frenetic paws flung the litter about so mightily it would fall from the loft, raining down into the cabin’s great room and kitchen. It was like a storm of cremation ashes enveloping my living space. As anyone can imagine, being caught in such a  macabre squall is not exactly conducive to tranquil relaxing, pleasant eating, or the enviable entertaining of guests. 

     Nonetheless, I loved Kilmer, and it was a sad day when we learned he had bone cancer and a sadder day still when we put him down.

     A few years later, we put Ollie down as well. Without warning he was struck with something called feline aortic thromboembolism. It is when a blood clot gets stuck where the aorta splits to feed a cat’s back legs. It cuts off blood flow, causing sudden paralysis and severe pain.

     I remember finding Ollie that last morning we had together. He was hiding under the porch. It was obvious something was horribly wrong with him. To protect myself, I put on a pair of thick work gloves, but when I crawled under the porch and reached for Ollie, he looked at me with those eyes of his, the smoky green color of the Allegheny Mountains in September, and started to purr.

     I took off the gloves, hugged him to me, and rushed to the vet. When she said there was no hope, Ollie was still purring, and he continued to purr as he died in my arms.

     Afterward, I thought I could never love another cat. Other cats, before Ollie, had shared their lives with me. Five, to be exact, and I loved them all. But it was somehow different with Ollie. Maybe finding him like a gift from motherly Ol-Ol during the worst period of my life had something to do with it. Or maybe it was that first winter we spent together. When I initially saw him strut undaunted over a water’s thin ice. At a time when I was emotionally winter-bound, iced-over with fear, and in danger of spiritually drowning, that image of a lion-hearted Ollie may have entered my subconscious as a symbol of encouragement.

     I don’t really know, and I suppose I will never really know. What I do know is that, after Ollie died, I was sure I could never love another cat.

     As gutted as I was with grief, I was still able to recognize that my husband is someone who needs a cat in his life. So several months after Ollie died, I sent Richard off to the local humane society with strict orders not to come home until he was in the company of a feline.

     He returned with a small, frightened, golden-eyed, silver-gray cat with white paws, bib, and belly. The vet at the shelter estimated she was around three years old and had given birth at least once. The past four months she had spent in a cage. Which was odd. Since cats in our humane society are normally allowed to move about freely in the large, cozy room they share. Her name, Richard had been told, was Bella, but both he and I felt the name did not suit her. As for what her name should be, we could not decide.

     She was so frightened. For the first month she was with us, we kept her up in the loft, away from the dogs. We visited her often, trying to cuddle and play with her. But for all that, she was not warming up in the slightest to either one of us. I began to think Richard had made a terrible mistake.

     Next came a morning when I went up to the loft but could not find her, prompting a search of the entire cabin by Richard and me. Getting desperate, we were about to expand our quest to outside when I spotted a clump of gray fur wedged in the tiny space behind the cherry corner cabinet that holds my mother’s good china.

     I’m not much of a good china kind of person myself. I’m more the rustic pottery or stoneware type, but that antique bone china in Noritake’s Sedan pattern was my mother’s pride and joy. Understandably so, since it was the only elegant thing my working-class mother could call her own.

     The china was originally a wedding gift to my paternal grandmother from her three older sisters. That must have been only a few years after Noritake came out with the Sedan pattern. In 1914, Sedan was introduced as Noritake’s first Western-style dinnerware. The Japanese company had specifically designed it to compete with established European manufacturers.

     Milk-white, practically weightless, and with the see-through glow bone china is famous for, each piece is hand-painted with several delicate sprays of green-leaved pink and blue flowers on a cream-colored border with a thin gilded edge. I may not be into good china, but even I can appreciate Noritake’s Sedan pattern is an exquisite work of art.

     Tragically, my grandmother did not get to enjoy her china for very long. She died of tuberculosis in 1925 at the age of twenty-nine. My dad was six at the time. After my grandmother died, her sisters packed up the china and stored it, hoping their little nephew, their youngest sibling’s only child, would someday marry, and it could again be their wedding present to a bride. When my parents married in 1952, their wish was granted.

     Several decades later, when my mother stepped down from hosting holiday and special occasion meals, she passed the china on to me. I rarely use it and live in mortal dread of ever breaking a dish or even so much as microscopically chipping one. My mother would come back to furiously haunt me for sure. And I am not exaggerating. I once saw my mother become livid with her sister and practically threaten to cut ties with her because my Aunt Edna had not placed a dinner plate down on the table as gently and with enough reverence as my mother thought she should have.

     Yet, I understand and have sympathy for my mother. She worked herself into bitter exhaustion in pursuit of the prosperity the American Dream promises to all hard workers but actually dangles like a carrot on a stick in abuse of its beasts of burden, almost none of whom get a bite. My mother, like my father, was one of America’s uncounted beasts of burden. The people who never get to live the dream. The dream that is an illusion. Its purpose, to control the non-elites. Practically all of whom are under the delusion that has been drilled into their heads since early childhood that the dream is real. But it isn’t, and so I have sympathy for my mother. Because it has got to be hard when your one taste of the affluence you have been conditioned to desire above all else is a pile of dishes.

     Sometimes I wonder if my mother ever regretted giving me her good china. Me being the one who made it to the high life and then gave it up for the good life. I made that drastic and difficult move because one day I woke up and realized I was living in someone else’s dream, and that dream could not fulfill me.

     I couldn’t find any worthy meaning in it.  It was a dream that murdered curiosity, questioning, and free thinking. A dream to keep people in their place. Most of whom are contained in the lowest of situations where it is all work and no wonder.

     Once I awakened, it became clear to me that I didn’t want to spend my life in the relentless pursuit of more and more money. I wanted to engage in the gentler pursuit of infinite happiness. It must have been so difficult for my mother to understand when I turned my back on her dream and left it behind. Chances are, she didn’t understand at all. But that’s okay. I understand, and no matter what, I am the steadfast guardian of her good china.

     So when Richard and I discovered the then-cat Bella had squeezed herself into the extremely tight space behind the cherry corner cabinet that holds the china, my first concern was for the dishes. Richard, on the other hand, was primarily focused on the cat. When he said he was worried she might be injured and that he was going to move the corner cabinet out from the wall, I asked him to please wait so that I could remove the china. A request that was totally disregarded.

     As Richard began tugging at the cabinet, I began yelling, “But my mother’s good china!” I must have shrieked that plea twenty times as I imagined the cabinet’s doors bursting open, a cascade of china crashing to the floor, shattering, dainty sprays of pink and blue flowers pulverized. I shrilly begged and begged like that until Richard finally managed to pull the cabinet, with its dishes still intact, away from the wall, revealing a perfectly fine cat.

     I lost it then. “Well, I know now what we should name her,” I spat out. “Pia. Because she’s a pain in the ass!”

     It was an outburst I swiftly regretted. Not because I had been a jerk and said something I didn’t really mean, but because Richard looked at me with a pleased expression and said, “That’s a good name. I like it. Pia. That’s what we’ll call her then.”

     I thought it was a terrible name, but it was too late. Richard was hooked on it. After all, I thought, it’s his cat. That is, if she’s anyone’s cat. Because it certainly seems there is no one in this house she likes.

     But something had happened to Pia during her adventure. I think she found her courage. She began showing trust and affection. And not just to Richard. To me too. So much so that we eventually became comfortable with the idea of letting her go outside. When we made that idea a reality, it was a gratifying experience I will never forget. It was the look on Pia’s face. I swear her gold eyes grew even more golden. It was the way she frolicked about. Inventing her own special dance. Hers was pure joy as she experienced the wonders of freedom for the first time after having been locked in a cage for four months and enslaved by fear for heaven only knows how much longer.

     These days, years later, it is sometimes challenging to get Pia to come inside. Like me, she loves the natural world. It would be easy for me to say that this is why I have come to love her. More difficult is the truth. But the truth is, I needed a pain in the ass to help me find courage again and understand how strong and undying love is.

     True as well is that there will never be another Ollie. Nor will there ever be another Pia. Or another Kilmer. Or another Twiggy, Scat, Cara, January, or Dewdrop. My eight cats. Eight lives, not one of which has been lost. Because each still has their ninth life.

     That would be me.

     Me. The Ninth Life.