Cleo

“Let’s see how she walks,” I said, lowering the kitten to the floor. We watched her paddle like a clockwork toy through the carpet. The shag pile was the equivalent of tall grass for her. Using the worm of her tail as a rudder she paced jerkily towards the rubber plant.

I’d never been a fan of the rubber plant. We’d inherited it from the owners of our previous house. I gradually understood why they’d left it behind. With its big waxy leaves it had an indestructible, vaguely humorless presence. Like an unwelcome guest at a dinner party, it eavesdropped on every conversation and contributed little in return except, perhaps, when it was in the mood, oxygen. We’d been hoping to leave the thing behind when we moved to the zigzag, but the removal men had mistakenly packed it into their truck with our furniture.

When I transplanted the rubber plant into an ugly orange plastic tub its confidence surged. It sprouted dark-green branches the size of Frisbees and sent feelers trailing creepily around picture frames and across curtain rails. Technically more a tree these days, the darned thing had ambitions to engulf the entire suburb. I’d tried cutting it back with a pair of hedge clippers, but that only encouraged it to swamp the sideboard.

About a meter away from the plant’s orange tub Cleo paused. Her ears and whiskers pointed forwards. Her nose twitched as if she was sampling some dangerous perfume. She crouched and, with the stealthy determination of a lion stalking an antelope, eyed her prey—a pendulous leaf dangling from one of the lower branches. Quivering on her haunches, she waited for the moment the leaf would be least suspecting. Satisfied her prey was foolishly absorbed in leafy thoughts, she attacked furiously, claws exposed, teeth perforating the startled victim’s skin.

Then something strange happened. It began with a noise, unfamiliar at first, a soft gurgle followed by vague hiccuping. Our mouths widened, the soft tissue at the back of our throats went into spasm, but not for crying this time. Laughter. Rob and I were laughing. For the first time in weeks we reveled in the simplest, most complex healing technique known to humanity. Grief had pulled me so deeply into its dungeon I’d forgotten about laughing. It took a boy, his kitten and a rubber plant to engage me in a function essential to human sanity. The horror of past weeks dissolved, padlocks of pain were unlocked momentarily. We laughed.

In the Cleo versus rubber-plant leaf war, there was no doubt who was winning. The leaf was twice Cleo’s size and firmly attached to the plant’s trunk. Every time she tried to grip the vegetation between her claws it slipped away and bounced insolently skyward again.

“She’s a gutsy little thing,” I said.

The kitten suddenly stopped and collapsed on her haunches. She looked up at us and emitted a dictatorial mew. No interpreter was needed. Cleo was tired of entertaining us. She demanded to be scooped up for more cuddles. A mournful howl from the kitchen reverberated through the wall, reminding us it was time for Cleo to meet the lady of the house.

I instructed Rob to let Rata out of the kitchen while I held on to Cleo. But what if the dog lunged at the kitten and tried to eat it? Adult muscle strength would be needed to restrain the dog. The only option was to instruct Rob to hold the kitten carefully while I brought Rata in.

Overjoyed to be released from kitchen confinement, Rata showered me with saliva. She was seemingly oblivious of my prison-warden’s grip on her collar.

“Now girl, there’s someone we’d like you to meet,” I said, sounding like a dentist introducing a first timer to the drill. “There’s nothing to worry about, but you’ll have to be very gentle.”

The golden retriever knew exactly where we were going. Like a jet boat with a water-skier in tow, she dragged me into the living room. Rob stood by the window anxiously clutching Cleo close to his chin. Rata took one glimpse of the kitten and tightened every muscle under her collar. Cleo’s eyes widened to become a pair of glittering jewels. The kitten puffed her patchy tufts of fur out to double her size, though she was still hardly big enough to intimidate a chihuahua. She arched her back and flattened her ears. Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse, Rata barked, puncturing the air like gunshots. The poor little kitten was going to die of terror.

Any normal animal outclassed in size would have recoiled into Rob’s arms, but Cleo was no common beast. Glowering down from her human fortress, she shrank her pupils to pinpoints and lasered out enough malevolence to intimidate the entire canine empire. She then peeled back her mouth, exposed two parallel rows of fangs—and hissed.

Rob, Rata and I froze. Frighteningly primeval, Cleo’s hiss was something a python would emit before swallowing a rabbit, a hiss worthy of Cleopatra herself. It was an imperial hiss, one not to be argued with.