Cleo

As the cab pulled up outside our rented villa in the leafy suburb of Malvern, I was still worrying about our cat. Poor old Cleo. She was probably languishing in some horrible transit prison for animals. Maybe I should have accepted Rosie’s offer to adopt her. Rosie had pointed out that, at the age of fifteen, Cleo was the human equivalent of seventy-five years old. It was, she hinted, nothing short of a miracle our cat had survived this long, considering her rugged lifestyle with us. She’d implied that Cleo’s vital organs might not be up to the rigors of jet travel. A short retirement in Rosie’s cat menagerie was possibly a more humane option. Nevertheless, Cleo was woven into our family history as firmly as cat fur into a favorite blanket. We weren’t perfect cat parents. But leaving her behind was unthinkable.

A lot had changed since our return from Switzerland five years earlier. After leaving school with a scholarship Rob completed his degree and decided to embark on an engineering career in Melbourne. Lydia was on the brink of becoming a teenager. Katharine was about to start school. My ex-husband Steve had married Amanda, and they’d produced a daughter. On a much sadder note, Mum had succumbed to bowel cancer and died after a few weeks of illness. Her suffering in the final days had been terrible to watch, yet she embraced death with great courage. As she’d withered to a shell of her former self, her spirit seemed to distill into dazzling purity, which blazed from every part of her. Harrowing as it was, I’d felt privileged to be alone with her as she heaved her last painful breath. I missed our phone conversations, her ceaseless encouragement, her refusal to regard life in its dimmest light.

Some things had stayed the same, however. Cleo was still undisputed queen of our household.

“There’s something on the doorstep,” said Rob.

There was a large box in the shadows of the front porch. I assumed it was a piece of junk the previous tenants had left behind. It had a mesh side. We approached tentatively. A pair of familiar green eyes glowered out from behind the wire.

“Look who’s here!” said Philip.

The eyes glared back as if to say, Well you certainly took your time!

“Cleo! You’re here already!” the girls cried in unison.

Typical of Cleo’s style, she’d arrived in our new country hours ahead of the rest of us. Somewhere along the line she’d flashed a look at a quarantine officer. He’d recognized an Egyptian goddess when he saw one and given her first-class treatment.

Cleo devoured her first Australian meal in a matter of minutes. She was adapting faster than the rest of us. My first reaction was to reach for the phone to tell countless people back in New Zealand we’d arrived. They sounded warm and happy to hear from me, but I sensed we were rapidly becoming part of their history.

Calling home was the easy part. The hard bit was finding new everythings—from doctors and hairdressers to shopping centers and playgrounds. The most daunting “new” was discovering new friends. The importance of an amiable network of people struck home when I had to fill out school forms. For “Emergency Contact: i.e., friend, neighbor etc.” I had no choice but to leave a blank space. We were stranded on a rock of anonymity. If we couldn’t find new friends soon we’d have to invent some. I’d decided to work from home, sending columns back to newspapers and Next magazine in New Zealand. While I loved staying in touch with loyal readers it was a solitary occupation. Mulling over a computer screen in the suburbs was hardly going to raise my chances of meeting friends.

After keeping Cleo inside for the statutory two days I opened the back door for her. She nudged a tentative nose outside. Her whiskers twitched. She lifted an uncertain paw. Australia, with its concoction of garden smells mingled with possum fur, eucalyptus and parrot feathers, smelled different. Before I could stop her she slithered like a trout between my ankles and disappeared into a clump of bird of paradise.

“It’s okay,” I said to Katharine. “She’s just exploring. She’ll be back for dinner.”

Dinnertime came and went. Not a whisker of Cleo. In all her fifteen years she’d never disappeared on us. Dusk faded. The sky turned the color of a bruise and it started to drizzle. Cleo hated rain. We called for her. No answer.

“She’s probably sheltering under the house,” I said, hoping it was true. “She’ll turn up in the morning.”