Cleo

Rain hammered on the roof all night. It wasn’t right. Australia was famous for drought and desert, not downpours. Soon after dawn I hurried out of bed to check doors and windows for a cat asking to be let in. Nothing. Losing our beloved Cleo would be a ghastly omen for our move to Australia. Philip left for his first day at work, a cloud of anxiety in his eyes. After breakfast, the girls and I slid into raincoats and trawled the neighborhood, calling for her. A grumpy white cat stared at us from a window. Across the road I heard a dog bark. While Cleo wasn’t as resilient as she used to be, she was still tough. But what if Australian animals were tougher? If she encountered a rottweiler she might not be able to stare him down. Even though she could still run, she wasn’t an elite athlete anymore.

Tucking the girls under their blankets that night, I tried to prepare them for heartache. “Cleo’s had a long, exciting life,” I said.

“Do you think she’s dead?” Lydia asked.

“No,” I said. “She doesn’t feel dead, does she? I think she knows we still need her.”

I couldn’t help thinking the odds were against us. An old cat runaway in a new country had a survival chance of a thousand to one. With every hour that passed her chances were surely getting slimmer.

Next day the rain had eased. We searched the neighborhood again. My throat was sore from calling her name. We trailed through laneways and a builder’s yard. We scoured a playground at the end of the street. There seemed no point investigating the busy main road just a couple of houses from our new place. If Cleo had ventured in that direction we wouldn’t be seeing her again.

Heavyhearted, we turned into the gate. Now I really wished I’d been sensible enough to accept Rosie’s offer to let Cleo spend her sunset years with a certified cat lover. We’d been crazy to move countries. Mentally deranged to think we had sufficient charm and energy to make new friends. Gulping back tears, I draped my arms around the girls’ shoulders and croaked out one last hopeless “Cleeeeeeo!” The houses and trees of our new neighborhood responded with silence.

A shadow flickered in the basement of the house across the road, the one where we’d heard the dog barking. The shape pushed forwards and squeezed between some gardenia bushes. At first I thought it was some strange Australian animal, an urban wombat, perhaps. But it had ears and whiskers…and…to our great relief, Cleo trotted across the street into our arms. We never found out where she’d been and whether some other family had tried to lure her to their fridge. Whatever she’d been up to, she’d made a decision in our favor.

Everything in Australia was bolder and more luridly colored—including the birdlife. I assumed Cleo would reassert her reign of terror over the feathered species once she knew her way around. But Australian birds aren’t to be messed with. Assertive as Dame Edna on HRT, they have no intention of becoming a cat’s breakfast.

Cleo was dazzled by the colors of the rainbow lorikeets, who set themselves up in our backyard pear tree. She ran her tongue over her lips, imagining the pretty toothpicks their green and red feathers would make. But they cackled derisively at the elderly black cat. They knew that if she got anywhere near them they’d claw her to pieces and fillet what was left of her with their beaks.

A couple of magpies decided to claim vengeance on behalf of the entire bird species. One afternoon I glanced out the kitchen window to see Cleo, head down, tail tucked under, running as fast as she could up the side of the house. Like a pair of spitfires the magpies were chasing her, swooping and diving and squawking with delight. I ran to the door and opened it just in time for Cleo to sprint inside to safety.

Our four walls couldn’t protect us from everything, though. Just when we thought we were adjusting to our new life we struck our first day over a hundred. I’d always claimed to be a warm-weather person. A few extra notches up the thermometer would be nothing short of delightful. Having grown up in a country that welcomes every ray of warmth, I threw the windows and curtains open. Nothing like a good through-draft. Except this “through-draft” was hurtling straight off the sizzling Outback into our living room. Heat lumbered through the house like a monster. Instead of wafting through as heat was supposed to, it plonked itself in every room and expanded like a phantom until it filled every corner and reached the ceiling. My arms and legs swelled to twice their size. My hair hung in damp streamers. My heart thudded in my ears. Paralyzed on the sofa, I could hardly move. I managed to drag a basket of laundry out to the clothesline. Our underwear practically caught fire in the wind.