Cleo

Magnolia is one of the world’s great cooks. Having grown up in Samoa, one of the few countries where people appreciate the beauty of bellies the size of hot-air balloons, she understands the meaning of quantity. Not only that, she has a gourmet’s flair for quality. She stole her recipe for coconut cake from the angels. Her beef bourguignon would make Julia Child turn spinach-green with envy. So Cleo licked her chops approvingly when Magnolia arrived carrying extra cooking pots and bags of undisclosed ingredients.

“Don’t you worry,” Magnolia said, slipping an apron over her head. “Go and enjoy yourselves. We’ll be absolutely fine. And you know I love cats. Not in a culinary sense, of course.”

I kissed Cleo on her tiny forehead, but formal farewells were of no interest. Her focus was on Magnolia clattering a large preserving pan onto our stovetop. We worried about Cleo while we were away.

“She’s such a sensitive animal,” I said to Philip. “She’s probably traumatized having a stranger in the house.”

Every time we phoned, Magnolia said our cat was just fine. I didn’t know if we should believe her. “Just fine” can mean anything from “just fine but she was attacked by magpies and had an eye pecked out” to “just fine but she hasn’t eaten a thing.”

“I can’t talk now,” Magnolia added. “We’ve got some bouillabaisse on the stove, haven’t we, Cleo? Then I’m off to the market to get fresh prawns.”

“Do you think Cleo’s all right?” asked the girls.

We told them she probably was, but what would we know?

The girls talked us into going home a day early because Cleo was almost certainly pining for us. When Magnolia answered the door the fragrance of a Michelin-star galaxy wafted through our nostrils—warm and meaty with a hint of wine and truffles. A small plump animal was tucked in the crook of Magnolia’s elbow. The creature had the expression of a movie star encountering fans on the way to the Academy Awards—“I see you, but you’re not really there. Collect a signed photograph from my publicity team if you’re desperate.”

“Cleo!” we cried, all reaching out to hold her.

She hesitated for longer than was decent before allowing Magnolia to lower her into Katharine’s arms.

“She likes her food,” laughed Magnolia.

Cleo wriggled to be put on the floor and waddled away towards the kitchen. Not only had she grown chubby over the past two weeks, she’d become incredibly smug.

“I’m going to miss sleeping with her,” Magnolia added. “She’s so cute the way she snuggles between the sheets and puts her head on the pillow beside me.”

There was still enough country girl left in me not to want to share a pillow with our cat, even our treasured cat goddess. And I couldn’t cook like Magnolia.

I don’t know if those were good enough reasons to punish us. Maybe Cleo was simply annoyed with us for going away. More likely it was a combination of crimes on our part. But she made her feelings clear enough by depositing a carefully placed turd in the middle of our bedcover.

Live-in cat nannies became the norm every time we went away after that. During one of these sojourns a kitchen chair fell on Cleo’s tail, leaving a permanent dent near the tip. The nanny apologized profusely. She said there’d been blood. Katharine shed tears over the damage. While the tip of Cleo’s tail remained tender for the rest of her days, she didn’t ask for sympathy. She wore her dented tail with the suave pride of a battle-scarred cavalry officer. Forgiveness for permanent injury was a straightforward process for her, simple as breathing.

I wished I shared her expertise in the art of forgiveness. We humans hold on to our hurt and nurse it, often to our own detriment. We’re quick to assume the role of victim. Yet cats are and always have been at the receiving end of human maltreatment. During medieval times many thousands of them were hunted out and killed because it was believed they were inhabited by witches. In Paris during the sixteenth century thousands of people looked forward to fun outings witnessing the mass burning of bags full of cats. Even today, kittens are routinely dumped into sacks and drowned. Cats of all ages are tortured in experiments for the so-called advancement of science. In parts of Asia, a serving of cat meat is considered beneficial for women of a certain age.

Humanity has brought such suffering upon the domestic cat it’s amazing they still tolerate any contact with us. Felines may not forget our atrocities against them. Yet, generation after generation, they continue to forgive us. Every new litter of kittens born helpless and mewing is an invitation to start again, for humans to lift their game. While our past behavior reveals the depths of the cruelty we’re capable of, cats continue to expect better of us. We won’t be worthy of considering ourselves fully evolved until we live up to the shine of trust and expectation in a kitten’s eye.