Cleo

Cleo developed strange blotches in her eyes, enhancing the impression she was in direct contact with other realities. I found a vet who wasn’t tough and understood how precious she was. He said Cleo didn’t have cataracts. The blotches were just a natural part of the aging process. Soft Vet wasn’t so happy about her kidneys, though. He suggested we could fly her to Queensland for a kidney transplant, though the success rate wasn’t high. (A cat flown thousands of miles for a kidney transplant that will probably fail! I could practically hear my mother wail from the depths of her plastic urn in the New Plymouth graveyard. The world must be off its rocker.)

Unwilling to embrace the less attractive aspects of growing older, I focused on body parts that, with some attention, could still look good. I discovered a nail salon run by a Vietnamese family who, I was thrilled to find out, could hardly speak a word of English. This meant they were mercifully free of small talk and unable to instruct me on methods of maintaining youthful hands and feet. As we got to know each other better, they greeted me with nods and smiles.

Around the same time Cleo’s toenails started clicking like tap shoes over the floorboards. They weren’t getting as much use as in her assassin days. Her claws had worn thin and were as flaky as miniature croissants. I was flattered when Cleo allowed herself to lie on her back in my lap while I attempted to trim her talons with Philip’s nail clippers. Reading glasses perched on the end of my nose, I was terrified of hurting her. I hardly trusted myself with hedge clippers, let alone nail trimmers and her tiny paws. Any clumsy mistakes were corrected with swift gentle bites. After the first few attempts, Cleo trusted me enough to actually purr during the procedure. I was honored to take on the title of official manicurist and (combing dry cat shampoo through her coat) beauty therapist. In short, personal servant.

We’d spent long enough in each other’s company for her to know I had her interests at heart. We’d been through so much together and found a kind of peace, not only with each other, but within ourselves. Together we discovered the well-kept secret that, give or take a few inconveniences, old cats have more fun.

Cleo and I decided to become quirky about our eating habits. I was afflicted with an obsession for chocolate, dark chocolate to be precise, preferably seventy percent cocoa, made in Switzerland and wrapped in something shiny involving photos of mountains. Try as I might to divert my addiction to Italian writing paper or thousand-thread-count sheets, I could find nothing more mesmerizing than chocolate. Cleo underwent an even more powerful food fixation. The word “no” had never been of particular interest to our cat. She now obliterated it from her understanding of human vocabulary. In her mature years, however, she learnt exactly what the words “Chicken Man” meant.

Whenever anyone announced they were off to Chicken Man (to buy a rotisserie takeaway bird from the cheerful Asian man’s shop round the corner), Cleo trotted behind them and waited eagerly at the door until they returned with the mouth-watering parcel.

Cleo was circumspect about most food, though on the whole she preferred it murdered or stolen. Chicken Man was in a different league. One whiff of the freshly roasted flesh drove her to salivating insanity. Anyone in charge of an unguarded plate of chicken was at risk. Loyalties and past affections were forgotten as she embarked on chicken jihad.

We developed a routine of shutting her out of the room so we could have first choice of the meat.

“Poor Cleo!” Katharine would say, as an elegant black paw appeared under the door.

There was no “poor” about it. If the door wasn’t closed properly, the paw slid down the side and pushed it open. Bones and paper napkins would fly through the air, plates clattered to the floor. It was chicken season for young and old.

Our food fixations were equally unattractive to outsiders. The only difference was, Cleo’s didn’t make her any fatter. In fact, she appeared to be shrinking. Her chest bones jutted out, the angles of her skull became even sharper and more prominent. With fur draped over her skeletal form, she resembled an amateur attempt at taxidermy.

That’s not saying we didn’t enjoy moments of friskiness. If the curtains were pulled tight enough and there was no evidence of human life within a five-hundred-meter radius, a determined anthropologist might still have caught a glimpse of me boogieing alone to the strains of Marvin Gaye.

Likewise, after a shower of rain, Cleo shimmied like a kitten up a tree trunk—until halfway up old age got the better of her and she slid unceremoniously back down.