Гвен Купер - I Choo-Choo-Choose You!

Pandy and I fell for each other instantly, from the first day we met.

Jorge’s family were a bookish clan, and I was a reader myself. Many a Sunday would find me lounging in one of the comfy chairs in his parents’ living room, nose buried in a novel while Pandy sprawled on my lap or my chest, belly fat oozing out and around until her body was an enormous perfect circle atop which perched a teeny-tiny cat’s head.

Her weight should have made her an unwieldy lap cat; the body heat generated by her bulk should have made her a sweaty, uncomfortable burden on a humid Miami day. But something about us just meshed, and neither of those things ever bothered me. Pandy’s rumbling purr was a deep, intensely happy vibrato that sank into my chest and radiated through my entire body as I absentmindedly stroked her back or rubbed her chin in between turning book pages. If I got too immersed in my novel and neglected to pet her for more than a few minutes, Pandy would bonk her head against my hand or paw gently at my shoulder until petting was resumed. My fingers seemed to know instinctively how to find just the right scratching spots that would make her purr deepen, her half-closed eyes turned to my own in a gaze of such melting adoration that it could break your heart.

As for me, I sometimes felt that I hadn’t known true serenity until those Sundays with Jorge’s parents, when the late-afternoon sunlight would slant through the windows and transform the fur of Pandy’s rising and falling chest, lying across my own, into a gleaming mound of golden flax.

Pandy’s instant affection for me—unprecedented in the annals of Jorge’s family lore—became something of a tall tale among them, the story about The One Person Pandy Liked. It was heady stuff for a budding, inexperienced ailurophile.

You heard all the time about people who one day discovered some latent talent or ability they’d never known they had. Maybe I was one of those people. Maybe I had this previously untapped, deeply instinctive understanding of cats. Maybe I intuitively “got” cats in a way that other people didn’t.

Maybe I was secretly a cat genius .

And so, when one of Jorge’s sisters announced one Sunday that her mechanic had found a litter of four-week-old kittens, and did any of us know somebody who might want them, I didn’t hesitate before claiming one for myself.

* * *

It was another two days before Jorge’s sister could drive out to her mechanic’s garage to pick up the kitten, and I was in a fever pitch of excitement the entire time. For two nights, I tossed in bed with the restlessness of a ten-year-old on Christmas Eve. A KITTEN is coming! I’m getting a KITTEN!

I went to the pet store for a litter box and kitten food, and came home with a toy-filled shopping bag so large that I struggled to carry everything up the stairs to our apartment. I’d been an easy mark for the enthusiastic store owner, who’d probably closed up shop and gone home for the day after I left. (I imagined her calling her husband and saying, Good news, Herb! We can go back to imported wine! ) I’d bought miniature mice by the dozen: some made from felt, some from plastic or sisal rope, some that rattled or squeaked when shaken, some with hidden compartments you could stuff with catnip. I’d gotten a toy that consisted of a circular sisal-rope base with a large metal spring jutting up from it vertically, at the end of which was attached a belled cluster of feathers. There was another circular toy, this one a plastic wheel with a ball trapped inside and slats through which a cat could shove a paw to push the ball around and around in an endless loop. And I’d bought balls in every color of the rainbow: some made of cloth and plush with stuffing, some that whirred and sparkled when pushed, others made from candy-colored plastic. Last but not least, I’d bought a toy worm made from three puffs of cottony material with a little bell attached to one end.

I spent the hour before the kitten arrived arranging this bounty strategically around the apartment as Jorge looked on, until our home resembled a kitty day-care center through which a dozen or so cats might troop at any moment, demanding entertainment.

“They always end up being more interested in the bag the toys came in than the toys themselves, you know,” Jorge told me.

I knew that Jorge had far more experience with kittens than I did (I having no experience at all). Still, I silently pooh-poohed him. I knew the kitten would be delighted with this avalanche of playthings—would love the toys not only for their own sakes, but also because of all the love for her and excitement at her arrival that they represented. And we would be so much more than cat and owner, this kitten and I. From the very first look—from the very first moment —she and I would form an instant, unbreakable bond and be the best and closest of friends forever. These toys were merely the first step in that process.

At the very least, they certainly brightened up the place. Jorge and I didn’t have much in the way of décor in those early days of living together—just a futon, battered coffee table, and highly weathered entertainment center in the living room; a hand-me-down circular plastic table and three chairs in the kitchen area; and another futon along with an ancient dresser in the bedroom. I didn’t want the kitten to look around and wonder if maybe her luckier littermates had gone to better, fancier homes, while she’d drawn the losing ticket in the lottery of life.

Cats, I’d been given to understand, could be very judgmental creatures.

I’d barely finished arranging everything just so when the doorbell rang and Jorge’s sister entered. She toted a kitten-sized lavender plastic carrier, across the top of which a piece of masking tape with SCARLETT written in black marker had been affixed.

One of the things I’d been looking forward to most was getting to name the kitten. I’d never been the one to name a pet before—with our dogs, that privilege had always fallen to my parents—and I’d seen naming rights as one of the adult prerogatives I would now assume with a cat of my very own.

“She was so dehydrated when the mechanic found her that she kept fainting,” Jorge’s sister explained. “So he named her Scarlett.”

Any disappointment I may have felt upon learning that someone else had already named my kitten dissolved, along with my heart, upon hearing this. The poor little thing! I knew I could easily rename her. Young as she was, she wouldn’t know the difference. But this name was so closely tied to her origins in life—and the hardships she’d endured before being rescued—that it seemed as if changing it would also erase something important and essential about her.

Scarlett, then, she would be.

Jorge’s sister had placed the carrier on the floor at my feet, and I knelt before it, fumbling with the clasp until it sprang open. A tiny black nose poked its way out, quickly followed by the head and body of what was probably the smallest living creature I’d ever been close to.

She was a gray-and-black tiger-striped tabby, with a white belly and chest, white chin, and white “socks” on her lower legs and feet. I marveled at her miniature perfection—the little pink pads of her paws; the tiny, nearly imperceptible tufts of fur sprouting from the tips of her ears; the wee, feathery whiskers on each side of her nose, as if an adult cat’s features had been rendered into something small enough to fit in a dollhouse. The next time I went to Jorge’s parents’ house, only a few days later, their cats would seem to me almost monstrous in size.

Fully emerged from the carrier, the kitten looked at me with wide blue eyes (which would turn a yellowish green in only a few weeks’ time). “Hey, Scarlett,” I said. I knew I must look like a giantess to her, so I made my voice soft. “Come to your new mama.”