Хелен Браун - Cleo

Rob moved towards her. Cleo’s eyes snapped wide open. Glaring, she pinned her ears back and lashed the pillowcase with her tail. Before either of us could get any closer she sprang to her feet and flitted mischievously across the room. Rob flung himself to the floor, trying to pin her down in a rugby tackle. She slithered through his grasp, leapt on top of his bookshelf and scrambled out of reach up the Smurf curtains, using her claws for crampons.

Swinging from Smurfland, the kitten was deaf to my concerns for the interior decor. Nevertheless, a glimpse towards the ceiling confirmed she couldn’t climb any higher. Descending meekly into our arms, however, wasn’t an option. In less than a breath, she dropped onto my shoulder, a mere springboard from which she then plunged to the floor.

Back on the carpet, she leapt in wild circles around the room, bouncing off the window ledge, the bed, the bookshelf. This was not a kitten. It was a dynamo with enough energy to power a discotheque. Even watching her was exhausting.

It wasn’t going to last. We weren’t cat people. Our house no longer belonged to us. Cleo had invaded and turned us into prisoners. Even though she was tiny, her personality filled every corner of every room. If she wasn’t stealing socks from the laundry basket or chewing the covers of precious books she was hiding in a shopping basket waiting to ambush us.

Admittedly, the trouble she was causing had provided diversion from our pain. Every moment spent worrying what part of the house she was destroying was one not steeped in grief. But I was a barely functioning human being and in no condition to deal with the undiluted force of nature that was Cleo.

The only thing more unnerving than her presence was her sudden, inexplicable absence. “Where’s Cleo?” I muttered after resurrecting the rubber plant and disposing of the turds. The house was too quiet. Rob found her eating potato peelings inside the kitchen cupboard that contained our rubbish bin.

I’d once read somewhere that cats sleep seventeen hours a day. Presumably kittens needed more than that. Going by the damage to our surroundings, Cleo must’ve slept a total of three hours in the past twenty-four. Some other kitten in a blissfully calm household had surely stolen Cleo’s designated downtime and grabbed it for itself. It’d be pigging out on hours of extra sleep, dozing on a cushion in a patch of sunlight somewhere, not causing any trouble. Its stress-free, thoroughly spoiled owner would look at its plump, snoring form and wonder at its passive nature.

I couldn’t stand another minute of that kitten. I persuaded Rob to leave the house with me for an hour or two. The only terms he’d agree to was a visit to a pet shop that sold stuff for kittens.

We crept around the abandoned supermarket bags toward the front door. I turned the lock smoothly to avoid loud clicks that might draw attention to our escape. Just as I shuffled Rob out ahead of me, the supermarket bag closest to the door suddenly inflated to twice its size, exploded to life and emitted a terrifying yowl. A miniature panther pounced from its depths and dug its teeth in my ankles.

I tried to shake her off. The kitten was several notches below us on the Darwinian scale. She had no right—let alone the brains and technology—to detain us. Nevertheless, she was having a damn good try.

Rob picked up a sock and shook it. Cleo was immediately mesmerized. Ferocity: 10. Attention span: 0. She leapt and danced after the hosiery. When Rob threw it to the other end of the hall she scurried after it.

We slid out the front door as Cleo’s tail disappeared into the shadows. She’s only a cat, for heaven’s sake! my mother’s voice lectured inside my head. But I hadn’t felt so guilty since I’d tried leaving the boys at a day-care center that was clearly run by a direct descendent of Adolf Hitler.

We headed along the path to the zigzag. A force tugged me back towards the house. I turned to see our kitten peering out of Rob’s window. If a representative of Hallmark Cards had wandered up the zigzag he’d have signed her up for a lifetime of schmaltzy photo shoots. Nestled in a basket or garden pot, dangling from a Christmas stocking, she’d have been irresistible.

Back in the bathroom she’d rescued me from one of my bleakest moments. I was grateful to her for that. She was beautiful, wonderful. And impossible to live with.

Taming the Beast

A cat tames people when they are ready.

Cats and people are unlikely allies. If they were logical, humans, with practically the entire animal kingdom to choose from, would opt to tame creatures more like themselves for pets. Monkeys would be an obvious choice. Furry, intelligent and largely vegetarian, monkeys can learn tricks. But people don’t warm to primates on the whole. In a monkey’s eyes they recognize their own cunning gleaming back.

Instead, humans prefer creatures closely related to their fiercest enemies—lions and tigers and wolves, who’d rather gnaw their bones than sit at their feet and amuse.

The pet shop mostly catered for this preference. Out of habit or instinct, I headed for the dog section. An Aladdin’s cave of squeaky balls and rubber bones, it was Rata heaven. Rob steered me to the other side of the shop and pointed out a cushiony thing he thought would be an excellent bed for Cleo. The leopard-skin cover certainly reflected something of Cleo’s personality.

A shop assistant homed in on us and recommended a sack of dried kitten food. ( Special food for kittens? I could almost hear my mother wail. Has the world gone mad?! We’ll have women running the country next. ) The shop assistant said our kitten would love a soft toy stuffed with catnip, adding that it made them extra playful. Imagining Cleo on the feline equivalent of LSD, I said no thanks.

On our way to the counter she talked us into buying a bag of kitty litter and a plastic tray to put it in. I didn’t want a kitten. Steve was almost certain to throw a fit when he came home and saw what Cleo was capable of. What were we doing purchasing all these accessories? Rob stood on tiptoes and slid the cat bed across the counter’s glass top.

She was a talented saleswoman. Beaming down at him, she asked for his kitten’s name. His face turned pink with pride as he said the word. And, he added, she was the best kitten in the whole world.

Life was complicated. I drove the long way home, winding down the gully past the Botanic Gardens, where the boys and I used to feed ducks. Visiting the ducks was always a good way to defuse their energy when they’d been cooped up inside after days of bad weather. Feathered or furred, animals always had a way of reaching into their frazzled, overactive souls and calming them down. The sight of a brown duck gliding over silvery water tuned all three of us into a wider world where problems didn’t seem so insurmountable. We invariably left the duck pond feeling calmer. In spring we’d count the ducklings, always one or two fewer than the week before. But it was impossible to mourn for long, not when the tulips were out. The boys would run, their hair fiery gold in the sunlight, through rows of dazzling reds, pinks and yellows.

I asked Rob if he wanted to see the ducks but he was keen to get back to Cleo. I couldn’t face them, anyway. And I wouldn’t be visiting the tulips this year, either. They would have to flower by themselves. Every corner of Wellington housed gut-wrenching reminders of our previous life. The town was one big mausoleum.

But home was no longer a shabby retreat from the world. Within twenty-four hours the kitten had taken charge and transformed it into the House of Cleo, invading every centimeter of my personal space, coiling between my ankles, scrabbling up the back of my chair if I sat down for a coffee, following me to the bathroom and pouncing on my lap the instant I settled on the toilet seat. Socks, supermarket bags and all the collateral damage from the night before still had to be cleaned up. If I wanted to avoid making explanations to Steve I’d need to find someone in the Yellow Pages to fix the curtain cords. And who knew what additional acts of vandalism she’d pulled off while we were out?