Хелен Браун - Cleo

Praise for Cleo

“Helen Brown’s remarkable memoir took me on a journey that threatened to break my heart, and right when I thought I couldn’t possibly bear to read another word, I realized that she didn’t break my heart at all—she opened it.”

— Beth Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author of Saving CeeCee Honeycutt

“Possibly the next Marley & Me, Cleo , by Helen Brown, is an honest and un-mawkish true story of ordinary people rebuilding their lives after a tragedy, with the help of a kitten. Even non cat-lovers will be moved.”

— Good Housekeeping

“Heartwarming, fun, and romantic. Marley & Me fans will love it.”

— Closer

“This is an absolute must gift for yourself or a cat-loving friend.”

— Cat World

“Helen Brown’s Cleo is not just a tender story about a cat and a family facing the world again after a family bereavement. It’s also an epic, genuinely moving, funny, and ultimately, uplifting. Don’t be surprised to find yourself smiling through tears after reading it.”

— Witi Ihimaera,author of The Whale Rider

“In the tradition of Marley & Me , this memoir about an impish black kitten teaching a grieving family to love and laugh again is written with warmth and candor.”

— Who

“A warm, poignant tale about the sheer force of a cat’s personality and the joy and healing it can bring.”

— Australian Women’s Weekly

“A beautifully told story of loss, love, and finally, peace and acceptance.”

— John Morrow, The Armidale Express

“Heartwarming and life-affirming—it’s easy to see why it’s been on the Australian and New Zealand bestsellers list since it was published.”

— Kerre Woodham

“To say that gifts of inspiration, hope, and pure love emanate out of every page would be an understatement.”

— Leukaemia Foundation

“A heartwarming, tear-stained ride told with great charm and humor.”

— Jillian Devon, North & South

Cleo

The Cat Who Mended a Family

HELEN BROWN

CITADEL PRESS

Kensington Publishing Corp.

www.kensingtonbooks.com

To those who say

they aren’t cat people

but deep down

know they are.

Contents

Choice

A Name

Loss

The Intruder

Trust

Awakening

Taming the Beast

Healer

Goddess

Resuscitation

Compassion

Huntress

Letting Go

Observer

Indulgence

Replacement

Rebirth

Risk

Resilience

Openness

The Kiss

Exposure

Respect

People and Places

Freedom

Witch’s Cat

Absence

Patience

Missing

Purr Power

Connection

Forgiveness

Conversion

Tough Vet, Soft Vet

Renewal

Acknowledgments

Cleo

Choice

A cat chooses its owner, not the other way around.

“We’re not getting a kitten,” I said, negotiating our station wagon around a bend the shape of a pretzel. “We’re just going to look at them.”

The road to Lena’s house was complicated by its undulations, not to mention the steepness. It snaked over what would qualify as mountains in most parts of the world. There wasn’t much beyond Lena’s house except a few sheep farms and a stony beach.

“You said we could get a kitten,” Sam whined from the backseat before turning to his younger brother for support. “Didn’t she?”

The backseat was usually the boys’ battleground. Between two brothers aged nearly nine and six the dynamic was predictable. Sam would set Rob up with a surreptitious jab that would be rewarded with a kick, demanding retaliation with a thump, escalating into recriminations and tears—“He punched me!” “That’s ’cos he pinched me first.” But this time they were on the same side, and my usual role of judge and relationship counselor had been supplanted by a simpler one—the Enemy.

“Yeah, it’s not fair,” Rob chimed in. “You said.”

“What I said was we might get a kitten one day. One big dog is enough for any family. What would Rata do? She’d hate having a cat in the house.”

“No, she wouldn’t. Golden retrievers like cats,” Sam replied. “I read it in my pet book.”

There was no point recalling the number of times we’d seen Rata disappear into undergrowth in pursuit of an unfortunate member of the feline species. Since Sam had given up trying to become a superhero and thrown his Batman mask to the back of his wardrobe, he’d morphed into an obsessive reader brimming with facts to destroy any argument I could dredge up.

I didn’t want a cat. I probably wasn’t even a cat person. My husband, Steve, certainly wasn’t. If only Lena hadn’t smiled so brightly that day at our neighborhood playgroup when she’d asked: “Would you like a kitten?” If only she hadn’t said it so loudly—and in front of the kids.

“Wow! We’re getting a kitten!” Sam had yelled before I had a chance to answer.

“Wow! Wow!” Rob had echoed, jumping up and down in his sneakers with the holes I’d been trying to ignore.

Even before we’d met Lena I’d been in awe of her. A willowy beauty with an eclectic fashion style, she’d migrated from Holland in her late teens to become a highly regarded painter. Her portraits invariably contained political comment about race, sex or religion. An artist in the deepest sense, she also chose to live independently from men with her three children. Personally, I wouldn’t have been surprised if Lena had summoned her offspring from some parallel universe only she and Pablo Picasso had access codes to. I wasn’t about to make a fuss about a kitten in front of her.

Raising a pair of boys was proving to be more demanding than I’d imagined back when I was a schoolgirl watching baby-shampoo ads on television. If there’d been an Olympic medal for teenage-mother naivety, I’d have won gold. Married and pregnant at nineteen, I’d smiled at the notion of babies waking up at night. Those were other people’s babies. Reality struck with Sam’s birth. I’d tried to grow up fast. Midnight phone calls to Mum three hundred kilometers away hadn’t always been helpful (“He must be teething, dear”). Fortunately, older, more experienced mothers had taken pity on me. With kindness and great patience they’d guided me through Motherhood 101. I’d eventually learned to accept that sleep is a luxury and a mother is only ever as happy as her saddest child. So in those closing days of 1982 I was doing okay. They were gorgeous boys, and put it this way: I hadn’t been to the supermarket wearing a nightgown under my coat for several months.

We were living in Wellington, a city famous for two things—bad weather and earthquakes. We’d just managed to purchase a house with the potential to expose us to both: a bungalow halfway down a zigzag on a cliff directly above a major fault line.

Minor earthquakes were so common we hardly noticed when walls trembled and plates rattled. But people said Wellington was overdue for a massive quake like the one of 1855, when great tracts of land disappeared into the sea and were flung up in other places.

It certainly seemed like our bungalow clung to the hill as if it was prepared for something terrible to happen. There was a faded fairytale appeal to its pitched roof, dark-beamed cladding and shutters. Mock Tudor meets Arts and Crafts, it wasn’t shabby chic; it was just plain shabby. My efforts to create a cottage garden had resulted in an apology of forget-me-nots along the front path.