Helen Brown - After Cleo

If a surgical team was a rock band, the surgeon would be lead guitarist with backup vocals from the nurses. The guy who pushes the trolley would be on drums. And the anaesthetist? He’d be bass guitarist. Like all good bass guitarists, the anaesthetist tends to have a modest ego, compared to the surgeon anyway. The anaesthetist knows he’s important but feels undervalued. It’s worth trying to flatter him and form a bond in the few seconds you’re awake with him since he’s the one with the most potential to kill you.

Flat on my back in a blue shower cap, I tried to work my charms but the nipple anaesthetist wasn’t interested.

‘That was quick,’ I said when he asked only three questions and signalled for me to be wheeled into theatre.

‘You survived seven hours last time,’ he replied rather coldly. ‘You’ll get through forty minutes.’

Needle stab. Cold fluid up my arm. Good night.

Waking up was slow. Pain in my abdomen. Headache. Nausea. Sore throat. Worse, a sign on a door saying ‘Leave X Ray’s Here’. A nurse asked if I was comfortable. Not with that rogue apostrophe in the room. I’d never have put my life in their hands if I’d known they couldn’t do apostrophes.

Back home I winced with pain changing blood-soaked bandages. Resembling a ‘proper’ woman again involved an inordinate amount of trouble.

I sometimes wondered what Mum would have done if she’d been in my situation. For a woman of her generation, she was extremely image conscious. She’d had an innate sense of style that could turn heads even in her seventies. She’d tried to pass that glamour on to me. Shopping for my first bra with her, I was surprised how the garment pulled and dug into my flesh. Soon after, she squeezed me into a suspender belt and stockings, a sanitary belt with huge safety pins and a surfboard-sized pad, plus a corset ( ‘It’s just a light one, dear’ ) . The effort involved in being a ‘real’ woman was onerous beyond belief.

In my circumstances, there was no doubt Mum would’ve gone for the full reconstruction gig, plus nipple. Besides, there was Philip to consider. Not to mention a vestige of my own vanity.

Recovery was longer and slower than ‘simple day procedure’ implied. Lydia slid into nursing mode again, providing ceaseless tides of takeaway coffees from Spoonful and cooking meals. Likewise, Jonah seemed to understand I was in pain and snuggled up to me on the bed as if to say, ‘ Let’s settle in for a good rest now, shall we? ’ I took comfort in the knowledge that once it was healed, all that remained was to have the nipple tattooed a darker colour in a few months’ time.

The sight of Philip appearing in the hallway with a bunch of flowers sent an electrical force through our cat. His eyes became a pair of opalescent saucers, his ears pointed forward, his whiskers tense as fencing wire.

Meowing feverishly, Jonah sprang up on his back feet and stretched the length of his body up Philip’s thighs. With his front paws he dabbed Philip’s hips, begging incessantly.

Jonah wasn’t interested in the flowers themselves, or the paper and cellophane they were wrapped in. He wanted the florist’s ribbon.

Jonah’s obsession with ribbons was by no means indiscriminate. It had to be the right sort of ribbon from the right florist, meaning a particular type of satiny string from a shop called Say it With Flowers near our old house. Whenever someone appeared with flowers wrapped in the wrong sort of ribbon, Jonah put on an operatic display. After the initial surge of excitement, he’d examine the flowers to discover they were wrapped in crisp polyester ribbon, a broad band of silk or some other unacceptable tie. His eyes would narrow with disgust, his tail would sink and he’d skulk away.

If, however, they were flowers from the right florist using the right ribbon, Jonah became ecstatic. The instant the flowers were lowered onto the table he assailed them, gnawing and digging at the string. A human would usually try and shoo him off, and then – to Jonah’s great joy – unravel the bouquet. The instant the ribbon was detached from the flowers, Jonah pounced on it, snaring it between his teeth and carrying it away like a gambler who’d just beaten the casino.

With ceaseless pride and enthusiasm, he’d carry the string around with him day and night, begging people to engage in Jonah-and-the-Ribbon games. The alternatives were boundless. The ribbon could be a snake winding across the carpet, a bird gliding through the air, a mouse hiding under the rock of a cushion. He even circled chair legs with it until they were tied up.

Jonah and his ribbon would be inseparable for weeks until the object of his passion frayed at both ends and shredded. Even then, our cat refused to forsake his treasure.

Concerned that the dishevelled strands might be a danger to his digestion, I’d wait until his attention was diverted by a real-life moth or a shadow on the kitchen floor and dispose of the beloved object in the rubbish bin.

Watching Jonah searching for his lost love afterwards was heart-wrenching. I visited the florist shop and furtively asked for lengths of ribbon, no flowers attached. The woman behind the counter thought I was a rose short of a bouquet. Once I explained Jonah’s addiction, she was vaguely amused.

‘Does your cat have a favourite colour?’ she asked, fingering the stash of ribbons gleaming seductively from a hook on the wall. If Jonah could see them he’d have experienced religious ecstasy.

‘Pink,’ I replied. ‘Even though he’s a boy. He is Siamese, which might go some of the way to explaining it. Though some say he’s Tonkinese . . .’

The woman was starting to look wary. I’d given her too much information. Still, she was kind enough to let me have the stuff, and supply it on a regular basis. I tried to keep Jonah’s habit under control, supplying one string at a time until he’d destroyed it.

Discipline soon slipped. Ribbons at all stages of the life cycle sprawled over the house, particularly in our bedroom where they were draped over the floor, bed and tables. I wondered what the cleaners made of it. They probably thought we used them for kinky sex.

While he was still hugely affectionate, and adored his morning routine playing fishing rod and ribbons with Philip, Jonah gave the impression his world was far from perfect. Even his exclusive outdoor run carpeted with cat grass and catnip didn’t do it for him anymore. After half an hour lying in one of the hammocks and being tortured by fat pigeons on the fence, he’d trot inside and demand to be stroked or carried.

When he wasn’t getting enough attention from his human subjects, he’d patrol the house like a shark, slinking from one room to the next, sniffing out escape routes. I felt hurt Jonah still wanted to run away. And some of the escapades he sent us on chasing him around the neighbourhood were humiliating.

One evening, after he’d squeezed out of a crack in the front door and the girls and I were forced on yet another Jonah hunt, we saw him trotting away halfway down the street. Ploughing toward him from the other end of the street was a large black dog, attached to its owner by a leash. Confident he could take the dog with a single swipe, Jonah accelerated toward his foe. The girls and I cried out as the animals drew closer together. Confrontation was inevitable. Jonah was about to become dog food.

Not for the first time, I wondered how such an intelligent animal could lack common sense. What made Jonah imagine he could take on a dog seventeen times his size? Dreading what was going to happen next, I closed my eyes.

A baritone bark stabbed the air. It was the joyous, confident sound hunting dogs make when they know they’ve run down a fox.