Roxanne Willems Snopek - More Great Cat Stories: Incredible Tales about Exceptional Cats

It was the spring of 1977 and my greatest wish was about to come true. Cinders, my very own cat, was going to have kittens! Each day I feverishly rushed through my schoolwork, eager for the dismissal bell to ring and the bus to deposit me back at home. I raced along the driveway, dropped my bags and jacket, and went to check on her. In all my 14 years, nothing was as thrilling as the anticipation of cat grandmotherhood. I thought I might burst with excitement before the event actually took place.

Throughout my childhood, I had always loved cats and wished for one with all my heart. Now, not only did I have my own cat, but she was going to become a mother! It just didnt get any better than that.

When the day finally arrived, I tiptoed over to the carefully prepared box in the corner of my bedroom, my heart in my throat. To my surprise, the box was empty. I scanned the room. Nothing. I looked in the closets, under the beds, beneath the stairs. But the mother-to-be was nowhere to be found.

As on most farmyards in the area, half-wild cats skulked on the periphery of human activity, ever wary of coming too near the domestic inhabitants. They were twitchy, illfed things, riddled with disease and parasites, here one day and gone the next. Cinders, however, was different. She was cared for and loved. Her kittens would be different, too, I vowed. After all, they were mine.

Tears of panic filled my eyes as I intensified my search. Id kept Cinders confined to the house for the past few days and instructed my family not to let her out, for fear of predators who would have loved to come upon a nest of new kittens. But my precautions had been in vain. I scanned the outbuildings and barns, the corrals and haystacks, the wide-open fields beyond, knowing the hiding places outside were infinite.

I might never find her.

CHAPTER

It is very lucky to have a cat of three colours come to your house.

Traditional Proverb

Cinders was not my first cat. When I was about five years old, my parents got a pair of kittens for my younger sister and me. Immediately upon their arrival in our home, Blacky and Spotty made tracks for the hidden spot behind the sofa and refused to come out. With two youngsters poking and prodding at them, their hissing and spitting were appropriate, possibly life-saving, reactions. But my sister and I were so disappointed; we wanted to play with our new pets. I realize now that the kittens were nearly feral (wild), or poorly socialized at best; they preferred to keep their distance and within a few months theyd both disappeared.

Shortly afterward, our family embarked on the first of several moves. And while my parents indulged my love for animals as much as they could, my insatiable need for four-legged companionship didnt mix well with the upheaval of boxes and moving vans. I took comfort in our dog Fluffy, a budgie named Sharpie, and what I suspect was a regular turnover of goldfish. A cat would have to wait.

But I could still read about cats. As I grew older, my parents faithfully turned me loose in the public library, where I invariably ended up in the pet section. I knew it blindfoldedcat breeds, cat care, cat training, feeding, grooming, showingfinding and reading all the books they had on my favourite subject. Before I was a teenager, Id read about Colettes famous cats and knew about Hemingways multi-toed felines. I could tell Persians from Himalayans, Burmese from Siamese, Manx from bobtails.

Id read that tortoiseshell cats were believed to be able to see into the future and could impart that gift to a lucky child in their household. Dreaming over the dusty stacks of books, I took flight into a world in which I was no longer a gawky, tongue-tied child, but a powerful seer, always accompanied by my faithful animal companions.

Even history came alive when the right details were included. I discovered I had something in common with the infamous Cardinal Richelieu, who lived in the time of the witch-hunts of the 1600s. The Cardinal was an ardent cat-lover, a fact inexplicably left out of my social studies textbook. Although cats were linked to witches by superstition, the Cardinal ignored this in deference to the 14 cats that lived in a special room next to his own bedroom. On his deathbed, the Cardinal made provision for all his cats, and their two attendants, in his will. Sadly, as soon as he died the soldiers of his Swiss Guard burned the poor creatures to death as vengeance for the many witchesand, by association, their catsthat Richelieu had put to death in his lifetime.

While my classmates discussed the legacies of great political leaders, I daydreamed about other more interesting things. Sir Winston Churchill, for instance, loved his cat Jock so much that he shared his bed and his meals with him. In fact, if Jock wasnt at the table Churchill would dispatch a servant to find him and wait to begin eating until the cat arrived. And the great humanitarian, Albert Schweitzer, who was left-handed, sometimes wrote with his right arm rather than disturb his beloved cat Sizi, who liked to sleep on his left arm. He chose poor penmanship and pins-and-needles when his numb arm was finally released, rather than disturb her rest.

Being at the age where children begin looking toward their future careers, I thought I might become a nurse one day. Imagine my delight to discover that Florence Nightingale was a great cat lover! Although she often complained that they messed up her papers, the comfort they must have brought her after long hours of difficult work apparently made up for it, because she owned more than 60 cats over the course of her life.

I spent a great deal of my childhood with my nose buried in books. I wasnt pickyI read everything I could get my hands on. Adventure stories, romance, mysteries, westerns, science fiction, fantasy. Animal stories were, of course, the best. Black Beauty, Old Yeller, The Yearling, TheRed Pony, The Incredible Journey, Hurry Home, Candy, BornFree... the list goes on and on. Paul Gallico could only have written Jenny, one of the most beautiful and moving books ever written about a stray cat, out of a soul-deep feline connection. What a thrill to learn that authors such as Victor Hugo, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, and H.G. Wells were cat lovers, too.

History records a few famous cat haters, too. The beauty of Brahms lullabies was forever tainted when I read that one of his favourite forms of relaxation was to sit at an open window and hunt neighbourhood cats with his bow and arrow. It goes to show, I thought, what happens when you spend too much time practising piano. Napoleon Bonaparte was supposedly once found nearly hysterical with fear, sweating and lunging wildly with his sword, all because a small kitten had entered the room.

Immersed as I was in cat lore, it didnt take the place of real, living felines, but I made do as best I could. I got to know all the neighbourhood strays and gave names to all the cats that earned their keep at my grandparents farm: thin, unkempt, half-wild creatures that I coaxed and cajoled until they let me near enough to stroke them. Skittles and Tansy and Periwinkle and others Ive long since forgotten.

But I still didnt have a cat of my own.

Finally, four moves later, as I was entering junior high school, we were ready to stay put. My parents purchased 80 acres of flat land filled with rocks, scrubby bushes, and poplar bluffs and made plans to build a house. After years of what felt like cramped city living, I had space to move and grow, fresh air to savour, and enough quiet to hear my own thoughts. Id never liked urban living; I longed for wide-open spaces, birdsong, alfalfa-scented air, and silent, starry nights.