Nils Uddenberg - The Old Man and the Cat: A Love Story

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

To

Lotta, Daniel,

Samuel, and Elias for making The Kitten possible!

I am a qualified doctor; I am a lecturer in psychology and empirical, practical research into philosophies of life. The government has been kind enough to credit me by name of professor. But, for my own part, I am happy to call myself a writer: over the years I have published a large number of books, some of which have sold reasonably well. Nowadays I am also a cat owner or, I wonder, is it in fact the cat who owns me? Well, yes, thats probably the casein real terms.

This is the story of how I came down with cat, even though I had decided I would never, ever, own any pet. Its a banal story, maybe even a little ridiculous. But Im in my seventies, and I have no status to defend and no career to fight for. I can allow myself the liberty of telling this tale. Like many older men I am fairly wet and sensitive. But the cat, as well soon see, has a will of steel; or maybe it is closer to the mark to say that she has a methodical, soft determination. There were never any confrontations, but in the long term that cat got what she wanted. This was how it started.

* * *

At the end of October, my wife and I came back from Namibia. I have always loved traveling and we have been to Africa before. We had driven a four-wheel drive for two weeks through the Namibian desert, visited large, empty national parks and seen elephant, zebra, and many elegant antelopes ranging the wilderness. Naturally we had also seen the obligatory big cats, the lions and leopards, but not so many of them on this occasion.

We live in a little house in the center of Lund. Our garden is surrounded by a wooden fence, which in most places is entirely covered in ivy. We park the car in a carport, and between the garden and the carport we have a gate that is always kept locked. This is immediately by our ground floor bedroom window and when, about a week after we had come home, I raised the blind to let in some pale autumn light, there was a cat sitting on the gate, looking at me with large, yellow eyes. She was a small, gray-brown speckled cat without any white markings. We had never seen her before, but we assumed that she lived in one of the nearby houses.

The little cat kept turning up in the days that followed, and before long we realized that she was spending her time in the little garden shed that is built onto the carport, with its entrance from the garden. A couple of times, while picking something up in the shed, the cat peered out from the basket where I kept some implements. We understood that she was spending the nights in the garden shed, where she got some shelter from wind, cold, and rain. Obviously, that morning when she unexpectedly showed up on the garden gate, she had been sleeping in my garden basket. She had made herself as comfortable as possible. The weather had turned cold and when, a few days later, we looked into the shed we saw that she had curled herself into a tight ball. She couldnt be especially comfortable; garden implements are not exactly bedfellows of choice. The only thing to provide a bit of comfort were my gardening gloves.

We went to the apartment we have in Stockholm and stayed away for almost two weeks. All the time I was hoping that the cat would realize that we were not a good bet, that she would understand that she had everything to gain by going home or finding some other protectors. But when we came back, the cat was still lying there in my gardening basket and watching us with her big, yellow eyes when we opened the door of the shed.

Winter came early that year; our unheated and draughty garden shed can hardly have been a salubrious place to spend the harsh winter nights. But the cat seemed to be feeling well, both alert and in good physical shape, her fur thick and lustrous. But how in the world was she getting by? Did she have some owner somewhere in the vicinity, where she could go for some food now and then, or?

* * *

There is something special about a cats eyes. They are large and face forward; like humans and other primates, cats have three-dimensional vision. Nor do cats turn away their eyes; like small children, they just stare right back at us. It is easy to start seeing an appeal, maybe even reproach, in their gaze. In any case we were overwhelmed by pity, we removed the hard gardening implements and put an old worn-out beach towel in the basket. Our son, who had visited us with his family a few months before, had forgotten some of the dry food that he gave his dogs. Maybe, we thought, cats eat dog food. We put some of the dog food on a flowerpot saucer and served it up outdoors; we didnt want to let the cat inside the house. The cat smelled the food, guardedly at first, then she started eating greedily. Apparently she was ravenous.

Again we went to Stockholm and once more we were gone for almost two weeks. When we came back it had snowed and I went to the shed to fetch a shovel, so I could clear the drift that had built up outside the car port. THE CAT WAS STILL THERE!

What could we do? While we were in Stockholm we had been talking quite a bit about the cat. We had been hoping she would leave on her ownwed hardly been hospitable. Certainly she was a sweet and alert little cat and we had nothing against cats per se, but we often spent long periods in our apartment in Stockholm and we liked to travel. With our lifestyle we could not have a cat, it was just impossible. A cat needs to be able to depend on its hosts, and we were not dependable. The most likely thing, we consoled ourselves, was that she had got herself lost. Someone nearby was probably missing a gray-brown speckled kitty.

We put up notices. Someone from the next street responded, and wondered if his cat was causing us inconvenience. Not at all, we said, but maybe he was missing it? He wasnt. Obviously it was not his cat that had a habit of spending the nights in our garden shed. No one else expressed any interest, and we took down the notices. There we were, quite helpless, with a cat that had decided to live with us.

From time to time when we went to our grocery store we had seen posters appealing for donations to a community association that took care of homeless cats. They seemed to be feline-friendly, tender-hearted people well used to taking care of summer strays; maybe they could help us find a home for our little kitty? Oh yes, they could certainly understand our problem and they were pleased that we had turned to them, but their home for cats in distress was fullfull to bursting.

* * *

There was still the police. I called them. A friendly female voice answered, and I explained, a little bashfully, that I had no crime to report, only a silly question: What do you do when a cat starts living in your garden? I was hoping that someone had reported a missing cat to the police. My call was transferred and I spoke to yet another friendly lady, this one a police officer, who checked her register of missing cats. No one was looking for a cat like ours.