Helen Brown - CLEO: The Cat Who Mended a Family

Praise for

Cleo

Helen Browns remarkable memoir took me on a journey that threatened to break my heart, and right when I thought I couldnt possibly bear to read another word, I realized that she didnt break my heart at allshe 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 Browns Cleo is not just a tender story about a cat and a family facing the world again after a family bereavement. Its also an epic, genuinely moving, funny, and ultimately, uplifting. Dont 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 cats personality and the joy and healing it can bring.

Australian Womens Weekly

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

John Morrow, The Armidale Express

Heartwarming and life-affirmingits easy to see why its 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 arent cat people
but deep down
know they are.

Contents

Cleo

Choice

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

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

The road to Lenas 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 wasnt much beyond Lenas 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. Didnt 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 tearsHe punched me! Thats 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 onethe Enemy.

Yeah, its 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? Shed hate having a cat in the house.

No, she wouldnt. Golden retrievers like cats, Sam replied. I read it in my pet book.

There was no point recalling the number of times wed 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, hed morphed into an obsessive reader brimming with facts to destroy any argument I could dredge up.

I didnt want a cat. I probably wasnt even a cat person. My husband, Steve, certainly wasnt. If only Lena hadnt smiled so brightly that day at our neighborhood playgroup when shed asked: Would you like a kitten? If only she hadnt said it so loudlyand in front of the kids.

Wow! Were 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 Id been trying to ignore.

Even before wed met Lena Id been in awe of her. A willowy beauty with an eclectic fashion style, shed 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 wouldnt have been surprised if Lena had summoned her offspring from some parallel universe only she and Pablo Picasso had access codes to. I wasnt about to make a fuss about a kitten in front of her.

Raising a pair of boys was proving to be more demanding than Id imagined back when I was a schoolgirl watching baby-shampoo ads on television. If thered been an Olympic medal for teenage-mother naivety, Id have won gold. Married and pregnant at nineteen, Id smiled at the notion of babies waking up at night. Those were other peoples babies. Reality struck with Sams birth. Id tried to grow up fast. Midnight phone calls to Mum three hundred kilometers away hadnt always been helpful (He must be teething, dear). Fortunately, older, more experienced mothers had taken pity on me. With kindness and great patience theyd guided me through Motherhood 101. Id 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 hadnt been to the supermarket wearing a nightgown under my coat for several months.

We were living in Wellington, a city famous for two thingsbad weather and earthquakes. Wed 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 wasnt 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.

Quaint as it was, clearly the house had been built with a family of alpine goats in mind. There was no garage, not even a street frontage. The only way to reach it was to park the car up at road level, high above our roofline, and bundle groceries and childrens gear into our arms. Gravity would take care of the rest, sucking us down several zigs and zags to our gate.

We were young, so it was no problem on sunny days when the harbor was blue and as flat as a dinner plate. Whenever a southerly gale roared up from Antarctica, however, tearing at our coat buttons and flinging rain in our faces, we wished wed bought a more sensible house.

But we loved living a twenty-minute walk from town. Equipped with ropes and rock-climbing shoes we could have made it in five. When we headed into the city, an invisible force would send us plummeting down the lower end of the zigzag. Hurtling through scrub and flax bushes, wed pause for a glimpse. A circle of amethyst hills, stark and steep, rose above us. I was amazed we could be part of such beauty.

The path then pulled us across an old wooden footbridge spanning the main road. From there we could either take steps down to the bus stop or continue our perpendicular journey to the Houses of Parliament and central railway station. The slog home from the city was another matter. It took twice as long and demanded the lungs of a mountaineer.