"I have a little girl who is about your age," he said. "She's back in Russia. She has a cat just like this one." As he smiled at us, I looked up into a pair of kind brown eyes, and my fear vanished. My grandparents sighed with relief.
Later that morning, we found out that the Soviet occupation of our country was in progress. Many atrocities occurred in Hungary in the following months, but because the young soldier had taken a liking to me and my cat, our lives were spared. He visited us often and brought treats for Paprika and me. Then one day, a few months later, he had some news. "I've been transferred to another area, Malka ['little one'], so I won't be able to visit you anymore," he said. "But I have a gift for you." He reached into his pocket and pulled out a necklace. It was beautiful, and it had a turquoise Russian Orthodox cross on it. He placed it around my neck. "You wear this at all times, Malka. God will protect you from harm. And you take good care of your kitten."
I hugged the soldier tightly, then watched with tears in my eyes as he left.
Throughout the trying times that persisted in our country, Paprika's love made things easier for me to bear. He was my comfort and my best friend, and he rarely left my side.
In the fall of 1945» Grandfather went into hiding. He had spoken up about the atrocities taking place in our country, and he didn't want to be imprisoned as a dissident by the new Communist government. Grandmother and I expected Christmas to be solemn, but it then turned into my worst nightmare. I awoke on Christmas morning to find Paprika lifeless and cold, still curled up next to me. I picked up his body, held him close, and sobbed uncontrollably. He was nineteen years old, and I was only nine.
"I will always love you, Paprika. I will never give my heart to another cat," I vowed through my tears. "Never, ever!"
"Paprika's spirit is in heaven now with your mama, sweetheart," my grandmother said, trying to comfort me. But my heart was broken on that terrible Christmas Day.
Grandfather remained in hiding until the fall of 1947- At that time, we were finally able to escape Communist Hungary by hiding among some ethnic Germans who were being deported to Austria. When we got to Austria, we lived in a displaced-persons camp for four years. But there was hope for us: We were accepted for immigration to the United States of America. In September of I951, we boarded an old Navy ship and were on our way to America.
Christmas of 1951 was our first in this wonderful new country. The horrors of war and the four years of hardship in a refugee camp were behind us. A new life, filled with hope, lay ahead.
On that Christmas morning, I awoke to a tantalizing aroma wafting through the house: Grandmother was cooking her first American turkey. Grandfather, meanwhile, pointed to one of the presents under the Christmas tree. The package seemed to be alive, for it was hopping around to the tune of "Jingle Bells" that was playing on the radio. I rushed over, pulled off the orange bow, and lifted the lid from the box.
"Meow," cried the present, jumping straight into my lap and purring. It was a tiny orange tabby kitten. When I looked into his yellow eyes, the vow I'd made in 1945 to never love another cat crumbled away, and love filled my heart again.
I do believe my mother smiled down approvingly at us from heaven that Christmas Day, while Paprika's spirit purred joyfully at her side. Since then, there have been many other cats in my life, but the memory of my mother's cat will live in my heart forever.
The Real Thing
Beth Adelman
There's an old legend that at midnight on Christmas Eve, all the animals in the world speak in human voices—a gift from God originally bestowed upon the animals in the manger in Bethlehem.
The legend originated in Eastern Europe, but it has echoes in many other stories from many cultures around the world. We humans long to understand the animals around us, and the closer we live with them, the deeper our longing. Our cats are members of our family, but as well as we come to know them, they are also always a little mysterious—part of us and yet apart. Sometimes we look at their exquisite faces and can't help wonder what they are thinking.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if they could tell us? I remember the thrill I experienced when I took a trip to Spain and was finally able to use my high school Spanish to understand and be understood in another language. I felt as if I had opened up a new world. How much more thrilling—and more elusive—it is to communicate with another species.
In fact, we humans have been trying to do just that for decades, teaching apes to use sign language and parrots to talk. And even sneaking into the barn on Christmas Eve, hoping for a miracle. In all these efforts, we expect the animals to speak our language. As unreasonable as this is (after all, we're supposed to be the smarter ones), the animals do their best to accommodate us. Their limits seem not to be in their ability and desire to use our language, but in their physical makeup. Apes have the manual dexterity required to sign and birds have the syrinx that enables them to make a variety of complex sounds. But most animals lack the hands and the voice needed to communicate the way we do.
So where does that leave our cats? Actually, it leaves them with an astonishing array of body postures, facial expressions, sounds (cats can make more than one hundred distinctive vocal sounds, while dogs make about ten), and even ways of manipulating their fur and whiskers, all of which they use to tell the world exactly what's on their minds. And that's not counting the scent and visual markers they leave behind for later reading. So while we're waiting for a Christmas miracle, maybe all we really need is a feline-English dictionary.
Our cats, of course, have never needed a dictionary. They've already got the interspecies communication thing figured out. They are masters at reading our little gestures, body postures, and facial expressions. They know just from looking at us when we are mad, scared, sick, happy, ready to go to bed, or ready to play with them. They notice the little things we do that we're not even aware of. We may be able to hide things from our mothers, but we can't hide anything from our cats.
When it comes to communicating with us, they try hard to speak to us the way we prefer. The same study that counted how many types of vocalizations cats are capable of also found that they vocalize a lot more to us than they do to other cats. In other words, cats noticed all on their own that while they communicate mainly with scents and body postures, we communicate mainly with sounds. So they speak to us with more sounds and fewer postures, hoping we'll get the idea.
Then why don't we? Why does communicating with them seem so elusive? Why do we think we need a miracle?
I think it's because we humans rely so heavily on communicating with words that when the words aren't there, we don't really trust ourselves to understand. We live so closely with our cats that we usually know what they want and we often know what they're thinking. We understand them, but we don't believe we do.
There are times when my cats look very earnestly into my eyes, their faces clearly marked with emotion. Sometimes they squeak or yip or meow. Sometimes they use their body posture to lead me somewhere (usually a place where they can settle down next to me). Sometimes they simply tremble with delight that I am looking at them and softly saying their names. At all these times, they are communicating with me with supreme sincerity, and I try to be equally sincere in my attempts to understand them. Often that means just quieting my mind and watching them carefully. When I do, I have flashes of understanding that might be insight or might be something more—I am not willing to rule out anything, because animals communicate in all kinds of ways we don't completely understand. The communication is real, and we have to trust the ways we experience it.