Don’t blame Jennifer, though. She was only twelve. And Cookie may have been humiliated, but she was never harmed. She never protested. She never fought back. She wore the dresses; she played tea party; she was a good friend. She loved Jennifer despite the cowboy hats. But she worshipped Lynda. From the moment Cookie saw Lynda walk into the North Shore Animal League, she was Lynda’s cat. Or more accurately, Lynda was Cookie’s human. As Lynda always said: Cookie knew a sucker when she saw one.
But that wasn’t true, and Lynda knew it. She wasn’t being played for a sucker any more than Dewey played me for a sucker all those years. Yes, we were doting parents, but there was a genuine bond. It wasn’t a Snuggles situation; it wasn’t “give me the food and beat it.” Cats like Dewey and Cookie give as much as they get. The only difference? Dewey gave to a community; Cookie gave to Lynda Caira.
She gave Lynda love. She gave Lynda attention. She wanted to be nearby, to be underfoot, to be touched. No, she insisted on being touched. If Lynda left a room, Cookie followed her and brushed against her leg. She sat on her foot. She jumped on her lap. If she wasn’t getting enough petting, she nudged Lynda’s arm with her head, then twisted around to show exactly the spot where she wanted to be scratched. She loved to climb on Lynda’s chest and give her a kiss. That’s right, a kiss. Every few hours, Cookie would stretch up and put her lips to Lynda’s lips, like a young daughter shyly giving her mother a good-night peck.
Even when Lynda went outside, Cookie sometimes slipped out with her. Lynda tried to stop her, of course, but Cookie was smart. She hid behind the door, then rushed out as Lynda walked through, usually with a garbage bag in her hand. Once outside, Cookie would run. Lynda would drop her bag and chase after her, yelling for her to stop. Halfway down the block, Cookie would decide she’d gone far enough. She’d stop, turn around, and wait for Lynda to snatch her up. Then they’d walk slowly back to the house, Lynda telling her baby to never, never, ever do that again, and Cookie rubbing against Lynda’s chin as if to assure her, Don’t worry, Mom, I would never go too far from you.
For some people, it might have all been too much. But Lynda’s life was busy. After her divorce, she became the general manager of her family’s catering business. The business was embedded in the community of Bayside, supporting and being supported by the family and the friends who had sustained Lynda over the years. She worked fifty hours a week, even before an administrator at St. Mary’s Hospital for Children asked if she would donate a catered Christmas party for the nurses. She was so impressed with the hospital that the next year, in addition to the nurse’s party, she organized and catered a forty-dollar-a-plate fund-raiser. The first year, she raised more than twelve thousand. The next year, she convinced a soap opera star to attend—many of the soaps filmed a few miles away in an industrial part of Queens—and doubled the attendance and donation. Soon, she was raising more than fifty thousand dollars a year with her February fund-raisers and being written up in Soap Opera Digest as a favorite charitable event for daytime stars.
When she wasn’t working, she was at home preparing dinner, cleaning up, helping with homework, and trundling her young teen off to bed. Her parents would bring her armfuls of homemade spaghetti; her friends would take her out for movies and shows; but most of her time was devoted to Jennifer.
“You know how it is,” she told me. “It was all for my daughter. Everything I did was for her.”
I did know. When Lynda Caira talked about her life as a single mother, I remembered my own days of working fifty hours a week at the library. I remembered the weekends with my friends and the warm embrace of my family, how sheltered and supported I felt. I was happy. I had my own life. But that life, in a real way, was devoted to my daughter, Jodi. When I was working, it was to give her a better life. When I went to school to qualify for my director position, it was with the goal of making enough money to send her to college. Every moment, whether I was pounding away on a term paper alone in the library or trying to convince Jodi to clean up her filthy bedroom, I was thinking of my daughter.
And I know what Lynda means when she says that Cookie was there for her, because Dewey was there for me, too. Whenever I felt tired or frustrated, Dewey jumped on my lap. Whenever I wondered if the effort was worth it, or if I was making the right choices, Dewey forced me out of my funk and into a game of chase. Every morning, Dewey stood by the front door of the library and waited for me. When he saw me coming, he waved—and whatever was bothering me flew away. Dewey was here. He was waving. The world was good.
Cookie did that for Lynda. Whenever she came home, whether it was from a long day of work or a night out with her friends, Cookie was waiting on the ottoman near the front door. Every time, she followed on Lynda’s heel like a dog, waiting for her to put down her bags, straighten her things, and bend down to pet her. Lynda couldn’t resist. No matter how often it was given, she always enjoyed Cookie’s attention. She never held it against Snuggles, who continued to be standoffish. She never expected it from another cat. This devotion was something special, she realized, something that was Cookie’s alone.
Cookie loved fresh laundry, warm from the dryer. Lynda let her curl up in the basket at every opportunity. She couldn’t bear to kick Cookie out, so she often washed each load of laundry two or three times. (That’s what she told me the first time, anyway. Later she admitted, with a laugh, that she never rewashed.) Cookie was picky about pillowcases. Every time Lynda changed a pillowcase, Cookie jumped onto the bed to test it with a nap. If she didn’t like the new fabric, she’d whine and step off, waiting for Lynda to change it. Which, of course, she always did.
Cookie also loved to be in the kitchen when Lynda was cooking. She had a habit, in particular, of sitting on Lynda’s foot while she cooked at the stove. She loved Irish soda bread and pumpkin bread, and Lynda knew to cut Cookie a piece whenever she sliced one for herself. She also loved broccoli rabe, an Italian vegetable that connected Lynda with her childhood, her family, and those summers of homemade wine and kitchen-canned tomatoes in her grandmother’s house. Broccoli rabe looks like stringy broccoli, and its bitter taste is something most Americans choke down and endure. Even many Italian Americans don’t like the bitterness, although broccoli rabe is a staple of Italian cuisine. Cookie loved it. As soon as she smelled broccoli rabe cooking, she ran to the kitchen, stood on Lynda’s feet, and meowed until she was given a bite. Or two. Or three. Lynda never cared. She wasn’t lonely. Far from it. But Jennifer was having more meals out with her friends, as well as court-ordered weekends with her father, and it was nice to have someone to eat with every night.
It got to the point that Lynda noticed not when Cookie was with her but when she wasn’t. If Cookie disappeared for a while, Lynda often walked the town house looking for her. Cookie almost always trotted out after the first few times Lynda called her, but one evening she went missing for hours. That wasn’t like Cookie. It took Lynda a few tours of the house before she noticed the screen pushed out in the master bedroom. She looked out the window and there was filthy, disheveled Cookie trying frantically to climb the wall. She must have accidently pushed open the screen and somersaulted out the window. Fortunately, it was the first floor. Cookie had only fallen five feet. Still, by the time Lynda found her, her claws were broken and her paws were bloody from scrabbling at the rough brick wall.