I have never been loved by another human being, Lynda wrote in her letter to me, not even by my daughter or my parents, the way I have been loved by my Cookie.
I could tell, even from her brief letter, that Lynda wasn’t lonely. Her life was filled with happiness and love. I wanted to include a story like this—an ordinary story—because a majority of the letters I received where from ordinary people like Lynda. Why her, you ask? Because of that one beautiful sentence, which celebrated a kitten’s extraordinary love without a whisper of despair:
I have never been loved by another human being, not even by my daughter or my parents, the way I have been loved by my Cookie.
“I know that sounds strange,” Lynda told me, although after my life with Dewey, it didn’t sound strange at all. “It almost sounds sad, I know. But it is absolutely the truth. As much as my daughter loves me, as much as my parents love me, as much as other people have loved me, I have never felt . . . I have never felt what that cat felt for me.”
And that love was returned. I’m not saying Lynda loved her cat more than the other people in this book, because love can manifest in myriad ways, but she was the only one who said, “Thank you, Vicki, for doing this for Cookie. She was such a good cat. She deserves to have her story told.” She was the only one, in other words, who explicitly put her cat before herself, and I admire her for that.
“She was just your typical tabby,” Lynda admitted. “She was gray and white, the tiger markings, your little garden-variety kitty. I can’t say that she did any extraordinary things. I can’t say she was a hero. I can’t say she saved somebody from disaster.”
Not even Lynda. Cookie, after all, didn’t save Lynda Caira from illness . . . or occasional loneliness. This isn’t a story of redemption. It isn’t a story of need. Lynda Caira has been and will probably always be happy. This is simply a story about being chosen, about being loved so fiercely that it changes your life.
Dewey. Cookie. All the other cats that touch our hearts and change our lives. How can we ever thank them enough? How can we ever explain?
After Cookie’s death, Lynda wrote a remembrance of her precious cat. It closed with this: “There is nothing more to say—life will go on, although I will miss her each and every day! Jennifer will get married, I will have precious grandchildren, I will love and lose more pets. But one thing is certain: there will never be another pet who will be my best friend; there will never be another animal who could bring the joy that Cookie brought to my life.”
Amen.
SEVEN
Marshmallow
“He was a tough cat. For a cat that was a runt and so weak, he ended up being a pretty strong man. He reminds me of Grizzly Adams a little bit. You know, big heart but you can’t see it on the outside. Marshmallow rarely showed his true colors.”
“Only to you, huh?”
“Only to me.”
I’ve known Kristie Graham her whole life. I was beside her at her communion. I attended her high school graduation. I did the floral arrangements at her wedding. I even changed her diapers. When she was younger, of course, when she was just a sweet baby girl. When I started college in Minnesota in my thirties, after a bad marriage to an alcoholic that left my life and finances shattered, Kristie’s mother, Trudy, was one of my first new friends. While I attended class, she’d often babysit for my daughter, Jodi. When I wasn’t working, we’d sit for hours and drink coffee while our children played. That’s what Kristie remembers, anyway, that her mother and I drank gallons of coffee. She was only four or five years old at the time, so her memories are pretty scattershot. She remembers that my washing machine didn’t spin, so I stirred my laundry with a big wooden spoon (maybe once, for about a week). She remembers that my rusted car never seemed to run (only occasionally); that I bawled my eyes out when Elvis died (not true; it was her mom who cried); and that I was, in her words, “a very hardworking, hard, hardworking woman.” (I’ll agree with that one. I had to be!)
I simply remember a wonderful girl. Trudy’s oldest daughter, Kellie, was Jodi’s age. She was a beautiful, outgoing kid. Kristie, three years younger, was just as beautiful and outgoing, but she never felt she could compare to her sister—even though Kristie was the one who would eventually become homecoming queen. So at the age of three, she went the other way. Kristie became the snot-nosed kid of our little coffee club. Literally. That girl always had something encrusted beneath her nose. If you put her in a clean white dress to have her picture taken at Sears, she walked out of the car covered in dark smudges. It didn’t matter how clean the car was. She found a way to ruin the dress. And I’m not making this up. The picture happened. Even Kristie admits (with some pride, I think) that back then, she was always covered with “runny booger dirt.” I guess that’s why I called her Pigpen. I loved that kid. Pigpen was my term of endearment.
But the thing I remember most about Pigpen Kristie wasn’t her dirty face and soiled dresses. It was the way we had fun. She and Kellie were the laughing-est, goofing-est, playing-est kids I’ve ever met. I remember Kristie and a few others convincing (or possibly forcing) Susan, the daughter of another friend, to slide down the laundry chute. Thank goodness there was a pile of laundry at the bottom, because it was a twelve-foot drop. I remember being the “house mom” for big slumber parties of eleven or twelve preteen girls, and always having to come in at 2:00 in the morning to tell them to pipe the heck down. I remember being snowed in during a ferocious blizzard and coaxing Kristie, Kellie, and Jodi to dance and lip-sync to 1970s soft rock songs. Then Trudy and I put on costumes and “sang” a few 1950s girl-group hits. We laughed for years about the Weekend of the Blizzard when, as always, we girls made the best of a tough situation.
I also remember Kristie’s cat, Marshmallow. He was a huge, fluffy, off-white fellow who, really and truly, resembled a marshmallow. Not that I saw him much. I usually only glimpsed his tail as he was running away. I liked him, but I’m not sure Marshmallow would have been special to me if it weren’t for one thing: He was special to Kristie. If ever a child loved a cat, it was Kristie Graham. She loved her Marshmallow. The girl talked about him all the time.
So when I thought about stories for this book, I thought of Marshmallow. I thought of how much Kristie loved him, how much he was a part of her life, how important it all seemed to her, and how much he loved her in return. Kristie and Marshmallow’s relationship was the closest thing I’d ever known to what Dewey and I shared. That is part of Dewey’s legacy, of course: the opportunity to tell stories about other special cats and special girls. The opportunity to show the world that those kind of wonderful relationships are happening everywhere, all the time, and that it’s okay—in fact, it’s perfectly normal—for a cat to be your very best friend.
I also knew Kristie could tell a funny story. I expected her to make me laugh. And she did. What I didn’t expect was for it to touch me so deeply. I knew Kristie’s life hadn’t been perfect. She’d had hard times. Who doesn’t? That’s life. As Kristie told me: “It was an awe-some journey. I wouldn’t be where I am today without going through all this so I count it as a blessing, obviously.” I do, too. I count it a blessing to have known her. I love Kristie and Kellie and their mother to the bottom of my heart. Their presence upgraded my life to first class, even if my washing machine didn’t spin and my car broke down. But Kristie’s story still surprised me. I expected her to be smart, but I guess I never expected her to be wise. I mean, the girl’s only thirty-five. What’s she trying to pull?