“You don’t want to look at any others?” she asked.
No, I didn’t. Send him back, look at other cats, make a choice of one, maybe not him? I couldn’t. Fate or the Lord of the Animals or whatever had presented me with a cat, again. OK.
His previous owner had conscientiously filled out the Humane Society questionnaire. Her answers were useful and heartbreaking. Reading between some of the lines, I learned that he lived his first year with his mother and one sibling in a household where there were children under three, children from three to nine, and children from nine through fourteen, but no men.
The reason why all three cats were given up for adoption was stark: “Could not afford to keep.”
He had been only four days at the Humane Society. They had neutered him right away and he was recovering fast; he was in excellent health, had been well fed, well treated, a sociable, friendly, playful, cheerful little pet. I do not like to think of the tears in that family.
He has been with us a month today. As his first owner warned, he is somewhat shy of men. But not very. And not afraid of children, though sensibly watchful. We lived thirteen years with shy, wary Zorro, who feared many things—including my daughter Caroline, because once she stayed in our house with two big, unruly dogs, and for ten years he never forgave her. But this fellow is not timid. In fact, he is perhaps too fearless. He grew up as an inside-outside cat. Here, he won’t go outside till the weather gets warm. But then he must. I can only hope he knows what to be afraid of out there.
Like many young cats, he goes wild as a buck once or twice a day, flying about the room about three feet off the ground, knocking things off and over, getting into all kinds of trouble. Shouts of disapproval are ineffective, little swats on the butt are slightly effective, and he understands, and remembers, what No! and a preventing hand in front of his nose means. But I found to my distress that sometimes a threateningly raised hand will cause him to cringe and crouch like a beaten dog. I don’t know what that comes from, but I can’t stand it. So shout and swat and No! is all I can do.
Vonda sent me a whole bucket full of Super Balls, wonderful for solo soccer games and working off excess energy. He’s good at all varieties of String Game. When he wins at String-on-a-Stick, he walks off with the string and the stick and likes to carry the whole thing downstairs, clatter rattle bump. He is quite good at Paws Beneath the Door, but hasn’t yet got the point of Paws Between the Banisters—because there were no banisters in the house he grew up in. That was clear the first few days, when he tried to navigate our stairs, a landform entirely new to him. The learning process was extremely funny, and dangerous to us ancients, who are unsteady enough on stairs without a confused cat suddenly appearing belly up on the next stair down or darting madly crossways right in front of your foot. But he mastered all that, and now races up and down far ahead of us, barely touching the stairs at all, as to the manor born.
They warned us at the Humane Society that there was a feline cold going around, probably from the rescued cats, and he probably had it; there’s nothing they can do about it, any more than a kindergarten can. So he brought it home, and was a very snuffly little body for two weeks. Not a totally bad start, since he wanted to cuddle and sleep a lot, and we could get to know one another quietly. I didn’t worry much about him, because he had no fever and never for a moment lost his appetite. He had to snort to breathe while he ate, but he ate, and ate… Kibbles. Oh! Kibbles! Oh joy! Oh gourmet delight, oh tuna and sushi and chicken liver and caviar all in one! I guess kibbles is all he ever had to eat. So kibbles is Food. And he loves Food. He just loves it. He certainly won’t bother us with his finicky, demanding tastes. But it may take strong willpower (ours) to prevent globularity in this cat. We will try.
He is pretty, but his only unusual beauty is his eyes, and you have to look closely to realize it. Right around the large dark pupil they are green, and around that reddish yellow. I had seen that magical change in a semiprecious stone: he has eyes of chrysoberyl. Wikipedia tells us that chrysoberyl or alexandrite is a trichroic gem. It shows emerald green, red, or orange-yellow depending on the angle of the light.
While he had the cold and we were lying around together I tried out names. Alexander was too imperial, Chrysoberyl far too majestic. Pico was one that seemed to fit him, or Paco. But the one he kept looking around at when I said it was Pard. It started out as Gattopardo (the Leopard, Lampedusa’s Prince Fabrizio). That was too long for anybody his size, and got cut down to Pardo, and then turned into Pard, as in pardner.
Hey, Little Pard. I hope you choose to stay around a while.
Chosen by a Cat
April 2012
IN THE FOUR months since I wrote about his arrival, Little Pard has grown up. He is now Not Large But Quite Solid Pard. He’s what they call a cobby cat, not a leggy one. When he sits upright, the view from the rear is pleasingly and symmetrically globular, a shining black sphere, plus head and tail. But he isn’t fat. Though not for want of trying. He still loves kibbles, oh kibbles, oh lovely kibbles! Crunch, crunch, crunch to the last crumb, then look up with instant, infinite pathos—I starve, I perish, I have not eaten for weeks… He would love to be Pardo el Lardo. We are heartless. One half cup of food a day, the vet said, and we have obeyed her. One quarter cup of kibbles at seven, another at five. And, well, yes, there is a sixth of a can of catfood with warm water on it for lunch, to make sure he gets plenty of water. But he often leaves that till five when the kibbles arrive, the One True Food. And then he cleans both bowls and goes into the living room and maybe flies around a little bit, but mostly just sits and digests in bliss.
He is a vivid little creature. Youth is so dramatic! His tuxedo is utterly black and utterly white. He is utterly sweet and utterly nutty. Wild as a bronco, inert as a sloth. One moment he’s airborne, the next fast asleep. He is unpredictable, yet keeps strict routines—every morning he rushes over to greet Charles coming downstairs, falls over on the hall rug, and waves his paws in a posture of adoration. He still won’t sit on a lap, though. I don’t know if he ever will. He just doesn’t accept the lap hypothesis.
Getting waked up by twenty minutes of strong, steady purring is very nice, plus the nose that investigates the neck, the paw that pats the hair… the increasing intensity of purr, the commencement of pouncing… By then it’s quite easy to get up. Then he rushes into the bathroom ahead of me and flies around, mostly about waist level, getting into things; and he plays with the water I run for him in the bathtub and then leaps out to make wet flower paw prints here and there, or if I dribble him water in the washbasin he closes the stopper, thus creating a water hole where savage panthers may crouch in wait for dik-diks and gazelles, or possibly beetles. Then we go downstairs—one flying, the other not.
Closing the drain is typical. He’s clever at opening cabinets too, because he likes getting into things, anything that can be got into—cabinets, drawers, boxes, bags, sacks, a quilt in progress, a sleeve. He is ingenious, adventurous, and determined. We call him the good cat with bad paws. The paws get him into trouble and cause loud shouting and scoldings and seizures and removals, which the good cat endures with patient good humor—“What are they carrying on about? I didn’t knock that over. A paw did.”
There used to be a lot of small delicate things on shelves around the house. There aren’t now.
Charles bought him a little red harness. He is incredibly patient about having it put on—we thought it would be Charles the Bloody-Handed for weeks, but no. He even purrs, somewhat plaintively, during the harnessing. Then the bungee leash is attached, and they go out and down the back steps into the garden for Pard’s Walk. It went quite well twice, then a man running by outside the fence slapping his feet down galumph galumph scared Pard, and he wanted to go back inside at once, and is only beginning to get unscared of all the weirdnesses out there.