Annie takes control

If Chloe is a country girl, then Annie is a sophisti-cat. Born in Greenwich Village, she moved, as a kitten, to the Soho studio of Doug, a down-at-the-heels artist and his cat-loving wife, Jane, my best friend. She was named Anne Sexton after Doug's favorite poet, who, like Jane, was a brilliant woman crippled by mental illness.
In the seventies, Doug was a high-flying performance artist and art critic. He and Jane rubbed shoulders with Manhattan's artistic glitterati. But the passage of time and Doug's difficult personality eroded his success. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Doug and Jane eked out a precarious living, squatting illegally in the one-room basement studio, living on Doug's social security and Jane's disability checks. Still, Anne Sexton made the acquaintance of some emerging artists and students researching the 70's art scene and spent time in the airshaft outside the studio, basking under a ginko tree planted by Yoko Ono.
Doug wasn't fond of cats and valued Ms Sexton largely for her ability as a mouser, but Jane and Anne spent happy times napping together on the futon, sharing a Big Mac or chicken wings from the bodega and entertaining Jane's grown daughter, step-daughters and other visitors to the studio. I got to know Ms Sexton during several visits to New York before I had Chloe. Like Jane, she was a shy but gracious hostess, rubbing against my shins and purring softly. Physically she reminded me of the Jane I knew in college, tiny and pert, vaguely exotic with high cheekbones and almond eyes.

When Jane died unexpectedly, I visited Doug at the studio. Ms Sexton was there, rubbing against my legs and purring. "She needs a woman's touch," said Doug.
"I'll take her back to Virgina with me, Doug. I know you don't like pets."
"No, Anne Sexton is the only living thing other than our daughter, Victoria, that I have to remind me of Jane. I'm keeping the cat."
After Jane's death, Doug became even more irascible. His daughters visited him less and less. Victoria started college in Massachusetts, and I heard from her rarely. "A friend of mine visited Dad lately. Anne Sexton is looking rather thin," she wrote when we checked in by email.
One day while scanning Victoria's Facebook page, I saw the following plea: "WIll someone please adopt a wonderful cat? As sick as she's been, she just purrs and purrs. Will someone please take this cat?"
I learned that Doug's increasing agitation and eccentricity were harbingers of dementia. He and Anne Sexton had been discovered, half dead, in the squalid studio. Doug's path led to a hospital and a nursing home, Anne Sexton's to a veterinary hospital and a temporary placement with Jane's step-daughter. Because Anne Sexton was a mature, fragile animal requiring special care, no one would adopt her.
"I'll take her," I emailed Victoria impulsively. "It's the last thing I can do for your mother."
"Thanks for the offer," she responded. "Now let's see how we can transition her to Virginia."

I began contacting pet escort services. It would have cost less to hire a limousine to drive to New York City and escort Ms Sexton to my home. Since Victoria's half sister lives near Washington D.C., we made plans to rendezvous there. I arrived to discover a tiny, trembling, drugged creature with a swollen mouth from dental extractions for abcessed teeth. She wore a dainty blue belled collar.
Having researched cat introductions (Cat versus Cat is an excellent book), I was cautious about introducing four-pound, old, sick Anne Sexton to twelve-pound, young, robust Chloe.I had prepared the dining room with a feeding station, litter box and cat bed. The minute Anne emerged from the carrier, she skittered under a low shelf and crouched there, trembling. I made sure I left some items with Chloe's scent in the dining room and took the cat carrier with Anne's scent to the study where Chloe preferred to stay. She showed no interest in the smell.
For three days Anne remained largely in the dining room under the shelf. I took her to the vet where I learned she had signs of kidney disease plus a heart murmur, probably caused by a taurine deficiency. Cat food is routinely supplemented with this vitamin, but Jane had not had the money for cat food, so she had fed Anne with the fast food she bought for herself. When she died, Anne must have lived on whatever she could scrounge from the garbage and any vermin that entered the studio. I hoped poor Anne Sexton could spend her declining years in peace and renamed her Annie to denote what I hoped would be a more relaxed life than she had with Doug in New York.

I became ever more concerned that Chloe, my big, strong, healthy, young, very spoiled cat would attack poor, debilitated, tiny Annie.
The night of the third day, Annie ventured out from the dining room. Chloe and I were asleep when we heard an alien ding-a-ling: Annie's collar. Up the stairs came the tinkling bell. Chloe and I sat together on the mattress. I was guardedly ready to restrain her should she attack. The bell stopped at the foot of the bed. Suddenly, Annie leaped onto the mattress with a fierce soprano roar like a little lion. Chloe ran for the safety of the study. Annie had taken control.