Sex and the Single Cat

            At my book club, a fellow reader mentioned that her cat, Pavarotti, had recently been to the vet. A full-bodied, neutered, long-haired tomcat, he was named for his physical resemblance to the opera singer, not for his magnificent tenor voice. Pavarotti had begun to urinate outside the box. The vet reported that the combination of long hair and generous girth in his nether regions had resulted in a urinary tract infection. In addition to a supply of antibiotics, Parvarotti was treated with a lower body shave. “You mean he had a Brazilian?” 

            “That’s what the vet said.”

            I asked if Pavarotti was interested in a relationship with a fetching female. I was thinking of Chloe, of course. Annie doesn’t speak about her past romantic relationships. When she and I visited the vet for the first time, the doctor mentioned that Annie had been an unwed mother. “That was a long time ago,” was her curt response. “And I lived in Greenwich Village.” Perhaps as a result of that painful encounter, she evinces little interest in other cats of either gender, preferring to spend time alone or with me or a large catnip-filled felt rodent that stays mostly in her lair under the bed.

            On the other hand, Chloe has had several beaux. Since she doesn’t go outside unaccompanied, these affairs du coeur have been conducted through the living room window. She would sit on her radiator perch and commune with gentleman callers seated on the rattan divan on the porch. She would smile and meow fetchingly through the screened open window until she had the poor sucker thoroughly captivated.  Then when her swain was hooked, the little flirt would pace below the window, just beyond his view, while he showed up daily, calling plaintively through the screen. But then she met Vronsky.

            Vronsky was a Russian blue who showed up one evening on the porch, just as the sun was setting. Chloe was sitting in her window perch watching the birds in the big red maple when he leaped onto the back of the divan, startling her. She fell backward off the radiator, catching herself mid-tumble and hoping he would interpret this leap as a graceful jeté. She did a little pirouette, completing the movement, and leapt daintily back into the window with a coy meow. Vronsky turned sideways on the divan, treating us both to a display of his lean but muscular  physique and Roman nose before turning back to fix her with a mesmerizing golden-eyed stare. This time, Chloe was the captivated one. Every evening at sunset, she would leap expectantly onto the radiator. Vronsky appeared punctually and the two would commune, nose to nose through the screen. Then he would turn and stride into the sunset while Chloe stared wistfully at his manful retreating gait.

            One day Vronsky did not appear. Chloe paced back and forth on the radiator for an hour before returning to the sofa to accept my condolences and a scratch behind the ears. “Maybe he’s out mousing or he’s been locked into his house. He’s clearly not a stray cat with that sleek body and that velvety fur. His owner might have prevented him from roaming.”

            For a week she waited. And then the unthinkable occurred. Chloe and I were sitting in the upstairs study. I was reading a book; she was watching birds on the electric lines outside the window. I heard a stifled gasp and ran to the window. On the street below was Vronsky. But he was not alone. With him was the neighborhood hussy with her ratty yellow coat – it looked for all the world like a cheap fake fur coat- and her crooked tail. In the middle of the road, in front of the neighbors, they rubbed noses and sauntered shamelessly down the street together. In a flash, Chloe leapt from the window onto my chair. She buried her head in my lap as I tried to console her best I could with pats and cat treats. For a week, Chloe stayed away from both the windows. The view was just too painful. When she finally mustered up the courage to return to the usual perch, she jumped back down before twilight, so as not to encounter that shameless pair.

            I tried to comfort her with the usual platitudes. “You are too good for him.” “There are plenty of fish in the sea.” I even set her up with a gentleman of my acquaintance, but she found him to be rather stuffy and was still nursing a broken heart.  It’s been a year. Maybe she’s ready for a gentleman friend. Pavarotti is older, settled, and comes from a good family. We’ll start with a long-distance romance, mediated by the book club and just see where it leads. As Martin Luther King once said, "Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step." And, who knows, maybe that step will lead you back to the front porch window.

Chloe and the new normal

The first step in my home construction project was removing the old steam radiator system and adding a heat pump with a forced air heating and air conditioning unit. Because the old system would be removed before the new system would be installed and I would be without any heat for a week, I waited until warmer weather came. When the contractor arrived one spring morning, I warned him that I have two cats. “But I doubt you’ll see either one,” I said. “They’re shy and will probably stay under the bed while you’re in the house.”

I came home before the contractor had packed up for the day. “I saw one of the cats, for sure,” he laughed. “It’s the little short haired critter. When I was pulling the radiator in the bathroom, I had to move the litter box. I guess it’s her box because she came in and gave me holy hell about it. From that point on, she followed me and my men all over the place, supervising and complaining if we did something she didn’t like.” As if on cue, Annie entered the room and looked at him critically.  I gave him a bag of cat treats so he could give her something to snack on the next day.

Chloe stayed safely under the bed while the contractors worked. When I came home after the second day of the project, she greeted me at the door, whining. Her favorite radiator, the one in the living room window, which has a clear  view of the maple tree with the birdfeeder, had been removed. She paced sadly up and down on the spot where it had been, looking at me and crying. Hoping to ease her distress, I went to the basement and retrieved a wooden tray table. It is about the same height and size as the radiator was. I set it carefully in front of the window, picked Chloe up, and placed her on the table.  She screamed as though the table were made of red-hot steel, threw herself on the floor and looked at me reproachfully, licking her paws.  I went over to the table and put my hand on it. It was a normal wooden tray table, not even tippy. I reached down to pet her. Fearing that I would again place her on the table of doom, she barreled up the stairs to hide under the bed.

Maybe putting some treats on the table would sweeten the deal. I put some cat treats on the table. Chloe paced up and down below the table, whining about my sadistic behavior. Annie leaped lightly up onto the table and ate the treats to Chloe’s dismay. When Annie left the living room, I put more treats on the table. Chloe leaped carefully onto the window sill and perched there precariously, eyeing the treats. Carefully, she stretched out one forepaw, and batted the treats toward her mouth, not letting her paw touch the table. She snapped them up quickly, almost falling off her narrow ledge, staring balefully at me.

The third day of the project, our notoriously unpredictable spring weather turned cold. I woke up, chilly, under the blankets with two cats on top of me. I dressed quickly and discovered the windshield of the car was covered with frost. The weather report promised below-average temperatures, even some snow and sleet, for the next few days. I borrowed a space heater from a colleague and set it in the upstairs study to Annie’s delight. She did a perfect imitation of “kitten on the hearth,” warming first one side and then the other, before the red-hot bars while I knitted and watched DVD’s. Chloe sat in the cold, dark hall and cried.

After a week of work, the project was complete. Instead of radiators, I now have small metal vents in the floor. There’s no more knocking and banging of the metal radiators to announce heat’s arrival. Instead, there’s gentle whoosh of air, so quiet that I strain to hear it. The day I came home to the completed job, Chloe met me at the door. She cried and stared until I followed her upstairs to the bedroom. The she walked me to the bedroom floor vent which was softly blowing warm air. She looked at it, then at me. I held my hand over the vent so the air blew on my palm, then turned my hand, palm up, so Chloe could give it a sniff. She sniffed  thoughtfully, then butted her head against my palm before sniffing the vent directly.  Apparently she was pleased with the result. She led me into the upstairs study to repeat the procedure. We walked slowly and carefully through the house. Palm, sniff. Vent, sniff. Nod of approval. The inspection took about half an hour, but finally, Chloe was satisfied. We had reached the last vent on our tour, the one in the living room. After the final inspection was finished, she leaped into the favorite windowsill, careful not to touch the table of doom. She looked at me quizzically. The weather had warmed up again to seasonal temperatures. I opened the pane so she could enjoy the smell of spring.  I got some cat treats and put them on the table. She batted them carefully to her mouth, avoiding the table’s surface. One last look at the bird feeder before it got dark. She jumped lightly off the window sill and onto the arm of the sofa. I had turned on the floor lamp and the radio, and had just begun to knit. I put down the yarn and scratched her behind the ears as Annie came into the room and leaped up on the sofa cushion beside me. Chloe sighed and snuggled beside me.  “It’s a new normal, but it’s normal,” she seemed to say contentedly. “We’re safe and sound for another day.”