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.
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