by Helen Brown
Anxiety clawed at my insides. I hated the prospect of Rob undergoing such a radical procedure. Nobody wants their child mutilated. What if the surgery went wrong? If, on the other hand, he elected not to have the surgery the future would be even grimmer. One glimpse of his pale face, swollen from steroid intake, was enough to convince me. He was dying in front of our eyes.
One morning I opened the kitchen door to find a plump baby thrush lying stunned on its back on the brick path. Cleo was losing her touch. Not so long ago she would have gone in for the kill by now. The baby thrush’s eyes were bright, alarmed. Perched on the fence above, two adult birds, the parents, were creating the mayhem that had drawn me outside.
As Cleo crept forwards for the final lunge, my skin prickled with rage. How could she be so soft and loving one minute and a coldhearted destroyer of families the next? For once I had the opportunity to stop one of her ritual killings. I grabbed her and swept her into the house, slamming the door behind us.
All afternoon Cleo and I watched the adult birds flit between the fence and an overgrown camellia bush. Their shrieks were fractured with desperation. I understood their anguish as they urged their child to fight for life. At least they’d been spared the horror of seeing their child mutilated, I thought. Then again, those two little words “at least” always carried a shadow of dread with them.
Cleo was infuriated by my sentimentality. It’s nature, you fool, she seemed to say. You’re only making things worse. Let me get it over and done with.
Next morning, I imprisoned her indoors. The baby bird lay motionless in the same spot on the brick path. Its eyes were blank, its claws curled up in a gesture of astonishment. I gulped back tears. To my surprise the parents were still standing guard in the camellia bush, staring down at their dead child in disbelief. I’d never realized birds could feel grief for their lost children the way people do. As Sam had often said, the world of animals is more complex and beautiful than humans understand.
Witnessing the scene from a nearby window, Cleo licked her paws with regal nonchalance. I struggled to even like her at that moment.
Purr Power
A nurse cat is more devoted than her human counterpart, though some of her methods may be unconventional.
The cause of ulcerative colitis and its terrible cousin Crohn’s disease is unknown, though research continues. Why this cruel ulcerating of the bowel should occur mostly in young people aged between fifteen and thirty-five is a mystery, although I couldn’t help feeling that, in Rob’s case, unresolved grief over Sam had contributed. There is as yet no cure, apart from surgical removal of the bowel.
Rob didn’t want a fuss. We drove to the hospital as if it were an ordinary day and we were heading into the city to have lunch. As the car hugged the curve of the river, I thought of the surgeon’s hands. Today, I hoped they’d be working well. What can you say to a son who’s about to undergo a massive operation that will permanently change (mutilate?) his body?
“Isn’t the light beautiful on the water?”
He grunted agreement. If by some miracle the surgery was successful it would give him new life. I tried not to think of the enormity of what was about to happen. Eight feet of colon would be removed, and he’d return home with a colostomy bag. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. He was born perfect. I’d used every ounce of my maternal powers to make him stay that way. My determination to heal him through sheer will had failed. If all went well there’d be a second operation two months later to remove the colostomy bag and give at least (at least, at least—what loathsome words they were) the appearance of physical normality.
Conversation was minimal. Toothbrush. Check. Razor. Check. Why couldn’t he have the one thing that mattered? Good health. Uncheck. We caught the elevator to the eighth floor, where a small grey room was waiting for him. A crucifix on the wall was a reminder of previous young men who’d suffered more than their due. He sat in a chair that had arms but could in no way qualify as an armchair. At least the room had a view over the city.
“Chantelle will be in there,” he said, pointing at a grey cube of a building. “The university.”
My heart lurched. To have twenty-four-year-old male yearnings inside a body that refused to work properly seemed the ultimate cruelty. All the other patients on his floor were the wrong side of seventy.
Our silence wasn’t awkward so much as textured.
“I love you,” I said. The words conveyed a tiny percentage of my feelings for my beautiful, sensitive, cat-loving son.
“You can go now,” he said, not moving his gaze from the window.
“Don’t you want me to stay till they settle you in?”
He shook his head. “Tell Cleo I’ll be home soon,” he said.
My last glimpse of him as I left the ward was of a lonely figure sitting in a chair facing a window.
Outside on ground level, I crossed the street to find a small church. Wood-lined and colonial, it reminded me of the one in which I’d struggled so hard as a child to learn God’s rules. I tried to pray again, but my conversation with God was one-sided as usual.
There was more solace to be found in the park outside, the giant soothing hands of branches reaching over me. It was easier to imagine God here among leaves and flowers that pulsated with life. Death and decay was woven into the beauty in ways that seemed natural and reassuring.
Gulping the oxygenated air, I thanked the Victorian minds that had decreed hospitals needed parks nearby. Grass and trees absorb human worries and help put them in perspective.
Six long hours later I fumbled in my handbag. My hand trembled and was so slippery I could barely hold the phone to my ear. The surgeon’s voice was weary, matter-of-fact, with an upbeat edge.
“It went well,” he said.
Cleo and I nursed Rob through his recovery from the first operation, and a couple of months later, the second. As he regained strength he often draped Cleo over his stomach to let her throaty song reverberate through his wounds. While scientists have proven pets help people live longer, more research needs to be done on the healing potential of a cat’s purr. It’s a primeval chant, the rhythm of waves crashing on the shore. There’s powerful medicine in it.
Cats are known to purr not only to express pleasure but also when they’re in great pain. Some say the feline lullaby is comforting because it reminds them of when they were kittens curled in the warmth of their mother’s fur. I wouldn’t be surprised if someday the purr is proved to be much more than a lullaby, that the vibrations have potential to heal living tissue.
“Listen to that,” he said one day. “It’s a cross between a gurgle and a roar—a rurgle.”
“Do you remember when you were little you said Cleo was talking to you?” I asked. “Was that real?”
“It felt real at the time.”
“Does she still talk to you?” I asked, no longer concerned for his sanity. Years ago I’d accepted Rob had a special connection with Cleo that only seemed to bring good.
“In dreams, sometimes.”
“What does she say?”
“She doesn’t talk so much these days as show me things. Sometimes we go back to when Sam was alive. We’ll run up and down the zigzag with him. It’s like she’s telling me everything’s going to be okay.”
Cleo straightened her front legs, arched her back and opened her mouth in a cavernous yawn. Appearing in Rob’s dreams was just a pastime, as far as she was concerned.
I’d have willingly exchanged places with Rob to relieve him of his ordeals. Yet he shrugged when I said such things. In many ways, he said, the illness was a gift. I shivered when he talked that way. He sounded like an old man. Certainly, his experiences gave him a perspective well beyond his years.
“I’ve been through good times and bad times,” he said. “Believe me, good’s better. When you’ve tasted stale bread, you really appreciate the fluffy stuff fresh out of the oven.”
Rob’s body gradually adjusted to eating and absorbing solid food again, th
ough he still looked like a survivor from a wartime prison camp. If, for some reason, his body refused to heal properly and he had complications I wondered if he’d have any strength left to muster a fight. Fortunately, he was young and he seemed have stores of vigor to draw on from his athletic years.
Cleo, a more conscientious nurse than I, trotted after him around the house, snuggling into his blankets and presenting him with the occasional get-well present in the form of a decapitated lizard.
Through our long days at home together, I had the blessing of getting to know Rob better. It’s rare for a young man in his twenties to share his thoughts with his mother. In an unexpected way, his illness brought us closer together.
“I used to wish I had an easier life,” he mused. “Some families sail through years with nothing touching them. They have no tragedies. They go on about how lucky they are. Yet sometimes it seems to me they’re half alive. When something goes wrong for them, and it does for everyone sooner or later, their trauma is much worse. They’ve had nothing bad happen to them before. In the meantime, they think little problems, like losing a wallet, are big deals. They think it’s ruined their day. They have no idea what a hard day’s like. It’s going to be incredibly tough for them when they find out.”
He’d also developed his own version of making the most of every minute. “Through Sam I found out how quickly things can change. Because of him I’ve learned to appreciate each moment and try not to hold on to things. Life’s more exciting and intense that way. It’s like the yogurt that goes off after three days. It tastes so much better than the stuff that lasts three weeks.”
My young philosopher in a dressing gown had theories to rival an Eastern mystic’s. Yet deep down we both knew his dreams were the same as every other young person’s. More than anything, he longed for love and happiness.
Connection
A cat who appears in a dream is no less real than one who pads a kitchen floor.
The psychic cat is connected to the world in more ways than we imagine. She can creep into a kitchen or, just as easily, a dream. Waiting on her favorite window ledge, she knows when her slaves are on their way home to her. Guardian of unworldly powers, she beams a shield of protection over the human household she has blessed with her presence. Sometimes they are aware of her ability to slide between worlds. Mostly they are not.
A couple of months later Rob was still as thin as a sapling in winter and, as far as I could make out from an anxious mother’s perspective, not fully healed. Nevertheless, he insisted on planning an Outback adventure with a couple of old schoolmates—“the boys.” They planned to drive through the desert to Australia’s red heart, Uluru, a journey that would take three weeks. To say I worried was an understatement. Yet I had to accept that Rob had no intention of having an “invalid” sticker attached to his forehead for the rest of his days. He craved a normal young man’s life brimming with adventure, but the risks were enough to turn a mother’s heart to jelly.
I lectured the boys about the Outback being basically a vast zoo for creatures armed for attack. From crocodiles and sharks to snakes, spiders and ants, they’re all expert killers devoid of affection for the human species. Even kangaroos can be killers, crashing inadvertently through drivers’ windows at sunset.
They listened and nodded sagely. They weren’t fools who’d go out of their way to get into trouble.
The only thing that concerned me more than wild animals was the danger of mechanical breakdown. Since his surgery, Rob had been urged to keep hydrated as much as possible. If their vehicle sputtered to a halt in some parched wilderness, lack of water could be a serious problem. The boys assured me they had plenty of spare water on board. Technically, they weren’t boys anymore but young men well beyond the age of consent. I was left with no choice but to trust them.
“What are you worrying about?” Philip asked one night when I couldn’t get to sleep. “Rob’s mates are fantastic. You saw their loyalty when they visited him in hospital every day. They know what he’s been through. They won’t let him down.”
Their beat-up Ford hardly looked ideal for journeying across the vast emptiness of central Australia. They insisted they were prepared with the latest snake-proof camping gear. Imagining them inching across barren terrain under a merciless bowl of blue sky, I wanted to beg them to stay home and do something safe and sensible—enroll in cooking classes, take dancing lessons. Anything but this. But I’d learned enough about parenthood to know there are many times when it’s wiser to keep your mouth shut. I was hoping this was one of them.
Three weeks later, when they were due to return, Cleo paced the hallway. She leapt to the window ledge, stared out at the street, then sprang back onto the floor to start pacing again. She was twitchy as a cobra on a desert highway. When I picked her up we exchanged electric shocks. Her ears flattened. She wriggled impatiently. I lowered her to the floor so she could pace some more.
“Don’t worry, old girl,” I said, talking to myself as much as the cat. “He’ll be fine.”
A waterfall of relief washed over me as their car, red with dust, turned into our street. With Cleo in my arms I ran outside to meet them. Rob uncoiled his considerable length from the backseat to accept with a dutiful grimace my embrace. Strange how the child who once stood on his toes to kiss his mother now bent and inclined his head to receive hers. Running an anxious eye over his entire six feet and more, I noticed his physical condition had, if anything, improved.
“How was it?” I asked.
“Fantastic!”
We persuaded the boys to stay on for a barbecue before they headed off. Basking in the glow of the coals, we watched the stars sparkle to life.
“Nothing like the night sky,” Rob sighed. “Whenever things get too much all I have to do is think of the stars and all the things they look down on. Here on earth we think our little lives are so important. Even though we’re an integral part of everything we’re just tiny specks in the universe.”
Cleo took the opportunity to lick some tomato sauce off his plate.
“I had an amazing experience in the desert,” he continued. “One night when we were camping in a remote spot near Katherine Gorge I dreamt about a weird white cat. It had seven hearts and it was sitting on the edge of an inland sea.”
“Was it a scary cat?” I asked.
“No. It was wise, like a teacher. And it talked to me.”
“Oh no!” I smiled. “Not again! What did it say?”
“It told me I’d been protected for many years by a cat, that the cat had guided me to the right people. It said our world would continue to be racked with sadness and pain until we learn the most important lesson. To become everything we’re capable of we must replace fear and greed with love—for ourselves, each other and the planet we live on.
“The white cat went on to say my cat guide had helped me find love on many levels. There was only one form of love left for it to teach me, and I was already further along that path than I realized. Once I’d discovered that love, the cat guardian’s role on earth would be complete.”
A shooting star scurried across the sky. I was lost for words.
“Funny thing is,” Rob continued. “It was such an outlandish dream I told the boys about it the next morning. I described the shape of the lagoon and the surrounding hills. They laughed when I told them about the talking cat, of course. But then, a few hours later we visited a place that exactly matched the dream landscape I’d described. The lagoon, the hills. They were all there. If I hadn’t told the boys about it in such detail earlier they’d never have believed me. An Aboriginal man introduced himself and told us about the area. He said it was a sacred healing ground. He pointed out seven tall mounds around the edge of the lagoon. For as long as anyone could remember, he said, the local people had called them cats.”
From her vantage point on Rob’s shoulder, Cleo surveyed every human face in the shadows of the barbecue flames and winked.
Forgiveness
To f
orgive is in a cat’s nature—eventually.
One of the downsides of changing countries was that we no longer had access to reliable friends who thought nothing of looking after Cleo for us when we went away on holiday.
Even though we were getting to know our new neighbors, it seemed too soon to impose cat-minding duties on them. We’d never put Cleo in a cattery before. I was worried how a freedom lover like her would adapt to living in the feline equivalent of Guantanamo Bay for a week. She’d proved herself tough and versatile, though. I assumed she’d cope.
Assumption is a dangerous thing. A couple of days after we’d collected her from the cattery, her eyes streamed with gluey fluid. She went off her food and developed a cough. For the first time in her life Cleo was terribly ill.
Our neighborhood vet was plump and red-faced with a plume of silver hair. He prodded her with fingers the size of salamis.
“How old is she?” he asked, examining our precious cat as if she was something he’d scraped off his shoe.
“Sixteen.”
He looked at me in disbelief.
“Are you sure?”
“I know exactly how old she is. She was given to us just after our older son died.”
“Well, if you’re certain she’s that old…” He sighed. “I wouldn’t hold out much hope for her. She should have died six years ago, according to the average life expectancy for a cat.”
He was a tough vet. I hated his cold words. Some time in the distant past he must’ve had enough compassion for animals to envisage himself spending a lifetime working with them. But whatever sympathy he possessed had either dried up or, for some reason, wasn’t directed at us. Maybe he shared Rosie’s opinion of my cat-mothering skills. Perhaps his wife had left him for the orthodontist around the corner. I wouldn’t have blamed her.
