Take Five: Pandora

by Mary McHugh

I was almost home from my morning walk, when I heard a cat meowing. Most cats don’t meow unless they have something to say, so I looked around and saw a pure white Persian beauty standing on his hind legs scratching at his front door and meowing to get in. 

 I waited. No one came to the door. I hate old ladies who interfere where they have no business, but I decided to be one anyway. I walked up to the cat and patted him.  He had one blue eye and one green one. He gave me a rollover and I scratched his stomach. “Meow,” he said. “O.K.” I said. “I’ll ring the bell even though I’m not the kind of old lady who usually does things like this.”

The woman who answered the door look definitely upset and grudgingly opened the door for her cat, who ran in quickly before she could change her mind. The woman’s hair was droopy, her face looked as if she smoked too much and she barely answered my embarrassed, “I hope you don’t mind - I heard your cat meowing and I ---” before she closed the door firmly. After this, I thought, I’ll mind my own business. 

Well, I wouldn’t have interfered if I hadn’t become a fierce cat lover three years ago when my daughter, who had never liked cats either and didn’t understand why people kept three or four of them in their apartments, changed her mind and got a sweet little kitten, whom she named Pandora.

One touch of the soft, velvety fur of that affectionate kitten and I was hooked. Cats are so clean and so easy to take care of. You don’t have to train them because they have the sense to go to their litter boxes as soon as they find out where they are. If you keep them indoors you don’t have to worry about ticks and fleas. 

You’ll think I’m nuts, but that little cat knew that Kyle was blind. I saw her stand in front of Kyle and when my daughter didn’t know she was there, she would touch Kyle’s leg with her paw to tell her.

 My favorite story is the time Kyle had her blond hair highlighted and when she came home and sat down in her favorite chair, Pandora jumped up on her lap, put one paw on her shoulder and with the other, lightly patted her hair, as if to say, “You look great!”

 Now, if you aren’t a cat lover, you’ll just think this is all ridiculous, and I don’t blame you. Before I met Pandora I couldn’t understand people who spend thousands of dollars when their pets are sick. I couldn’t understand having to worry about an animal if you wanted to go away. It’s hard enough to find baby sitters when you have little children, but to deliberately complicate your life with a cat or dog seemed idiotic to me. 

 Until Pandora.  One of Kyle’s friends persuaded her that cats were far less trouble than men -  they didn’t talk back, they were always affectionate and you could depend on them. She told Kyle about a book called “Why Can’t a Man be More Like a Cat?” by Linda Konner and Antonia van der Meer (Cats never ask, “Are you gaining weight?”; “Cats don’t keep telling you your jokes aren’t funny;” “Cats don’t use up all the hot water.”) When you came right down to it, she said, a furry animal is just as good as a furry man.  She also pointed out that loving a pet is good for your health, lowering your blood pressure and cholesterol, reducing minor health problems and risk of heart disease. Pet owners supposedly have fewer headaches, less indigestion and less difficulty sleeping.

Kyle laughed and agreed.  She was finding life harder and lonelier in Boston since the amputation of her leg, and the idea of a cat that didn’t need to be toilet trained, didn’t need to be walked, could be left alone for a couple of days, became more and more appealing.

Then, in her usual thorough way, she listened to five books on tape about cats, what they should be fed, why the cat should be neutered. She learned that cats shouldn’t be fed milk (gives them diarrhea) tuna fish or other foods that I thought were part of a cat’s diet. They should have dry food filled with nutrients and tasting faintly of chicken or fish. She looked into all this and then a friend serendipitously noticed an ad in the local newspaper offering kittens for sale. Kyle was ready.

 A friend took Kyle to see the kittens and Kyle unerringly chose the one which was the most affectionate and the gentlest, but also had a spirit of independence which she liked. Her friend thought Pandora was the homeliest of the kittens in the litter - she was a tortoise shell - but Kyle could only see the inner beauty and spirit of that cat.  The owner of the kittens wasn’t altogether convinced that a blind woman could take good care of a cat, but he was won over by Kyle and her knowledge of cats and her determination to take care of the kitten.

Soon Kyle was completely hooked on this little cat, and it was my great joy to visit Kyle and watch Pandora run to her when she came out of her bedroom in the morning and kiss her face and arms, circle around her, rubbing up against her back and loving her with every ounce of her little body. She would curl up in the chair next to Kyle, especially when Kyle was feeling sad. 

Kyle’s friend Liz noticed the difference in Kyle after she brought Pandora home to live with her. “Pandora brought out the warmth and all of the stuff I knew was in her,” Liz says. “Kyle was such a salty, vigorous person. Pandora brought out all that was soft, all that was loving, and all that was sweet. It was just a miracle.” 

After Kyle died, during the terrible days when I had to clear out her apartment, still numb from her sudden death from a heart attack at 40, not really knowing what I was doing, I found great comfort in patting Pandora’s silky coat and hugging her. When you lose a child, it doesn’t seem possible that you will survive it.  One of the things that kept me sane and functioning in the weeks and months following Kyle’s death, was the presence of Pandora.

Even though Pandora sometimes still waits in front of a closed door expecting Kyle to come through it, she is used to her new home and she bumps her nose against my face in the morning to say hello. I love her.  And love always works miracles.  I just know that I feel good when I stroke her velvety fur and watch her chasing her tail, wondering why she can never catch it. Pandora makes me laugh.

 I am definitely a cat person.  I like the independence of cats, their self-sufficiency. My daughter and my three grandsons are definitely dog people. Their golden retriever, Tucker, is a magnificent dog but he’s always jumping on me in the friendliest way and licking my arms and bumping into me. I understand why they love him, but give me a cat any day.

Are you a dog or a cat person?  Please write and tell me why. I have a theory that neat, rather introverted people like cats and extroverted, alpha-like people like dogs.  What do you think?  I look forward to hearing from you.

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