It was cashmere hats and gloves and scarves and wraps for all. With winter fast arriving, the Annecy street vendors catered to my weakness for loveliness with their gorgeous, affordable wares, but my need to take French gifts home for friends and family did not sit well with Camino. I could tell.
“Where’s my kitty?” I sing-songed upon returning to our room overladen with purchases that I dropped in a pile before plopping myself exhausted onto a chaise. Camino ran from his nap to stretch and roll at my feet, per usual, and he allowed himself to be flipped up and held to my face while I breathed him in, as was our standard hello, I missed you, too. But then: his displeasure. He prowled among the shopping sacks – sniffing, surveying, taking measure – and then with his tail tall stalked over to the big-ass suitcase, where I would be sure to see him.
“My God, Camino, you’re right!” No way in the world could I add all the new cashmere to the obese valise with bulging zippers and still carry our affairs – plus kitty – without a trailer. Pray tell, Mami, what will Karen think? I saw accusation in my kitten’s expression as he looked at me, and scorn. I was to meet my friend Karen soon for our driving tour of Loire Valley châteaux and certainly she would rather not serve as my maidservant, charged with hefting heavy bags from here to there around castles and grounds. “We will have to leave things behind.” Camino scurried over to his travel house as if to hide – Not I! – but it was only to see that his favorite fur mouse was appropriately inside. “Don’t worry, my kitten; I will never-ever-ever forget you,” I reassured him, a little afraid that if I didn’t his inner rogue, like Señor Zorro, would strike in the night and mark me more with his version of a sword: killer kitten claws. As it was, I was scabby enough, for now, and worried: Karen is a dog person. An avowed animal lover, my dear friend nonetheless had never had a cat and currently was mom to two elderly dachshunds that were entirely dog-like. They barked, they slobbered, they begged to be walked; they even sat when it was suggested and wouldn’t, in all their years, even remotely entertain the notion of pouncing or scratching. So utterly lächerlich! Laughable. How would Karen road-trip for a week in the company of Camino? How would she fare as we wandered from Chambord to Blois to Amboise and stopped at other iconic reflections of Renaissance ideals – castle-homes that told the whole history of the French monarchy? What’s more, I fretted, how would kitty adapt to an interloper in our midst? We were so exclusive, Camino and I – together sans another soul in our European trala.
The kitten curled under the sheets at my feet – our bedtime ritual – and his purrs reassured me via my right ankle, as he snuggled against it, that just like Annecy and Biarritz before, we two would be fine in the Loire. Dog-people, I heard in Camino’s purrs – so strong, so confident, so self-assured – can always be changed into cat-people. Leave Karen to me, Mami, I heard as I drifted off. All it takes is the right cat.
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“Hiiiiiiii!” My best friend and I squealed hi and how was your flight and girl-hugged in happiness when Karen arrived from L.A. At the airport exit I held kitty in his travel house and introduced them, ever hoping she would fall over love-struck at first sight of my unexpected gift from the Camino. I hoped, too, that Camino the Spanish kitten would not be frightened of the dachshund-mom, the woman who, however loving and well-meaning, didn’t know how to coo and sing when speaking to a cat, and surely assumed my kitten would sit or stay or poop if simply promised a pup-cup.
“Karen, this is Camino.” I lifted up his crate so she could see him, and he regarded her with wonder. “Camino, please say hello to Karen.” He was welcome to say hola, if he had to. Wide-eyed and unsure of the woman poking fingers into his space for a how-do-you-do tickle behind his ears, his scent sense seemed then to explode with new information. Stranger danger! He tucked himself into a back corner of the crate and crouched down behind his blankie.
“OMG!” My friend exclaimed. “Don’t be afraid, little kitty; it’s just me!” A dog person. She then turned to me with all the love and sweetness of one who wants truly to make friends, to be accepted, and said, “Why didn’t I think to bring treats!”
I didn’t hear my kitten sigh, caramba! here we go, but I suspected it crossed his mind that, ey, the job of turning Karen into a kitty lover might require much more from him than simply showing off his Zorro-ish powers of persuasion. Would he be able to flatter her with his attentions without carving the marks of Camino upon her legs, her arms, her face? Could he sleep on her head, in her hair, or at her feet, beneath the sheets, and thus convince her such expressions of affection are preferable to a pup tucked tidily in his dog-bed all night, his wildly wagging tail conveying without question I love you? Would he even succeed in seeming more endearing – more desirable – than his upcoming competition? These rivals for her heart were the Loire Valley hounds housed at Château Cheverny, surely a must-see on our châteaux tour. Numbering more than one hundred, these tricolor, Anglo-French hunters (half-English foxhound and half-French Poitevin) are a popular floorshow, especially during mealtime when they slurp-up their Soupe des Chiens – dogs’ soup – and delighted château visitors get to ooh and aah over dogs being dogs and disappearing all their dinner in ten seconds. The Loire’s châteaux cats, on the other hand, have a more subtle presence: Artist Maurice Serreau’s 14 stone cat sculptures in the village of La Romieu commemorate the medieval legend of a young girl named Angeline, whose two hidden kittens saved an entire town from famine. Today, Château de l’Epinay’s fine feline residents, Leo and Blackie, pad around with pride, or loll lazily in sun puddles, to remind everyone: cats rule and dogs drool. So, if Karen with the smallest smidgen of dachshund fur on her sweater cuff – fluff that Camino certainly did scent – could first convince the kitten that this avowed dog-girl has it in her to be charmed when awoken daily at 5:00 a.m. with a paw-pop to the face, or amused when her best twill trousers are shredded at the hem from play, and then somehow succumb to kitty’s smooth Spanish moves, well, then: his triumph will be sweet. His next conquest Karen will become, as she would never, ever believe, cat-people.
Meow! Camino cried from his crate, suddenly brave. Let me out! Let me have my way with the pretty señiorita from L.A.
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