Mont Blanc loomed. Icy, craggy, cliffy, with sheer drops unto death from every angle, Chamonix’s local celebrity filled the sky with its drama. We stood at the door of the flat Camille’s friend had leant us for our visit and gazed sans breath at its majesty.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” My sister was in her element. All around us, townspeople of every age walked the cobbled streets with the quick, jaunty steps of the strong, the fit, the sporty, the vital, the alive. The crisp mountain air this November made faces beamy with well-being and brought out everyone’s supercute wool beanie and de rigueur down puffer. One old guy – at least 90 – booked past wearing rock-climbing shoes; attractive ladies…strike that: gutsy gals going about their village business looked fresh from the trail in their mountain-athlete’s bodycon outfits, and all around, shop windows displayed the wares of the place: climbing ropes, ski gear, hiking boots, mountain bikes, river rafts, and – ack! – paragliders.
“I guess.” I stared up at one peak called the Aiguille du Midi that jutted up, up, and more up in the vast Mont Blanc massif. At its tippy-top was a teeny building where an aerial tram could take us, obviously to say hi to God because we would be that high, and I knew for sure that that ride along a single, sagging cable would be an adventure on my sister’s agenda. “But for now, let’s get settled and then explore the town!”
In the stylish, comfy flat Camino flew out of his travel house to search and sniff every inch of his new accommodation and forthwith determine precisely where he belonged, that is, which bed exactly, which chair specifically, and which happy place strictly were Camille’s. If she strolled hither into the kitchen, he followed; if she moved thither into the toilette, he scampered after her. As soon as she and Jacqueline regrouped a moment on the sofa to test the TV – was it apropos of us at 300 channels? – kitty climbed onto her shoulder to nuzzle her neck and chew a strand of hair.
“Don’t you love me anymore?” I held out a dish of Camino’s favorite French-kitten shrimp au jus to tempt him to notice that I was in the room, too, but Jacqueline had just popped open a vacuum can of Pringles and so, kitty leapt to her instead.
“You know, you can’t give him to Gina when you get home.” Camille cracked a can of Coke Zero and the sssss of the fizz brought Camino prancing back to her.
I beg your pardon.
“He needs to live with me.”
“With you? What? That’s impossible.” I thought of her two rowdy hounds – big, rambunctious Chesapeake Bay Retrievers who, in greeting, bodyslammed guests to the ground with their enthusiasm for life. I thought of her fabulous house surrounded not by neighbors but nature, where cat flaps were welcome mats for visiting critters sensing that here was a warm, loving home for them at last. “You have raccoons in the laundry room, and sometimes skunks in the dog food.”
“So?” Well, it was true that no greater love for animals exists in this world than that hath by my sister. A cat needing rescue, a fawn in distress, a fledgling fallen from its nest – all God’s creatures great and small were to her worthy of whatever she could do to save, heal, home, or otherwise show them tender care. Known among family and friends as the “cat whisperer,” she had a special, even mystical connection with felines. She could see into their souls and they, feeling known, idolized her. So, when Camille said Camino needed to live with her and the dogs and raccoons and memories of the many, many cats she had loved over the years, I was stunned into wondering: what does she know about kitty I don’t?
“Well, he’s Gina’s kitten. Gina found him with me, and Gina is waiting for him. Plus,” I added, afraid Camino had already communicated to Camille he’d rather go home with her and face the galling prospect of life with rowdy retrievers, not to mention the possibility of an early death by coyote at her country home. Would he really rather this than live safely – smally – as an indoor-only cat in a city apartment? “Plus, it’s too crazy at your house.”
“I know.” Jacqueline offered Camino a Pringle, which he accepted with joy. My heart sunk with a sudden understanding. Surely, he did express to my sister that a life filled with Bugles and Pringles, with relaxed rules and lots of action, would be preferable to a life defined by – yawn – boredom. If you’re not busy living, you’re dying, said writer Vince Flynn. I felt sick that my kitten, begging for a second Pringle, felt only Camille could save him from his fate.
“Of course, Camino can’t live with me,” she said. “It wouldn’t be the best. But he needs to.”
“He needs to? What for?”
“So his spirit isn’t broken.”
His spirit? Are we breaking his spirit?? I was stricken to think little Camino was wrenched from imminent death on the trail only to suffer horribly in a life far away from Spain – his homeland, his culture – and possibly far from his family. Was his mother grieving his loss, tragically meowing to every passing trekker, where, where, where is my missing kitten? “Is kitty telling you in your secret communications that he doesn’t want to go live in California with Gina?”
“Not yet,” said Camille. “But I can tell. He wants fun. Look at that face.” I looked. Camino now lay stretched out, upside down, across my sister’s lap as she tenderly tickled his spotted tummy puffed out with Pringles; I was sure the vet we would see soon in Paris would not find this so amusing. His little kitten expression was of pure, purring contentment – happy in the lap of the one who might actually suggest we put him in a pack and hike a high-altitude loop like the Grand Balcon Nord so he could see the Mer de Glace (Sea of Ice) glacier. Would he feel alive descending into the ice grotto up there to be inside the glacier where the Gallery of Crystals features a fandango of the finest crystal specimens in the Mont Blanc massif?
“I’m sorry, but you can’t take Camino up the gondola that goes to Italy just to see ice falls and crevasses.” These four-seater télécabines titled the Panoramic Mont Blanc pass by jagged rocks called dents (teeth), where the world’s best rock climbers daily death-defy, and for three miles you, dangling at 12,605 feet above the sea, are suspended on a cable that no kitten in his right mind would find fun. “Can’t we honor and nurture his spirit another way?”
“What about letting him climb the wall thing he seems so obsessed with?” Rejuvenated after his quick post-Pringles nap in Camille’s lap, Camino now strutted back and forth beneath a fancy textile wall hanging – surely a statement art piece – in an effort to find the first claw-hold for a successful ascent. I feared if I scolded no! That belongs to our host! and therefore acted yet again as un-fun Mother, kitty would definitely secretly communicate to Camille that he was being forbidden to “get busy living” and thus was dying.
“OK, fine,” I said.
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