“Camino, look! Maybe you can meet Puss in Boots here!” Karen, kitty, and I pulled into the gravel drive of the Château de Perreux, the grand, imposing hotel that resembled exactly the kind of palace where Puss, an orange ragamuffin like Camino, held court after his numerous deceits transformed him into a French lord. In Charles Perrault’s legendary fairy tale, the rascal Puss, sporting the tall gentleman’s boots of Corinthian leather he acquired through charm, not only tricks a king, but also seduces his daughter, and in the end becomes master of an ogre’s enormous castle. “You and Puss had the same sad beginnings,” I told my kitten, as we half expected the château to send ladies in waiting in Versailles-style gowns to greet us. “Maybe you, too, can become a lord of sorts.”
Camino didn’t instantly act like having a sword and cavalier’s hat (with feather) was his passion; instead, he meowed mightily to be let out of his travel house after hours of a nap in the car. “Would he like a walk?” Karen, not yet immersed in Camino’s world, was talking doggie but expressed excitement that soon she could spend time with the kitten who was an enigma to her, an orange puff of fluff that meowed sometimes and mostly slept – no need for an obedience class for this one! “No, not a walk. We’ll just let him climb the walls. Literally.”
In our room at the turreted Louis XIII-style château, complete with four-poster bed, Marie Antoinette-era drapes, creaky-wood floors, and other motifs speaking of its origins in 1701, Karen and I refined our Loire Valley adventure, and Camino revealed that a mini kitty harness and leash – and a dash about outdoors – might have been the better plan. Chenonceau, Chambord, Chaumont-sur-Loire; the châteaux of Blois and Amboise and Villandry: We would see it all. Glorious formal gardens, marble, mirror-y halls, portraits of dukes and lords and minor marquis, all done up in white-powdered wigs and fine French ruffles and bows. Oh, and there would be the lifestyles of the rich and egomaniacal monarchs. We would tour the hunting lodges and mistresses’ follies and plein-air city escapes where a whole host of King Louis caroused. Camino, meanwhile, made himself at home: he climbed each Marie Antoinette curtain in turn, found a fine scratching tree in the beautiful right-foot bedpost, crashed a gilt-edged porcelain dish to the floor, and otherwise said without saying, Maman, I love it here! I don’t know the exact moment the kitten left behind his land’s native Spanish to experiment with French, but perhaps as a true European like Dr. Pappacoda, he would grow to fluently converse in an entire world of languages. After all, Puss in Boots, conceived in France by an Académie Française writer, and clearly a French cat/lord with his own château, spoke with a Spanish accent whenever he appeared in film. This was all just more mystery for me when it came to my Camino kitty. Karen, too, was a little confused. “When I say ‘leave it’ to him, he doesn’t?” She referred to the exquisite crimson silk tassel that the kitten now dangled from; the two hung from a key in the huge bedroom armoire, antique, and with one high leap Camino found it as fun as perhaps a live mouse.
“Kitty, stop!” I plucked him off and was cheered in the knowledge that, even if his killer claws demolished the posh of our room in the gorgeous, historic hotel, our overnight in the Château de Perreux would make John and everyone else currently on the Camino wretched with envy. I wondered: how were they doing? While Karen bounced a small ball on the polished parquet to tempt the kitten to “leave-it” vis-à-vis another tassel attack and instead give chase, I checked-in first to John’s field report. He had stopped at the Irache Monastery in the tiny Spanish town of Ayegui to refresh himself at the famous fountain that dispenses free wine; there he learned that all available alber-goos were completo, full, and he would be spending the night not on the floor – which happens in alber-goo life – but out in the cold (with possible rain) on an alber-goo step. “The flagstones helped me identify all the sharp points on all my bones throughout the evening,” he reported with regret, “and when I did fall asleep, the Iglesia de San Andrés took the opportunity to sound its bells to remind me of the time, every half hour. Sunrise,” he noted of his ordeal, “didn’t come soon enough.”
Angela Leslee was having her own discomforts: “Today I have perfected my gansta walk – step-limp, step-limp,” she recounts in her post-trek tale. “The cause of this pain baffles me, but…understand that at this point, my feet are on fire and every step counts.” I’m not sure if Angela is on her third or thirtieth day of walking, but when she finally finds respite at that night’s alber-goo, she is handed a key card and is directed to “the furthest freakin’ room from the front desk!” Reeling from the indignity, she eventually removes her boots to find, as she describes, “the big toe on the most-sore foot is white and numb! Oh, crap!”
Whoa, I thought, after my dreamy sleep in the château’s fluffy four-poster, I am so glad to know no flagstone bruises or foot-battering by boot! However, our sunrise, in the dawn of the day we’d visit the Château royal d’Amboise and, nearby, the storied Chenonceau, found us wondering if all too soon we’d be châteaud-out. If we could successfully overdo, we planned also to traipse through the two châteaux in town, Château du Clos Lucé and Château Gaillard. “Is this a thing of, if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all?” Karen’s Loire Valley enthusiasm seemed a little less in the new day, as did mine. Were we not excited to see Chenonceau, the Loire masterpiece of magnificent Renaissance architecture, or the 15th century royal Amboise, with its spectacular gardens and tomb of Leonardo da Vinci? Or, were we feeling very ladies-of-the-court in our château-hotel boudoir, as pampered as lazy princesses and happy to amuse ourselves instead with our feline plaything?
“Does he need to sniff my hand first, before I pet him?” A purring Camino lay curled against Karen’s hip as she sat up in bed with a second coffee. He had snuggled against her neck on and off all night, perhaps deciding she was no threat if unconscious, or else making his first move to seduce her with the feeling of his Spanish fur so soft, so orange, so inviting to the touch. The midnight love bites he delivered to her ear by the moon’s warm glow, which shone through the room’s leaded windows, had to be a move, too, though awkward.
“Who?” I joked. “Leonardo?”
The mark of Camino was already on Karen, but she claimed not to feel the tiny tooth marks I could see inflaming her flesh. Surprisingly bright after her first overnight with a wildling wanting only to frolic into the wee hours, she ventured a tentative touch on my kitten’s head. His come-hither face wore its flirtiest gaze, so, encouraged, her touch turned into a tickle under his chin, then, emboldened, a fondle around his ears. With a slo-mo stretch he showed to her the pride of his plump, pink tummy with its ocelot spots, and, lower down, his Spanish endowments the vet would snip at six months. Well, all this seemed an exact replay of the Puss in Boots move where with “two or three tender glances, before you know it, she had fallen in love.” In the story these glances go to the King’s beautiful daughter, but just like Puss’s fairytale princess, Karen had no idea she already was smitten.
“Oh, Camino, I saw that, you naughty boy.” I scooped him up to give him his preventive worm pill and let my friend shower and dress. He quickly bounded back to Karen’s spot in the bed and intended, it appeared, to live for her and her alone. Just watch, Maman, he said in the glint of his bad-kitten eyes, before we leave the Loire, she will be all mine.
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