Where’s my kitty? I opened the door to our spa-hotel room and knew at once things weren’t right. There, on the four-poster bed, lay the maid. The bedclothes rumpled, the vacuum idle, Mademoiselle with a cry of surprise leapt up in shame to see us.
“Oh, pardon, pardon, Je m’excuse, Mesdames!” Flushed and dewy from exertion, Elodie – she introduced herself – said she had come in to service the room but…
“Il y a un châton!” There was a kitten, indeed. And there was Camino, tucked-in among the sheets after having clearly seduced yet another damsel with his Spanish charms. Smoothing her uniform, Elodie quickly tossed aside the incriminating evidence of their tryst – a catnip armadillo on a string – and in sputtering French confessed to the play session they had enjoyed because – oh, le petit bébé! – the baby cat she came upon was too, too, too, too cute for words, even French words. Kitty slowly crept into better view, yawning and stretching and making happy squeak sounds after his conquest, and I had to admit: he was irresistible. If Karen were jealous of Elodie, she didn’t show or say, but all that night and into the next day, when we would be leaving the Loire for Paris, gone were the pup-lover’s terms of endearment, the dog-person’s expressions of affection. I noted nary a single good boy met Camino’s success in the litter box; no promise of a treat, no thought of a walkie – Karen was even cooing to the kitten in high-pitched tones: she, in a word, was acting exactly like a cat person. But, of course, there was the existential question: could she become a crazy cat person?
“I could have a kitten,” she finally admitted in the car as we sped to Paris and she held Camino in her lap, his eerie, knowing gaze fixed on her face, his expression conveying…well, what? “I mean, look at him!” Between glances at the two of them I tried to be eyes-on-the-road, so couldn’t exactly see whatever was going on in the passenger seat, but at least it wasn’t as unnerving as David and Mary Jo’s Camino affair flaunting itself in Angela Leslee’s alber-goo bunkbed. I could hear Camino’s purr, however, and though the marks of Camino bloodied her hands and her arms, her legs and her feet – souvenir love scratches that would heal once she was home in L.A. – Karen’s voice was full of missing him already. “I always thought a cat would never love you back,” she said. “Not like a dog.”
“Oh, Camino.” I looked over at my kitten so content in Karen’s lap, the dirt-trail foundling now as arrived in life as orphan Puss is after – poof! – he transforms into a lord complete with white-powdered wig and sword, and moves into the ogre’s spectacular castle. “What a clever kitten you are, you are, my Camino. What a clever kitten you are!”
“When it’s time,” Karen added, starry-eyed, “I might just have to have a cat.”
“Two cats,” I corrected. “It’s best if they have a friend.”
Okay, well, there you are. One cat, two cats, six cats, 10. Crazy is not so much living as a “cat lady,” the iconic old/batty/lonely hoarder who loves felines more than people. It’s more like aligning with the words of legendary French writer Colette, who said: “I love cats because I love my home, and little by little they become its very soul.”
Karen and I sped into Paris where the Tour Eiffel glittered its welcome. In the car Camino slept the sleep of one who had not, as we had, overdone it on châteaux, and so, when we arrived in the City of Light where our hotel for the night was gilted to the hilt, where its walls were flocked in gobs of royal court-approved frou-frou, he leapt out of his travel house and was dazzled. Mis mujeres! he as good as said now that he knew the two of us were his. I don’t mind if I do climb the curtains of this room and shred the fine silk quilts into snags, do you?
No, Camino, go ahead, we assented. Little lords certainly do, as we had seen in every palace grand and grander, have their privileges.
Recent Comments