I did not tell my 25-year-old son where we were going when I asked him if he’d help me. “I’ll come pick you up at 1.” He, surprisingly, asked no questions. We drove up Route 7 through a rain that was supposed to have been a much nastier Nor’Easter. I took the gentler weather as a good omen, as I did the artist who sang the song that came on Sirius XM’s First Wave channel just before we arrived, by Romeo Void. “Where are we going?,” he finally asked.
We pulled up to a what-used-to-be white house on a corner, with several cars and trucks in the gravelly semi-circular driveway. A multitude of empty cat carriers looked like so many Christmas presents at the base of a leafless tree in the yard. Several pallets of multi-pound cat food pellets barred our way around the driveway, so I stopped in front of them and uncovered the brand new aqua blue cat carrier that I’d oh-so-cleverly draped with a Black Watch tartan cape from Edinburgh Woolen Mills.
“I knew it.” He said. “I figured it was either a cat or some furniture you needed my help moving, but you’d have told me that.” I handed him a Claritin. Just in case. On the porch, a small white and orange cat jumped down from a chair and screamed at us, pacing back and forth. John, who had opened the door, said, “That’s Kate. She likes the heating pad,” which we realized was plugged in to an outdoor outlet. “But she won’t let you touch her.”
Because of Covid-19, we (masked, of course) declined his invitation to come inside, and he took the empty carrier and came back out with it full of an 11-week-old Ragdoll kitten who he and his wife had rescued from a kill shelter down South. John called him Dumpling. I was having none of that, and knew from the moment I got the email saying he was available and was I interested, that he’d be Romeo.
He may very well be my last suitor (although I certainly hope it doesn’t end tragically), and as a Shakespeare nerd, I will derive great joy from wandering the house, plaintively calling, “Romeo, Romeo.”
My son, who had urged me to get a cat (I had owned two before - Shakespeare and Cleopatra) for years, he sat with Romeo on his lap in the unzipped carrier, stroking and whispering to him all the way home.
I had considered a new pet since I returned from studying Shakespeare in England nearly two years ago. But I’m old and set in my ways and every time I came close, my somewhat obsessive need for order and tendency toward wanderlust kept me from consummating the deal. I credit the pandemic as the cat-alyst that pushed me to act. So many hours alone in my place since March - and so many more to come with a bleak winter looming despite the vaccine on the horizon. I would trade tidiness and the hassle of finding reliable cat-sitters for the promise of a cuddly companion.
And at not even three pounds, Romeo has not disappointed. He could have been called Starbucks - my home away from home, pre-coronavirus, as his face, ears, tail, and paws are the color of a shot of espresso, and the rest of him resembles the foam on a latte that the barista has loving swirled so that the top white just starts to mix with the dark coffee below in an artistic swirl.
His eyes are poetically cliche deep pools of blue, crossed, as he is part Siamese, ever so slightly.
At the moment, he is curled up in the crux of my elbow, after having explored the undiscovered country of the “downstairs,” where my office is. He walked on the keyboard for a while, hoping to help me type, and thoroughly examined a very interesting empty Staples box before he mewed for me to pick him up and cradle him in the folds of my oversized sweatshirt. With a little rubbing behind the ears, the motor started to hum like a finely-tuned Bu-cat-ti. I don’t believe that any manmade medicine can lower blood pressure quite like holding a purring cat can.
Romeo is learning to navigate the stairs and to jump on furniture. In just two days here he has scaled the intimidating peaks of the sofa, dining room chair, and my platform bed. He struggles with the fours sets of uncarpeted stairs, but will no doubt conquer them too, by the weekend.
Yup, the house is messier. I need to find a way to relocate the litter box to an upstairs bathroom so the feline aroma isn’t the first thing to greet guests. I need to get used to his routine, and he to mine. But I am forever grateful that Romeo was rescued, and transported up North to find me.
What a lucky kitty!