I adore Christmas decorations, and therefore own far too many of them. But each ornament and figurine, toy and trinket has it’s own story. Each represents a memory or wish, a moment or emotion. They sparkle and spin on the tree. They march across shelves and perch on the mantel. For a single season, the house sprouts a glorious clutter of nostalgia and peace.
Next week, I’ll spend a quiet day packing it all into boxes and stacking it in the attic for another year, and the house will resume its usual routine. My memories, wishes, moments, and emotions will scatter, untethered, into the nebulous ether of experience.
Mother bought an artificial Christmas tree many years ago, tired of fighting the yearly mess. (And the predictable attack of severe allergies.) Eventually she gave up on the artificial tree, too. She replaced it with a small ceramic tree, which fit on the table and was easy to put away when Christmas was over. All of this means that Vanna, who is thirteen years old, has never seen a real Christmas tree. Until last night…
Her housemates are accustomed to our mysterious mid-December decor, but that doesn’t mean they are immune to the tree’s allure.
This year’s tree seems to have earned the approval of all three cats. It survived the rigors of feline inspection and is, for the moment, their favorite spot in the house.
“Silver had two guns slung about him–one before and one behind–besides the great cutlass at his waist, and a pistol in each pocket of his square-tailed coat. To complete his strange appearance, Captain Flint sat perched upon his shoulder and gabbling odds and ends of purposeless seatalk.” from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
In 2005, Mother signed up for a class about pirate literature. The course focused on Peter Pan and Treasure Island, as did most of our telephone conversations at the time. She shared bits of trivia regarding the authors and texts. She followed tangents of memory sparked by Peter’s exploits and Jim’s adventures. And she read from her notes, teaching me how the books fit into the history of literature.
A few years later, when she met a pair of orphan kittens named Captain Flint and Long John Silver, I was tempted to call it fate.
Captain Flint, 2007Long John Silver, 2007 (photos provided by my brother and sister-in-law)
These two kittens arrived at Challenger’s House in the summer of 2007. Captain Flint was found, malnourished and abandoned, in front of a local business. Long John Silver was thrown from a car and rescued by the driver who witnessed it. As they were about the same age, and both too weak to keep up with healthy kittens, they were placed in a foster home together. To be exact, they were placed in my brother and sister-in-law’s home.
Flint had trouble gaining weight. Long John needed surgery to repair his broken leg. And Mother talked about them for months, calling with detailed updates after every visit. It seemed to me as if she visited my brother and sister-in-law more often, while the kittens were there, and her attachment to the little pirates grew with each week. All the while, she denied any desire to adopt them.
Then she called one day and said, “Guess what I just did…” She claimed that her decision came from an urge to keep the boys from being separated. They had finally been declared healthy enough to go to the adoption center, and she feared they would not find a home together. So they went to live with her, and our telephone conversations were soon filled with the antics of Long John Silver and Captain Flint.
Long John Silver is a charismatic troublemaker, a bit like his namesake. (Right down to the bad leg, which healed stiff because the joint was too damaged to repair.)
Captain Flint is both buccaneer and parrot, sometimes starting the trouble, and sometimes following Long John’s lead.
Last year, when Mother died, the pirate cats returned to my brother and sister-in-law’s home, which means I get to continue following their adventures. And their misadventures, because they are often very bad boys. A pair of mischievous rogues, well named and well loved.
I grew up in a house with a wood burning stove, so all of my winter memories are tinged with the scent of smoke.
Mother ordered the first load of wood mid-summer, which gave it time to cure. She ordered a cord at a time, requesting a mixture of kindling and longer burning logs. It arrived as a tumbled pile at the end of the driveway, and we hauled it off by armfuls and wheelbarrow loads, stacking neat rows under the tin roof of our open-sided pole shed.
Starting in my teens, I claimed the wood as my own domain because I enjoyed the physical activity of hauling and stacking. Plus, it gave me an excuse to be outside with the animals, who followed me back and forth as I worked.
Mother disliked storing firewood on the porch, so she rarely wanted more than one day’s supply brought down each afternoon. However, she relented when we had snow or ice storms. Then I would carry wood until my shoulders and back ached.
Or until I got bored and wandered off to explore the pasture and woods.
The stove was undeniably harder to maintain than central heat, but it was also undeniably warmer.
Except it didn’t heat the entire house. Our den was a smoky, sleepy haven, but my bedroom, in the opposite end of the house, stayed so chilly that blankets were not sufficient for a comfortable night’s sleep. Even so, I didn’t suffer. I had plenty of furry companions to keep me warm.
A week after Mother’s accident, I met Vanna. I had seen glimpses of her before, darting through doorways or disappearing under a bed, but I had never really met her. She was a fearful, shy cat who rarely ventured into the open, even around Mother.
When Vanna finally allowed me to pet her, I discovered that her hair was dry and loose, falling out in handfuls. She had not been taking care of herself, and her matted fur felt like a physical manifestation of my own distress.
For the first time in days, I knew exactly what to do. Here was something that I could actually fix. I found Mother’s cat brush and went to work, laughing at Vanna’s ecstatic response to my grooming efforts. She purred and drooled, rolled and kneaded the air. And I fell head over heels in love. Three months later, when I announced that I would be taking Vanna home with me when I returned to Virginia, no one objected.
The drive was too long to cover in a single day, so we stopped at the Holiday Inn Express in Emporia. Mother would have laughed herself to tears over the thought of Vanna sleeping on a hotel bed.
Now it’s been a full year since our long drive together. Vanna has settled in and taken over the house. Her two housemates are too lazy to protest as she claims the warmest pools of sunshine and the softest pillows. They move aside as she bolts past them in the hall, as she chases her favorite toys or races to get there first, wherever she is going. They are patient, gentle cats, amiably dodging her jealous swipes and ignoring her touchy temper.
Some of their ease is rubbing off on her, and she is learning to share food bowls and favorite perches. Best of all, she rarely hides anymore. I seldom find her in a closet or under a bed. Instead, she sleeps in front of the windows and sprawls across the beds.
Every so often, usually after a poor night’s sleep, I catch myself indulging in a moment of grief as I watch Vanna. She is Mother’s cat, not mine. Or at least, she should be Mother’s cat. What if Mother had survived her injuries? Would she have consented so readily to my taking her neediest cat?
Such moments are lessening in frequency and intensity. I’m learning to file these questions in the unanswerable category, alongside a litany of other questions that start with “why?” and “what if?” I may as well ask why is there sunshine. Or why are there cats to enjoy the sunshine…
Rae Spencer 