The Story of Charlie

 

Charlie at four weeks,
when he was rescued

After years of both Christian and me saying, “No more cats,” a kitten lives in the family room in the main house. Jordan was visiting at a neighbor’s lake house, and the two of them found an apparently feral kitten, probably about four weeks old. Far too young to survive on its own. They brought it inside, gave it milk, and decided to co-parent. There was no sign of the momma, though in later days they did see other kittens. None were as lucky as Charlie to be adopted.

Since Christian really didn’t want a cat and since they already had Cricket, the remaining Cavalier Spaniel, the kitten went to live with the neighbors. Jordan made regular trips to feed, play, and love. When the kitten was about ten weeks old, the neighbors decided it was time for it to be an outdoor cat. Even I, not particularly a cat lover, know that the survival statistics for outdoor cats are pretty grim: an average life span of three years as opposed to fifteen or more for an indoor cat. At ten weeks, the poor thing was doomed, and Jordan of course couldn’t stand that. I’ll never know what she said to Christian, but the kitten, still unnamed, came to live in our compound.

The first order of business was to find the kitten a name. Charlie seemed to fit, for whatever reason. For now, he periodically gets the run of the house but for the most part is confined to the family room, an add-on that sprawls across the back of the house. Jordan spends time loving on him, playing with him, and so on. Jacob, who has a perfectly good bed in his adjacent bedroom, chooses to sleep on the wrap-around couch in the family room—and then complains the kitten wakes him up. When he’s past kitten stage, Charlie will have the run of the house.

A bit of an explanation here: Jordan has always loved kittens. Me, not so much, though I had one cat, Wynona Judley (commonly known as Wywy) that I adored. Christian says he had cats growing up, but I think his first real experience came with the cat Jordan bought ($5 at a pet store) when she was in middle school. Pardon my French but Graffiti was the cat from hell. She peed everywhere, in obvious defiance—sometimes right in front of you. I spent hundreds of dollars reupholstering furniture and even then our house smelled of cat pee. When I found myself living alone with Graffiti and Wywy I banished Grafitti to the guest house, which was empty, so she lived alone; Jordan came to visit, and I made her pay a monthly fee for the a/c to keep the cat cool (give me credit: I was trying to teach responsibility). I was also honestly at the end of my cat rope. Graffiti ended her long life living in the bathroom in Jordan and Christian’s first apartment. She died one night where she was happiest: sleeping on the floor next to Jordan. The details of what ensued after her death are hilarious, a story for another time. But that background is why I was not enthusiastic about a kitten, and I was amazed that Christian acquiesced as easily as he did. I think that boy really loves my daughter.

Charlie has been once to the cottage, a complicated maneuver in which Christian kept Sophie in the house. Sophie has demonstrated, in various veterinary trips, that she hates cats, and I see no reason to bring him out here again. Sophie knows where he is, and it bugs her. Jordan has put paper across the lower panels of the windows in the back door, but that’s an exercise in futility. The vet tells us Sophie is blind, so it’s not vision that tells her a cat is in there. It’s instinct, hearing, and smell. Some days I can see Charlie from my desk, sitting in the window, surveying that world he cannot be part of. Once I saw him stalking Sophie.

Charlie at three months

I suspect Charlie will outlast me as a resident of the Alter/Burton compound. And that’s okay with me. I wish him no harm. I’m just not intrigued. But I have to redeem myself with the many cat lovers among my friends: I absolutely adored Wywy, the cat Jamie found as a kitten abandoned on a roadside in Minnesota (do not ask what he was doing there). For the first year of his life, we thought he was female; after the vet corrected us (another hilarious story), Wywy lived a life of gender confusion. Today’s aggressive Christians would have had a field day had they known of his transition. We like to believe Wywy was part Maine Coon—he was big, with a fluffy gray coat and a wonderful full tail. But beyond that he was sweet and affectionate, and I loved him dearly. Wywy was helped over the Rainbow Bridge at the age of nineteen, when he was truly miserable and trying to sneak off to the back of a closet to die. He holds a special place in my heart yet.

Wywy on my desk
helping me work

I am ambivalent about Charlie. I’ll never feel about him the way I did about Wywy, but Charlie and I haven’t crossed paths much and probably won’t. Meantime he makes Jordan happy. She loves him. Who am I to quibble. You know what? He’s kind of cute when he stares out the window. I think he’s looking straight at me and trying to win me over.