Let me Call You Sweetheart

She came because I wished for her; I still believe that. I wished for her with all my might. I prayed for her, and hoped for her; I asked God for a friend and he sent her to me.

She appeared out of nowhere one summer day. I came around the corner of the house and there she was, curled up on the front porch like she owned the property: a cat. As far as appearances go, she was nondescript. She was just a gray tabby, a little on the runty side. Her fur was dull with hunger, and when she moved, I could see her ribs. But she was mine. She was for me; I knew it down in the deepest part of my very bones. She was for me, and I was for her. We were for each other.

I screeched to a halt when I first spotted her. She was like some kind of angel, too good to be true. I was terrified I’d scare her away. She slowly blinked open her green-yellow eyes and looked straight at me. She closed them again; she was not afraid. She made no move to leave. I approached her with deference and caution, holding out my hand:

“Kitty, kitty, kitty?”

My voice was a whisper full of hope. There was so much hope in me right then, I could’ve lifted off the ground and gone sailing through the air. She opened her eyes again and sniffed my fingers. I held perfectly still. Inside I was begging for this to be real: Please, please, please, please! Inside, I was squirming and hopping with nerves. Outwardly, though, I was so calm and careful that I may never in my life be able to match the level of self-control I was showing. And then she licked me.

Maybe I had Cheetos on my fingers. Maybe I still smelled like lunch. I don’t remember. All I know is that she licked me, rasping her little sandpapery tongue over my skin. She licked my fingers; she licked my palm. She stood up and butted her head under my hand: Are you going to pet me, or not? As I scratched between her ears, I thought I would weep with joy. Then I saw how thin she was, how prominent her ribcage through her short fur. Her belly was a high, tight lump that meant kittens, but I didn’t know that at the time, and it wouldn’t have mattered to me anyway. When I looked at that cat, I didn’t see a rangy, pesky stray who would soon produce more rangy, pesky strays, as some others might have. I saw an absolute miracle: a beautiful little miracle who happened to be quite hungry.

I set out to remedy this immediately. As luck would have it my mother was in absentia at that precise moment (memory fails to tell me where), and I was able to clatter into the house without reserve. “Stay right there!” I said over my shoulder as the storm door came to behind me. I hurried, darting my eyes around the kitchen for something a cat would like to eat. I opened the fridge and found a pot of chili sitting covered on the shelf. Fetching a small plastic margarine bowl from the cabinet, I peeled back the aluminum foil and picked out several chunks of cold hamburger. Then I dashed back outside and set the bowl at the little cat’s feet.

After a cautionary sniff, she began to eat in fast, thankful gulps. I watched as she made the meat disappear without a trace and then licked the tomato juice from the bottom of the bowl. When she looked to me for more I brought it, this time with a small bowl of water as well. I spilled most of the water on my way to present it to her, but there was enough left for her to slake her thirst. She finished her meal and began to wash herself primly, as if suddenly realizing she had not been much of a lady in her haste to eat.

 After hiding both bowls in the tall grass next to the house (evidence of illegal chili-thieving to be disposed of later), I crawled up onto the porch and stretched out on my belly. Chin in hands, I watched the cat. She watched me back. We silently regarded one another over six inches of rough concrete. I telegraphed thoughts across the space: I promise to feed you. I promise to play with you. I promise to always love you, if only you’ll stay. Please stay. I need you. And the little gray cat stayed, because she needed me, too.

I named her Sweetheart. Though technically she was thought of as the entire family’s cat, she knew herself as wholly mine. We were thick as thieves. She kept me company in the darkness of the basement, content to lie curled in my lap for hours at a time. She purred at a hundred-thousand decibels and licked my hands and face like a puppy. If I ventured outside alone to play or to go to the Daffodil House, she followed right beside me. When school came into session she led the foray down the hill to the bus stop each morning and was waiting there every afternoon when I returned, fastidiously smoothing her fur or washing her face. With the utmost in longsuffering patience, she let me fasten her into frilly doll dresses and push her around the yard in a toy carriage. She brought me gifts of the hunt: beheaded squirrels, gutted moles, poor, mutilated starlings and robins. I’d find them at the bottom of the basement stairs with macabre regularity. That I never wanted to eat them rather offended her feline sensibilities. She’d glare at me accusingly when I rejected her bloody little presents, as if to say: This is a perfectly good dead thing; I can’t believe you aren’t going to at least play with it a little. Then she’d pick it up and trot off somewhere to eat it herself.

I knew that she hunted. We fed her dry food, but it was cheap, sawdust-like stuff. She much preferred a nice, juicy lizard or a mouse, or even, on occasion, an exceptionally large grasshopper. She got so good at stalking and dispatching prey that it was a wonder she had ever been starving: she should have been nice and sleek and entirely feral. But then, if that had been the case, we two would never have found one another.

I let her hunt as long as I didn’t have to watch her kill. Of course I knew about the food chain: one creature eats another creature eats another creature; the cycle of life and death. I knew that the hamburger on my plate had once been a cow, that the venison in my stew had once been a deer, etcetera. As a country kid, I had seen plenty of dead things by the time Sweetie came along sometime around my ninth summer, but I didn’t like to watch them die, and I didn’t like to watch them be gnawed on and disemboweled. Of course, once or twice I had to kill something myself out of mercy: if my little huntress brought me something that was still twitching, I put it out of its misery with a shovel. But death and dismemberment turned my stomach, so I made her keep it out of sight. I didn’t let her stalk anything in front of me; I’d chase the target off with a shout. If I caught her playing with her food – tossing and catching it, or letting it run and then recapturing it – I made her pick it up and take it somewhere else. This kind of discretion became a learned behavior after a while: she’d leave me and pad off into the brush, and then come back a little while later licking her whiskers and resume her guarding or playing or on-my-lap napping without first showing off a grizzled little corpse or a twisted bird’s foot minus its owner. But she never stopped leaving me “gifts.”

In due time, Sweetheart gave birth to two tiny kittens: a double of herself my mother called Olivia, and a little solid-gray tomcat named Oliver. I was fascinated with them because, well, they were kittens and I was a little girl, but they never took to me like Sweetheart did. Olivia was devoted to my mother, and Oliver was your typical cat’s cat, pretty much devoted entirely to himself. Every so often they’d let me pet them or spend a few minutes on my lap, but I was just another standard human to them: as far as they were concerned, there was absolutely nothing remarkable about me. It was Sweetie who took care of me. She was my four-legged shadow, my confidante, my protector. I didn’t have to be afraid of basement beasts anymore: Sweetie would take care of them. I had someone to talk to, someone to sing to – every song is more comforting when you sing it to your best friend. I split my lunches with her, too. She loved peanut butter, barbecue potato chips, Cheez Whiz, and Andy Capp’s Hot Fries. We shared and shared alike: I took a chip and gave Sweetie a chip; I tore off the crust of my sandwiches and left plenty of peanut butter between for her. She wasn’t allowed upstairs, but sometimes at night I’d leave the basement door ajar and she’d slip through and join me in bed, curling up against my ribcage under the covers. When the sky began to lighten outside the window she’d take her leave, quietly going back the way she had come. The early cat gets the bird.