Lessons in Grace

When we moved here, I wanted to have a cat. My mother said I couldn't unless it was exactly like my sister's cat. Looking back now, I can see that was another red flag that mom was losing some ground. Not wanting to clone the famous Fifi, I gave up on cats for the duration, but still there remained a longing in  my heart for the cuddly companionship of a cat. I'd had cats all my life, and I knew the comfort a furry little body could give, the delight I had felt when such an independent creature chose to be interested in me, the almost parental feelings that come from waking in the morning to see that little face inches from my own on my pillow.

This house is on a large lot, larger than almost all of the other houses in the neighborhood. The house, however, is fairly small for a two story. When I was a child, my parents gardened. Vegetables mostly. It was not long after WWII, and my parents weren't wealthy. Food was a big priority, so we gardened vegetables and fruit, and then we canned everything for the coming winter. When my dad died almost thirty years ago, my mother scaled back the gardening. And then, little by little until we moved here seven years ago, she let things go. Eventually she let a neighbor's son have her vegetable garden, such as it had become, in exchange for a few tomatoes and some squash and cucumbers for her table over the summer.

I took great pleasure in restoring the vegetable garden. Each year, I added one or more flower gardens filled with perennials. The yard began to take on a city park atmosphere and once I had moved my piano studio here, it became a favorite place for students and parents to walk about and play while waiting for lessons.

It also became a favorite place for the large raccoon population in this part of town to forage. We soon became aware of their destructive little habits from both our neighbors and our own powers of observation. But when my next door neighbor mentioned shooting them as a solution, I decided to intervene on the masked marauders' behalf. I began to feed them.

Every night now for years, outside the kitchen door on the large side porch we place a cake pan filled with dry cat food, table scraps, stale bread, and sometimes peanuts. And they come. They come down the wrought iron railings from the kitchen roof. They come up the steps. They come in groups. They come with their babies. They eat. They wash their food in a water dish. They make an awful mess. And they are the closest thing to a pet I have had.

A few years ago, two very fat possums joined the happy fray. I have taken photos of our dinner guests. I have even been a few feet away from them out on the porch. But they have never been so tame as to let me pet them or hold them. I'm afraid I became a bit fixated on raccoons for a while. I followed several raccoon blogs with passion. I spent months on Ebay looking for the most perfectly stuffed toy raccoon, and I actually found one and bought it. But cuddling it was no different than cuddling a teddy bear, and I was left to watch them through the window or door. They were never truly mine.

Then last spring, about eight months ago, a little stray cat wandered up on the porch on a cold day. It had patches of fur missing, runny eyes, and dried feces stuck to its tail. Whatever my first instincts were, I shoved them aside in consideration of the health and well-bring of the children who came up those same steps six days a week for their piano lessons. A sick animal is a potentially dangerous animal. So I shooed it away, and it left.

But not for long. A few days later, it was back. Still sick. Still dirty. Some of my students had drawn on the concrete porch floor with sidewalk chalk, mostly pinks and blues, so when the cat rolled around on the sun-warmed porch floor, it became pink and blue. I tried to shoo it away this time, but it wouldn't go. So I brushed it off the porch with a broom. I noticed it back again later that afternoon and it had found the cat food we put out for the raccoons. I almost shooed it away from the pan, but I thought that if I could feed raccoons, and everyone knows how dirty and germy they are, I could let the sick little cat have some of the cat food, too. I just didn't want to encourage her in any way to come near the house.I moved the food and water pans down onto the driveway in front of the garage which took away the fun I had watching the raccoons play, but kept the cat at a distance, too.

The summer came and with it great gardening and sunny lazy days out on the porch. Once in a while the cat, who was filling out with regular good food, would walk across the porch giving me a wide berth and looking my way with very distrustful eyes. I knew she had not forgotten my broom. We had a mutual respect for each other's space and that was that.

Until the day in July when I was sound asleep in my chair on the porch and the cat jumped up into my lap and began to purr. I can't describe how night to day my feelings for this little creature changed. Suddenly, I wanted her. She had come to me. She was dusty from living in my vegetable garden and playing in the raspberry bushes where the baby bunnies lived, but I thought, for the very first time, how pretty she was.

Soon she came when I called her. She loved being with Gary and I. I made her a little bed out of a wooden packing crate from the garage and stapled a towel over part of the top like a little canopy. I put a soft fleece blanket inside and sprinkled catnip on it. I placed a little green catnip mouse inside. She loved it.
First thing in the morning when we came outside to eat breakfast on the porch, she was there. On the suggestion of a seven year old student, we named her Gloria. She was officially our cat. Of course, the fact that we now wanted her after not wanting her didn't seem to register with Gloria. She still had a dreaded fear of the broom, any fast motions on our part, and my husbands shoes. In short, she wasn't very trusting.

One day in August when the walnut tree leaves started falling early as they do every year, I held the kitchen door wide open for the longest time while Gloria sat on the porch observing. Then, in a moment that was a history-maker, she chose to come inside slowly, crouching more than walking and looking over the inside of the kitchen with frightened eyes. She walked through the bathroom, looked into the tub, and hurried back to the kitchen door where she cried to go out. This process was repeated many times in the next few weeks, each time, however, Gloria found more and more things to sniff out and explore, but always coming back to the door to leave.

The next time she came in, I had a bowl of water and a bowl of cat food on the floor by the refrigerator. This caught her attention. She sniffed, ate and drank nothing, but took note of another food source.  And this became the next pattern in her and our life. Until she decided to come in and eat, and then there was a new ritual. Breakfast. She sat outside the door waiting for us to come out so she could come in and eat.

Fast forward to today, a cold November afternoon. Gloria is outside, having spent the night on our bed, sleeping on my feet. It is sunny, so she may still be playing in the garden which is mostly dead, but still jungle-like enough to delight Gloria's hunting instincts. If the sun goes behind the late autumn clouds and she begins to feel the chill in the air, she will probably go into her heated cat house on the porch. Gloria now cries to wake us in the morning, and usually Gary lets her out. She spends most days coming in and out. She loves canned tuna and she runs to the cupboard where I store canned goods if her bowl is empty. She knows us very well. She knows her new home very well. She has found hiding places in closets and in cupboards. At night after my last student, I call her and she comes running through the open door and for the night she is mine to cuddle and hold.

And so, after seven years, I have a cat. I have Gloria, not a Fifi look-alike. I didn't go out to the pet store or the Humane Society to find one. She found me. She found me in spite of my first thoughts about her. She stayed with me in spite of my broom. She came to me with an offering of affection when I had kept my distance from her for whatever good reasons. And now, I am the beneficiary of that stroke of grace that gives to us what we do not deserve. And I am grateful.