a second chance
a cat found us
Hello, World.
It’s been a while, but here I am.
Originally, this post was going to be about being gaslighted by my uncle, the priest, but every time I focus on that, my mental health screeches like an old rusty hinge, so let’s talk about something more hopeful instead.
Last November, for example, my sister1 and I headed into the orchard after lunch to plant some onion seeds.
“We’ve got to buy some garlic next time we go to the farmers’ market,” she told me on our way. I looked at her, unconvinced, wondering if there was any more space left in the orchard for anything at all.
I remember it was a crisp, sunny afternoon. The air brushed the last flowers of the year and the sycamore leaves. The clear blue sky looked unconcerned. It was the kind of normal day that you wouldn’t expect anything out of the ordinary to happen. However, deceptive as appearances can be…
Meow.
My sister straightened up.
“What now?” I asked her as I pressed a small onion bulb into the soil.
“Did I just hear a cat or am I starting to lose my marbles?” she said.
Meeeow.
I looked up at her. I had also heard it.
“—but where is it coming from?” I said, straightening up too.
“I don’t know, but it must be close.”
We looked around, trying to find the source of the meowing—and there it was, sitting on the pumpkin patch next door: a small, shabby cat with a classic tuxedo look, mostly black with white muzzle, bib and paws.
Meeeow, meeeeow.
The cat began meowing insistently when we made eye contact with it.
It was scared to come closer at first, but we could tell it needed something from us as it hesitated.
In the end, the cat allowed us to pet it, even hold it. It brushed its head against our hands in a way that gave me the impression it was craving for something. We were astonished, as that’s not normal feral-cat behaviour.
“What is it you want?” I asked softly.
I caressed its back, and I could feel the bones so hard against its fur that I quickly understood. It was starving.
The cat ate a 150g can of chicken pate in one go as we finished planting all the onion bulbs. Then it gulped a fine amount of fresh water before coming to brush its tail against our ankles in a way—I guess—of acknowledgement.
It purred and pressed its little head into our hands every time we caressed it.
The cat spent the whole time with us, and when we were done, it followed us all the way back to the door.
We weren’t sure whether the cat would stay or leave as soon as it had been properly fed, so I poured some dry dog food into a bowl (don’t judge me, that’s all we had), as well as some fresh water into a plastic container. The cat ate some more, and we left the garage door open—thinking it would go back where it belonged on its own.
You’re right to think the cat was still there the next morning.
I went to the garage early in the morning, and I found the cat sitting on a cardboard box. I touched its head, and it purred affectionately. I refilled both bowls of food and water.
Our neighbour found her in her orchard later that afternoon, sunbathing against the strawberry bushes. After a quick, superficial examination, she confirmed the cat was a female.
“She is so adorable, who’s this cat from?” she asked us.
We had so many questions. Where did she come from? What happened to her? How old was she? Was she pregnant? (for goodness’ sake, let it not be so)
We tried to guess her age. She had white teeth except for a little imperceptible amount of tartar in her upper fangs, which was normal after starving for a long period of time. Her eyes weren’t clouded, but she had some white hairs here and there in her black fur. One of her whiskers was torn and stained with dried blood, and on that side, a wound where some fur was missing—probably from a recent cat-fight. I guessed she tried to steal some food and got attacked by the stray cat family being fed by a woman who lives nearby.
The cat’s sociable behaviour made it clear from the beginning that she was a family cat.
We had many theories. The most sugarcoated one was that her old owner had died, and she had escaped in an attempt to get some food.
We didn’t want her to lie down on a cardboard box the whole day, so I made an improvised bed with a wicker basket, an old cushion and a tablecloth we never used, and placed it inside the garage. Every time I went to check up on her, the cat was still lying on the same cardboard box. It reminded me of my chihuahua, ignoring every single toy I bought for her.
To my not-so-pleasant surprise, the cat was missing the next morning. It had to happen—I said to myself—she’s probably on her way home. There was still some food in the bowl, but I left it there untouched, just in case. My sister had the feeling that this would happen. I thought I wanted it to happen. Right? We had two dogs. We couldn’t keep her. Still, I had to admit to myself that I liked seeing her first thing in the morning.
I checked the garage and any possible hiding place for a cat in our surroundings at least five times that morning, but she was nowhere to be seen.
The day went on as usual, and we thought she had been gone for real. I was sad, to be honest.
That same afternoon, however, we went for a last check on the orchard, when we saw the cat lying comfortably on her bed, as if she had been there the whole time. I was delighted to see her back.
After that, we agreed that the cat was probably staying longer than expected, so we took our bikes and rode to the nearest supermarket to buy her some real cat food.
I can tell you that she preferred it way more than the dog food.
A couple of days passed, and we were at a point where we had to make a decision because the weather was changing. Wind and rain were expected on the following days, and storms could be quite wild here—the kind of “wild” that the man who tilled us the land in April, one morning, found his garage roofless after leaving the door open during a storm. It was my sister who reminded me of this story. We couldn’t leave the garage open for the cat, and we didn’t want to lock her in there either, so the next step was obvious.
“We could place her upstairs, in the room where the sunlight hits in the morning. She will be warmer there,” suggested my sister. I agreed.
We brought her inside the kitchen. The cat could sniff and hear the dogs’ disapproval coming from their kennel, where we had locked them previously as a safety measure.
I held her all the way up to her new temporary room. We placed a chair next to the window, in case she was one of those curious cats who love peering outside. Also, her bowls of food and fresh water, and a couple of toys: a small rubber ball and a tiny, squashy version of Pluto (Mickey Mouse’s pet). We didn’t have a cat litter box yet, so we expected to clean the mess at any moment of the day.
At 5 am she woke me up.
Meow.
I walked half asleep, dragging my slippers all the way to her room, to find her wide awake, sitting on her chair. Meow. There was still some food and water in her bowls. Meow. What did this “meow” mean now?
I found it out when I brought her down to the living room: Toilet.
In the morning, I made another improvised thing for the cat: a litter box. I can turn my hand to anything, as you can see. I used the plastic base of an unused cage from my neighbour’s great-granddaughter's already departed hamster. I poured some soil from the orchard into it and placed her new litter box in her room. The cat peed there without us having to teach her. I was so proud of her.
My sister and I had a conversation about that afterwards. If the cat knew what the litter box was for, we could really assume that she had spent part of her life in a house. She used her new toilet twice a day, always at the same time of day. She couldn’t be that young either; she had a couple of white hairs scattered in her black fur, and she slept a lot.
It took her just one and a half days to join us in the living room, and one night to sleep in my bed (even with my sister’s dog in it). I knew she was fed up with being alone and wanted to be part of a flock—our flock.
The funny story is, I started making origami cat figures two weeks before all this happened, and my sister wouldn’t stop getting cat videos popping up all the time on her ig feed. Is this really the law of attraction at work? Or is there a superior intelligence that inspired us into a cat-receptive mode because it was meant to be?
Why she decided it was right and safe to show up in our orchard that day will remain a mystery.
She’s actually my best friend, though she feels more like an older sister ever since we started living together.