The Kitten Who Became A Girl

Arianna was born on a hot afternoon in September, two days before her mother’s birthday. We knew her gender and her name before her arrival. The first time I saw her I noticed the magnificent huge eyes, long lashes, and sculpted brows. Arianna had fur, lots of soft fur covering her perfect little form. She didn’t cry like most babies, but she did make an occasional “meow” sound.

When petted as a baby, Arianna would make a sound that sounded something like “coo- coo-coo,” or actually maybe more like a purr. She loved being stroked and I could listen to that wonderful sound for hours. Still, she didn’t cry. If she was hungry, she meowed softly. When Arianna began to crawl, she did it with a grace like I have never seen. She moved like a cat, silent as a Ninja! Arianna seemed to love quietly approaching someone and listening to their gasps of “where did she come from?”

Sadly, all that beautiful soft fur fell off when she was about a year old. When she was one, Arianna was walking as well as crawling. Everyone was amazed because she walked on her toes, always. It was just as quiet as her crawling. She would slip around corners and into small places where she would curl up and catnap. She was self possessed for a baby and could entertain herself for hours just playing with a jingle toy or a ball of yarn.

When she was four, she was at our house during a party. My husband found her sitting on the stairs alone, not moving and looking straight ahead. “What are you doing, Arianna?” he asked her. She looked at him somewhat disdainfully and replied, “I’m breathing, Alex.” She just looked at him with her enormous brown eyes and continued “breathing.”

Arianna just turned thirteen. If she resembles anyone, it’s probably Audrey Hepburn. She’s elegant and quiet, except when she’s playful and noisy! Arianna is a talented dancer and moves with the grace of a young feline; she also has a wonderful singing voice. Sometimes when she doesn’t know I’m watching her, she sits in front of the mirror and brushes her long dark brown lustrous hair and just purrs. She’s fascinating, mysterious, and beautiful. My Navajo husband, Alex, has a relative who was an eagle; I have a grand-daughter who is used to be a cat.

Our Pretty Cookie

We got our cat Smokey, a black dude with an attitude, a torn ear, and saber toothed tiger fangs in 1997. He was kept primarily as an indoor cat for a very long time. I used to hear him carrying on, vocalizing at least once a day when a big peaches and cream female cat would appear in our yard, on the other side of our window.

Smoke would occasionally slip out of doors and disappear for varying periods of time and God knows where he went or what he did. I would wander the streets at 2 AM looking for him and fear the worst. He had been run over; he had been catnapped and was now going to be used for witchcraft type sacrifices; he was caught by the Animal Police and sent to the pound. By 3 AM, Smokey would be yowling in the space outside our bedroom, annoyed as hell that he had no way back in his home.

The big female cat appeared outside our window about the same time every day. She was a beautiful creature, but so dirty and fearful. I started taking her a bowl of kibble and some water out right before I expected her. I named her Cookie. She ate and drank with gusto every day, while Smokey watched her with equal measures of love and lust. She was something, that Cookie!

We continued this pattern for about a year. One time, during a storm, I tricked her to coming into the garage where I had placed her food, and closed her in. She screamed like she was dying and I didn't have the heart to keep her there. (My idea had been to trap her, take her and get her neutered, and maybe, just maybe make her our cat.) Cookie was not going to be a house cat. I had to let her be free, a beautiful blond warrior princess.

One day she showed up with a bloody eye. Oh I hated to see her hurt! Smokey looked worried as well. She ate her food and rubbed herself languorously against the glass door next to our kitchen. Smoke would yowl and rub himself along that window in a mirror of her movements.

Smokey became more adept at running out of the house when I would open the garage door, or go out after the mail. He would disappear into the cellar at our neighbors house every evening. Cookie began to arrive less frequently for food. Then she stopped coming at all. My next door neighbor found Cookie dead in his cellar and called me. He knew Cookie had been close to Smoke for years. I think she was sick for a long time, and Smokey went to be with her in that cellar until she died. Sad and beautiful, their love affair was over.