She’s four pounds of intention. She’s four months of curiosity and explosive energy. It took less than four minutes for us to fall in love. Only Mango, our first cat, our primary reason for a second cat, withholds judgment, although he’s been a gentleman with claws in as he schools her to her rightful and inferior place in the family hierarchy.
Good thing, because she’s a force, setting off a clatter of commotion, upsetting the very things that you thought had longevity. The other night, for instance, she toppled the Thanksgiving cactus after making an emergency landing into its center. In the process, she knocked over a stack of books, and a collection of ceramic tiles, the very ones a daughter had brought back from Mexico many years ago. In an effort to flee her own chaos, Miss Hattie scrambled over our heads, which had been at rest on their pillows. But no more. Because then came the part where she crawled under our covers and nipped my husband in the rear, causing the next eruption, which startled and woke Cat One, who then sent the kitty into flight… and that was that for 2 a.m. But we are smitten, although it’s not always easy to have such a free spirited thing as a Miss Hattie join our sedentary lives. But then again, Hattie, her namesake wasn’t easy either. We must have had that in mind when we named her, the kitty, I mean, all four pounds of rambunctious calico cat-ness of her.
Miss Hattie. A mother’s name: Hattie. Bold and brassy, for her times. Not an easy mother to please but a mother to respect. A mother to emulate, although that was hard going too. Our friend, Douglas, once commented that if he were driving a wagon train across the badlands, he’d want Hattie to ride shotgun. We’ve repeated this quote often, when trying to explain Hattie to those who didn’t know her. How she inspired fear in some. Awe in others. How she was a tender mother to her son and a stern taskmaster to her daughter.
“Take care of your brother,” she instructed me, her daughter, then with young children and my own demanding life. It took many decades for me to understand what my mother meant by the lack of daughter coddling, how it was my mother repeating her own instilled code. Didn’t she take care of her younger brother? Didn’t she pay his way through college while making her own hardscrabble way far from West Virginia to the big city?
And how she never complained, or asked for handouts. That she allowed no bend of the spine. That strength was the core of her femininity and thus the resource she could offer her daughter. This was my mother’s path and her self-determined route, perhaps cat-like in its agility, its high leaps, its curiosity, its quest for knowledge and for her impressive ability to stand her ground.
And now our calico Miss Hattie is racing up and down, under and over, her food, the big cat’s food, a silky and wriggling spirit. Already, it seems she is staring out the window, plotting and conniving her way into yet a bigger world, or so we imagine. We fear. One day. Maybe when it’s warmer. For now chasing basketballs across the TV screen is good, or snoozing beneath the couch, or atop some pillows, or finding a captive swath of sunlight. A tail to chase (hers or his), a foil ball to bat, and a crumb to punish. And there’s always the opportunity to catch the bigger cat sleeping, to pounce and provoke. Life is too full of entertainment to stay hidden, even when the grandchildren appear and are anxious to play. At such moments, there’s a tactical dart behind the Christmas tree, unreachable, until lured out by trailing ribbons and squeaky toys.
Now, when she disappears, we call her name, “Miss Hattie, Miss Hattie.” Unable to bear her absence, we call. And sometimes her name evokes memories of the other Hattie, an absence we’ve never quite gotten used to even after so many years gone. Memories surface, random and often sideways and sometimes with that same sudden cat-like pounce. Her vital presence, and perhaps a certain quality of spirit, recalled by a name said over and over: “Miss Hattie… Miss Hattie.”
Ruth Charney lives in
Greenfield with her
husband, Jay, and two cats.