Sauvi

"I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul."
- Jean Cocteau

"There is, incidentally, no way of talking about cats that enables one to come off as a sane person."
- Dan Greenberg

"You can't help that. We're all mad here."

- The Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland

This Week's Ten Word Challenge: albino, trench, marble, assistant, Indian, What's that supposed to mean?, sound first principles, the key thing, moat, curtain

The mini challenge: under the surface, doomed, grand design, temple, aspirin

Sauvi

It started out innocently enough. We received the photos as a jpeg email attachment from a reliable source. We opened it and inside, found: a white cat in a basket with orchids.

We suspected it from the start, but didn’t want to admit… that we were lost. In point of fact, doomed to reneg on our grand design of living free from care and responsibility. She was three years old and intolerant of other cats. The key thing was that this pretty much ruled out the klatch of gaga over kittens first timers and also the hopeless pool of fanatics– with their rife colonies of eccentrics. Sauvi came with stringent prenups (which it turns out became the only bulwark between us and our natural propensities). You know, one cat just leads to another… One cat is too few… It must be genetic, a dominant gene for crazy for cats fever which runs rampant on both sides of the family.

Natalie first noticed her wandering around the apartment complex. Sauvi looked nothing like she does in the fetching CV photo. Apparently, her pristine coat was sooty and pocked with blisters. The presumptive diagnosis was scabies.

Poor thing. All porcelain. Turns out she was sunburned.

Who could have done this? Set her loose in the noon flare of scorching Florida sun?

Natalie could not keep her because of conflicts of interest with her own burgeoning feline family. So it came to pass that Sauvi was carefully dispatched to a temporary shelter in the suburbs. Mike and Rita’s safe haven for displaced and misplaced kitties. Upon arrival, she had apparently tacked her nonnegotiable conditions onto the door in the fine tradition of rebels and renegades.

There were a dozen or so boarders poised on tables, crunching science diet, ears twitching with excitement at our arrival. Loquacious and happy to regal us with their rambling narratives. In the mean time, our girl had set up an impenetrable trench behind the water heater in the commodious garage. No cat’s land.

We waited. And waited. And waited. Enfin, the curtain rose and Sauvi made her debut. A baroque masterpiece. Disheveled but with a hint of faded elegance. We crossed the moat, gave her an aspirin for good measure, and lured her gently into her soft carrier.

It was all so understated. A cat needed a home. We happened to be passing through. Under the surface, and in retrospect, we recognize it for what it was, a finely crafted plot.

Sauvi. She is all white and pink, the dear one, An intrepid explorer, interloper of roofs, terrorist of chipmunks, ruffian, diva. Don’t be fooled by her albino persona. She is fierce. Curiosity trumps trauma every time. Daily, she crosses the moat of fear with her great Indian patas. We cannot imagine life without her.

Sound first principles. What’s that supposed to mean? Family is family.

Every good magic trick needs an assistant in the wings. Natalie. Who had the good sense to make marble crack.