My Little Muse
By Jessica Shepherd
December darkness has wrapped around us with a cold grip. Single digits and not enough snow to make it worth going outside for anything beyond starting the car or bringing in more firewood. I count the days until Solstice (nine) when we begin to gain back the light I so long for. To pass the days until sunlight and snow make their reappearance, I have a charming new excuse to curl up with a book or take a nap.
We have a new cat, you see. A small, plump tuxedo female. Her black and white coat is short and thick, and she purrs when I run my hand down her back and up her tail, but she doesn’t like me to pick her up. She does like to sit in the window overlooking the yard, making guttural sounds at the squirrels and birds, desperate on these short days to make use of the bird feeder. And she has made herself the boss of the dogs so that they give her a wide berth when she sashays up the stairs, jumps on the bed (which used to be their special place), and joins me for a cuddle.
We acquired Musette (which means little bagpipes in French) by way of our friend David, who lives in Anchorage. He had been caring for her since his ex-wife entered a memory care facility after a stroke. The plan was for a short-term stay (he’s not a cat person), but after 18 months, it became clear that the cat wasn’t going to return to her owner, and Hal, in town for a work trip, had a moment of weakness. He called me to see if we might take the cat. I didn’t hesitate. “Of course!”
I grew up with cats and with a grandmother who had a soft spot for strays. We always had one or two felines twining around our ankles and kneading our laps as we read or watched Gunsmoke. I continued with cats as an adult, even in college housing, and moved with them from Arizona to Alaska. My last cat, Catkin, another tuxedo but with seven toes on each front paw, abandoned us several years ago for neighbors Dave and Melisse, where she lives still, content and rightly spoiled.
In that time, there have been puppies, and ducks, and chickens, and now there are just the two dogs, who were quite content to live in a cat-free home. Imagine Arlie’s surprise when he was chided for treeing this intruder on top of the refrigerator. Imagine trembling Tavish, wanting so much to lie down in his favorite spot next to Hal in his study, but at the risk of encountering that being who doubles in size and hisses whenever he moves in her direction.
This is a cat who will not suffer fools. Or dogs. If I was at first concerned that she would live her days upstairs under the bed, I need not have been. She goes where she pleases, when she pleases, expecting lowly canine subjects to make way, which they do, claws skittering on the floor in their haste. They still own the couch and dog beds. And so far, she hasn’t deigned to put her dainty muzzle in their sloppy food bowl, but there’s time yet.
Cats are, of course, keenly aware of human emotions. They show great compassion and affection to the humans they favor, and great contempt for those they do not. Musette has taken to me, head butting me with lavish affection, and fitting herself into the curve of my body with a deeply contented purr. She follows me from room to room in our small cabin, making her presence known with meows befitting her name when she wants a morsel of food or just some companionship.
With Hal, the human who brought her home and to whom she owes a debt of gratitude, not so much. He’s a dog person, through and through, and cats sense that. She might rub his leg, or sit in his lap for a moment of appreciation, but it’s me she’s got at her beck and call, and we’re both delighted with that arrangement. I didn’t know I needed a cat in my life until I held this one in my arms.
Musette gives me every excuse to eschew the news coming out of Washington, and every reason to settle into my favorite chair to read, what else, one of the books in The Dali Lama’s Cat series by David Michie. In this, she’s giving me something invaluable in return for a full bowl of kibble and a scoop of tuna. She’s giving me the gift of present moment awareness by drawing me into her catdome, where no other way of life exists.