Confessions of a Converted Cat Lady's Daughter

Last December when we took Flannery in, I often thought of my mom, who had passed away about eighteen months earlier. I missed her every day and I liked the idea that Flannery might be my "Perry," the cat who stole my mother's heart when she was about my age.

I have vague memories of the only cat we had as a family pet early in my childhood. Her name was Jenny and we gave her to a German farmer when we left Germany to come back to the states.

Mom didn't like cats much, because stray cats killed birds and pooped in her flower beds. The last dog my parents had was a Dalmatian named Molly who they got when I was in junior high. She was so aggressive toward any cat that got into the fenced backyard they were afraid someday she might kill one, but fortunately she never did.

Sometime after Molly died, a stray cat started coming into the backyard and Mom kept shooing him away with her broom. He was very persistent, though and one day she turned the water hose on him. She was immediately guilt-stricken because he looked so "pitiful," as she told it, and for the first time she realized how skinny he was. Perry's life turned around that day. Mom named him Periwinkle because he liked to nap in the sun in the periwinkles in the flower bed.

Mom with Perry in 1991

Perry wasn't skinny for long. Every morning he started his day with a can of Sheba Premium cat food, his favorite. Perry liked to attack and bite people's feet, but Mom always forgave him, because she was sure that someone in his past must have abused him by kicking him.

One day he got out and when they found him he had been shot with a pellet gun. He recovered nicely, but mom never felt the same about her next door neighbor. He denied it, but Mom always suspected him since she knew he had shot stray cats before.

 Like Flannery, Perry had a fondness for drinking water from the toilet bowl and one day he fell in. From that day on in my parents' guest bathroom there hung an attractive framed picture of Perry with this little rhyme printed underneath:

We have a cat who cannot swim,
Nor can he balance on the rim,
So please make sure the lid is down,
We do not want our cat to drown. 

 After Flannery died last December, memories of her and of Mom with Perry left me feeling that I needed a cat in my life, a needy cat who might not have a home otherwise. I didn't know to what extent I was still allergic to cats, but I started making the rounds of the shelters, holding and petting cats, putting my nose close to their fur and inhaling. And I made an appointment to have allergy tests again.