Sarah

Jan­u­ary 16, 1999 —

The house was dread­fully empty after IrisCat’s death on Christ­mas Eve, 1998, but I needed a lit­tle time to mourn. Still, the talk with my friends online was not of if, but rather when, another cat would join us. Some­one sug­gested that all the cat­spir­its were out there fight­ing over who would get me next. Four other peo­ple sep­a­rately chimed in and said, no, the fight’s already set­tled, Julia’s cat is out there wait­ing for her.

From a prag­matic point of view, I thought that the long Mar­tin Luther King week­end would be a good time to bring another cat into the house­hold. We would have a cou­ple of days to get acquainted and set­tle down together. I knew, sort of, who I was look­ing for — a fairly young adult cat, not a kit­ten, and one from one of the local adop­tion agen­cies or shel­ters. I also was sure that I’d know the right cat when I saw him/her. Our local Pets­mart stores make their facil­i­ties avail­able to area res­cue groups, so I knew I’d start there.

Fri­day night’s visit to Ken­ne­saw yielded some nice cats, but not My Cat. Like­wise our first two stops on Sat­ur­day were fruit­less. It was get­ting late in the day when we stopped at the Alpharetta Pets­mart, where Good Mews Ani­mal Foun­da­tion was set up.

After fill­ing out an appli­ca­tion and being approved as a prospec­tive Cat Com­pan­ion, I went into the adop­tion room. Two cats were already check­ing out their prospec­tive new humans, so I looked around at the oth­ers. Buster, a gray Per­sian with green eyes, caught my eye imme­di­ately, even though I quickly knew he wasn’t My Cat. None of the oth­ers struck a spark, and I was about to leave in dejec­tion when I real­ized that there was another cat in the top row, over­head where I couldn’t see.

I asked “What about Sarah?” The atten­dant said oh, she’s new and a bit shy, this is her first day out for adop­tion, as he climbed the steplad­der and brought her out. A lovely medium-haired solid black cat with gold eyes peered at me from his arms.

Yes, we both said.

Sarah had orig­i­nally grown up in a house with ram­bunc­tious kids and large dogs, then had been dumped at a veterinarian’s office where she spent sev­eral months as the Office Cat. Nei­ther posi­tion suited her well, being a bit high-strung to say the least. She had just been spayed a few days before and turned over to Good Mews for adop­tion. At a year and a half old, she was ready to set­tle down into a per­ma­nent home.

The paper­work fin­ished, the cat car­rier was retrieved from the car, and Sarah­Cat came home.

If Iris was a “dumb blond” cat, Sarah is the antithe­sis. Thank the Lady that they have been very dif­fer­ent cats, so that I have not been tempted to com­pare them. They do share the same love of remote hid­ing places (well, don’t most cats?), the same dis­like of trav­el­ing, and the same abil­ity to shed all over. Sarah, at least, loves being combed and will roll around rev­el­ling in it as you try to run a comb through her fur. Sarah shares Iris’s inter­est in my weav­ing stu­dio, and fre­quently climbs up and around on the looms, even as I am work­ing. On the other hand, Sarah, not being declawed, is much more of a jumper, and can fre­quently be found atop tables and up on shelves. Before we moved in Decem­ber, 2001, her favorite perch in decent weather was in the (open) bath­room win­dow watch­ing the birds and squir­rels outside.

Unfor­tu­nately, Sarah’s dis­like of trav­el­ing was severely put to the test in Novem­ber and Decem­ber, 2001, when I sep­a­rated from my hus­band. Though she might have been bet­ter off stay­ing put until I got set­tled, I didn’t trust that she wouldn’t be neglected, or worse. So she came with me the night I walked out. We spent two nights that week, plus the fol­low­ing work­week, with my friend Elaine. It wasn’t a prob­lem for me, but Chester (Elaine’s cat) and Sarah took an instant dis­like to one another. This meant that, except for an hour or so in the evening, she was locked up in Elaine’s down­stairs bath­room (it was, after all, Chester’s house). At least she could have the bath­room win­dow there open for fresh air and entertainment.

On the week­ends, she and I drove the 45 min­utes to my par­ents’ house in Ken­ne­saw. There, she at least had a whole bed­room plus bath­room to her­self, with a mar­velous win­dow seat per­fect for a cat perch. She proved no fonder of my par­ents’ cat Spook than she had of Chester, though Spook, with her usual lofty dis­dain, sim­ply glared at Sarah as if to say“what’s your prob­lem, bitch?” every­time Sarah caught sight of her and hissed.

Finally, after almost two weeks of lay­ing our weary heads wher­ever we could find a room, we moved into our new, albeit tem­po­rary, home. This place has lots of neat nooks and cran­nies for Sarah to explore. The rail­ing between din­ing and liv­ing room has per­fectly cat-sized spac­ing so that she can come and go between rooms as she pleases; the upstairs rail­ing over­look­ing the liv­ing room allows her to super­vise the goings-on from on high. Her cat stand has found a home in the lit­tle nook upstairs by the stair­well, where she has the per­fect view out the win­dow into the trees. From these van­tage points she can say she is truly the queen of all she surveys!

Update: April, 2005

Two years ago Sarah and I moved into our very own place, a condo with an enclosed patio to pro­vide a safe out­door haven for us. From there, she super­vises our lives and the neigh­bor­hood. She addi­tion­ally served as my “barom­e­ter” as I started dat­ing again — no man that couldn’t pass the “Sarah Test” was going to become a part of our lives! One man did, indeed, pass, and she has since become a real “Daddy’s cat.”