Part I – Sir Fopling Flutter

Beauty and the Beast

A year and two weeks had passed since I lost Taffy when I decided to attend a weekend cat show held at a Gold Coast hotel. It was a mild, overcast early February morning but I was excited.

As I walked through the aisles, glancing at each cat, I had no distinct desire to purchase just yet. My heart was still set on finding a brownish, longhaired cat as much like Taffy as possible. After an hour, I found myself disappointed since I would have to wait a few more months for future litters of Maine Coons and Norwegian Forest cats–cats which most resembled her. As I turned to head out the door, however, I happened to notice three white kittens playing in a cage. “What breed are they,” I asked a pretty, petite redhead. “Shaded silver Persians,” she replied. “The Fancy Feast cat.”

They’re out of your budget, I thought to myself. Nonetheless, I decided to ask — just out of curiosity. I was surprised that the kittens were not as outrageously expensive as I anticipated. Since the lively female was already taken, I settled on the next most energetic, a male. I decided to pick him up the next day so I could clean my apartment before his arrival and make it 100% kitten-ready. I needed to buy cat food too.

Needless to say, I felt excited to have a cat again — even if this 6-month-old boy wasn’t what I had initially planned at all. Except for his fluffy coat, he didn’t look like Taffy one bit. But wasn’t he just like the cats I admired when I was little — and the numerous stuffed cats I had growing up, I asked myself. Memories of that tantrum I threw at a department store flashed before me. I was four then, and desperately wanted a stuffed white longhaired toy cat with green eyes. (Even years later, I marveled at how life-like it looked.) My mother refused to get it for me, but an uncle who was staying at our apartment felt sorry for me and bought it. I carried it everywhere in our Bronx apartment. Indeed, for many years, I longed for a white Persian.

And now nearly 25 years later, I was finally getting a real, live version of my childhood dream cat.

The next morning, I picked up Taffy’s old carrier in the storage area of my building where I had placed it since the sight of it had saddened me after her death. Hailing a cab and arriving at the show seemed to take an eternity. And to this day, I still remember how the breeder had tears in her eyes as her mother snapped pictures of her with the three 6-month old kittens: they were now all going to three separate owners. Saying good-byes to kittens can be sad — even for experienced breeders.

Not unlike the trip to the hotel, getting back to the condo seemed to take forever too. But imagine my disappointment when the kitten — whom I named after a character from a Restoration play, George Etherege’s Man of Mode — scurried into the folds of a Chinese screen, positively frightened.

Not only that, but as I approached him with a treat, he ran and hid under the radiator. When I managed to get him out, replacing him in the carrier, my heart broke as I noticed how he refused to look at me; whenever I approached the carrier, he would turn away. Nor was he interested in food. I felt frustrated. Why couldn’t he be like my sassy Taffy, playful upon arrival? And ready to be loved?

However, I was struck by the fact that when I turned on the tv, he meowed. It wasn’t until a month or so later that I learned from the breeder that Flutter and his siblings would watch the television together, trying to catch the football players on the screen. Perhaps he thought momentarily that he was back home? Was he missing his brother and sister?

It wasn’t until Wednesday that I was able to take him to the vet for his shots. But in the meantime, I continued to feel sorely disappointed, more than a little hurt that he was so different from Taffy who adjusted so quickly. My only relief was that he was eating and using his litter in the carrier. Yet how much longer could I keep him there?

Then a miracle took place. Suddenly, as I was cooking lamb, he meowed. I approached him gently in his carrier and gave him a tiny piece which he devoured, looking up to me with his great big eyes as if begging for more. I opened a can of cat food , unlatched his carrier door quickly, placing a tiny saucer with food within which he also ate unhesitatingly.

But the real moment of togetherness did not take place until after I had finished my meal. I decided to open the door to his carrier. Maybe he would trust me now? His first impulse was to scurry away but he turned and looked at me as he headed to the radiator. I decided to toss a ball to him. To my surprise, he retrieved the ball and laid it at my feet. So we continued to play fetch until he stopped, tired and panting. But after a brief pause, he brought the ball to me, wanting to play again.

That night, he began to sleep by the piano even as I left his carrier door open. Sometime in the early morning, he decided to sleep by my side.

Over the course of the next few weeks, he had established a pattern of sorts. After eating in the morning, he would hide behind the living room sofa, not emerging until 6 pm when I started preparing dinner. He would remain up with me, playing, sleeping, and eating again until I went to bed, when he would resume his spot by the piano — and eventually climb to the top, resting on a pile of scores.

By early morning, he would return to my side, ready for breakfast before hiding behind the sofa until sunset. I joked that I should have named this little white kitten Casper the Ghost since he only appeared at night.

It wasn’t until a former classmate from graduate school visited me that he stopped hiding behind the sofa. With painstaking patience, she crouched by the sofa for nearly an hour, eventually coaxing him out. Interestingly, he never hid again.

But new problems arose not long after this: I discovered I was allergic to him as I sneezed and felt unable to breathe. Then I developed hives, necessitating a visit to the local ER because my eyes were practically swollen shut while my entire body was itching and burning. Suddenly I wondered if I had to give him up. I called the breeder to ask if I could return him because of my allergies — and to my surprise, she said yes.

Feeling relieved, I went to the living room sofa and turned on the radio. To my surprise–again, Flutter ran to me and leaped onto my lap. He looked into my eyes and purred. I sat and cried. How could I relinquish him after taking so long to cultivate our relationship? It took nearly four days for him to warm up to me and another few weeks to fully make himself at home.

Fortuitously, some minutes later, the radio began playing the Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson ballad, “Beauty and the Beast.” As he sat in my lap, I didn’t want to get up to change the station — so it was the first time I had listened to this song in its entirety. After I had grown to love this very shy, delicate, affectionate boy, it struck me that Flutter was my Beauty, and I the Beast. We had barely been friends, and he had unexpectedly bent that Wednesday night after the trip to the vet’s. It was in many ways bittersweet and more than a little strange since neither of us seemed prepared. And so for years and decades later, I have always associated this song with him–as it became “our song.”

Flutter was indeed a most spectacular beauty. Whenever I attended cat shows, I would always return home pleased, thinking I had the most handsome cat in the world. He was my very own Fancy Feast cat. And in turn, I felt a little more glamorous too. Although I had always been attuned to style, this was perhaps the one point in my life when I came closest to aspiring to look like something out of the pages of Town and Country. (So yes, cats can affect our identity!)

But not least of Flutter’s charms was his goofy streak despite his otherwise regal appearance. He was in fact a Garfield of sorts who enjoyed human food: he not only enjoyed lamb which I mentioned earlier, but pizza, ice cream, and yogurt. I discovered his taste for the latter when I had gotten up to the kitchen when he jumped on my chair, and began to lick my yogurt.

Equally droll was his habit of sitting on his rear with his feet extended outwards, as if imitating or longing to be a human. And perhaps even more bizarre was his sideways hop.

But perhaps most endearing was his way of lying on his back and allowing me to pat his belly — something none of my other cats would allow. And so I would refer to him as my Bellyboy.

For the next two years, he became my sole source of comfort during some of my most difficult years as I applied to graduate schools while temping nearby. Disappointments were only barely allayed as I had come to enjoy our nightly routine when he finally abandoned his nightly perch on the piano, curling up on my duvet as I fell asleep. I might not have anything in my life, but at least I had this loving boy. And whenever I put my head under the covers, he would meow plaintively as if to ask “where are you?” I would stroke him to reassure him that I was still here.

After our second year together, I developed such an attachment to him such that I recall the day I took him to the vet to board him since I would be visiting a friend in Boston for two weeks. As the evening drew on, everything felt strangely quiet. I should be happy and excited to see a then best friend whom I hadn’t hung out with in a long while, right?

It struck me that I was already missing Flutter — and much to my own surprise and involuntary shame, tears began to fall. (Thank God, I lived alone and no one had to witness this fulsome sentimentality, I thought!) I had become accustomed to playing with him and feeding him in the evenings. And now it felt oddly quiet, not hearing his jingling toys, or his delicate mews and purrs when he sat by my side. Was I feeling something akin to grief–even though I was mostly assured that I would see him again? (I tried hard not to think of flukes like an accidental fire or break-ins at the vet’s.) I thought about our times together. Then I recalled his first days with me when it fully struck me that he probably suffered some form of feline grief himself when I brought him home. Perhaps cats, like humans, do suffer from grief as they miss their familiar friends, cats and humans alike. Was Flutter missing me now? Perhaps he too felt the sadness of goodbyes. This possibility endeared him to me even more — even as I suddenly felt a twinge of guilt that I was deserting him for two weeks. Cats, I suddenly realized, are indeed sentient beings who can love.

Although I enjoyed the visit to my friend, I was still relieved and overjoyed to see Flutter again. He was as affectionate as ever when we returned to our old routines.

Part 2: https://readmedium.com/sir-fopling-flutter-9df70be16bef