Published: December 11, 2008

The heat of the sun on my face, the beat of a jackhammer, and the burning smell of hot tar arouse my senses again.  My eyes open slightly, but I don’t move.  My body is numb for the moment and I think, “What are they trying to rebuild?”

I twitch.  The pain rises out of the joints in my knees and hands and shoots out of my eyes and mouth.  I begin to soak the damp pillow in more involuntary tears.  With one burst of strength, I let out a cry.  I can sense my mother coming down the hallway.  Her footsteps stop for a moment near the doorway.

“Are you okay?”  She comes closer, but knows not to touch me.

I make an affirmative sound with closed lips so I can keep the joints in my jaw still.

“I’ll get you some more Advil.”  She starts to leave.  “Sweetie is with you again.  She’s been there all day watching the door.”

I turn my neck a little to see my cat.  I glimpse the tip of her tail flicking back and forth.  The pain is distracting and I only now recognize the extra weight and heat her eight pound body provides.  I feel the tension in her muscles.  She’s not asleep.  I imagine her oversized grey ears erect and her eyes fixed and alert.  The lashes of my top and bottom lids press together slowly while I concentrate on the subtle vibrations the purring is sending right to the tips of my swollen fingers.

Sweetie was a present on my ninth birthday.  “Mom, where’s Sweetie?”

“Sleeping,” my mother answered sternly.

“I want to play with her.”

“Courtney, leave her alone.  You don’t like it if someone bothers you when you are trying to rest.”

Sweetie was half asleep on the top of her three-foot scratching post/kitty condo which I insistently told my mother she would want for Christmas.  Her eyes opened wide when she realized I was standing over her.  She crouched as low as she could as I put my hand out to pet her.  I stroked her head and then lifted her up and carried her to my room, closing the door behind me.

“More tea, Sweetie Pie?”  My cat shot me an angry look under her white eyelet bonnet.  Her pink flowered dress prevented agile movement, so she sat unhappily in a wicker chair with a plastic tea cup placed in front of her.

“Maybe you want some cookies, too.”

“Courtney, come out here; I’m leaving now,” my mother yelled to me from the living room.  Sweetie saw her chance and darted out the door as I opened it.  She tripped over the dress into my mother’s gentle arms.  “I’ve told you not to dress her up like this; she doesn’t like it.”

My mother was leaving for a vacation to California to visit her old boyfriend with whom she had reunited after the divorce.  It was he who had handed me the barely weaned tabby with a big smile and a “Happy Birthday!”  My grandmother and aunt had come over for a few days to baby-sit.

“Now you stop hissing at me, you little witch, or I’m not going to feed you at all,” my grandmother plopped down my cat’s plate and Sweetie, perhaps expecting my grandmother to give her a slap instead, bolted out of the kitchen.

“That cat is a real little beast, Mom.  That’s what I’m calling her, ‘Beast,’” my aunt teased.

My aunt and grandmother were laughing at the offense I took to the new nickname for, ‘my baby,’ when my aunt started screaming.  Sweetie, who was particularly agitated now that she was in heat for the first time (we had not had her spayed yet) had flung herself upon my aunt’s back and made growling and whining noises as she clawed and bit her way through Aunt Kathleen’s shirt.

“Help!  Help!” she screamed.

I tore my cat away from my aunt and released her.  She ran down the hallway. My aunt cursed and wailed that she had never been anything but nice to that little b—-, well anyway I knew Sweetie meant nothing personal by it.  She never let my friends use the bathroom without putting up a fight, and she had attacked my uncle’s leg just the other day.  My hands were always covered in scratches and bite marks from playing “trick kitty” with her.  I would snap my fingers above her head and she would jump up to attack them.

Nine years later, I am eighteen and lying in bed with a blood disease called “serum sickness” which causes pseudo-rheumatic symptoms in all the joints of the body.  An overdose of antibiotics caused colitis when doctors tried to treat my sinusitis.  To cure the colitis, they gave me Flagyl which caused the rare and severe allergic reaction.  Sweetie has not seen me for weeks; I have been at college for the first semester of freshmen year.  Ever since I became a teenager, I’ve been home less and less.  She doesn’t play “trick kitty” as much as she used to when she was a younger cat.  At least she doesn’t hiss at people so frequently, and she hasn’t attacked anyone for years.  But, before she knew I was so sick when my mother brought me home, she peed on my bedroom carpet to let me know that leaving home was unacceptable behavior.

The serum sickness has become worse, but somehow, Sweetie knows where it hurts and strategically places herself away from my joints.  No one touches me unless it’s absolutely necessary, but the disease prevents agile movement, so I leave her there; her purring is more soothing than her weight is burdensome.  I assume Sweetie knows I am defenseless, and she seems to have a purpose on her perch.  I fall asleep under her watch.

When I wake, I can hear my aunt’s voice.  Even with my mother’s warning that it hurts too much, my aunt will want to pat my back, stroke my hair, or kiss my cheek.  My prehensile abilities are gone.  Brown, candy-coated pills are beyond reach on the nightstand.  They will not ease the pain fast enough.  I will have to move my jaw to tell her not to touch me.  I will have to unglue my face from the goose-feathered pillow to convey a look of distress.

I feel my cat gingerly rise up, and apply gentle pressure with her four paws into my back.  Aunt Kathy stands in the doorway.  A low growl forms in Sweetie’s belly.  My aunt proceeds.  Sweetie bares her teeth in a strong spitting hiss.  The growling escalates and panicked warning cries are warding off the unwelcome visitor.  Finally, my aunt turns and jogs down the hall calling, “Mary, that little beast is crazy.”  Sweetie lowers herself down with incredible agility.  She was as still as she could be when on the edge of an attack, and now resumes a repetitive breathy purr.

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Sweetie continued her watch for almost a week until some of the pain subsided and I dragged myself out of bed, determined to salvage my first semester of freshman year.  She sat amongst my bags while my mother helped me prepare to return to college.  I lightly stroked her head with my hand, swollen, stiff and battered from the disease.  She stopped sleeping on my back once I fully recovered, which disappointed me.  I learned a lot from that experience, but I never understood how Sweetie knew that I was in terrible pain, or that anyone’s touch seemed like an attack.  Perhaps it was the way I cringed when someone came close enough to touch me. I learned from her that physicality is not the only expression of love.