Weeks with current fosters: 15, 9 (All our kittens have now lived over half their lives with us.)
Days without being sneezed on: 1, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any sneezing today; it just hasn’t been on me yet.
We’re observing our second anniversary of Clementine’s arrival this weekend, so here is a newsletter dedicated to her.
In 2017, Kas discovered Toast of London. Later that year, we attended a Jackson Galaxy reading. Afterward, when we went to have him sign our copy of his new book, he asked us how many cats we had. “One,” we answered cheerily. “So when are you getting another?” he asked. We laughed, and then went home and seriously discussed why, after a year of having just Jenny, we should absolutely get a second cat. She’s lonely, we said. She’s got more energy than we can deal with, and we play with her twice a day. Cats need friends. Plus we’d just gotten this book that explained in great detail how to introduce a new cat to your household, so all we had to do was find the right cat, follow the instructions, and Jenny would have a new best friend before we knew it.
Well, people can always dream.
I started the hunt at once. I got on PetFinder and made lists and sent Kas a million links and filled out applications and sent a few off on a Sunday evening. The first response came within an hour, from a foster who said that the cat I’d applied for was a “bully,” but that she had the sweetest, tiniest little cat who just needed the right home and it sounded like ours could be it, and when did we want to come meet her? So we hied ourselves to the Upper East Side later that week to meet “Crissy,” who was, as advertised, a very small cat with very large paws. She was sitting in a carrier and didn’t seem to care whether we petted her, which her foster parent encouraged we do. “She loves it,” she said as we tentatively extended our hands to let the little animal get a sniff of us. She didn’t really do anything as we petted her, which we interpreted as shyness. “Well, we’re not ready to make a decision yet,” we said, firmly, and left to mull things over. “We’re not adopting the first cat we meet,” we told each other on the subway home.
We decided we couldn’t decide. This Crissy seemed sweet enough, but would she have enough energy for Jenny? Would her little thumbs make it harder for her to play on the skyway? What if she and Jenny hated each other? I emailed her foster parent expressing my concerns, saying that while we had liked Crissy we weren’t ready to commit to adopting her, so if she had other people lined up she shouldn’t, you know, put the cat on hold for us or anything. She wrote back immediately. “I want a special home for her, and her extra digits will only help her balance on those shelves! I really think she and Jenny could be besties, so let me know when you’re ready.”
Turns out we were ready the next week. I have long forgotten how we justified bringing this particular cat home, the first and only cat we met after deciding to get a second cat, but we must’ve made a great case to ourselves. We read Jackson Galaxy’s instructions and set up Kas’s office (read: a walk-in closet) as Clementine’s Space, because after going over a zillion possibilities we decided we had to name her Clementine Fandango. I have also forgotten how I agreed to give our cat a novelty name, but the evening we stuffed her in a carrier and brought her home on the 4 train two years ago this weekend, she became our Clem.
And our Clem is a unique cat. A real individual, that Lemon. We started calling her Lemon because “lemon-lime” rhymes with “Clementime” which is more fun to say than “Clementine” and also answers the question “What time?” when you’re serving her a meal. She wouldn’t eat the first food we gave her, which was surprising, after living with Jenny, a Food-Motivated Cat. Eventually we got her to deign to eat some canned food, a lovely pâté of beef and chicken and, I don’t know, carrots and whatever else (but not carrageenan). Since that first meal Clem’s been particular about her food, and I suspect becoming more particular as we give in to her demands of more can, please, always more can in the mix, and can it have bonito flakes both on top and mashed in, for texture as well as flavor? We were not prepared for a cat who would refuse food, but that might explain why she weighed in at a meager 5.5 pounds at the vet the next week. Tiny, our Lemon, all eyes and paws and somehow nearly three years old, despite looking barely out of kittenhood.
Because we were following Jackson Galaxy’s instructions to the absolute letter, we kept Clem stashed in Kas’s office every night, and the bedroom during the day. And because she spent so much time in the office, she ended up spending a lot more time with just Kas. Maybe that’s why she bonded so strongly with him? To this day, I’m not sure how Clementine feels about me. Kas, she loves. To Clem, he is the best person, the only person, the greatest human alive and provider of all love, affection, and goodness. I believe I rank somewhere around “Other One: occasional groomer and feeder, not generally a threat.”
Clem, as she grew more comfortable with us, started taking up more space. She gained two pounds and started looking like a real grown-up cat, and she started talking to us. Or someone. She’s got a lot of sounds, our Clem. She can honk like a goose, she yodels with delight, she sometimes sounds like a baby elephant crossed with a seagull. Clem is loud and insistent. “Honk!” she says. “Peep peep whine peep!” she hollers. “Yes, I can hear you, Clem Fandango,” we answer. It’s not even a joke anymore, really; it’s just how we talk to Clem when Clem talks to us.
She’s a gentle soul, our Lemon, but stubborn. She’ll stonewall you if she’s unhappy. Instead of running away she retreats into herself, which is what she’d been doing the night we met her: She wasn’t acquiescing to be petted; she just wasn’t there. She hardly does it at all anymore, what with knowing us and trusting us. She’d been abandoned by her owners, and who knows what happened to her with them, but she’s opened up so much since we got her, and it’s been a privilege to get to know her.
We’ve learned she’s capable of great affection. Not usually towards anyone but Kas, but she loves him so much it’s a little weird. She likes to hop up on his shoulder and, with his arms extended and hands touching to make a circle, walk around and around him. She flops and coos and drools, she loves him so much. I’m envious of their bond, if only because I wish I could be anywhere near as sure of her love. Then again, it must be weird to be worshiped.
Clem still surprises us pretty frequently. She’s an odd duck, our Clemmie. Just this morning, after 15 weeks of living with Buster, she started playing with him. It was incredible: They circled each other, one ever so slowly stretching out a paw to just touch the other’s head or shoulder; then they circled again; then, blam, they were scrapping like kittens, wrestling each other to the ground and biting and raptoring, all in total silence. I didn’t know Clem had it in her, to extend herself like that. Usually she ignores all our foster kittens as hard as she can, spending her waking hours on the kitchen stools where she Cannot Be Reached by the chaos below.
It took three long months for our girls to get used to each other. At first, Jenny adopted “the best defense is a good offense” approach, and tried to murder Clem before Clem could murder her. Not that Clementine was behaving at all aggressively — she limited herself to defensive crouching and hissing — but she could, with all those claws, go for Jenny’s throat at any moment, so taking the offensive position was only practical. I’ll reiterate, again, that we followed Jackson Galaxy’s instructions, feeding them nearer and nearer on opposite sides of a closed door and then a baby gate, attempting parallel play, and nothing worked until one day it did.
This is the first photo taken of them together. It was on Kas’s birthday weekend and it was truly a miracle. We had begun (tearfully, agonizingly) resigning ourselves to having two cats who hated each other living in separate rooms for the rest of their lives, and then one time we just let Clem out and Jenny didn’t try to kill her and they shared a shelf and it was glorious and pure and good.
Clementine Fandango is a beautiful weirdo, and I hope I’ve been able to share some of her uniqueness in this little ode to her. Sometimes she races around the apartment making her play noise (kind of a brrrrrip! brrrrup! sound?), diving in and out of a tunnel, playing a made-up game all by herself. Kas likes to say she’s imagining herself a pirate queen, having grand adventures, and who knows what goes on in Clementine’s mind because after two years I still don’t have a clue. But in those two years she’s become our little oddball, and we count ourselves lucky to know her.
You can follow Clem and the rest of our cats’ adventures on their Instagram. It’s a lot of kittens because we are trying to get them adopted, but there are plenty of Clem posts in there. Thanks for reading, and as always, if you know anyone in the New York area who wants to adopt a kitten or two, send them my way. Clem needs the room to play.