The Sad Tale of Katie Mackenzie

I remember her heft as I hoisted her in my arms, and when she jumped on my chest in the morning, I felt it. Hard. She was an obese, furry cat with a nasty disposition. Her formal name was Katie Mackenzie, but we usually referred to her as Fat Girl. She shed profusely, scratched if disturbed, and mostly just lay in the sunlight beneath the front window anticipating her next meal. If, as someone once speculated, a cat is the soul of the house, then our house was a surly one, an irritable one, a demanding one whose needs were never quite met. Even Christine, my animal-loving friend, was startled by a hiss and claw when she tried, ever so gently, to befriend Fat Girl. “You bitch,” snapped Christine, in a most uncharacteristic way. And that’s how Katie Mackenzie went through life.

But she was oddly attached to me. I was inexplicably the only human she would tolerate, her exclusively chosen person. The benefits of this honor were questionable. I alone was permitted to carry her. I was the landing field onto which she jumped each morning. And if I called her name in a certain sing-song way, “Katie! Katie Mackenze!” she would come running. Well, not exactly running – but at least galumphing towards me, forgetting momentarily her matronly bulk and seeing herself, perhaps, as an ordinary kitty scampering through the grass. This was Katie at her most endearing. I liked to think her eager response to my voice was indicative of her special affection for me, but she probably would have responded with the same enthusiasm to the sound of a can opener, or dried cat food being poured into a bowl.

Ironically I had chosen Katie because she was a ragdoll cat, and all the experts said that this was the most passive and gentle breed imaginable, a cat that would relax limply in your arms like a ragdoll. I pictured a playmate for my toddler daughter, a purring and docile creature to be her very first friend from the animal world. I drove to the Los Angeles tract home of a woman who bred ragdolls and selected Katie from among her siblings, all puffy little fur balls mewing and fussing in a cardboard box. I paid too much for her and then paid more to cure an infection and clear out ear mites. I never did like kitten behavior but I gamely endured it in the spirit of things – twirling little catnip toys on string, moving slowly to avoid attack, and tending to the cat box good-naturedly. My daughter soon lost interest.

It’s funny how we grow attached to the ones who seem to need us. It really doesn’t matter what we get in return. Katie became my cat, and the snide remarks of others only made me feel protective. But we were building a house at the ranch by now and I feared that our fat suburban feline would be easy prey for coyotes. I placed an ad and found a willing taker, a lady who had once owned a ragdoll that looked exactly like Katie and who claimed no cat was ever better loved. When she saw Katie, she cooed and sighed with a degree of enthusiasm that Katie had never before elicited from anyone. I am ashamed to admit how readily I parted with my charge. At last, I thought, here is someone who will appreciate her, treat her well, and bring out the best in her. I gathered together her food, her dish, her scratching post, her special little bed, and a spare bag of kitty litter; I placed her in her deluxe kitty carrier, and I handed her over to a stranger.

A house abruptly without its animal inhabitant is a strangely empty place. I had not realized what a substantial presence Katie was, or how many routines and rituals she had engendered. I missed her most in the mornings, feeling guilty and selfish and a little bit sad, but certain she would find happiness and respect in her new digs.

Then came the phone call: “Did she find her way back to you?” My heart sank.

Katie’s new mistress had left for a business trip within days of acquiring her, leaving Katie in a basement where she was tormented by a squawking parrot in a birdcage overhead. Frightened and confused by her unfamiliar surroundings, she leapt right through a screened window and was last glimpsed running, really running, towards an open pasture and the barking dog back streets of Santa Ynez.

Oh, how many nights I wandered those streets, flashlight in hand, calling her name in that sing-song way that used to bring her to me! “Katie! Katie Mackenzie!” I cried out between sobs. An old man beckoned to me from his doorway one evening. “That cat is long gone,” he announced coldly.

And she was. For years I slowed down hopefully whenever I approached that neighborhood, and for years I imagined a flash of white fur darting into the woods, followed always by the old familiar sense of disappointment and remorse. Katie had bonded with me and I had betrayed her -- there was no prettier way to say it. I could only hope she had allowed some kind soul to take her in. As for me, I would never again underestimate the weight of an animal’s trust, the attention it implies, the humility it warrants. When you’re the one who’s chosen, you can’t just pass it on.