We are all animals -- hungry for warmth but fearful of pain, some more skittish than others. Our families call us impossible.

That's why I like this little story, shared with me by Grosse Pointe dentist Ed Vermet. It is about an elderly feral cat. But it strikes me as a parable of the human condition.

When Ed and his wife, Chris, met the black-and-white kitten more than 16 years ago, Ed dubbed it Stumpy for its short legs. It was a wild cat, fed by a neighbor, that spent mornings on the Vermets' sunny porch, rubbing against the window, pawing at their fingers as they drew them across the glass.

They decided Stumpy might make a fine companion for Oreo, a cat they adopted when they were newly married. But Stumpy could not be lured inside. Only a humane trap finally confined her.

After spaying, while she was still woozy from drugs, the couple petted her fine fur and imagined a happy future.

They would not touch her again for many years.

Love goes one way

Stumpy in full consciousness was not a social cat, except for curling into a ball with Oreo to sleep. She lived in the basement. She slashed at any hand that approached. She scooted at any glance.

She told the family, in effect: "I'll take your food. But to hell with your affection."

Ed told me: "I grew to hate Stumpy."

Chris, however, "always came to her defense." She changed the cat's humiliating name to Checkers, although that didn't change its nature.

When the Vermets moved, Ed argued for leaving Checkers behind.

Chris could not. "We took her in. We couldn't let her out again."

She drugged Checkers' food, three nights in a row, in increasing doses until, protected by two heavy coats and three pair of gloves, she and a neighbor wrestled the cat into a cage.

At the new address, Checkers found the basement and stayed there.

Purr for the course

Time passed. Oreo died, and the three Vermet children longed for pets, so two adopted kittens joined the family. Pixie and Princess loved to be handled, hanging out in the kitchen, the warm heart of the home.

Checkers noticed. Growing deaf and stiff with arthritis, Checkers began to nibble from the kittens' kitchen food and let Pixie and Princess share from her dish. She began to sleep in the sun upstairs.

Ed still considered her pitiful. She had become a wheezer, and he called her Darth Vader.

Then this spring, one ordinary evening, Chris reached for Checkers, as she had hundreds of unsatisfying times, and her fingers met fur. Checkers let Chris gently scratch behind her ears and, every day thereafter, enjoyed everyone's touch without complaint, as if making up for lost time.

Last Sunday, after a Mother's Day brunch, Ed walked into the family room to find his wife asleep on the sofa and Checkers nestled at her neck.

He took a picture.

"I never would have believed it," he told me, "but apparently love found a way."

Love and time and patience.

Copyright © Susan Ager
May 20, 2007