Chicks for Miss Kitty

“Chicks!” Miss Kitty chattered when she saw the colorful cover of Chick Stories, a memoir by Patti M. Walsh that her housemate Tania had brought home. A bird-lover—especially the backyard-type—Miss Kitty began pawing through the pages. But her upright tail drooped a bit as her excitement turned to consternation. Locking eyes with Tania, her question was obvious.

“Where are the chickens?”

Tania smiled and turned to the epigraph, which she read aloud.

“Chick, noun (colloquial): an attractive woman or girl; something marketed toward women. Example: Chick Lit.” She paused and flipped to the dedication. “To my girlfriends,” she read, looking directly at Miss Kitty, “of course.”

Tania folded her legs to sit beside her feline companion.

“The chicks are Patti’s girlfriends,” Tania explained, “just as you are mine … ” She hastily added “… and Nancy’s” when she noticed her wife enter the room, arms folded and face softening into a smile.

Miss Kitty, who had relaxed her whiskers and raised her ears, responded with a slow blink and soft caress for Tania and a sturdy head-butt for Nancy.

Satisfied, albeit disappointed that she would not be reading about chickens—or birds of any manner—Miss Kitty amused herself with tales involving other animals, from bats in the attic to sled dogs in the Arctic.

Nosing her way through the book, she meowed, purred, and even hissed as travesties, tragedies, and comical calamities abounded in essays rich with historical and cultural context. There were tales of being lost in the woods, paddling with alligators, and even falling naked over a waterfall.

Miss Kitty slow-blinked at Tania and Nancy when she read about them in “The Real Chicks of Fontanella Drive,” an essay about a neighborhood where everyone is from elsewhere. Yet, “in a world that encourages people to put up walls and hide their true selves, the real chicks of Fontanella open doors to authentic relationships and rich, fulfilling lives.”

For Miss Kitty, however, the epitome of authenticity was embodied in “The Cat Lady.” Finally, an essay she could relate to! It was about a woman named Jan, who took kids to the zoo, discovered a hundred manatees in the warm waters off Ship Island, Mississippi, and celebrated her daughter’s wedding at the Audubon Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans.

Jan once said that she started life as a dog lady, though Patti didn’t know her in those days. Jan invited Patti one day to meet her new feline housemate. Ironically named for the terrifying Hindu goddess, Kali was a sweet Siamese who liked to lick the ears of her guests. Since then, Jan has always had at least one cat, though usually it’s two or three.

One day, Patti got a reference-check call from a woman representing a pet-adoption agency. Jan had applied to take in a homeless critter.

“Can you tell me what kind of cat companion Jan is?” the woman asked, as if she were checking Jan’s suitability for a job.

Having never described anyone as a cat companion, Patti was a bit stymied. She remembered that Jan had adopted her deceased brother’s cats rather than leave them with a local shelter. Patti’s answer satisfied that particular question, but there were more.

“Can you describe the home environment Jan provides for her cats? How is Jan in providing personal care? And what about toys?”

Toys? Miss Kitty was ecstatic. She loved toys. She gazed affectionately at the two fuzzy bunnies holding her book in place.

“Jan sends us toys every Christmas for our cats,” Patti replied. “Since they were similar to ones her cats liked, I assume that her cats all have suitable toys.”

Jan got the cat.

Miss Kitty trilled her affection for Jan, the Cat Lady. Through Jan, she understood the concept behind “chick stories” and settled in for more stories about the girlfriends in Patti Walsh’s collection of adventures lived, laughter shared, and lessons learned.

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