Juan Villoro
In childhood, you adopt pets that you will not take care of. A rabbit, a goose, or even a water snake awaken in you, enthusiasms that will disappear with the obligations of feeding these species and keeping their habitat clean. Only in adulthood do you resign yourself to the fact that pleasures give discomfort.
Those who love gardens and dogs accept that the lawn is like Penelope’s cloth, which advances and unravels without ceasing to plant seeds or love the mess’s perpetrators.
I have concluded that the best animals belong to an intermediate condition, neither domestic nor wild: birds and squirrels enliven the garden without depending on us. As is often the case, the rest of the family is not of the same opinion and needs another species to bite their slippers.
This leads to another point of interest: you can indirectly appreciate pets by the way they improve the character of others. When you buy a puppy, you expect the one who behaves well is the family.
Back to the subject of pet adoption. My daughter already had two dogs at her mother’s house, whom she appropriately named Rag and Macaroni when she found an injured kitten on the street and decided to rescue her. She gave her a science fiction name that later became a trademark and replaced it with Narnia. My daughter’s interest could not have been nobler, but neither Rag nor Macaroni shared it.
Inés sought another way out of the matter: her father’s house, dominated by a café au lait cat she had named Cappuccino. Pets are often seen as people in another format. I mistakenly thought that an Autumnal gentleman like Cappuccino would welcome a young lady friend in good spirits. Nothing could be more false. The alpha male, who has kept several breeds of dogs at bay for twelve years, repulsed the intruder. The first contact was a thunderous battle that filled the air with fuzz. I spoke to veterinarians and was told everything would change when the newcomer was subdued. To our pride and concern, she did not submit.
I understood that the only way to live with enemies was to assign them separate spaces. Every so often, I would change the location of Narnia and Capuchino so that they would divide their lives between the garden and the house.
Capuchino continued to control his preferred places; he took over any box that came into the house and occupied the armchair where I read and the chair where I write. On the other hand, Narnia discovered a unique place, which she appropriated with mystical dedication: the window overlooking the street. Did she miss the wildlife she had before being attacked? The truth is that she began to exist outwardly, seeing the world through a pane of glass. She did not interact with any visitors to the house nor rubbed against my legs with a faint purr. Isolated, watchful, she watched the street.
It took us a long time to understand that this was how she communicated with other people. One day she received a letter in the mailbox. A Brazilian girl, who had just moved to Mexico, had adopted Narnia as her best friend and told her about her life.
Unable to enter her universe, I thought she was alone. Tired of moving cats from one room to another, I made the same decision as my daughter: I took the cat to my mother’s house, where she lives to this day.
When Narnia disappeared from the window, something singular happened. “What about the kitty?” the neighbors asked. A few days ago, and several years from what I have told, Victoria Zappi, who lives across the street, was kind enough to give me a filmed video in which her little daughter plays with Narnia through the glass.
There are many ways to inhabit a house. Some children are homey; others lead a mysterious and attractive life far from us, Capuchino lived inward, and Narnia lived outward (she was never alone; from her vantage point, she conquered the neighborhood). As she no longer has anyone to harass her, she now leads a different life and has discovered that houses have an interior part.
All this leads to a conclusion: the difficult thing is not for a cat to adapt but for humans to change. When I took Narnia to my mother, she looked at me with the affectionate resignation that defines the filial treatment.
In adult life, you accept that pleasures give discomfort, but if your mother is present, you prefer her to take care of your pet.
Reforma initially published this article in Spanish on April 22, 2022.