Cleo: The Cat Who Mended a Family
by Helen Brown
Cleo: The Cat Who Mended a Family is the story of an Australian family who endured the unendurable: the loss of a child. Author Helen Brown’s nine-year-old son had requested a small black kitten for his birthday present, but he was killed in a tragic accident before they were able to pick up the cat. Helen and her family were barely functioning when Cleo came into their lives, and, as she relates through the pages, Cleo helped them heal and continue their lives. The first third of the book is incredibly moving, painful, realistic, and touching.
A reward was the last thing I expected. It was delivered in the form of a sandpapery swipe from her tongue. Cleo’s lick on the back of my hand was startling, like a lover’s first kiss. Part of me wanted to envelop her and never let her go. The other part, so wounded, was wary of the tsunami of affection washing over me. To love is ultimately to lose. The unwritten contract that arrives with every pet is they’re probably going to die before you do. The more devoted you are to them the more sorrow their departure will inflict. Opening my heart to Cleo would’ve been the equivalent of placing an already bruised organ on an airport tarmac and inviting planes to land on it.
[…]
Then something strange happened. It began with a noise, unfamiliar at first, a soft gurgle followed by a vague hiccupping. Our mouths widened, the soft tissue at the back of our throats went into spasm, but not for crying this time. Laughter. Rob and I were laughing. For the first time in weeks we reveled in the simplest, most complex healing technique known to humanity. Grief had pulled me so deeply into its dungeon I’d forgotten about laughing. It took a boy, his kitten, and a rubber plant to engage me in a function essential to human sanity. The horrors of the past weeks dissolved, padlocks of pain were unlocked momentarily. We laughed.
As you can tell, Helen Brown is a very talented writer. She’s doesn’t write in the “tape recorder” style of many lay people who write memoirs, because she’s not a lay person. She’s a journalist, and even throughout her son’s death and the ensuing years, she maintained a column, often writing about Sam and Cleo. Sometimes it’s a wonderful style to read, but sometimes it feels a little episodic, like the book and her column might have blurred together. Still, all in all, it was a pleasure to read her descriptive and vivid writing.
I never, ever give spoilers in my reviews, but I’m going to make a very large exception for the memoir Cleo: The Cat Who Mended a Family. Anyone who picks up this book is probably a cat lover, and they will probably be as nervous as I was about the title. To me, the title implied a symbolic as well as actual cat, appearing in a family’s life when needed, and once the job was done, left like Mary Poppins. So, here comes my spoiler: Cleo lived to the ripe old age of 23 ½.
Now, the first page will tell you that the story takes place in 1983, and since the book was published in 2009, I knew the last sentence wouldn’t be, “Cleo is alive and well!” But, as any pet owner has experienced, when the cat doesn’t come to dinner on time or doesn’t come until the morning, my heart lurched and my immediate thought was, “Cleo didn’t make it.” So, rest assured, every time you get that terrible worry, she makes it.
If this sounds like the type of book you’d like to read, my recommendation is to read the first third. The beginning of the book really is wonderful, and it’s truly touching to read how the family adopted the love of a kitten. Then, when you get the feeling that the family is putting the pieces together and the greatest achievement in every day isn’t getting out of bed in the morning, you can close the book and pass the recommendation along. I didn’t enjoy the last two-thirds of the book, mostly because it focused on the author’s life choices instead of Cleo’s involvement in her life. While life choices are just that, matters of opinion, I will respect the author’s journey without adding my own criticism. If you watched Marley & Me but wished it was a cat instead, this book is for you—well, the first third, anyway.
A reward was the last thing I expected. It was delivered in the form of a sandpapery swipe from her tongue. Cleo’s lick on the back of my hand was startling, like a lover’s first kiss. Part of me wanted to envelop her and never let her go. The other part, so wounded, was wary of the tsunami of affection washing over me. To love is ultimately to lose. The unwritten contract that arrives with every pet is they’re probably going to die before you do. The more devoted you are to them the more sorrow their departure will inflict. Opening my heart to Cleo would’ve been the equivalent of placing an already bruised organ on an airport tarmac and inviting planes to land on it.
[…]
Then something strange happened. It began with a noise, unfamiliar at first, a soft gurgle followed by a vague hiccupping. Our mouths widened, the soft tissue at the back of our throats went into spasm, but not for crying this time. Laughter. Rob and I were laughing. For the first time in weeks we reveled in the simplest, most complex healing technique known to humanity. Grief had pulled me so deeply into its dungeon I’d forgotten about laughing. It took a boy, his kitten, and a rubber plant to engage me in a function essential to human sanity. The horrors of the past weeks dissolved, padlocks of pain were unlocked momentarily. We laughed.
As you can tell, Helen Brown is a very talented writer. She’s doesn’t write in the “tape recorder” style of many lay people who write memoirs, because she’s not a lay person. She’s a journalist, and even throughout her son’s death and the ensuing years, she maintained a column, often writing about Sam and Cleo. Sometimes it’s a wonderful style to read, but sometimes it feels a little episodic, like the book and her column might have blurred together. Still, all in all, it was a pleasure to read her descriptive and vivid writing.
I never, ever give spoilers in my reviews, but I’m going to make a very large exception for the memoir Cleo: The Cat Who Mended a Family. Anyone who picks up this book is probably a cat lover, and they will probably be as nervous as I was about the title. To me, the title implied a symbolic as well as actual cat, appearing in a family’s life when needed, and once the job was done, left like Mary Poppins. So, here comes my spoiler: Cleo lived to the ripe old age of 23 ½.
Now, the first page will tell you that the story takes place in 1983, and since the book was published in 2009, I knew the last sentence wouldn’t be, “Cleo is alive and well!” But, as any pet owner has experienced, when the cat doesn’t come to dinner on time or doesn’t come until the morning, my heart lurched and my immediate thought was, “Cleo didn’t make it.” So, rest assured, every time you get that terrible worry, she makes it.
If this sounds like the type of book you’d like to read, my recommendation is to read the first third. The beginning of the book really is wonderful, and it’s truly touching to read how the family adopted the love of a kitten. Then, when you get the feeling that the family is putting the pieces together and the greatest achievement in every day isn’t getting out of bed in the morning, you can close the book and pass the recommendation along. I didn’t enjoy the last two-thirds of the book, mostly because it focused on the author’s life choices instead of Cleo’s involvement in her life. While life choices are just that, matters of opinion, I will respect the author’s journey without adding my own criticism. If you watched Marley & Me but wished it was a cat instead, this book is for you—well, the first third, anyway.