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Caro hadn’t intended for Barney to live on the Natalie. When Cathy first broached the subject of a cat, wistfully, Caro began to keep an eye out for just the right kitten to introduce into their sprawling, multi-part household. And she had assumed that, as a present for Cathy, the future feline member of the Keating clan would live (insomuch as a cat lived anywhere) with Cathy, Geordie, and the girls. But that was before the abstract idea of a cat had turned into the material reality of this particular cat.
And Barney had a mind of his own.
She had even -- Caro pointed out (to Barney, who studiously ignored her by cleaning his toes) -- gone to the trouble of wrapping him up in a picnic hamper. A brand new and quite commodious hamper tied up with a gaudy red ribbon from the stationers on High St. She had then delivered him to the Keating household on the occasion of Cathy’s 39th birthday, where everyone had gathered after Sunday morning services for cake and lemonade.
“Oh, gracious! You’ve gone and done it!” Cathy says, clapping a hand over her mouth when she opens the lid -- Dora and Davy hanging off the arms of her chair to see what was inside.
“Kitty!” shrieked Dora, bouncing up and down on her toes as Cathy reached in with two careful hands and scooped out the brownish-blackish-whitish tabby cat no bigger than her two hands fisted together. The kitten, who appears to have fallen asleep in the bottom of the hamper while Caro was cycling from the riverbank, blinked sleepily up at the circle of people standing around Cathy and the basket -- then perked its tiny ears with sharp interest as Dickens rose to his feet and came over to sniff the newcomer.
“Dickens --” Sidney begins, half rising from where he’d been sitting under the lilac, his bare ankle unobtrusively tucked under Geordie’s shin in the chair next to him. Caro had noticed them upon arriving in the yard because she’s in the habit of noticing such things. It always cheers her immeasurably to see the people she cares for content, and it’s a particularly deep pleasure for her (and Cathy too, she knows) that Geordie has finally found someone to tangle ankles with the way Caro has always had with Cathy.
“-- gentle, Dickens,” Cathy is saying, as nudges his way between Dora and Ivy are Cathy’s left elbow to examine the kitten.
The kitten yawns.
Dickens wags his tail experimentally, ears lifting in excitement. The kitten peers over Cathy's cupped hands and bats at Dicken's nose.
“So you thought the household wasn’t quite chaoticenough?” Geordie comes up beside Caro, a half-drunk pint in hand, and elbows her gently in good-natured rebuke.
“Let’s just say it’s a long-ago promise that I had to make good on,” Caro says, watching as Cathy introduces the kitten to Dickens. The more the kitten wakes up, the more enthusiastic Dickens becomes, and the kitten -- perhaps feeling slightly outclassed by a full-grown Labrador -- retreats up Cathy’s arm to her shoulder and into her hair.
“And where did you find this particular scrap of chaos?” Geordie asks, sipping his beer and watching the proceedings with growing amusement.
“Ah, well,” Caro waves a hand in the direction of the river. “Picked him up off one of the river barges. Their cat had had a litter and the wife was more than willing to take a few quid in exchange -- probably would have handed him to me for free; it was a litter of seven.”
“Born to be a rapscallion, then,” Geordie mutters darkly, taking another mouthful of ale.
Caro snorts. “As long as we’re pointing fingers, I’d say your lot are much the same. They’ll be peas in a pod.”
Geordie rolls his eyes. “ 'My lot,' she says. My lot. They’re always mine when they’re busy gettin' into trouble. Here -- you’re making it worse, love,” he says to Cathy as she reaches up, gingerly, in a vain attempt to disentangle the as-yet-unnamed rapscallion from her hair. “Let me.” He hands Caro what’s left of his beer and goes over to help Cathy with the kitten.
Sidney wanders over. “A cat?”
Caro’s first impulse is to be flippant, because she’s used to not telling the stories she and Cathy share. But she’s learning, with Cathy to help, that sometimes Sidney needs the whole truth. Because Cathy has always known how to hold them all together.
“A promise I made,” she says. “Before the war. At Dunleavy. We were just girls, but I already --” she crosses her arms protectively in front of herself, watching Geordie coax the kitten to retract one paw full of tiny needle claws, only to extend another and latch on to Cathy’s red curls. They’re both laughing together, even as Cathy winces. “-- I already knew I wanted ... to keep her. I used to tell her stories about all the places we’d travel, all the people we’d meet. Paris, Prague, Bombay, Manila, San Francisco, New York … and we’d hold each other in the dark and tell stories about the places we would live: What our flat looked like, where we’d go shopping in the morning for breakfast, the china we’d use to serve our tea.” She feels her mouth curve into a smile at the memory. “And Cathy’s stories always featured a cat.”
Esme comes out of the back door, then, elbowing her way through the from the kitchen out onto the stoop with a saucer of milk held carefully in both hands. Soon, the four children are crouched in a semi-circle around the kitten as it tips itself face-first the meal.
Cathy stands up, brushing her skirts off, and comes over to Caro. “Thank you,”she says, putting a hand against Caro’s chest, over her heart, and pressing a kiss to Caro’s cheek that purposefully skirts the edge of Caro’s mouth, a brush of lips against lips that here in the back garden was safe enough.
“Happy birthday, love,” Caro says, pulling Cathy in close. “Come down to the river later?”
Cathy smiles up at her, hands settling at Caro’s waist. “Of course; our menfolk have already promised to take charge of bedtime.”
Caro glances over at Geordie and Sidney. Sidney is crouched beside Dickens with a hand on his collar just in case Dickens decides the kitten is of interest again, Georgie has collected his beer and is standing beside Sidney in the proprietary way he does when they’re together as a family. Sidney’s leaning comfortably against Georgie’s leg.
It is unexpected, having menfolk, Caro thinks, as Cathy turns in her arms and leans comfortably back against her chest. She pull Caro’s hands across her belly and folds her own on top of them. Her head settles back against Caro’s shoulder. Caro inhales the scent of Cathy’s shampoo warmed by the midday sun. As long as Caro can remember imagining a future, she had imagined a future of women. Geordie had been so unexpected. And now Sidney.
And a kitten. “It’s a tomcat, the kitten,” she murmurs to Cathy. “I hope you don’t mind. I couldn’t resist the white paw.”
“We still outnumber them, dear,” Cathy pats her hand. “Five to four.”
“Not if you count Leonard and Ben,” Caro says, darkly, because she’s beginning to think they should count as cousins at the very least. Goodness knows, the girls know them better than any of their flesh and blood relatives.
“Ah, but if we count Leonard and Ben,” Cathy says, “then Mrs M comes too and we’re back to a tie.”
The kitten, filled with milk, staggers across the grass on some obscure quest known only to itself.
“Does it have a name Auntie Caro? Dora comes running over. “Does it have a name? Is it a boy cat or a girl cat?”
“Does that matter where names are concerned?” Caro asks, to be difficult.
Dora sighs with her whole body. “Of courseAuntie Caro!”
“Well then,” Caro says. “If you must know he is a male cat.”
“I think he should be Barnabas,” Ivy offers, appearing quietly -- as she often does -- from behind Caro’s elbow.
“Now where did you come up with a that name?” Cathy wants to know.
“Violet leant me a book about the lives of the saints,” Ivy says. “St Barnabas is the patron saint of hailstorms. And the kitten’s eyes are the color of the sky when it storms.” She skips back over to where the kitten -- Barnabas -- has begun scaling Sidney’s trousers.
“Did you follow that?” Caro blinks.
Cathy laughs. “Ivy often makes sense only to herself,” she says. “To the despair of her teachers. But mark my words they’ll all be calling him Barnabas before the day is out.”
So Barnabas it is: Shortened to Barney by Geordie and reinforced by Caro who prefers the last name of her (second) favorite Sapphists (Cathy, of course, being the first) over the name of a saint who can conjure the weather. She may be agnostic on matters of the supernatural, but there’s being a skeptic and then there’s tempting fate. The kitten -- rapidly outgrowing his kittenhood and becoming a cat -- remains indifferent to either moniker in the way of all cats who only come when called if they had planned to come anyway.
And it isn’t midsummer before Barney begins coming ‘round to the Natalie with fresh-caught shrews to leave at the cabin door, and a habit of appearing moments after Caro comes back from the shops with a fresh bottle of milk. “They’ve all become a bit much, have they?” Caro asks the first time he comes around, pouring out a bit of the milk into a saucer. “I know how you feel. Well. Any time you’re tempted to throttle one of them, you come ‘round for a visit, eh? We’ll keep it a secret -- just between you and me.”