Mina

Mina was the first. She came into my life before I was born, in that she was my parents’ first cat. And when I was born, I displaced her and sent her to exile and death. 

Nobody told me for a long time, of course. When I asked what had happened to Mythical Mina, the smartest, cleverest, most beloved cat ever to grace the world according to my parents’ stories, I was told that she was jealous of me and had been given to a good woman who lived in a farm. 

Back then I was sorry because I would have wanted to know Mina. And I had a sneaking suspicion that this living-in-a-farm story was just a little too happy. 

As it turned out, it was mostly true. My parents had just omitted a few things. Mina had been jealous of me, but she had never hurt me. In fact, it was the toddlering Anna who had been discovered with hands joyously squishing the cat’s food in her bowl, while Mina looked on disapprovingly. This, at least, was the story my mother told me for a long time. What she is telling me now is that Mina was discovered in my crib, curled up around me. My mother was scared, and as it happens, with good cause. Although it is very rare, infants can end up smothered by a cat that wants nothing else than to curl up next to the nice warm human kitten, a human kitten that doesn’t yet have the sense or strength to free his nose.

So Mina was given away, and she was, in fact, given to a good woman: my mom’s then cleaning lady, who was a cat lover and cherished Mina in particular, and did have a farm.

The problem was that Mina had never set paw outside the house from when she came in as a four-weeks old kitten. She was terrified, spent three days trembling under a bed, and when she finally got out, she crossed a road and was killed by a car. She didn’t know what roads or cars were, of course. 

Today, with another cat in the house, my mom is full of regrets, and tells me that they could have probably kept both me and the cat if they had known better. I am a bit comforted though that between me and the cat they had chosen me. 

They surely loved her very much. Even to this day, more than forty years later, they remember and tell the same stories: 

How she was found one cold morning (December 8 1963, my mom says) in the shape of a tiny mewling and trembling black and white thing, firmly planted under their car after a visit to a friend in Lignano, so that they had to coax her out with a little dish of milk, and then put her inside the sleeve of my mom’s coat because she was so cold, and how she went to sleep in her sleeve all the way home. 

How she knew my father’s step from the road outside, two floors down, because when he came back for lunch, and only then, she would stand by the flat door expectantly.

How she would play football with my dad with a pencil or a piece of scrunched up paper.

How she would run up my dad’s trousers to be cuddled in his arms, until the day when she tried it one morning early before my father was dressed; and how at my father’s howl of pain she immediately retracted her claws and slid back down like an elevator.

How she would sleep under the covers next to my dad, and waking up he would see a triangular face, and two large feline eyes on the pillow looking at him. 

How my dad told friends that he had taught her to bite his nose on command, even if what he did was raise her up and squeeze her until she gave him a soft bite of protest. 

So that was Mina. Maybe she’s the reason for my cat obsession: the lifelong feeling that I have some reparation to make, a debt to pay. My shadow sister, which I met, but can never remember.