Author’s love affair with a cat

After finishing Caleb Carr’s book My Beloved Monster: Masha, the Half-wild Rescue Cat Who Rescued Me, I looked at my Fanny and said, “I feel like I haven’t loved you enough.”

I thought that after four years I was as close as I was likely to get to a cat who isn’t cuddly but posts herself near wherever I am. We play hide and seek or throw and chase. She often greets me at the door and rolls over onto her back, showing trust by exposing her belly.

It would be nice if Fanny were like her predecessors in some ways — Silas was a lap cat and Lizzy slept in the crook of my arm — but I accept that every feline is different. 

Masha, a Siberian forest cat, was different all right — so wild that the staff at the Vermont animal shelter despaired of anyone adopting her. The reclusive Carr, best known as the author of The Alienist, believes that Masha sensed a fellow wounded soul when he visited the shelter. His abusive, violent childhood had left him with physical and emotional problems. Her former owner had abandoned her in a locked apartment without food and water. 

They went home to the three-story house he’d built in the mountains of Rensselaer County in Upstate New York. Predators roamed the surrounding woods — one had taken Carr’s previous cat — but Carr believed that Masha, terrified of confinement, would not survive if not let out. Masha kept patrolling outdoors — Carr thinks to protect him — even after near-fatal battles with a bear and a fisher.

Masha’s surviving those attacks are two of the remarkable accounts that Carr relates about his tough, strong girl. Masha was the soulmate with whom he had the closest relationship of his life. “Masha always judged my moods, physical states, and personal qualities correctly,” he writes.“Masha and I had established a connection that went far enough to be genuinely called, in every sense of the word, Romance.” “[N]o one ever fought so strenuously and valiantly for me, to get back to me, to keep danger away from me, as Masha did.” “She was a complex, sentient being as able to love as a human.” 

Cats are known for sensing their human’s moods, but Carr says Masha was exceptionally sensitive and empathetic. Whenever he was in pain she kept vigil by his side and gave him a worried look that Carr, a lifelong cat lover, had never before seen on a feline. Masha always knew when it was time for his phone therapy appointments and supported him from a nearby ottoman. She gave him head bumps, licked his forehead and eyebrows, and nibbled his hair. He taught her to understand words like home, not too far, not too long, and before nighttime so that they could monitor one another’s comings and goings. 

The pair looked after one another as their physical challenges ran a parallel course. Masha had arthritis and neuropathy, Carr neuropathy and peritonitis. Masha had to recover from the bear and fisher episodes, Carr from surgeries. Carr’s hospitalizations were the only nights they were apart in their 17 years together. Their medical similarities even extended to being diagnosed with cancer around the same time. 

Carr’s cancer has metastasized. In the book’s final chapter he wonders about being able to find Masha on the other side. He decides that with so strong a bond, they must reunite. (I published this on May 25 not realizing Carr had died two days before.)

Tears flowing, I closed the book thinking about how Fanny and I might get closer. She does communicate with me. She wakes me up every morning by meowing and hitting me on the head. She initiates play by scampering off as I approach, inviting me to chase her. Unfortunately, she’s most likely to do this when I’m preparing to go to bed, but it wouldn’t kill me to delay bedtime for a few minutes. 

Fanny will curl up on my stomach if I cover myself with her favorite blanket, so I ought to lie on the couch more. She likes being brushed; I should do that daily. I could try talking to her with more than four or five words. Carr held Masha’s attention for long chats. 

As much as I have treasured my cats, before reading My Beloved Monster I would have found it sad for a human to say that a cat was his greatest love. Now I think that Carr was blessed, not sad.