The Short Tail of a Not-So-Basic Heroine

Remembering the best little cat on both sides of the Rio Grande

She was born a street cat in Mexico, to a mother who, I can only surmise, was the diminutive cat version of Buddy the Elf.

I had been waiting for a stray kitten to show up on my doorstep in Creel, Chihuahua; a creature eager for a heavy dose of doting and fawning, American-style. None came. Perhaps it was the neighbors’ territorial flock of chickens that kept our future kitten at bay. Perhaps it was the pack of semi-feral dogs who lorded over the barrio. In any case, our doormat remained empty.

I had been watching our taciturn male cat, Timoun, salivating over those luscious, feathery balls of meat free-ranging in our front yard, tantalizingly out of reach. He looked so lonely he could eat a chicken! (Sidenote: He did escape once, bolting after the flock with front paws outstretched in anticipation, back legs somehow busting out some roadrunner moves to get him within hugging range. To preserve his dignity, let’s just say that the chicken won, and end the sidenote here.) Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who could use a kitten playmate.

So the next time we found ourselves in Cuautemoc, a very small city with an unassuming pet shop, we stopped in to ask if they had any kittens available. 

“What type are you looking for?” the woman behind the counter responded. “A Persian?” 

“Oh, no,” I said, imagining the cost of a Persian and quickly realizing that it wouldn’t square with my humble Mexican teacher’s salary. “A basic kitten.”

The woman looked at me and Patrick like we had five heads between us. Who couldn’t find their own basic kitten?

“Umm, well, I guess I can see what I can find. Leave me your phone number and I’ll call you when I find a basic kitten,” said the slightly disgusted pet shop attendant. I pictured her curling her upper lip in disgust as she walked down a dark alley, peeking under a crusty trash heap in search of something distantly related to a Persian, but cheaper.

Six weeks later, we got a call. Our basic kitten was ready to be picked up. 

When we returned to the pet shop, a tiny, muted calico tabby with green saucer eyes peered from her crate and directly into mine. She muh-muh-MOWed a friendly salutation. 

The first thing we would learn about our basic kitten was that she was not a fan of riding in a car. We were used to Timoun, who approached every car ride like a chill road trip. He practically wore sunglasses and rolled down the windows. 

Our new kitten was a shrieking whirling dervish in motorized vehicles.

As soon as I took her out of the carrier and placed her on my lap, she slipped through my gentle fingers, managing to wiggle her way into the engine via the old car’s footwell. Perhaps this was Life One? We managed to get her out of the engine and back into the carrier, which our new kitten christened The Howling Box. 

Timoun’s grinch-y heart grew three sizes the day we brought her home. The copious tongue baths he gave her wiped away all memories of The Howling Box. 

We named her Amelie, after the shy yet spunky heroine in the eponymous French film. Amelie the cat was certainly plucky, but she was not quiet. No matter, we loved the name Amelie but could not use it for a future child. Any kid with the lilting name Amelie McElwee would need to have “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” as a theme song. But it worked perfectly for our bouncy, prancy, chit-chatty kitten.

Amelie was a cat capable of lengthy, reciprocal conversations. She greeted me every morning with a mow-o-WOW and a pirouette, to which I responded with the same, minus the pirouette. She proceeded to tell me about her dreams and the night-time cat gossip, and listened to me patiently as I tried my best to translate my own adventures into cat, a language I now speak passably well, thanks to her.

We didn’t have a dog for years, because after we got Amelie, we didn’t need one. She had all the dog behaviors coveted by humans in need of stalwart emotional companionship. Plus, her arrival freed up Patrick to focus on things other than being cute all the time and pretending to be super excited to see me every time I walked through the door. 

In her younger years, she played fetch with a plush, green mouse. Her tiny mouth still stuffed with green mouse, she uttered her hunting victory call, a combination of “Look what I brought for you!” and “Hot damn, I’m a mighty fine predator.”  Up until last month, she would still steal stuffies from the kids’ rooms and announce her kill with a series of self-aggrandising yowls. I always responded. She was happy to elaborate with details of the hunt.

Her story approaches the absurd, however, when she came of age, three hours from the closest vet. If you think she was loud in the car carrier, you should have heard her go into heat. 

Good American cat owners that we were, we knew the only responsible course of action was to get her spayed. Our Mexican friends thought we were a bit out of our minds. Why would you drive 6 hours round trip to prevent her from living a natural cat life? Part of me now wishes that we hadn’t been successful in getting her fixed. I imagine that the world would be a little more joyful if we hadn’t kept her family tree from growing. 

But we did finally find a vet in Chihuahua willing to spay a cat. He mostly dealt with horses and livestock, which might explain why Amelie had such a hard recovery. Big, clumsy hands operating on miniature organs, and all.

We picked up a mellow, post-surgical Amelie, who, about an hour into the drive home, became a hallucinating, overdosed Amelie whose howling reached an entirely new level of freak out. Patrick sped along the two-lane, high desert road. We couldn’t get home soon enough.

Imagine our surprise when we arrived at a roadblock, with no way to get around and no alternate route to our small town. We sat for half an hour, not knowing what was going on, our frustration and Amelie’s plaintive howls growing louder by the minute. Finally, our jaws dropped and our rage boiled over as we watched car after fancy car zoom by, driven by wealthy American and Mexican owners. Having just closed down the only route to and from hospitals for their joy race through the scenic passage, the rich men rolled down their windows, smiles wide, and waved to us (and the hundreds of cars behind us) as they passed, as if we had gathered there for the express purpose of cheering on their testosterone-laced, four-wheeled parade.

My normally polite husband flipped them off.

Amelie, for her part, made it home. Her recovery was harrowing, and there were hours when I thought we might lose her. But recover she did. 

The surprise came a few weeks later, after she seemed to have made a full recovery.

The tip of her tail - about 2.5 inches of it - was oddly hard. 

Within a week, the fur there was dull. 

I came home from work one day to find my already petite cat with a shorter tail. She was unbothered and chatty as ever, no doubt telling me about her new short tail. 

The tip of her tail is buried in Creel, Mexico.

We buried the rest of her body, along with Timoun’s ashes, underneath the window of my art studio in North Carolina. She died about 17.5 years after her tail.

The legends of Amelie don’t end in Mexico, however. There is the fact that she was my son Finn’s first word. Not mama, not dada, but “tat,” his tiny, chubby finger directed at her friendly face.

Or the fact that, every night, she would bop my face with her paw and request to curl up next to me under the covers. 

Or the fact that all five pounds of her would make my forty-pound dog, Mika, slink her body against the wall, debasing herself before the Queen of the Upstairs, hoping to emerge with her big dog nose, and her psyche, un-bopped. 

I could go on, but like most close relationships, the passage of time blurs most of our daily, taken-for-granted moments. Like watching a VCR rewind, it starts slowly, gaining speed. I am looking back through 18 years and the innumerable moments of connection with an affable little cat, without whom I must now live out the rest of my days.

And so I write down these words, so that the spunky spirit of a not-so-basic Mexican cat may live on, in my memory - and your imagination. 

Amelie

February 2006 - February 14, 2024