Rose

Rose Roberts was born, along with her twin Pansy Prutzman, outside of Nashville, Tennessee, on July 14, 1997 (Bastille Day).  She is an American Shorthair cat, a breed descended from and almost identical to the British Shorthair.  This type of cat arrived in America with the Pilgrims and served as mousers on the Mayflower and other Pilgrim vessels.   A purebred, the American Shorthair has been described as “the cat that looks like a cat”.

Like her twin, Rose is a calico.  Her striking markings, and particularly her black mask, make her look like Batgirl.   However, because their markings were not “perfect”, i.e., Rose and Pansy have color on their legs rather than being pure white, their breeders marked them for death.  Fortunately (we don’t know what or whose blessed agency intervened), they were transported to the North Shore Animal League on Long Island, a “no-kill” shelter, where we adopted them in the late summer of 1997.  We had recently lost our cat U, a Russian Blue, after losing Santa, a Flame-Point Siamese, a couple of years earlier.  U and Santa had very long lives and live with us still.  It took us a while to be ready to adopt new cats, but when we were, we decided that visiting a shelter, rather than a breeder, was the right thing to do.  A multitude of abandoned animals are desperate for homes at all times.

Rose and Pansy were housed together in a crate marked with the names Pebbles and Bam-Bam.   Silly, obviously, but they did share the sometimes loony animation of those kinetic cartoon characters.  After seeing them (our vet later agreed that they were an exceptionally “pretty pair”), we fairly quickly decided that they were “the ones”.  Directly we told them we were adopting them, but North Shore’s paperwork took a heartbreakingly long time to complete.  When we returned after about 45 minutes later to pick them up, you could see that they were nervous and could sense their impression that perhaps something had gone wrong.   Rose, who we know is a little older than Pansy, had clearly instructed her uncontrollably ebullient sister to behave and calm down, and they looked quite tentative when we saw them again, as if they had possibly “failed the audition”.  Jamais de la vie.  Our contract with North Shore included a clause that they could never be separated.

Returning to our apartment on East 86^th Street, they immediately adopted new roles, those of the Flying Wallendas.   That manic kitten phase lasted a while and was entertaining, if exhausting (for us, not for them), but eventually Pansy’s serene, expansive and “easy” side came out, as well as Rose’s regal reserve, utter dignity, and occasional expressions of haughty, but correct, dismissiveness regarding some of the vulgarities of this world including, she clearly believes, those shown by her brother Felix, a later addition to the family.   

One year later Rose and Pansy assumed a new role as sisters to our new baby, Jane.  The three girls took to each other immediately and permanently.  That was apparent the night we returned from China.  My former assistant Rebecca Tocci, who is a painter and photographer, painted Rose’s and Pansy’s portrait when were were in China on our adoption trip, and the painting hangs in our bedroom.  It captures their  dramatic black, white and gold coloring, their distinct personalities, and the perfection of their lithe kitten bodies, which may also be discernible in the high-contrast black & white photograph at the bottom of this post, which shows them crawling up my trouser leg. 

As I’ve written previously, we lost Pansy too young last year after an illness.  It was a huge loss for us and for Rose.  As we promised North Shore, they were never separated and they traveled with us always (at least up and down the Eastern Seabord).  Still, Rose and Pansy continue to be my office mates (or am I theirs?) in Berwyn.  It’s a great arrangement.  You don’t need to be an insomniac to love cats, but when you are an insomniac, feline company is precious.