Essay: Leo 2.0

What happens when your household goes from four cats to one?

Leo is showing us the way.

A large, long-haired black cat, Leo has always been quiet and reclusive. But since he’s become the only feline in the house, he’s come out of his shell.

Leo now meows when he’s ready to eat. He often follows me, or my husband, Paul, around. He waits at the door when Paul takes our dog, Will, for a walk, then sniffs the pup’s hindquarters once he’s back in the house.

To those of us who have known and loved Leo for 12 years, this is amazing.

Leo came to us because he needed a home and we had a space. Paul and I determined, in our younger years, that we could handle four cats. We wanted to help the cat overpopulation problem, but four was the limit. If we lost one, we added one.

A student of mine needed a place for his cat, and we had an opening.

Leo was almost two at the time, so he’s 14 now. When he arrived, the petite tortoiseshell Clara reigned supreme in the family. Sweet but elusive Annie and handsome, gregarious Teddy rounded out the kitty population, and there were two dogs, Aquinnah and Martha.

Leo seemed to accept his place at the bottom of the kitty pyramid. He became friends with Annie. They slept together and he often groomed her. Leo and Teddy maintained an uneasy male alliance. Periodically they would tumble around, hissing, in what Paul and I called an exhibition of Greco-Roman wrestling. Leo studiously avoided the dogs.

He spent much of his time upstairs, where there are sunny, south-facing windows. While Annie and Clara hid when we had visitors, he and Ted would socialize. But mostly Leo kept himself to himself. 

Quinn passed away in 2020. Clara was next at the end of 2022, then Martha in early 2024. Will arrived this past January, and then a few months later we lost both Annie and Ted. 

Leo’s world had been turned upside down. Will was gentle and respectful of the cats from the moment he stepped through the door, but he was still a new, strange presence in the house. Now Leo’s best friend and frenemy were gone. 

Not surprisingly, Leo got sick. He wasn’t eating, was vomiting and spent even more time upstairs. Though he didn’t exactly hide, we’d find him in odd places, like next to the love seat in the library. Normally, he’d be on the back of the couch, watching the world go by.

Since he’d hacked up a huge hairball at the outset of this illness, we gave it a few days, to see if he’d get over it. Then we brought him in to the vet’s. Steroids, antibiotics, anti-nausea meds—Leo was nearly back to normal within hours. And he was cheerful; clearly glad to be home.

There’s nothing like your people spending $300 on you to make you sassy, I joked.

Actually, I do think our furry friends do feel gratitude when they return home from the vet’s. 

Leo’s appetite was great and he was engaging with us more and more. So we quickly noticed when he appeared to be squinting out of his right eye. Soon clear discharge appeared.

It was back to the vet’s again. One week later.

Leo is now doing fine after a round of eye drops. Better than fine. He’s Leo 2.0.

He still spends a lot of time by himself upstairs, but he also hangs out with us several times a day. Leo is regularly looking for rubs and hugs. I’m not exaggerating when I say we never heard his voice until a few weeks ago. We wondered if he had one.

Leo’s meow is bittersweet to me. I miss the loved ones we have lost, but I’m glad he’s finding himself. I’m sorry he’s an only cat, but the other day I caught him stretched out in the sun next to Will in front of the glass door to the deck. A friendship in the making?

We can only move forward in the face of grief; Leo is showing the way.

_______

 I welcome email at lizzie621@icloud.com

Review: "Marble Hall Murders," Anthony Horowitz

Book editor Susan Ryeland and detective Atticus Pünd are back for parallel adventures in the present day and 1955. And what a delight they are.

Susan’s comfortable London life came crashing down in Magpie Murders. In Moonflower Murders, she was lured back to England—briefly—from the Greek island hotel she was running with her love, Andreas. Now she’s back in the UK, enjoying her cozy basement flat, working freelance for a publisher, and once again tearing around the countryside in her beloved red MG.

All is going well—she has even added a cat to her household— until her boss presents her with a dubious project. Eliot Crace, whose two ventures into murder mysteries had bombed years before, is writing a “continuation” novel featuring Atticus Pünd. The PI’s creator, Alan Conway, whom Susan edited, is dead, and she thought the series was as well.

Given Crace’s earlier works, Susan is not optimistic. She dutifully reads Crace’s first 30,000 words—she has questions and suggestions, but admits to herself that it could work. Crace has even worked in some anagrams, that Alan Conway speciality.

Then she meets the author.

He’s a mess emotionally—a touchy, quick-tempered former drug addict. Worse, he seems to be using the Pünd book to get back at his family.

Eliot is the grandson of the famed children’s author Miriam Crace. Though she created a beloved global franchise for her tiny, do-gooder characters, The Littles, she was a tyrant to her family. She’s left scars on them.

One of the settings in the Pünd novel is a magnificent villa in the south of France. It’s owned by Lady Chalfont, who bears no resemblance to Miriam. But other members of her family clearly mirror the Craces, who all lived on an estate with grandma in Wiltshire. Lady Chalfont is murdered, and Eliot suggests Miriam was as well.

Susan is alarmed by Eliot’s motivations, and begins digging into the Craces’ past. It’s not pretty. The author goes off the rails and reveals his family secrets in a radio interview. Susan decides she has to walk—run?—away, but when a Crace is killed, she is the prime suspect. Now she is up to her neck in the situation.

As in the previous novels, there is an actual Atticus Pünd novel within these pages. This time it’s truncated, but, fear not, a satisfying conclusion is reached in both stories.

I have thoroughly enjoyed this trilogy, as well as the PBS dramatizations of the two previous installments (Marble Hall Murders is to come!) Not only do they feature wonderful performances by Leslie Manville and Tim McMullan, but Susan and Atticus interact in the films, as they both work to solve their intersecting mysteries.

I eagerly devoured the 579 pages of Marble Hall Murders and was sad to see it wrap up—though it did end happily. Thank goodness. After what she’s been through, Susan deserves it!

Review: "Everything is Tuberculosis," John Green

Why is everything tuberculosis? Why do I want to read about it?

 

Those were my questions when I first heard of this book. Then I saw and heard popular YA novelist John Green via several media interviews and became intrigued.

Next question: Why is the author of The Fault is in Our Stars writing about tuberculosis?

Because he has obsessive-compulsive disorder and can’t stop thinking about germs? Because he met a young TB patient in Sierra Leone, and needed to tell his story?

Yes.

And here is another answer: “Everything is tuberculosis” because the disease has permeated our social history and popular culture, while it remains a serious health risk in impoverished countries.

It was, at times, amazing (and disheartening) to realize how true this is. Perhaps, for example, New Mexico is a state because of TB. (It recruited consumptives to live there in order to achieve the white population the laws required at the time.) The man who invented the cowboy hat had moved out west to recover from the disease.

The three major conspirators in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which began World War I, were consumptives.

This book was fascinating, at times heart-rending, and written in an engaging style.

Green takes us through the history of TB. Once, it was widespread and incurable. Also, it was misunderstood. Its infectious nature was unknown. Consumption, as it was called, was even thought to be romantic. Didn’t it seem to affect poets and other creative types more frequently? (Well, John Keats and all the Brontë sisters did die from it.) Young women aspired to achieve “consumption chic” with pale skin and sunken cheeks.

The TB fashion trend hit a wall when the disease was proven to be contagious. Moreover, although many people harbored “tubercules” in their bodies, these often did not blossom into disease without extenuating circumstances. Poor and unsanitary conditions could spring the TB into life. 

Prejudice and racism ensued, and an era of shunning began. Sanitariums were built across the country. Patients languished in the institutions: The main treatment was rest. Some, including children, lived for years in these places, seldom visited and often feared by staff.

Finally, cures were found and TB virtually eradicated in places like the U.S. But other countries have not fared so well.

Green was on a health fact-finding trip in Sierra Leone when he met Henry. He first thought the young man was the same age as his own son Henry—nine. But Henry was a teenager who had been suffering from TB for years and, yes, languishing in a hospital. Except Henry was bright and introspective. He was eager to meet new people, and recorded his thoughts and feelings in journals and poetry.

Henry’s story is woven through the book, and it is an amazing one. Initially I thought this story was posthumous, and Henry did come close to death. It was only through the efforts of a tenacious and dedicated doctor that he finally received the treatment he needed.

There are cures for TB—but, of course, money is a factor. Distributing drugs in countries which lack a good medical infrastructure also is an issue. And prejudice remains a problem.

Henry is now a college student with his own YouTube Channel. He has an infectious energy and optimistic outlook. It’s difficult to reflect on how this ray of sunshine (which is how I came to regard him) could have ended up just another sad statistic.

It’s difficult to realize that after centuries of experience with TB, after 70 years with a cure, we’re still losing people to this terrible disease.

Everything is tuberculosis, indeed.

Review: "The Maid's Secret," Nita Prose

The hit TV show “Hidden Treasures,” is headed for the Regency Grand Hotel, and Molly Gray, Head Maid and Special Events Manager, is beyond excited.

She picks a few of her Gran’s treasures—souvenir spoons, a Swarovski swan and an antique key—for appraisal. Her fiancé, hotel pastry chef Juan Manuel, urges her to also bring a bejeweled ornamental egg. Molly tells him it’s just a worthless trinket, but packs it in her box.

The egg turns out to be a Fabergé, and the gems adorning it are very real. Molly faints on air during the taping of the show when she hears the news and becomes an instant celebrity. The world is charmed by the kind, unworldly woman whose flat pronouncements always get to the heart of the matter.

Molly’s late Gran, Flora, loomed large in her life. It takes a while for Molly to realize the antique key opens a diary that Flora wrote specifically for her. It tells the story of Flora’s life before Molly’s birth.

Readers, however, get an inside look at Flora’s diary from the start of the novel, in chapters that alternate with the current—crazy—events of Molly’s life. It’s evident that the two storylines are going to collide.

In the present day, Molly is plunged into a media frenzy that she wants no part of. The egg could be worth half a million dollars. What will Molly and Juan Manual do with it all? Before they can make too many plans, the egg is stolen—during the auction, no less, right under the noses of a large crowd.

Further mayhem ensues.

When Molly finally reads the diary, she learns the story of the Fabergé egg, how Gran went from riches to rags, and how she met the man who would become Molly’s grandfather.

The Maid, the first book in the series, was one of my favorite books of 2022. Molly was a fresh and original character, and I enjoyed how the novel melded subtle humor and gentle pathos. The sequel, The Mystery Guest, was enjoyable but, I felt, not exceptional. The Maid’s Secret lies somewhere in between. At times, I wished for more Molly and less Gran; yet, I found Flora’s narrative to be interesting and moving.

A visit to the Regency Grand Hotel always is a treat, however, especially when a wedding is involved. (No spoilers!) I’m already looking forward to my next “stay.”