Felicity and the cats (intro)

Felicity was afraid of cats. And yet here she was, once again, in a room dominated by three bossy Siamese and one cranky old tabby tom. The cats belonged to Aunt Ruthie, but Aunt Ruthie was off on one of her adventures: trekking the Outback or mapping the ocean floor or similar. Ruth got to have fun in the sun, while Felicity got finicky felines, allergies, and dreams about suffocation and glowing eyes in the dark.

Every two years or so, Felicity would be recruited to watch over the abhorrent shedders for a month. They weren’t particularly needy or tedious in their daily regimen: water and food daily really. Mrs. Culpepper came twice a week to clean, and she took care of the kitty facilities along with the usual housekeeping chores of dust elimination and pillow fluffing. Pillow duty wouldn’t normally be an arduous task, but Ruth Alexander was not a normal sort of woman, nor did she keep a normal sort of house.

For a woman with such free-spirited and adrenaline-based inclinations in holidays, Aunt Ruthie lived in a surprisingly traditional, almost fussy home. This living room, for instance, bore the evidence of an explosion of chintz and florals in bold patterns on the overstuffed sofa and wallpaper. The windows were veiled in lace sheers and swathed in paisley poufs, admitting a controlled amount of sunlight while deflecting the curious eyes of passers-by. At night, Ruthie would pull across the matching chintz drapes, completing the illusion of being submerged in a surrealist’s interpretation of an English garden while on hallucinogenic drugs. Lace doilies were in evidence on some surfaces, a dog in china painted blue and white sat proudly and domineeringly on the mantel; a treasured Doulton Old Country Roses tea service could be seen in the breakfront – but never on the table for Ruth used a more prosaic set of ironstone mugs for her morning tea.

Mad chintz and scary cats aside, Felicity always enjoyed the time she spent at Ruthie’s, whether alone or with her beloved Aunt. The two were a comfortable pair – opinions about cats notwithstanding – believing in the need for sparkle in a woman’s life, whether in jewellery, ocean views, or fully-lived moments and no regrets. While the elder Alexander chose to physically explore her place in the universe, the younger had always chosen a more cerebral approach to discovery, preferring to read the accounts of other people coming into contact with exotic bugs and strange dietary customs from the comfort of her own home. When Ruth returned from exotic places afar to her chintz and her cats, she had tea with the ladies of the local historical society and cross stitched samplers for church bazaars, while Felicity would partake in an afternoon of geo caching, rock climbing, or off-road cycling.