Reading the Meow 2024: The Cat Who Came for Christmas by Cleveland Amory

1977: Christmas Eve in New York City. The snow is falling  Author, socialite and animal rights activist Cleveland Amory is contemplating spending Christmas alone in his Central Park apartment  Recently divorced, he’s having to devote so much time to trying to shore up his anti-cruelty charity, The Fund for Animals, that he’s years behind on a book deadline, embarrassingly late with work for magazines, and still at his desk at 7pm on the night before one of the biggest family-based holidays of the year  

‘And on top of it all, there was a final irony in the situation  Although I had had animals in my life for as long as I could remember…..and although I was working on animal problems every day of my life - I had not a single creature to call my own.  For an animal person, an animal-less home is no home at all.’ 

An hour or so later, everything has changed A stray cat, filthy, starving and injured is frequenting an alleyway at the back of Amory’s apartment building. Ruth Dwork, an inveterate animal rescuer, has tried in vain to catch it. Now she’s turned up on Amory’s doorstep looking for reinforcements  Before long Amory and Miss Dwork are out in that alley, trying to outwit a very frightened cat .

‘To anyone who has ever been owned by a cat, it will come as no surprise that there are all sorts of things about your cat you will never, so long as you live, forget. Not the least is your first sight of him, or her. That my first sight of mine, however, would ever be memorable seemed , at the time, highly improbable. For one thing, I could hardly see him at all…For another thing, what I did see of him was extremely unprepossessing. He was thin and he was dirty and he was hurt.’

Amory is a dog person. He’s never had a cat and he isn’t planning on breaking that run.

But as cat people know, there are few things a cat likes better than a challenge. My own cats are regularly all over my daughter-in-law, who’s never been quite sure about felines. To my son, however - who grew up with cats and tries his very best to make friends with them - they present the iciest of cold shoulders. They don’t approve of Trying Too Hard.

So of course Amory ends up keeping the cat, who, once (furiously) bathed, turns out to be pure white.  

Not that the bath goes without incident,

‘It seemed to me that he understood exactly what the mat and the towel and all the rest of the paraphernalia were about, and knew exactly what I was about to do. But, at the same time, it also seemed that he simply could not believe that I would do such a thing. His tail made an incredulous rat-tat. ‘Wash a cat!’ he was exclaiming. ‘Boy, have I got my work cut out with this one!’’

Amory thinks this can’t be too difficult. He thinks wrong.

And so begins his life of being owned by a cat  Eventually (and it takes a while….Amory gives this one a lot of thought) the cat is named Polar Bear, and Polar Bear sets to work training Amory. At every turn Amory assumes he knows how to manage Polar Bear  At the end (usually reached in nanoseconds) of each turn he realises that there’s only one manager in this relationship, and it certainly isn’t him.

Amory and Polar Bear have many adventures. They take a walk in Central Park. Polar Bear, resplendent in his new harness, refuses to move  They go to Hollywood, staying at none other than the Beverley Hills Hotel, where Polar Bear ends up sitting on Cary Grant’s lap. At Christmas, back in New York, they hold a party at which he meets Walter Cronkite and George C Scott (Cronkite is a cat lover  PB refuses even to come out from under the bed for him  Scott is not. PB saunters out at his request and ‘all but saluted.’)

From time to time Amory has to provide short term accommodation for a variety of rescued animals, usually en route to their new homes. PB is horrified when Bouncer, a cross breed retriever, makes an appearance in the erstwhile happy home,

‘…people are fond of the old saying that the very word ‘dog’ is God spelled backwards. To Polar Bear, on the other hand, dogs, no matter how you spelled them, were, if not God’s greatest mistake - he was not fond of serpents either- then so close to it that the difference was negligible.’

Amory hopes he’ll have more luck with a tiny kitten. He hopes in vain. And then another animal rescuer turns up with a cardboard box containing Herbert. 

Herbert is a lavender pigeon.

Amory is adamant that this will never work. 

And true to form PB proves him wrong. Cat and pigeon settle down happily together on PB’s enclosed balcony,

‘…and for some time the two of them just sat and regarded each other and the Park down below them, looking for all the world as if they were posing for a new version of The Peaceable Kingdom….As I told you before, you never could count on his foreign policy.’

Amory also tells us about his animal rights activism, which includes fighting the Canadian seal culls (they hire a boat, The Sea Shepherd, fill her bows with concrete, and force their way through the ice to cover the seals with a harmless red dye that renders their pelts worthless) and airlifting wild burros out of the Grand Canyon and taking them to the safety of Amory’s new property in Texas, the Black Beauty Ranch, ‘Home of the Unwanted and Abused Equine’, before the National Parks Service can carry out its plans to shoot all 577 of them. (These burros had been running wild in the canyon since the days of the Gold Rush, after which they had been abandoned by disappointed prospectors.)

But in the end The Cat Who Came for Christmas is all about Polar Bear, and daily life with a cat. Amory has many conversations with PB, but they are never twee or silly. He treats him as the intelligent animal he is, and their companionable existence is a joy to observe. Amory writes with great understated wit. He knows PB will always get the better of him, will always win any ‘debate’, but he soldiers on. They have a great time and - spoiler alert! - PB does not die at the end (I checked before I even started the book. Of course.) 

‘…an animal-less home is no home at all.’

The Cat Who Came for Christmas by Cleveland Amory is published by Back Bay Books, Little, Brown and Company. Read more about the Black Beauty Ranch here.

Reading the Meow week (10-16 June this year) is hosted by Mallika of Literary Potpourri, and the idea is simple - you just read a book or books featuring cats, then post your thoughts on your blog, or in the comments on Mallika's blog.