Cups, pets, and meaningful objects

A few weeks ago when I was helping my mother move to assisted living, and packing up dishes that she would be taking with her, I reclaimed a coffee cup that had been mine, leftover from my last stint of living at home. I was 31 years-old, and Ken and I had just returned from the Azores where we did our dissertation fieldwork—I was pregnant with our daughter, Zoë. The cup, a black and white coffee mug with a repeated graphic of a tuxedo cat, is what I have always called “my Lupe cup,” so named for Ken’s and my first jointly cared for pet, “Nossa Senhora de Guadalupe.”

As a graduate student at Brown I worked part-time in the anthropology library at Giddings House. It was one of the most boring jobs on the planet, but a good job for getting paid to do homework. One morning, Bob, one of my classmates, popped his head in. “Hey Anne, I was wondering if you could do me a huge favor?”

“Depends,” I responded cautiously. “Like what?”

“Could you keep an eye on my box of kittens while I go to class?” Bob opened the box revealing the six squirmy fur balls.

My heart skipped a few beats. “Sure! I would love to do that.”

An hour and a half later, Bob returned for his box, and left one kitten lighter. I had picked out a hefty black and white female with giant paws. For the rest of my library shift, the kitten sat contentedly on my shoulder purring and sleeping while I studied. When mid-afternoon rolled around, I gathered my belongings, and walked over to Ken’s office with my new kitten on my shoulder.

When I got to Ken’s office, he was busily working, as usual.

“Hi,” I said, “How are things?”

“Give me a few minutes,” he said without lifting his eyes from his screen, “I just need to finish this one email.”

Had he noticed the furry critter on my shoulder? He didn’t seem to have. I stood next to his desk expectantly. He finally looked up at me. I grinned. He returned a stern gaze.

“No,” he said, “Just no. I don’t like cats.”

“Aw, come on,” I pleaded.

“No,” he said adamantly.

“Okay, I will give her back to Bob. I told him I might not be able to keep her, but could you just do me a little favor?”

“Depends what it is.”

“Can you just hold her until I get back from my class? After that I will call Bob and arrange to return her.”

I knew I had been devious, as devious as Bob had been with me. Only the most callous and hard-hearted person, can resist a kitten. When I returned after class, Ken was busily typing away with a little black kitten curled up sleeping in his lap.

“Okay, I am back,” I said, “I can take her now.”

He looked up at me. This time he was grinning. She had won him over. “No,” he said, “She’s mine.”

Our kitten went nameless for a couple of weeks. We just couldn’t decide on a good name for her. We thought with her markings she looked like a Catholic nun, and settled on Guadalupe.

Lupe turned out to be as good a cat as ever was. She grew quickly into an extremely large cat. Bob speculated that this litter was part Maine Coon cat due to the number of extra toes and overall size of the kittens. Lupe had two extra toes on each of her paws, and while at first sight she was a tuxedo cat, upon closer inspection, she was an extremely dark tabby, especially noticeable when she was laying in the sun, as cats are wont to do. She was a gentle giant.

Many people think that cats are not very adaptable, but that was not so with her. While we had her, she adapted to many changes and several moves quite easily. She lived with other people for two long stints of her life, one that included living with my mother and her dog Maude when Ken, Zoë, and I moved to California to go work at Apple in 1993. That is how the Lupe cup had come to live in my mother’s cabinet; an artifact of our having lived with her, of our cat having lived with her. That cup had meaning for her, and a different meaning for me.

Today, as I was loading the dinner dishes, I noticed the Lupe cup in the sink. My son, Soren, home from college for spring break, had used it. He always favored this cup when visiting my mother as well, not because of his fond memories of Lupe, but because of his fond memories of his beloved Jasper, his black and white gentle giant, one of the cats we got shortly before he was born to fill the void left by Lupe’s sudden demise.

Thinking about this cup and the evocations it stirs in me, makes me feel my mother’s pain. Every object and every piece of furniture in my mother’s apartment had meaning for her, a story hidden within. Helping her select which belongings to take with her to assisted living was a difficult task for me, but it must have been excruciating for her to part with so much of her past life in the many objects she left behind, especially her books, which she once described to me as being “like people.” She said, “They are my friends.” I can’t imagine what it must be like to see one’s life packed up to be forever stored, sold, or shipped off, but I do feel some solace in knowing that many of the things she cherished will continue to bear meaning because they had once belonged to her and have gone to people she loves and who love her.