Sisters

In one of the photos I saw of her as a young woman, she is pushing a baby carriage – an old-fashioned big black baby carriage – down a city street in Paris. The street is shaded by large chestnut trees and, in addition to pushing the carriage, she is holding a little dog on a leash. The dog, a black terrier, is straining at the leash.

“Heel,” she could be telling the dog. “Heel, damn-it,” but the dog pays her no attention.

“She didn’t like dogs much,” my husband once told me. “She liked cats. I hate cats,” he adds.

“I love dogs,” I told my husband.

At first I had pictured her in a house full of cats. Cats everywhere. Cats stretched out on the sofa, on the chairs, lying on top of the kitchen table, sitting on the window sill licking themselves clean, eating from bowls on the floor. A mess. I was reminded of the book I had just read about poor Camille Claudel, Rodin’s discarded mistress, made mad by neglect and poverty. Her apartment on the Quai de Bourbon in Paris, a home for feral cats.