Blackie: an Inspirational Love Story about a Writer and his Battle to Save his Pet Cat

By Stephen Downes

'Blackie' is the heart-warming story of an unlikely friendship between Australian writer Stephen Downes and Blackie, a back-fence stray. Stephen never much liked cats. But one day, his sons Patrick and Benny find three kittens at the bottom of the garden. Two of the strays -- Blackie and Fluffy -- soon become part of the family. Stephen falls in love with Blackie, a confident, friendly cat who keeps him company while he's working and takes naps on his study floor.
But one day, Blackie's tail droops and he seems listless and despondent. From family vet to eye specialist to Melbourne University's prestigious vet research centre, Stephen pursues every avenue to cure Blackie's illness and keep his beloved cat alive.
Deeply moving yet unsentimental, 'Blackie' is a beautifully written tale of love and companionship. In describing Blackie's life, illness and treatment, Stephen explores the intense experience of loving and being responsible for another living thing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen Downes
• Release date: Dec 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311945495

Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes is the author of ADAGIO FOR A SIMPLE CLARINET, a narrative that involved musicology, biography, memoir, Nazi history and an interview with Mozart. A writer and journalist who wanted to be a concert pianist, he has ‘collected’ for decades live performances by some of the world’s greatest pianists, including Sviatoslav Richter, Daniel Barrenboim, and Julius Katchen. He has a significant collection of piano recordings. He is the author of several books, including BLACKIE, the story of a pet cat’s treatment for a brain tumour and his unfortunate demise, which was met with considerable sales and now translated into three languages.

Book preview

Deeply moving … an honest and courageous book filled with love for a very special little cat – I cried. It is so rare to see a man let down his guard and talk about love with such depth and sentiment.

Jeffrey Masson, author of New York Times bestsellers When Elephants Weep and Dogs Never Lie About Love

Blackie

Stephen Downes

Copyright Stephen Downes 2014

Smashwords Edition

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In loving memory of Blackie

my mate and tutor,

and to the staff at Melbourne University’s

veterinary clinic and hospital,

especially Sue, Jason and Michelle,

and John,

and my family Dominique, Matthew, Benjamin and Patrick,

who all tried so hard,

this book is dedicated

I

I WAS NEVER a cat person. An aggressive tortoiseshell clawed me when I must have been three or four. The incident is a lighthouse in the gloom of my memory, flashing a warning that small animals can be dangerous. It ranks with other traumas, such as falling up brick steps as an infant and knocking out my front teeth. From the day of the clawing, I grew up afraid of cats. I didn’t trust them. They were quick and erratic. They attacked without reason, selecting innocent victims. They drew blood, penetrated like the most dreaded instrument used by grown-ups to assault children – needles.

Into adulthood, I disliked cats. I had long debates with a cat-loving newspaper colleague about them. She’d argue that cats were loving and clean, easy to keep and responsive to affection if you gave it to them in the right way. I’d just say I didn’t trust them. They had a tendency to mug me. Get their claws in. They could probably smell my fear. I didn’t deny that they were smart. But when cats entered a room, I almost always left.

Our sons were not without pets; they just didn’t have cats. Dominique and I tried a couple of dogs that were said to love families, collie-kelpie crosses. We gave Jack, a puppy, back. He had pined constantly, and we were unable to cope with it. We had probably taken him too young, we agreed, and at the wrong time; a baby, our second son Benjamin was making considerable demands on us. We kept Rusty for more than a year. A lean animal of mahogany stain and endless energy, she was highly strung. Never still. She needed to herd sheep, run for 70 kilometres a day, statistics say. Instead, she made an asterisk of narrow tracks across the back garden. She would canter them ceaselessly. Monotonously. They became deep scars across lawn and garden beds, dusty in summer and muddy in winter. She was also aggressive, having some sympathy really only for Benjamin. Her unprovoked nips at the children – whom she probably thought were sheep – soon became open-jawed lunges. When she savaged Patrick, our youngest, who was about four at the time, we decided to give her away. (She went for his neck, puncturing it and drawing blood in three or four places, causing the soft skin to purple and swell.) So one hot day, we took Rusty to a farm hundreds of kilometres away. The graziers were in the paddocks, but we did what we’d been asked to do and left her in a small open pen partly shaded by corrugated iron. There was water in a large battered saucepan. All of us were upset to leave her – we had partly forgiven the attack on Patrick – but I think I was the most sentimental. I rang regularly for months to see how she was getting on as a trainee sheepdog. Not well, was the response. Her restlessness was a problem. She wasn’t learning. Too impulsive. I stopped ringing because I knew she was another mouth to feed. She’d be shot if she couldn’t work on a farm.

The boys had many rodents. There was Alain le Lapin, a large white laboratory rabbit given to us by a researcher friend. For some biologically incomprehensible reason, at least to me, he had failed in the lab. So we took him. He escaped constantly from his chicken-wire cage and I would retrieve him, sometimes roughly, I’m ashamed to admit. The pet of our eldest son Matthew, Alain had very little personality but was soft and furry and enjoyed being cuddled and patted as much as any living thing. And we enjoyed the tonic of doing it. Unfortunately, a rangy wolfhound broke into our back garden one day and tore Alain to bits. I picked up the pieces before the boys got home from school. Matt insisted on staking a crude wooden cross at his gravehead. Dominique and I loved to see the boys exercising their spiritual options, even if they were ones we had rejected.

Aquarium fish – even minnows from a local pond – came and went, and the deaths of small animals increasingly upset me. I was beginning to understand that to have a pet was to bring a life and its sole currency, that is, its being, into a special relationship with human carers. We had a responsibility to maintain this beingness, if I may use so obvious a word. A pretty simple idea, it was primed with heavy explosives. Love was nurtured by the responsibility, which was total and sometimes required extreme measures in desperation to exercise fully. Squeezing drops of medication into their aquarium, we tried unsuccessfully to save several fish from fin disease. The boys were puzzled when I cried as I buried them. I couldn’t avoid thinking that the carers – us – had been derelict in our responsibilities towards them. That they didn’t have to die. That their lives had been wasted because our effort had not been up to scratch. I felt genuine remorse.

We had most success with guinea pigs. For half-a-dozen years, they came and went like dynasties in a soap opera. There was Harry the patriarch, and Brenda, his wife. They had eight offspring, and we gave away only two or three. At least one was albino. But before Brenda arrived, Harry had two younger male mates, Darren and Peter. They were short-haired brothers, and they didn’t get on with older, furrier and bigger Harry. So I built a smaller cage for them, and that’s where they died, on its cold damp floor one winter. I was away a lot on business, and it distressed me that they’d died when I wasn’t there. It upset me even more that their deaths had shattered my two youngest sons. (In his teenage years by now, Matthew was drifting into a new life fairly separate from the family’s.) Only later did I read about keeping guinea pigs. Their cages should be warm and dry. Again, I was filled with remorse and shame. Damp and cold kill guinea pigs. And Harry had a straw floor in his palace. Harry died like a king, and when Cindy, the last of the line, expired I did all I could to try to save her. I nursed her, keeping her warm in a shoebox, hydrating her with a dropper. In my arms, she slipped away at 1am after a twelve-hour ebbing. I buried Cindy, the last of the line, in a brilliant gold box, her tiny body swaddled in fine white fabric tied up with a wide ribbon of crimson satin. I was alone, the rest of the family not wanting to participate.

In the suburbs of Melbourne, you live among feral cats and possums. The latter are nocturnal Australian natives, and you have the right to trap them in your roof cavity if you can stand no longer their scratching, bumping and heavy breathing. Sometimes they stain your ceilings with urine. Once trapped, they must be released in your garden or put down at your expense. Most people hire experts to find the points of entry into roof cavities and block them. Usually, the possums get trapped and released. But most are cleverer than we are, and after a little while they’re back. And the cycle recommences.

Stray cats – unloved descendants of perhaps once-loved forefathers – come in all shapes, colours and sizes and are easier to deal with. First, they get about during the day and you can turn a hose on them. Or throw anything at hand in their direction. A hit is considered honorable. Cats kill birds. Especially native birds. They need to be harassed at every opportunity. Every suburban block has them. There is a surfeit of opportunity to hate them. Under the shrubs of every back fence in late spring is a mewling of kittens.

Patrick found a den in September 1993. It was under a rampage of honeysuckle climbing a paling fence at the back of our property. He and Ben brought Dominique and me three animate balls of fluff, each no bigger than an orange. We knew their mother, a regular target in black with white patches. In small hands, the boys held them up for us. Could we keep them? They were cute, no dispute. One was a traditional tabby in stripes of gray, black and white. The second was a tortoiseshell, and the third was all black, even his nose and the pads of his paws. Completely black, apart from his sulphur-crystal eyes. Black cats provoked a mental flashcard. They were unlucky, I seemed to recollect, and we reserved our decision. The boys delighted in our prevarication and went to play with their kittens. We could feel the joy they got from them. They studied every lolling gesture the animals made, the way they doddered across the lawn, rolled in gambols and feinted hooks and crosses as they tumbled. They loved their tininess, their doll’s paws, the softness of their fur and their chocolate-box faces.

We reminded them of the holidays coming up in a couple of months. We’d be away two weeks, I said, and if the kittens were still around when we returned, perhaps we’d talk about keeping them then. The ruling was more selfish than practical. Stray cats came and went, blowing in with the dust and out with the wind, as Bob Dylan, a hero of mine, might have put it. With luck, the kittens would disappear in the fortnight we were away. That’s