Excerpts from Cleo: The Cat who Mended a Family (2009) by Helen Brown

On January 21, 1983, Helen Brown’s life changed.  Her nine-year-old son Sam died.  And six-year-old son Rob witnessed the accident. 

Brown wrote

On the outside, my family resembled the same people we’d been [before].  I drove the same car, went to the same supermarket .  My internal organs felt like they’d been rearranged and scrubbed with steel wool. [I was probably in shock.]  I no longer trusted the goodness of being alive.  Hatred and fury flared easily.  I.  Was.  Angry.  (66)

The Browns found themselves “engrossed in their misery” with Sam’s death (98).

And then a small kitten named Cleo joined the Brown family.

Brown wrote

Feathered and furry animals [have] a way of reaching into [our] frazzled and overactive souls and calming [us] down (59).

Within twenty-four hours [of welcoming Cleo] the kitten had taken charge and transformed our home into the House of Cleo, invading every centimeter…coiling between my ankles and following me to the bathroom and pouncing on my lap the instant I settled on the toilet seat (60).

Over time, the Browns learned that

Cleo loved eating mincemeat, raw eggs, and butter.  But once she’d figured out the fridge was the source of salmon, she spent many hours worshipping its Great White Door (100).

Brown turned to her audience for comfort.  She wrote

As I sat in bed, dripping tears into my typewriter, and recounted the events of that dreadful day that Sam died, I had no idea I was tapping into a great source of healing.

I had grown accustomed to sharing intimate aspects of my life through my weekly columns, so it seemed appropriate to tell my readers about Sam’s death (60-61).

Grief attacks us all in different ways.

Initially, Brown thought often about the woman who’d taken Sam’s life.  She had been on her way back to work from her lunch break [when she hit him with her car].  Brown wondered what she looked like (61).

Brown wrote

People persuade themselves [that] they deserve easy lives, that being human makes us somehow exempt from pain.  This condition of denial in no way equips us to deal with the difficult times that not one of us escapes (102).

Shortly after Sam’s death, Cleo arrived.  Brown noticed that

Rob [soon began to sleep] more soundly.  His dreams were less disturbing.  [There’s] no doubt that the comfort of a centrally heated kitten had something to do with that [change] (91).

Brown was astonished by Cleo’s influence.  She wrote

Cleo awakened a depth of tenderness in Rob I hadn’t seen before.  He’d always been the baby of the family.  Now, he was responsible for something smaller than himself.  A gentle, caring side of him began to emerge.  Cuddling with his kitten was helping him grow stronger and more

self-assured (107).

By making a life with Cleo the kitty, Brown found she could manage her grief over Sam’s death.  Over time, she even found that she had become a cat person.  She wrote 

A touch of a paw can [sometimes] work better than aspirin (103).