Charis
April 8, 2020
In 1979, I lived with two other friends in a very funky three-bedroom apartment in Atlanta on Vedado Way, which we called VaDildo Way because, well, we were young and thought that was funny. Our landlady June lived in the apartment above us and dated a guy in the band Atlanta’s Finest, a very cool dude who often made his entrance to June’s via the fire escape, and we heard a lot of activity up there. Not sure if any of it involved a dildo.
I was working as a singing telegram messenger for Eastern Onion, Mimi was working at the Academy Theatre, and Lynden was waitressing at the Lullwater Tavern. We were unfolding life like a map that we could never quite fold back up neatly again.
One day Lynden came home and said that a regular customer at the bar, a cab driver, desperately needed homes for four kittens. Lynden is a very persuasive person, in her own soft spoken way, I mean why would we not want to save these darlings from certain death at the shelter, or something, so I soon found myself at this cab driver’s apartment, watching four absurdly adorable kitties.
One, in particular, a calico, caught my attention. She—all calicos are female—climbed to the top of an old straight backed overstuffed chair, teetered there, looking a bit terrified, and then flung herself into the air, expecting to land on the floor. Instead, she caught a claw on the upholstery, did a front flip off the chair, and hung there, suspended by just the one claw of the one front leg. She looked at me and meowed piteously. It was quite a sight.
I knew right then and there that was my cat. I named her Charis, as in charismatic, and thus began our seventeen years together.
Charis liked things most cats don’t. She let me hold her like the baby Jesus in the Mary and Jesus paintings. She loved playing spin-the-kitty. I threw her over my shoulder like a sable fur, and she was happy to be toted around that way. On car trips, she would either sit on my lap, sometimes with her feet up on the door, or in the back window warning me of oncoming 18-wheelers with her distinctive Siamese cry.
Charis was a little bit like a dog. When I took her camping, she hiked right along the trail with us and at the end of day, when we built the campfire, she went off hunting and came back with small rodent treats and lay them by the fire. When I was briefly living in a tent out on Barton Creek (story for another time), Charis got into a tussle with a raccoon. Oh, my god, the sound, the screeching was terrifying. Raccoons are wild animals and much heavier and stronger than a cat, at least your average cat. But Charis was not your average cat. She had mojo that blew that raccoon’s mind. I found Charis perched in a tree, calmly and competently licking a paw, not even a tuft of fur missing. No sign of the raccoon.
Charis had a real presence. Gretchen’s 100-pound Dobie would give Charis the side-eye and walk as far away from her as possible. She sat like a sentinel in our front yard and other animals passing by felt that intensity and kept their distance. Anyone who ever met Charis never forgot her.
Charis was an excellent judge of character. When I first arrived in Austin to do a summer show with Jaston, I briefly had to stay with him and his boyfriend. In the short time Charis and I shared the space with them, Charis shat in the boyfriend’s shoes and then in his suitcase, at least once, maybe more, apiece. Not in anyone else’s anything. Charis knew. It took Jaston a while to figure it out. But Charis was right about that queen.
Charis was a perfect companion. In the early mornings before I got out of bed, she would climb onto my chest, and gently tap my face with her paws to get me to wake up. Sitting at the breakfast table, she sat on my lap and would, verrrr-y slowly, raise her paw up towards the table top and I would say “no” and she would just as slowly put her paw back down. She was so interested in whatever I was writing, that she would lie down on it. She was never bothered by my rehearsing, singing, or playing the piano.
I am so grateful to Lynden Harris for making adopting four kittens sound like the most responsible thing in the world.She brought into my life a powerful being who loved me fiercely.Charis was more than a cat. She was an ally. She was a goddess. A kindred spirit.I can hear that meow even now.
©2021 Joy Cunningham