The White Cat - native orchids and lavender growing and cooking in connecticut

Cattleya Orchid

I don't quite know how to tell my wife about what I suspect happened to her cat. I don't know for sure, but here is an account of the events that surrounded its disappearance.

She'd had the cat, Snowball, for three or four years. It was pure white with yellow eyes, one of those big ones but not with the double paws. Absolutely sparkling white, no matter what it got into. It could leave a trail of ink, soot, whatever, but the cat itself would be perfectly clean. Just where it had been, everything would be a shambles.

My study, in particular. "Elise," I'd say, "I know you love that cat, but keep it out of my study. It keeps messing up the papers on my desk."

Now, that may sound overly fussy. But I'm a bookkeeper, I work with numbers all day, then I come home and after dinner I like to catch up on my correspondence. I have a network of people I write with about various types of exotic plants that we grow.

Time and time again I'd find the cat sitting on my desk when I got home. It would look at me as if to say, you can't tell me what to do.

"Snowball didn't mean to do it." Elise would say when I complained. I know she did her very best to keep the cat out of my study. She'd make sure if she went in there to water the plants or put my mail on my desk, that the cat was not underfoot. Yet it kept getting in.

One time I was particularly angry when the inkstand was knocked over and the ink pooled onto papers I was writing, as well as dribbled down onto the floor. There wasn't a lot of ink in the bottle that day, but plenty enough to make a mess for me to clean up. Not that there was the slightest tint of black ink on the cat, oh no, its fur stayed pure and white.

Going off to my Horticultural Club meeting after, I was still upset and frustrated. But I lost myself in the talk of the visiting speaker, a young man named Jack Madding. He told stories of hunting new plants in the jungles of South America.

Just the kind of place that a stogy bookkeeper like myself would never dream to visit.

Poling canoes upstream with natives, sleeping in hammocks to avoid army ants that came through and clean up any garbage, debris, or anything that didn't move fast enough. The brightly colored birds he described, giant snakes, even shudder-provoking leeches.

Bringing the plants back in cases on the deck of the steamship, gong through a hurricane, I could hardly imagine a greater contrast to my own ordered life of books, walking to my office each morning, calculating lists of numbers, meeting with clients and reporting in the afternoons, then home to my quiet study and my own armchair in he evening.

The biggest excitement in my life was growing bits and pieces of plants like those Madding had brought back, and listening to his stories.

In terms of being a grower of plants I am very modest. I have a small solarium attached to the downstairs drawing room. Not a big space, but with careful use of shelves and a small fountain it is very pleasant, especially in winter.

I also have a small shelf built into a window in my study for my own personal display. When something in the solarium is in bloom, I bring it up there so I can enjoy the flowers.

It was the spring of 1894 when Jack Madding came and spoke of the Amazon River and I bought two plants from him to add to my collection.

The summer seemed to agree with them and by October both were heavily showing buds that promised to be fabulous. Going out to a horticultural event I chance to run into Madding and invited him back to the house to see the solarium and how well his treasures had done under my care.

Opening the door to my study, Snowball streaked out between my legs. I could only raise my eyes in horror to see my proudest possessions, carefully placed on my window display, now smashed and shredded on the floor.

My face paled but I controlled myself. Madding and I had a pleasant visit and cup of tea. I share some of my frustration with the cat with him, but the talk was mostly of plants and growing and the delights he had seen despite the perils of the Amazon Basin area.

Elise came to me as Madding left and in the face of her tears, what could I do but relent and give Snowball another chance.

A few days later in the post I received and unexpected package. Madding had sent me a plant which he suggested I try growing. A type of orchid he had written, he hoped I would try it. The label was blurred although it was clearly something from his most recent Amazon adventure.

Odd, elongated stems and flat leathery leaves in singles, with a dried, withered appearance. His notes included direction to pot it with rocks and very little soil then water twice a week. I set it up in a big pot towards the back of the solarium and watched over it anxiously.

Slowly I could see it beginning to hydrate, white vellum coated roots poking out first green tips, then getting going, snaking along the edges of the pot and waving downwards, enjoying the faithful watering but taking in the air in between.

A new growing section that I hoped would reveal flowers came to show and raised up over sex or seven months to show a single leaf and an eye, but no flowers on this growth.

I moved it to a different part of the solarium, hoping to give it more light, and that was when disaster struck.

Snowball, previously content with invading my study, now made an attack upon my growing area in the solarium.

I returned from my office to find Snowball literally in the special plants very pot, chewing the last remaining bits of this special orchid that had been given to me. In an instant, the wretched cat had run out of the solarium, leaving me to view the path of destruction; topped over and smashed pots, soil strewn across the floor, stems snapped off, leaves shredded and ripped.

I had had it with the cat. "Elise!" I cried, "Come see this mess!"

My wife came, and after a time she calmed me down. We worked together to salvage what we could, clean up, sweep up. Everything except the remnants of the special plant. That I found too upsetting, I simply took the pot and pushed it into the back, under one of the shelves.

Elise pleaded with me for Snowball and I relented once again. In the next few weeks I was too busy to really worry about the cat, with summer coming again we were off to spent it with friend at a place by the ocean, not returning for about 2 months. I had things to delegate for my business and other matters more pressing than the cat.

Snowball seemed to be staying out of my study. Shut door or not had never made a difference in the past, but now things were as I had left them upon my return.

It was just a few days before our departure when I really got a good look at Snowball. The creature looked a little odd and it took me a moment. Where the cat had always been pure white untouched by any adventures with my inkwell or other forays, now it looked a little yellow around the edges. Almost a yellow-green sitting in a beam of afternoon sunlight.

The minute Snowball saw me, it bolted, and I never saw it again. We left four days later with Elise leaving instructions with the neighbor and food for Snowball, much as I left instructions for the watering of my plants.

We spent a delightful holiday visiting with friends and enjoying the gardens and the greenhouses of the people around this area. In particular, I met some new to me who also enjoyed rare plans and we talked long into the night about the orchids coming from the new world and the adventures of the intrepid young men who went there and brought plants back to us.

Returning to home I immersed myself in work and catching up with clients, wooing new ones. The one mystery was that after we had left no one had seen Snowball. Our neighbor had put food out for the cat for a couple of weeks, but with it never being touched, eventually stopped. And she had not seen the cat, nor had Elise.

Elise confessed to being less sad than she might have been if Snowball had been less destructive and more of a good pet. She did not blame me in any thought, and our lives settled into a pleasant routine of work, a small social whirl, and here and there a few more horticultural events and talks.

Reacquainting myself with the contents of my solarium, I finally approached the big pot I had so disconsolately shoved back under one of the shelves so many months ago.

At first, it seemed stuck, then with a grating sound the pot slid over the stones into the open walk space.

To my surprise, the pot was not barren. It was filled with a mass of white vellum coated roots and green spurs of new orchid growth. Sheaths coming up had clearly visible swellings from buds. And there were what looked like ten or more, not just a couple.

My excitement warred with puzzlement. I had seen Snowball rip to pieces and eat this orchid, yet here it was growing and thriving.

A couple of months later I exhibited the plant in full bloom at one of my horticultural club events. It had huge white flowers, each with a deeply frilled white lip, and a pair of bright yellow markings like eyes.

At the exhibit I ran into Jack Madding who congratulated me on my excellent culture of the plant and said he'd rather though I'd like the Cattleya.