Cynthia Flowers, Freckles & Frankie
My parents were cat people, and for my eighth birthday, they let me pick out a cat to take home from our local animal shelter. One of the happiest days of my childhood was meeting and saving a tiny gray and white kitten that I named Nermal, after the cartoon cat Garfield’s nemesis. Nermal and I had a very special bond, and I’ve pretty much had a cat since then.
My current cats are named Freckles and Frankie. Freckles is a gorgeous medium-haired tortie that my husband, Oliver, and I adopted from PupStarz in March 2019. Shortly before we adopted her, our prior cat Whitey Ford had died. Whitey had been given to Oliver by our former landlady, Rose, when she moved into a nursing home. Rose just walked upstairs with Whitey and said, “You’re taking the cat!.” Whitey was a very sweet cat, who was also deaf and blind. After she died, I thought we wouldn’t have another cat for a while because Whitey had a lot of health needs and it had been so hard at the end. But two weeks later I was like, “I miss the sound of little claws on the hardwood floor. We need another cat!”
We were trying to adopt a younger cat and reached out to a few adoption agencies without any luck. Then I saw a photo of Freckles, and I just thought she looked hilarious. It turned out she was being fostered in Long Island, but we decided to take the LIRR out to meet her anyway and that was one of the best decisions of my life!
In some ways, Freckles is more like a dog than a cat. If the doorbell rings, Freckles is the first one to run to the door to greet our guests, she plays fetch, she adores a brush and a belly rub, and she loves to play with toys. She is not a lap cat, but she is a champion couch snuggler. She doesn’t care about food, but she is always hungry for pets. She will sit next to you and tap you with her little paw or swipe at you (no claws, just a love pat!) if you are rude enough to walk by her without giving her some affection. She is just a special little soul, and everyone who meets her loves her.
Although my brother also had a cat growing up, our cats did not get along. So, I never really considered having two cats, especially in a one-bedroom apartment.
But in November 2019, the brilliant playwright and my friend Jackie Sibblies Drury and her husband Mark adopted a friendly stray off the street. When they took the cat to get spayed, the vet told them the cat was already pregnant with six kittens. So Jackie went from having zero cats to having seven—and my friend Meropi and I would go over to Jackie’s to help socialize and play with these adorable kittens and I would pretend I didn’t want to take one, but…Jackie and Mark wanted to keep the original cat and one kitten together and adopt most of the kittens out in pairs…which left one little loner. So I said that we would take one of the kittens in for a trial run.
Well! Cut to 2024—Freckles and Frankie are a love story for the ages. Freckles is definitely Frankie’s favorite being on earth. If Frankie wakes up, and Freckles is not nearby Frankie will make this little trilling “bring bring” noise, trot off to find Freckles, and then plop herself down on top of Freckles to cuddle. Every morning I wake up to them snuggling and grooming each other at the foot of my bed or doing this little thing where they put their paws on top of each other like they’re holding hands or doing this other little thing where Freckles puts her arm around Frankie. It is just the perfect way to start one’s day—it’s a total gratitude cuteness bomb.
Frankie is much more of a cat-cat. I like to joke that she must come from a long line of bodega cats because she is food-obsessed. She also loves chewing on plastic, whining for dinner, hunting toy mice, running 60 miles an hour into a paper bag, and sleeping in this one very specific spot in the entryway closet. She is also very smart though—she taught herself how to open two different types of doors in our apartment—one to get into her food and one to get into that special spot in the closet. She absolutely will not cuddle—except that I’m her favorite pillow and she loves to sleep on me as long as I’m in bed and there’s a comforter over my legs. If I have the audacity to try and sleep on my side, Frankie will get right in my face at 1am and yowl at me until I roll onto my back so that she can sleep on me. I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I find that sort of sweet.
Cynthia is one of three co-directors of Soho Rep, an award-winning Off Broadway theater. In addition to cats, her obsessions are yoga, cooking, concerts, her friends, and her mom.