Lauren Cerand & Toscano
A few nights after Christmas three years ago, when I was feeling like I had nothing to look forward to, I decided that the next day I would fly to Venice and stay until I ran out of money. My plan didn’t go further than that, but it was all I had besides my despair. First, I had to put a check in the bank before the end of the year, a task made harder on that day in particular due to the extreme cold. Immediately after walking out of my door in Brooklyn, I heard a cat howling. I assumed that one had gotten out of the nearby brownstones and was crying to be let back in. But on my way back from the bank I heard the howling again, so I decided to make a good faith effort to help the cat, who turned out to be across the street under a car.
When I got closer, two of my neighbors, whom I hadn’t met before, told me a tiny kitten was hiding in the wheel, and they were trying to coax him out before he froze to death, which, whenever he stopped crying, we were afraid had happened. I stayed with them for hours, going inside only to fill my hot water bottle for the cat carrier. Even in the atrium of my building, my hands and feet were numb. Eventually, I said, “You know, not everyone wants to be saved.” Right then, the kitten ran into the carrier. We didn’t know what to do next but I told my neighbors that I had a warm place, and the kitten could live with me if he didn’t have a home.
I didn’t actually see him until we went to the vet hospital to have him scanned for injuries and a microchip. He was the most beautiful black cat! So sleek and gorgeous but starving. He only weighed 2.3 pounds and the vet said he was eight weeks old, born on Halloween. His survival became my immediate preoccupation. I named him Toscano and loving him changed my life.
Toscano and I are always together—he even came to Italy with me for seven months while I went to jewelry school in Florence this year. We then spent a month in Lecce, which he loved most of all. We sent some money for food to the colony of cats that live in the cemetery as his birthday present.
“I had never heard him purr before we lived in Italy; I thought he didn’t do it. But he purred all the time we were there.”
I always thought he was very shy and afraid of everything because of whatever happened to him in his life before we met. But while we were staying in this enchanting, cat-friendly place, the Palazzo Tamborino Cezzi, there was a terrace to our rental apartment that overlooked a completely enclosed garden, ruled by Rocco and Rita, two of the most charming cats you can imagine (seeing Rocco on the listing instantly convinced me to stay there). Feeling the positive glow, I let Toscano go out to the terrace whenever he wanted and discovered a new side to him.
He is a keen observer, and with space and time to do this on his own terms, he showed me how he is sincere, bold, and adventurous in his own way. I even let him sleep under the stars on the terrace, after I came home from dinner with friends to find he had opened the door and let himself out. Direct, safe interaction with nature is key to his well-being. I had never heard him purr before we lived in Italy; I thought he didn’t do it. But he purred all the time we were there.
He is a silent traveler and sleeps at my feet, which makes the dream of us returning to Italy possible. At home, Toscano can be very talkative and stands on his cat tower to address me at eye level while I am in the kitchen. People always ask for him to write a children’s book about his travels, especially when we stay at hotels; an artist has even painted Toscano’s portrait.
Wherever Toscano is, that is home. I saved him, and he saved me.
Lauren Cerand is a jeweler, writer, and consultant in cultural public relations for artists and writers. Her most recently published essay can be found at Dining in Place, a Melbourne-based online journal of food in the time of quarantine.