When The Tiger’s Came To The City 

When the magical tabby cat Mr. Cat who was actually a female so the woman ended up calling her Mrs. Kitty because that was the name of her Godfather’s magical black cat who the woman loved for all 23 years of her life. Mrs Kitty, or Mr. Cat was a magical, majestic White Tiger, an extraordinary being. She was fierce and formidable yet she was gentle and loving with a special feline spirit that the woman thought was otherworldly. The big cat was raised by her and was her protector. Having come from the Siberian Strait she was one of the world’s most precious and powerful and majestic creatures and pride of the area. Though because in her lineage she was raised by her tribe, or her ancestors were, her own lineage made her a folk hero of great protectors, pure strength and of kind spirit. By the time she had morphed into a tabby who made her way to her owner, the young indigenous girl in Harlem, in Sugar Hill, in the same house that her mother was raised in because back in those days in the 1940’s and 50’s New York City was still very racist so all the mixed biracial families moved to Harlem and especially to Sugar Hill because it was an artist’s Mecca where Billy Holliday played all the time, The Cotton Club was in town and even Malcolm X had lived there before he found Allah. In our neighborhood, filled with bodegas and jazz clubs and cafes for Black people and the people who loved them it was a bohemian Mecca for artists and mixed families like my own. My mother had also known Mr. and Mrs.C as they were African American and Dominican, they raised their family in the house above their bodega and when their children were all grown they asked my mother if she would like to have her old family apartment there where she could raise me with their help since she was a single mom. Because my mom had three jobs, while also going to law school at Columbia she took them up on their offer and off we moved back to Harlem. Mr. and Mrs. C took the best care of the girl, always getting her off to school on time after feeding her hot decaf coffee served Dominican style with loads of sugar and condensed milk, and pastries with strawberry filled always piping hot. And because the girl always lost her keys to the apartment her mother made her wear them in a keychain to wrap around her neck. But sometimes she’d lose them also so Mr. and Mrs. C always had to open the doors for her and wait with her until her mother got home from work and night school where they would do her homework with her, always making her practice her cursive over and over until it hurt! The bodega was always full of family and friends and many usual customers so there was never a dull moment. Mr. C played dice with all his brothers and friends and taught the girl how to play so they would have tournaments in the back of the store where all the family meals were served and where the girl spent most of her childhood, acing dice and even beating the seasoned old men who also played chess with her after Mrs. C taught her both how to play and win and occasionally they’d all go downtown to let the girl play on the sidewalks and in the parks in the tournaments for grown people. When she would win which she often would occasionally they’d take in a show on Broadway which tickled the girl to no end and for many Christmas’s they’d all go with the girl’s mother to see the Rockets! These early Christmas memories are some of the best the woman has of her childhood. Anywhere you walked in the City during the Christmas season was full of the aroma of roasting chestnuts on an open fire just like in a Nat King Cole song. Almost every Christmas they’d all go to Macy’s so the girl could meet Santa and ask him for a million things. One year she asked him for a magical cat and a week later Mr. Cat appeared and the magic began as the cat changed the girl’s life. After she had the cat for only a few weeks she started to have vivid dreams about an indigenous tribe who lived in old time clothes just like in the pictures she had seen in her text books on history of America about Native American people, how they dressed and the certain battles they fought in and won. She particularly loved the photographs of the beautiful war hero Pretty Nose, Pocahontas and Buffalo Calf Road Woman and how they fought alongside all the Native men in so many battles, she noticed that it was Buffalo Calf Road Woman who killed Custer who she learned about in her history books as being the bad guy. She was drawn to these pictures in a very deep and meaningful way but she didn’t know why other than that she saw in them her own face and always wondered if she was related to them. The girl had long raven black hair down to her waist that her mom used to brush and braid to keep her hair from falling in her face. It was with her braids that when she looked in mirror she realized that she with her dark brown skin and her raven black hair looked exactly like Pretty Nose and all the other Native woman warriors in the photographs in her books. Her mother thought so too and when the little girl popped out of her mother’s belly the mother said that she told her doctor who delivered me that she had just given birth to a tiny little Indian child with loads of black hair. My mother always told me that she thought her daughter and her were always going to have a conversation because they were so connected. This remained true their entire lives and later the mother and the girl moved to Berkeley California where my mother met her soulmate and life partner who would become my father. My mother finished law school there and became a woman attorney with her own practice before she became the municipal judge of Berkeley, California. At the same time she worked  at Planned Parenthood as an abortion counselor where she was frequently on public television being interviewed for groundbreaking work in this new field when Roe v Wade was first enacted. She was on multiple lecture panels on channel 9, our local PBS station and I’d miss her so much when my dad was babysitting me while she was on television that I’d want to crawl inside the TV! But my memories of Mr. and Mrs. C were the best memories of my life, spending so much time with them was a precious gift I’ll never forget as they were like my grandparents and because I never had any of my own they were extraordinarily special to me. All those delicious breakfasts and dinners we had at the bodega in Harlem where there were so many black and brown people that I never felt for a second that anyone looked down on me for the color of my skin. My magical Mr. Cat was my guardian angel who took me time traveling with him to the magical lands that later in my life I would discover were the lands of my ancestors and all the ancestral dreams that I had were actually ancestral memories of my tribe, my peoples, my family and where and who I come from. After dinner at the C’s I would take Mr.Cat with me upstairs to the apartment and together we would dream out loud where we came from. He came from the Siberian Strait and was considered the most precious tiger in the East. And I was his rider and protector as he was mine. I’d ride him through the thick and dense forest where he always knew the way home and I’d ride him on the long stretches of coastline and we’d gallop like he was my horse. One night I had a vivid dream about us, we were riding fast and furiously up a long mountain and my foot came loose from the stirrups and I thought I was going to fall off and it was almost dark and no one would be able to find us if I did. My magical cat actually reached around and took my foot and gently put it back into the stirrup then we galloped off into the night knowing that I was safe and secure and he would never let me fall off. Some of the pictures you see here are of us riding together when I returned to New York City as an adult to not only pursue my career as an artist but also to see Mr. and Mrs. C’s-grandchildren graduate from college when Whole Foods bought their famous cultural landmark bodega they offered Mr. and Mrs. C a fortune to buy them out because of their huge customer base and because it had become a cultural icon. This made them very wealthy so they could afford to send all their grandchildren and nieces and nephews children to the colleges of their choice. When they died, they left my mother and me $300,000 to help my mom pay for law school and to pay for my college education. They were the most important people in our lives and every Christmas we’d receive cards from them and their growing family where they had 16 grandchildren! I loved them and never forgot how special they made me and my cat feel as they too thought Mr. Cat had magical powers. We remained connected our entire lives. My mother cried so hard when they died I thought she was going to have to grow a new pair of eyes. I kept them with me in a gold locket they gave me on my eighth birthday, in it they inserted a picture of me and Mr. Cat.