I'm Chanel

I keep the memory of my biological mother, I remember her smell in a precise way, she smelled like pocket candy.
Pocket candy is a sweet that remains hidden in a pocket of a garment that has been worn for a long time. When the garment remains unwashed for a long time, and the smells in it become concentrated, a mixture is produced that I immediately identify. It is a mixture reminiscent of the smell of sweat, saliva and blood together: an unnerving smell, the forgotten caramel adds a sweet note to that beautiful perfume that I call the smell of my biological mother.

I have no hope that anyone will understand my feelings next to the laundry basket and my desire to take shelter in the clothes, to sleep in that smell for long hours.

Despite the memory of my mother, I have a very good home life, a sweet and beautiful mother, an attentive and affectionate father and two talkative brothers with whom I have fun. I owe everything I know and everything I am to them. I often forget that I am a cat. There are no barriers between me and my family, not even language is an obstacle. They understand me and I understand them. Any meow of mine is interpreted correctly by my family and their every word is full of meaning for me. Although I can tell them in confidence that sometimes it is not necessary for them to speak for me to know what each of them is feeling.

If a shadow passes across mum's eyes, for example, I crawl into her lap and stare at her. That gesture is enough to make her smile.

My sister has told me many times how I came into the world, sent especially for my family.

Daddy, Mummy and my two brothers were on holiday in Paris, a trip that Daddy promised Mummy as a gift, after the birth of my little brother, when they decided that the family was complete. My youngest brother was two years old, and anything that moved on the ground caught his eye. He was the one who looked at me first. I was in the bushes near a food stall. I was crying.
When my sister walked towards my brother, to protect him, she fixed her blue eyes on me, let out a cry and took me in her hands. Mommy says my sister loved me immediately. The rest is history... my biological mommy didn't arrive all afternoon and as the sun set daddy and mommy accepted me too. Mummy lifted me up to her eyes and said simply. She is a girl, she has blue eyes, just like the females in this family. We have in our photo album several pictures of that day.

That's how I crossed the Atlantic with my family and arrived home. I had a soft bed, lots of love, and everything a baby cat needs. My mother cat had already taught me to be a very clean cat. Those had been her first lessons as she gave me her milk.
I see how mummy understands, little by little, that I have been learning to look after myself, although I never go, like my siblings, any distance beyond the range of her voice, to which I run, happy, when she calls me.

I have a fascination for the hours of the night, I like how my gaze is enhanced in the absence of the sun, and how the moon seems to speak to me. I am also afraid of the dark. I fear those cold hours when certain desires take hold of me. They are dark desires, a desire to leave the house, to jump the fence, to run through the bushes, to sniff the grass... Then my ears move like antennae, attentive to the most distant sounds. Sometimes I feel like running, I run and stop, anxious and fearful at the same time, as if I guess that the moment to decipher my inner mystery will come to me through the air.

Here it is. It is the smell of pocket candy. I can't yet detect if it's an accurate smell. It is a phantom smell, that comes and evaporates.

For that smell I go out every night. I sniff around and imagine I'm with my birth mother next to a tower. That's why I purred with deep joy when daddy gathered us together and informed us that we're going to Paris in spring.