Cleo

Cleo is Lizzy Enders’s kitten and a vulnerable companion whose injury brings Elinora St. Clair’s cruelty into sharp focus. Chosen on the night of a funeral, she becomes part of Lizzy’s effort to make a home amid grief and displacement; later, her apparent blindness and recovery become one of the book’s unresolved tests of what counts as a miracle.

Selection and Early Bond

While the Bishop is away at his farm, Sister Roberta allows Lizzy into his study to choose among four kittens. They are difficult to tell apart, but one has a small amber mark on its left paw. Lizzy chooses that kitten, takes her to her room for the first time on the night of the funeral, and cuddles her in bed. Cleo’s warmth and purring remind Lizzy of the cats she knew before arriving in Santa Fe, and the comfort of that resemblance brings her to tears.

Lizzy names the kitten Cleo because she is female, thinking of her own Cleo back in Independence, Missouri. She tells the new kitten that she will take her home when she returns to Independence; Cleo licks her nose. The promise links this small new attachment to a place and life Lizzy hopes to regain. Cleo is not only a keepsake of that former home, however: Lizzy also begins to imagine a future for her in the life she has now.

That same night, Lizzy falls in love with the newborn Elena and pretends the baby is her little sister, or at least her cousin Cassie’s. The two attachments arise together. Cleo is a warm, responsive animal Lizzy can hold; Elena is a helpless infant whom Lizzy visits before eating breakfast. Their vulnerability draws out the same protective impulse, though Cleo’s later injury makes Lizzy’s responsibility for her especially immediate.

Injury and Its Immediate Aftermath

Cleo’s injury occurs during a gathering of the girls at Our Lady of Light Academy. When the kitten jumps from Lizzy’s lap to chase beads scattered across the floor, Rosalyn lifts her by the scruff and points out that kittens are not allowed there. Lizzy reaches for Cleo, but Elinora takes hold of her and turns toward the window. The other girls restrain Lizzy; she hears Cleo howl, then sees Elinora throw her out onto the street. Cleo’s distressed meowing outside follows the act into the next moment, while Lizzy runs out to find her.

After searching for a full twenty minutes, Lizzy finds Cleo dirty, frightened, and cold, huddled in an old pipe in the ground. Blood is running from her eyes. Lizzy dabs at them, holds the shivering kitten close, apologizes to her, and carries her inside to find Sister Roberta. The details make the harm bodily and specific: Cleo is not simply lost after being thrown from the window, but found injured and in need of care.

Sister Roberta examines Cleo extensively, cleans her, and gives her something to quiet her. She tells Lizzy that the kitten has been poked in both eyes with a sharp object and says she is reasonably sure Cleo is blind. Lizzy identifies Elinora as responsible, recalling that she had been doing embroidery and had a needle in her hand. Sister Roberta considers putting Cleo to sleep, which she says she could do painlessly. Lizzy’s closeness to Cleo gives the diagnosis a personal consequence: the possibility of blindness is not an abstract condition but a change to the life of an animal she has just promised to take home.

Care, Blindness, and the Possibility of Recovery

Cleo remains close to Lizzy after the injury. When José encounters her, Cleo is tucked into Lizzy’s pocket and sticks her head out to meow. Lizzy tells him she is blind. He asks whether she was born that way, and Lizzy says no before hesitantly explaining what happened. José does not offer a certain cure; he says that Cleo might see again and that Lizzy must love her and care for her well. His response makes care, rather than a guaranteed outcome, the practical answer available to Lizzy.

Months later, Elinora insists that Cleo is not blind and offers to prove it. She leads Lizzy upstairs, takes a ball of yarn from a drawer, unwinds it, and waves it over Cleo, who is sleeping in Lizzy’s bed. Cleo raises a paw toward the yarn and follows its movement with eyes that appear bright and alert. Lizzy is astonished by what she sees. The demonstration is concrete, but it does not explain how Cleo’s sight returned or settle the question of whether the change should be understood as miraculous.

Meaning and Uncertainty

At the book’s end, Lizzy remembers Sister Roberta handing Cleo back to her and saying that she was blind. Lizzy remains certain that the blindness was real; she also remembers José picking Cleo up in the barn and suggesting that she might see again if she were loved and cared for. The gap between those memories matters. Cleo’s later response to the moving yarn confirms that she can see, but the narrative does not give a definitive account of what restored her sight.

Lizzy includes Cleo among the possible miracles she has witnessed at Our Lady of Light Academy, alongside Mrs. Lacey, Bishop Lamy, Sister Roberta, perhaps even Elinora, and the knowledge that her father wants her. Yet Cleo’s recovery does not close the question for her. Lizzy wonders whether Saint Joseph could have been involved and acknowledges that she may never have an answer. Cleo’s story therefore holds together two kinds of evidence: the remembered injury and the later, visible response. Her character is defined less by speech or intention than by the care she elicits, the cruelty she survives, and the unresolved possibility that healing can be real even when its explanation remains uncertain.