Where's the Blue Cat?

My name is Patricia Sánchez. I'm a civil engineer, but on the weekends I work part-time at the local museum. The pay is not much, but the work is very interesting and I get to see the work of some of my favorite artists first-hand.

One day, I received a very intriguing e-mail. It was sent by an anonymous person, who called himself/herself "Admirer of Picasso". The e-mail contained only one sentence: I found the blue cat. At first, I thought it was some kind of joke, so I didn't pay too much attention to it. But the e-mails kept coming, all with the same message. Finally, I got tired and replied that I didn't care if he/she had a blue cat and that I would prefer it if he/she stopped sending me e-mails. The e-mails stopped, so I thought that I had finally got rid of him/her, but after a couple of weeks "Admirer of Picasso" came back. He/she sent another e-mail saying: Not mine, Picasso's blue cat. I'm not an expert on art, so I didn't know what he or she meant.

I started asking around if someone knew something about a Picasso-related blue cat. I tried to be discreet, I didn't feel comfortable asking about the subject, since I still had the feeling that someone was pulling my leg.

As I suspected, nobody knew anything about it, so I dropped the subject and forgot about it until a couple of months later. At that time, I was doing some research on paintings lost during wars. I was surfing on the net when suddenly a name startled me: "Blue Cat" by Picasso. I couldn't believe it, I clicked on the name and there it was, the painting of a blue "cubist" cat. Underneath it, there was a paragraph describing the period, technique, materials used and a phrase in bold letters: PRESUMED LOST DURING SECOND WORLD WAR.

I was baffled. Could this be the blue cat that "Admirer of Picasso" was referring to? I didn't know what to do. I sent an e-mail to "Admirer of Picasso" with the sentence: Where's the Blue Cat? and hoped that he or she would answer back. Couple of days later I received a reply: Interested now? If you want to see it, meet me at 1414 Reforma Street at noon tomorrow.

The next day I was very nervous. I arrived at the address and was very surprised by the house that was in front of me. It was a very old mansion that urgently needed major repairs and a lot of maintenance. The ugly feeling that this was all a joke came back. I was about to leave, when the door opened and a very sweet looking old lady came out. She invited me in and told me that her nephew had told her that I would be coming by to see her painting.

I was very intrigued, so I accepted the invitation. The inside of the house was no better than the outside. I could not possibly believe a Picasso was kept within these walls. The lady took me to her dining room and proudly showed me a landscape done by a very popular local artist. I was very disappointed, still I had to ask: "Don't you have one that resembles a blue cat?" She looked at me as if I were someone asking for a hamburger when I could have a steak and replied: "That ugly thing?" I nodded in an affirmative way so she turned around making a sign to follow her. We passed several rooms until she opened a small door at the end of the hall. It was a very poorly-lit bathroom. She stopped at the entrance and urged me to go in by myself. She apologized for not being able to turn on the lights due to an electrical problem, but she told me that I would find what I was looking for hanging on one of the walls. I got in and anxiously started searching. There were several paintings, but there wasn't enough light to make out the content. I searched in my purse and found a small flashlight. I turned it on and there, in front of me, was the Picasso.

Patricia Sánchez
August 2002