Damaged Goods, Part 2
After Mitchell went missing, I found my son in his room, studying with his headphones on. He joined the search and we discovered a tear in the screen above the old dresser down in the garage. Perhaps Mitchell had jumped up there and gotten outside. I doubted we would ever get him back.
For three days I roamed the immediate neighborhood, searching, asking the neighbors if they’d seen a scrawny Siamese cat. On the fourth day my son found Mitchell squeezed into a little void under the TV cabinet, a space so small you wouldn’t think a fat mouse could hide in there, let alone a cat. It took us the better part of the day to coax him out with some cat food.
Slowly, very slowly, Mitchell settled in with Pearl and Andrew and me. When the weekend came and Carly came over, I tried to get her to take an interest in Mitchell. She burst into tears, telling me that Pearl and Mitchell were ‘our’ cats. I told her that Pearl and Mitchell were everyone’s cats. That did no good and so I told her that from now on she could consider Mitchell her cat. And Pearl would be Andrew’s cat. But she would have none of that and ignored both cats.
Mitchell was a strange animal. He would not let anyone get too close to him. I wondered if perhaps he had been living a feral life when he’d been rescued. I called the shelter and was told that he had been one of over a hundred cats rescued from an Alzheimer’s-addled woman’s house. That seemed to explain his paranoid ways. Every time I attempted to pet him he’d whack at me reflexively. But fortunately, he never bit. He ate like a raccoon, using one paw to lift food to his mouth. My son and I would laugh as he chewed with his head to the side like a dog trying to work a wad of peanut butter out of its teeth. My daughter Carly continued to ignore him, finding him ugly and a ‘scaredy cat.’ He certainly was that. Even Pearl became dismissive of Mitchell after a while, ignoring him most of the time, and then occasionally, whether for exercise or amusement, chasing him around the house until he squeezed himself into his refuge under the TV cabinet.
More months went by. We had a couple of those monsoon-like Pacific storms, with the rains coming down slowly and steadily for weeks it seemed, perfect for losing track of time. Pearl slowly began to accept Mitchell, allowing him to snuggle next to her. She began to groom him. And Mitchell grew a little less fearful of Andrew and me, sitting on the couch next to Pearl, but running off whenever Andrew or I got too close. His fears and eccentricities further endeared him to us. Carly came over every other weekend and I did my best to make her visits fun and enjoyable.
A couple of months later Mitchell and I had a breakthrough. After my many attempts, he finally began to allow me to pick him up and to sit him on my lap. Soon he allowed me to pet him. He’d begin to purr and for a while it was okay. Then, inexplicably, he’d turn around, wide-eyed. He’d scratch at me reflexively, then leap off my lap and run off to hide for a while. I continued to work with him, and he became more and more comfortable with me. Carly continued to come over, of course, and I felt like we, father, son and daughter, were all slowly growing closer and more at ease with each other and our new living arrangement. I was certain that Carly would eventually bond with one of the cats, but that never happened, and I felt bad about that.
Spring arrived. We had a large field next to our house. On the other side, a distance of about four blocks, a Safeway store anchored a small shopping complex. I used to cross the field to go to the Safeway with my daughter, despite her pleas that we drive, because I thought it was a good opportunity for us to bond and to get a little air and exercise in the bargain. One day as we were coming out of the Safeway through the electric doors, a woman came up to us and held an opened cardboard box up to my daughter.
“Kittens! I have kittens! Would you like a free kitten?”
Carly reached in and removed a little white and black ball of fur. “Can I have her, daddy?”
“Well, what are you going to do with her when it’s time for you to go home to your mom?” I said, already knowing what she’d say.
“Can’t you keep her for me?”
“But I already have two cats!”
“Aww.”
With the kitten in her arms, Carly was in a state of bliss. I remembered her words: Pearl and Mitchell were ‘our’ cats.
“Okay,” I said. “You can keep her. But only if you take care of her. I can’t take care of three animals.” I knew when I said it that it was ridiculous, and that it was exactly what I would end up having to do. But this was my little seven-year-old daughter whom I only saw every other weekend and every Wednesday after school for two hours. Seeing the sparkle in her eyes, I realized that I finally had the chance to do something for her that would make her happy. I would have cut off my right hand if she had asked me to.
“Thanks, Daddy.”
“You’re welcome. I just hope the other cats don’t bother her.”
Actually, it didn’t take long for the exact opposite to happen. Princess, as Carly had named her, grew quickly, taking what seemed like only a couple weeks to turn from a cute little black and white fluff ball into a sleek, panther-like female warrior cat. And soon Mitchell had to contend not only with Pearl’s occasional bullying, but Princess’s even more frequent attacks. Princess employed a sort of praying mantis kitty-fu, approaching Mitchell slowly, then reaching out a paw ever so slowly, seeming to paralyze Mitchell, as his eyes grew wide with fear. Then Princess would pounce, and Mitchell always got the worse of it, breaking free to run for dear life and squeeze under the TV cabinet.
Things slowly grew more stressful for Mitchell and for me also. I had recently added reading glasses to my in-house wardrobe, not so much as a fashion statement, but rather to enable me to, you know, to read, and also to scrutinize things up close. With them on, I soon discovered that there was hardly a surface in the house that wasn’t covered with cat hair, some of it lying flat and some standing up on end and waving like cilia. Alerted, I looked around the room and saw lots of down-like hairs floating like spores in a nearby column of sunlight. So I ended up vacuuming almost 24/7, it seemed. And the four cat boxes I had put out to accommodate our new family members seemed to be always filling up. After I’d finish cleaning out one, I’d hear a scratching sound and look up to see another cat in another kitty box watching me with what looked like a smirk, as he or she covered his or her business with litter. And so it went. It was me alone against a kitty waste-elimination tag team, and I was being smacked down.
One day as I plucked a downy white hair from the tip of my nose I came to the conclusion that one of the cats would have to go. I looked over at Mitchell who was sitting on a chair across from me. His eyes grew large as if he could read my mind. He jumped off the chair and ran to squeeze under his favorite hiding place. I called Joan and invited her to come to our house that Sunday evening for dinner.
After dinner Joan got to witness the cat wars herself. Mitchell put up a pathetic defense against Princess the warrior, half his size, and was quickly run off. “Oh, that’s a shame,” Joan said, while laughing guiltily.
“I have to take him back,” I told her.
Her face grew serious. “No! You’re kidding.”
I shook my head. “I can’t take care of three of them. Andrew and I have really bonded with Pearl. And Carly would never forgive me if I took Princess to the shelter. It has to be Mitchell.”
“Aww,” said Joan, going off to find Mitchell. She came back a few minutes later, laughing. “Andrew showed me where he was hiding. How does he fit in there?”
We laughed.
“Do you have a cat carrier?” said Joan. “I’ll take him tonight.”
I left Joan in the kitchen. Putting on my leather yard work gloves, I pulled Mitchell out from under the TV table. Before I got him in the carrier he managed to tear my shirt and leave a foot long bloody red scratch on my belly. I quickly changed my shirt and brought him into the kitchen. “Aww,” said Joan, “he’s such a sweetie.”
I guess I could have taken Mitchell back to the shelter where I’d gotten him. But he’d get better treatment from Joan than he would at the shelter with a half million other cats there. Anyway, I wasn’t proud of myself for having sent him away. And I knew I would miss the weird little guy. But, like my divorce, sometimes separations were necessary, although painful. As the evening went by, however, that knowledge didn’t make me feel any better.
end of Part 2. To be continued...
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