When I turned 6, my parents let me have a kitten.
His name was Rusher, and he was a male tabby cat from my friend's farm. I paid her brother $1 for him, because it was originally his kitten, but his mom made him let me take Rush home. (Years later, that boy who took the dollar from me got married, had a baby, and now owns a dog - but never again a cat.)
When Rusher was young and I was young, I broke his leg when I dropped him, by accident, onto the bedframe in my parent's room. I screamed with grief, but my Dad and Grandpa took him to the vet and got his leg casted. He zipped around the house (and still hopped into my bed to sleep at night) on 3 legs for several weeks.
Rush was a secret mother. My sister Jessie adopted a kitten from a farm when she was 5. The kitten was a female, probably weaned from her mother a bit early, black with a white nose, and white, 6-toed, paws. Boots was her name - and boots immediately took a liking to Rush. Rush began to groom her long hair every day, hacking up black hairballs on a regular basis. After Rusher died, Boots lived on with awful, scraggly hair she never learned to keep up. He was a bit of an enabler.
Rusher taught dogs to behave. We brought home an adult dog, Bocifus, who terrorized all the cats. I was determined that Bo behave - so I sat Rush in a corner, and put Bo on a leash, and sat in the room for hours with the two of them. Rusher gave him some sort of Jedi-look, refused to react to his barking and whining and lunging. Bo still terrorized all the other cats - except my boy.
My parents put Rusher to sleep when I was 22. I was finishing up my senior year of college, and my mother called me to explain that he really wasn't seeing well anymore, that his bladder control was gone, and that he had been vomiting regularly for weeks. He was losing weight, and making awful howling noises. I didn't get to say goodbye, but I trusted their judgement.
When I moved to Uptown this year, my roommate had a cat - Hugo. Hugo is all kinds of energy and trouble - tipping over glasses of water for the fun of it, escaping out the front door, learning to open cabinets and turn door handles with his paws, submersing himself in the toilet water, diving into the shower to lap up the rest of the suds. He hunts, he jumps, he "talks." He loves her - sleeps with her at night, curls up with her in the evenings. I was clearly a stranger in his home - though it was nice to have a furry friend around again.
After weeks of a chasing, stressful, work-filled existence, I had enough. I didn't want to see my boyfriend, I cringed at the idea of driving to the office, I fell off a therapy horse one day, I cried to friends, my mother. I was a mess. I declared a "hibernation" - saw only my roommate and family after work everyday, rarely answered my phone. We celebrated Jessie's 23rd birthday on Tuesday, and our last remaining family cat (Erika's - who is 20 and away at school), Tuffy, hopped her hulking bulk into my lap while I sat at the table.
"I miss having a cat."
That admission, out loud, began the roaring train of thought that wouldn't quite let me go. The weekend came, and I went to the humane society in Golden Valley with my friend Meghan.
We walked into a room in the cat section that had a clear warning "Careful - Escape Artists." Aiming for a cat that would be similar or complimentary to Hugo, I was thinking more about a kitten, female, playful, energetic. A seal-point male, 9 months, looked up at me from the floor. I picked him up and sat down. I cradled him in my arms like we used to do with our kittens as children (before we knew that was a freaky thing for cats to do - laying on their backs). He narrowed sleepy eyes, and began to purr.
It was over. I tried to like other cats - I tried to look at kittens, females, playful ones, stoic ones, young ones, older ones. I had his adoption card in my purse, though - and went back for him at the end. When I took him to the checkout to bring him home, people stopped me and asked, jokingly, if I was sure I wanted that cat - "I'd take him off your hands for you!"
He just fits right in, right where the last one left off, somewhere in the crook of an arm, in a ray of sunlight, in the soft laundry basket, calmly facing the day - not so different from his predecessor. I am happy.
Monday, November 9, 2009
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