Adventures of a Dead Cat

Continuing the cat theme, here is the opening of Disappearing Otis, a novel I put on Amazon ten years ago as print-on-demand, so very few have read it. It is a clever book that, sadly, will probably never find its way on to a bookshelf. Alas, a writer moves on, and I’ve written twenty novels every bit as clever since. But this cat story was fun to write—so enjoy:

They’re on their way back from visiting FayNell’s parents in Hartfoot when the car in front of them hits a cat. The girls, foothills to their brother in the back seat, witness it all—the orange cat racing up from the fire ditch at the side of the road; the Ford slamming on its brakes and swerving; the cat flying through the air. The Ford slows as if it might stop, but then continues on its way.

Maddie starts up pleading and crying and so does Essie, so what choice does Chris have except to go and check on the damn thing? He pulls over to the side of the road and they all pile out and scuff back to where the cat got hit and of course it’s dead and blood is oozing from its mouth.  

“Daddy, we can’t just leave it here,” says Essie, her voice pitiful. “We can’t just let it stay here where all the other cars’ll run over it.” 

“We’ll move it to the side of the road then,” he offers.  

But no, this isn’t good enough.

“Please Daddy, please. The buzzards’ll get it.”  

The girls are wrapped around FayNell, hugging on to her thighs—and FayNell, with tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes, has a desolate look on her face that hurts Chris’s heart because he knows what she’s really seeing when she looks at that dead cat. Gary stands by his mother’s side, looking at the cat and shaking his head sorrowfully.  

It gets really hot in the panhandle of Texas in August. There are no clouds and there is no breeze to push the air around. The heat rising from every surface makes the atmosphere shimmery, and the five of them standing like that at the side of the road are dripping sweat and panting like dried‑out dogs from just the minute or so away from the car air conditioner. Already a fly is buzzing over the feline carcass.  

The cat doesn’t have a collar and, scanning the area, Chris can see that its home could be any one of the houses in the new development off to the south—and he isn’t about to go knocking on doors telling somebody that their cat is dead. So what he does is, he gets the Neiman Marcus bag that’s left in the trunk from when FayNell took the girls shopping in Dallas in March, and he gets some newspaper that’s also in the trunk, and he scoops the dead cat into the gray paper bag with the string handles.

“There now,” he says. “We’ll give her a nice burial in the backyard when we get home.”

He puts the dead cat in the trunk and the girls seem satisfied with the solution of a funeral. They drive on.

When they’re almost home it suddenly hits them that they’re hungry so they decide to stop at Ben’s Country Kitchen for a meal. As soon as Chris parks the car and opens his door the heat hits him in the face, reminding him of the cat in the trunk. That dead cat baking in what’s basically an oven can’t be a good idea. So he takes the bag out of the trunk and sets it in the meager strip of shade beneath the rear fender with the intention of putting it back in when they return from their meal. They go into the restaurant and, as coincidence would have it, are seated at a table by the window that overlooks the parking lot and the back of their car and the dead cat bag.  

They all look at their menus but the gazes of all five of them keep returning in the most morbid way to that Neiman Marcus bag. They give their orders to the waiter.  

Next time Chris glances out the window a woman is hobbling through the parking lot, a black woman with a squashed‑up face carrying a heavy coat and a bulging roughed-up purse. Her shoes are worn-down pumps, and her feet puff up and over the sides of them like risen dough. And her dress—in this heat!—is high‑necked and long‑sleeved, burgundy knit of some kind and hanging unevenly all the way down to the middle of her calves.  

“Oh the poor thing.” FayNell releases a compassionate sigh, causing the twins to also heave weighty sighs. “All her worldly possessions in that purse. And the heat of that dress!”

The woman—he can’t tell her age but her hair is gray—is trudging right along, a slow‑moving boat, aiming herself toward the park across the street, maybe planning to find a bench in the shade where she can rest. But when she catches sight of that Neiman Marcus bag she stops. She looks at it; and she looks all around. Then she limps on by it on her swollen feet. But she stops on the sidewalk before crossing the street and back she comes to the bag. And once more she stops and looks around. And once more she carries on shuffling, this time toward the back of the building—and there she stays for three minutes or so, until she emerges, a purpose this time to her walk; and she carries herself with confidence straight to the car, stops, stoops, slips her arm through the strings of the bag, takes it up to her bosom, and then walks on.  

The food arrives, and its arrival is a nuisance to them.  

“I don’t know what to think about this,” Essie says fretfully.

Maddie, equally confounded, echoes, “I don’t know what to think, either.”  

The woman, bowed protectively over the bag, is moving off. This time she continues across the street—and her curiosity about her prize is too much for her because she stops at the first bench she comes to, opens the bag, and faints, collapsing forward and on to her side.

The family starts eating. Chris doesn’t really taste what’s on his plate, though ordinarily Ben’s is his favorite; nor does he meet the eyes of anyone else at the table, but views the floating of their forks between plates and mouths only peripherally.

Somebody inside the restaurant, or maybe someone driving by, must’ve taken notice of the woman hunched over there on the bench because within five minutes an ambulance drives up and two uniformed attendants jump out. 

Movement at the table stops.  

Together the EMS men move to check on her. One of them takes her pulse while the other bends low over her face. Then an attendant fetches the gurney and, in cooperation, one at her feet and the other supporting her head and shoulders, they scoop her aboard the white surface and roll her out to the ambulance. Then one of the attendants, looking around, spies her few articles—her bulging purse, her heavy coat, the Neiman Marcus bag—and going over, gathers these things and slides them into the back of the ambulance and closes the door. They drive away.  

This last, this absurd gathering-up of the dead cat like it’s a prized possession, is too much for Chris—and for the kids. Just imagine the reaction in the emergency room! Four pairs of twinkling eyes find each other and laughter follows—a laughter that won’t cease, an embarrassingly loud laughter complete with spit and open mouths filled with half‑chewed food. Tears roll down Chris’s cheeks. The girls laugh so hard they can’t sit still in their chairs and Gary loses his breath so that he makes braying noises and that makes them laugh even louder. They laugh and laugh so that the other mid‑afternoon diners stare and the servers form themselves into a puzzled line over by the bar.  

And through their laughter sits FayNell—erect, stern, and unmoving. Up until three years ago she would have laughed along with them over this string of outlandish events. But now instead of humor, horrified indignation is stamped upon her brow; priggish disapproval pinches her lips; and the haughty gleam of the fanatically empathetic glows from her eyes.  

And upon whom is she focusing all this intolerance? Who is she blaming for this entire comical sequence?  

Chris, that’s who. From the second the cat got hit by someone else’s car to the moment a poor woman was carried away in an ambulance, FayNell has been tallying and judging, and blaming her husband, a kind man who only wants what’s best for everybody.  

There was a time when she hadn’t been so unbending. There was a time when she wasn’t so quick to assume wicked intentions behind every episode. 

Chris can trace to the day the beginning of this change in her. It was the day of The Accident, three years ago. Somehow he’s been designated as the brunt bearer which is unfair because he wasn’t even there that day; he wasn’t involved in any way.

And that’s why the next evening, after he spends the afternoon brooding in front of the Ryder Cup, he packs his toothbrush, electric shaver, and a few articles of clothing, and leaves the house. He honestly has no intention of staying away from his home and family forever and FayNell knows this; and she knows also that the fault of his leaving is hers. He’s suffered long enough because of her sorrow. If she doesn’t find a way to put her anguish behind her the rest of their lives will be no more than haunted shadows cast by dead wishes and hopes gone sour.

Because the story calls for a picture of an orange cat.

Another Cat Story, This One Not So Depressing

When I moved to Cairo I realized that I needed a cat. Well, nobody needs a cat; but David traveled quite a bit and I thought it’d be nice to have a warm purring animal close by. Obtaining one wouldn’t be a big deal because they were everywhere. Feral cats lived in the streets and alleys. We had several living in the stairwell of the building. I could’ve grabbed a kitten from the garbage heap next door—I’d seen them crawling around over there. But David felt that they were probably diseased and wild (having never had a cat, he didn’t realize that a cat’s a cat no matter where it comes from) so he asked around and it turned out that someone at work knew someone who needed to find a home for their young cat, and that’s how we came to have Panache, a dainty year-old Siamese. 

Panache was feeble and petite. She spent most of her time spread out on the pilot on the stove, perched on a transformer, or snoozing in the sun. She spent all her life seeking heat. Her meow was a feckless croak, and she had no personality or sense of fun. She never chased a string or showed an interest in a toy. She felt no affection and gave no affection. Cats have a reputation for being aloof and independent, but she was the most boring and inert cat I’d ever encountered. 

We got transferred to Holland. Transporting an animal from a country like Egypt (open sewage, people in gallabiyahs hanging off buses) to a country like Holland (immaculate, organized, highly civilized) involved a lot of paperwork. Trips to administrative offices, health forms signed by a vet, and permits from both the Egyptian and Dutch bureaucracies—getting all that paperwork ready was a lot of bother. But when we landed in Amsterdam, nobody cared. When I urged the passport official to look at the folder holding her transport papers, he shook his head and gestured for me to move on. Security guards watched from posts throughout Schiphol and I poked my folder toward them, asking who I should see to get her cleared. Some ignored me and some waved me on. In the end, papers unexamined, we simply cruised out the entrance with Panache in her carrier, perched atop our cart full of luggage. I never got over feeling that she was there illegally. 

Fast-forward. We had kids and got busy. Panache was always in the background, eating, sleeping, seeking warmth, and remaining, as always, a pitiful excuse for a cat. 

We came to know a couple, Ann and Eric, at the Anglican church we attended in The Hague. Ann was a writer, so we had that in common; though while she wrote novels about God answering prayer and how faith’ll get you through, I was writing novels about quirky women doing quirky things. Her husband, Eric, was a jovial guy who outfitted commercial fishing boats. Also, they had two kids, as did we. Ann and I got together quite often. We bet on who’d get published first. She won.  

To get the full effect of this story, you have to know about Ann. She was deeply kind, the sort who took soup to friends when they were ill and helped tottering gray women across the street. Always compassionate, always generous. And riding alongside the loving part of her soul was a robust sense of humor, though even when she was making a joke, she was unerringly careful with her words—a trait I respected because quite often the words that fly from my tongue are snide or inappropriate.

When Panache had been with me for seven years, she became sick. She quit eating and she was so weak that she was unable to jump up to her chair in the sun. She’d probably been sick and growing sicker for days and I hadn’t been paying attention. It was that busy time—a two-year-old and a four-year-old—and my cat got sick and I didn’t even notice. Burdened by guilt, I rushed her to the vet, who told me her kidneys were no longer functioning. He advised me to have her put down. 

On Sunday when I went to church, I was still feeling miserable. During the social time after the service, the four of us came together for a chat as the kids ran circles around us. Expecting heartfelt sympathy from Ann, I told her that my cat had died. 

“You could have her stuffed and nobody’d know the difference,” she said.

She immediately slapped her hand over her mouth, her wide eyes revealing horror at what she’d just said. 

I was stunned. And so were Eric and David. 

Then, recalling Panache’s bland lethargy, we all burst into laughter—and I knew I’d never again think about Panache without also thinking of Ann, her faux pas, and the shocked look on her face when she realized that an unpleasant truth had escaped so gracelessly from her usually guarded mouth. Too, I appreciate the irony that the cat who slept twenty-three hours a day and lacked a personality is responsible for such a hilarious moment.

This isn’t Panache. Panache wasn’t this healthy-looking. She was skinnier and her hair wasn’t this fluffy, but the coloring is right.

The Lawson King Cat Story

When I was a child, parents didn’t hover the way my generation of parents did. Back then, unless we had a place to be, my sister, Resi, and I roamed the block freely, starting as soon as we could toddle out of the yard. 

One of our friends was Lawson King, who lived up the street. We played with him often because our parents were friends with his parents, who bickered in the most charming way, interrupting and correcting each other’s stories, getting all puffed up with indignation at being interrupted and corrected, and then breaking out laughing.  

Lawson was a gigantic, rambunctious, and loud boy, who ran around waving toy guns and shouting that he was killing the Krauts (or Germans or Nazis). Once he threw a coffee can filled with rocks at my head and said he was bombing the Germans. 

Though I was young, I saw the incongruity. He’d learned to dislike the Germans from his dad, who’d fought on the American side of the war, while my dad had fought for the Germans—considering this, how could the two men be friends? But they were. I think my father must have encountered a lot of prejudice back then. Maybe he learned to see beyond it. I think if I were him, and I knew some kid up the street was shouting about hating the Germans, I’d have been enraged every day. I wish I’d discussed it with him. I would have appreciated his wisdom concerning tolerance. 

Lawson was my age, but he was more my sister’s friend than mine, mainly because she was a bit of a tomboy while I was timid and small; and I found his size to be intimidating and his booming voice to be unsettling.  

When I was around four years old, he told us that his cat had kittens, so Resi and I went down to his house to see them. They were in a box in the garage, and because the garage door was heavy, the three of us worked together to raise it; only when it was about halfway up, Lawson and Resi had a brief conversation, let go of the door, and ran into the house. I was little and they’d left me holding the weight of that door. I wasn’t strong enough to hold it up, so I dropped it.

Resi and Lawson came back out with his mother, who lifted the door, giving us a view of blood smeared all over the garage floor and kitten heads and paws strewn about. The mother cat wasn’t there. 

I thought I’d killed those kittens by dropping the door on them, which is nonsense. There were only parts of kittens scattered around, not whole squished kitties. But I was four with a four-year-old’s perspective. It was traumatic when I dropped the door and then the kittens were dead. 

To this day when a breeze or waft carries a particular combination of odors—blood, garage, cats—it calls to mind images of that grisly slaughter. 

Years later, as an adult, I was reminiscing with my mother about the Kings. 

“Do you remember when I killed their kittens?” I asked. 

“What are you talking about?” Shocked, she said, “A tom got those kittens. You had nothing to do with it.”

Well, this was upsetting. I’d felt at fault for a major portion of my life, and it wasn’t true. 

“I’ve believed all this time that I’d dropped the door on them.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? I had no idea.”

Say what you will about hovering mothers, but if I knew that one of my kids had seen cat carnage, I would’ve talked to him about it. My mother had simply assumed that I was hunky-dory after seeing bits of dead kitten. I’d been bitter toward Lawson and Resi because they abandoned me that way. And I’d felt so guilty, a killer of cats. After I learned the reality, the incident came into focus. Resi and Lawson must have seen the mess in the garage when we were raising the door, while I was probably squeezing my eyes closed, concentrating on finding strength to help with the weight.

As we grew older new interests came along and Lawson, Resi, and I quit spending time together. Later, when we were adults, he and I ran into each other at the chicken place on Georgia. He was toting a really big baby. He and his wife were divorced. He had no job. He’d tried to get into the army, but they turned him away—which was too bad because being a soldier was what he’d always wanted to do with his life. He said he suffered from depression, and I realized that what I once thought was over-exuberance was most likely bipolarism. 

A few years later, his mother called mine and told her that Lawson had killed himself. 

What a weird and sad story this has turned out to be.

In the Neighborhood

Gina’s middle-aged and has lived with her parents all her life. What I like about her is that she’s different from other people. Developmental problems can be difficult to define, so I have no idea what diagnostic term to apply. While not wildly attractive, outwardly she appears normal. And she’s obviously able to read and reason, and her memory is impressive. 

Whatever her issue is, it manifests in her, absolutely and without pause for thought, saying what she thinks. A person who blurts can make others uncomfortable, and I imagine there’ve been times when people avoided her because of this. But I appreciate her honesty. Someone with no artifice, no manipulation, and no vanity is rare.

Her brother, who lives further up the street, warned me that she’s a talker, and it’s true. I suspect she could go nonstop for an hour. I’m pretty sure she’s been told that she talks too much, and I imagine that she often gets shut down mid-sentence—and this has caused her to talk noticeably fast, and to insert “just real quick” between her words, a quirk that I find amusing, but also poignant, as I take her talking as a sign that she’s lonely and needs attention. 

She drives up and down the cul-de-sac in her golf cart, moving between her house and her brother’s house, and going outside the gate to the mailboxes. She places great importance on fetching the mail, and she helpfully keeps an eye on my porch and texts me when we have a package. A while back she was appalled to see that our postal person left a package addressed to Lilah beside the mailbox. She thought that leaving it sitting out like that was irresponsible, so she picked it up and drove it to Lilah’s door. 

“She was home,” Gina told me, perplexed. “Her car was there and her lights were on, and I could see movement in there. I rang the bell several times. But she didn’t come to the door.”

“What did you do?” I asked. 

“I decided to take it to her the next day. I kept an eye out, and when I saw her turn into her driveway, I went back over there, but her garage was already closed. And she still didn’t answer her door, so I left it on her porch.”

I could tell her feelings were hurt. While I don’t know why Lilah didn’t come to the door, it’s understandable that Gina’s background would lead her to believe that Lilah didn’t want to talk to her. Lilah might have had earbuds in or something. Nevertheless, I’m kind of mad at her. 

There’s a curve between Gina’s house and mine, which means that the house being built across the street is directly across from my house, and also directly across from her house. The lot was bought by a retired Austin police sergeant who, during the years between retirement and now, hosted a right-wing radio talk show. He should fit right in around here. I’ve met his wife and she’s very sweet. They’re both in their eighties and frail, and I can’t help but wonder why they’d take on such an intense and draining project. I’ll ask next time I see them. 

Gina and I are both unhappy about the house going up. Here’s what we don’t like: large trucks with their loud smelly motors going in and out of the gate; the way the dust rises and sneaks inside our homes; and the nearby raised voices of people we don’t know. Also, it won’t be long before we’re finding nails in the street. 

It was a lovely lot, too, large, with interesting rock formations, frolicking deer, and more live oaks and cedar than the other lots. That was my view. When the house is finished, I’m going to be looking at the front door, and Gina and her parents are going to be looking at the driveway and garage. 

When construction first started, a homemade sign with the address was posted on the large rock at the corner—102 CEEKSIDE. Gina, who takes things literally, said, “We live on Creekside, but they live on Ceekside.” 

There’s an HOA rule that as soon as the heavy machinery moves in, the builder has a year to be finished and gone. The rock-crushing and digging people were over there for a few days in November, and then no work was done until the first few days of January, after which nothing else happened. We’ve been looking at a dumpster, a porta-potty, and a foundation for more than three weeks. It’s our understanding that a mistake was made with the foundation—wrong elevation in the garage is what I heard—so the workers are going to have to redo a major portion of the work. But currently they’re busy with a project elsewhere. Typical.

This is just stuff that’s going on around here and none of it matters much. Gina’s funny and interesting and I make sure that I give her a relaxed conversation at least once a week; and the people who bought the lot have every right to put a house on it. 

On a sadder note, further up the street, a couple we’re very fond of lost both their cats within three weeks of one another. When the first cat died unexpectedly, the vet thought she might’ve had blood cancer, but who knows? It’s not like they were going to run expensive tests on a dying cat. With the first cat gone, their other cat, sibling to the one who died, was heartbroken and stopped eating. And then she, too, died. Losing a beloved pet is devastating, but losing two, one after the other, is unimaginably tragic. 

Dear friends, I’m sorry for your loss. 

RIP, Coco and Chanel. 

This is the sloppiest construction site I’ve ever seen.

Lovely cats, broken hearts.