Cheryl smiled. "She was as mean as they come. Once she went away
for two months and my family teased me because I kept saying how much
I missed her. How could anyone miss an animal who hisses and scratches
and bites you if she's in the wrong mood?
"Then one day I drive home from work, and there she is, sitting
in the driveway, cleaning her face. I scooped her up, covered her with
kisses and gave her a dish of cream. When I went to pick her up again,
she swiped the back of my hand with her claws and gave me a reminder
of her true personality."
"God."
The bags are now in my cart, I've entered my pin number in the ATM
machine or whatever you call those things, and it's asking me if $107.67
is the correct amount. I don't know.
I feel I owe her information about my cat. I tell her that he was all
white with yellow eyes and how he was once hit by a car. The top of
one of his back feet was ripped open from the impact, and I rushed him
to the vet. After he was stitched up and given medication, I brought
him home and cared for him, but he wouldn't eat.
He retreated to my daughter's closet, curled into a tight little ball,
with no interest in anything at all. If I dragged him out and carried
him to his dish, he limped back into the closet. I called the vet, and
he suggested I open a can of tuna, get the juice on my fingers and crawl
into the closet to see if he would lick it off.
And that's just what I did. Over the ice skates and the smelly field
hockey shoes, the belts and shorts and other rotting things fermenting
in the dark, I got my tuna soaked finger just under Cloudy's nose. He
raised his head, opened his eyes, and in some kind of slow motion, the
pink tongue comes out of his cute little mouth and he licks my finger.
It took me a half hour of dipping my finger back in the tuna and offering
it to him before he made it clear that this was enough for now.
Cheryl looks at me with new admiration. I am no longer just a customer,
just someone to get through the checkout line. I am special.
"Wow," she says. "And he made it?"
"Yes," I say proudly. "He did."
The woman behind me has her items all piled up ready to be scanned.
She sees that I've paid. She sees the bags in my cart. I notice that
she has a lot of frozen dinners, which I think are the ultimate rip
off.
What I can't tell Cheryl, because if I do I will cry, is that after
that accident, after Cloudy regained his strength, he was more devoted
to me than ever. He knew I was the one who would do anything for him.
Anything at all.
Which is especially why I now can't tell Cheryl that two weeks ago,
when I saw that he could barely walk and the smell of his pee, which
was rarely deposited in the litter box, had intensified to a terrible
metallic smell that the vet said was a sure sign of kidney failure,
I very gently picked him up and put him on the soft towel in his travel
case and placed that on the front passenger seat of my car with the
top open so that he could enjoy this last ride.
As I'm driving to the vet, as I know this has to be done but can't
bear doing it, I see him poke his head over the top of the box and rub
his chin on the edge. It's a happy gesture, an outing with Mom. By the
time I'm inside the vet's office, tears are streaming down my face,
and I can barely see. The vet wants to make sure I'm all right. He tells
me that the cat had a long life but that now the quality of it makes
putting him to sleep the right decision.
