The Feline Zone

Living with a serial killer is starting to get to me. After three consecutive mornings of stepping out of my bedroom and greeting the day by finding a fresh white-footed mouse corpse on public display, it's now the fourth morning, and I haven't stopped looking around corners for yet another surprise.

Though I shouldn't have to look hard. He placed the last body at the foot of the front stairs, perfectly centered, front paws outstretched in death agony, head thrown back, perpendicular from head to tail to the edge of the bottom step. Hannibal Lecter in a fluffy fur coat when it comes to artful murder and postmortem staging. I pity those poor little mice who think they're moving to safety when they come indoors for the winter!

I didn't remember this much drama or bloodletting from having a cat when I was nine or ten. I recall one summer day when we had moved in temporarily with my grandparents, bringing the family pets. My grandmother was in the back room off the kitchen ironing a shirt when I let Tippy, our black and white shorthair, in through the back door. What I didn't know until then was that Tippy had a fat field mouse clenched in her teeth. The mouse wiggled free as soon as the door slammed, and my grandmother shrieked and flung herself across the ironing board to get her feet off the floor. Tippy pounced on the mouse, I pounced on Tippy as soon as she recaptured her prey, and I threw them both out the door. I still laugh at the thought of Grandma straddling the ironing board with her midsection. Lowbrow comedy, yes. Horror? Hardly.

We moved to a farm up north a few years after that, and I don't remember any fiendish "death art" scenes from our cats there either. I do recall looking across the farmhouse kitchen one day and spying a fat field mouse sitting atop a flour canister on the hutch next to the kitchen table, upright on his haunches and staring straight at me with an air of nonchalance. Obviously the cats we had back then didn't take their "search and destroy" missions too seriously.

My life was pretty much kitty-free after I left home for college a long time ago. Marriage to a man whose entire family was ferociously allergic to cats swept the idea of caving into the kids' pleas for a kitten every time one of their friends did right off the table. Twenty-five years later, though, divorce opened the door a crack...and then a canyon. Three days after I broke the news to my youngest son that his family was dissolving, he started to square his shoulders, get a little color back in his cheek, and look for a silver lining.

"Do you think that now we could maybe get a kitten?"

I smiled. He started to plot. At his urging, I began to call humane societies for kitten availability, but apparently it wasn't quite "kitten season" yet. To keep him out of my hair, I handed him the want ads. I was busy getting ready to paint a bedroom when my son, all of thirteen and more than a little reserved, came to me with an ad circled in the paper. He'd already made the call and had the first conversation with the owner. C'mon, Mom, please call this lady!

There was one kitten left, black with white paws and a white chest, in a small town, twenty five miles away. It was the day before Easter, and another buyer who sounded interested had already promised to come by. But still, she'd keep my number, and if this other person didn't show, we could stop by later that night. All the kids were home for the Easter weekend, and my soon-to-be-ex stopped by to pick them up and take them out to a custard stand for burgers. My son, ever the optimist, elected to stay home "to keep Mom company." Ha!

The "cat lady" called about ten minutes later. The earlier prospective buyer turned out to be a phantom, and the seller was out of patience. My son and I were in the car five minutes later with a written set of directions and a carrying case that most recently had been used to transport the rabbit to have his picture taken at a photography studio. That's another story.

As we rode along and the miles slid by, I voiced all the standard disclaimers. We were only going "to look." There were lots of other kittens out there somewhere to pick from if we didn't like this one. Animal shelters would soon be awash with spare kittens. We were not necessarily going to buy this kitten!!! My son nodded and kept on smiling, his grip tight on the carrying case, his excitement and anticipation an electric, palpable third occupant in the car. As I drove, I realized that unless this kitten had only three legs and a really bad case of mange, we were coming home with this cat. Dear God, please let it be a good one!

As expected, the kitten was tiny and frisky and healthy and adorable. Short-haired too, but appearances later proved to be deceiving. Twenty-five dollars later, the three of us were in the car for the ride home. We stopped at Wal-Mart for a litter box and some Tidy Cat before we even set foot in the house. My son spent the following week of Easter break largely cuddling and man-handling the newest member of the family, with the result that the kitten soon came to regard him as his new mother.

That was four years and sixteen pounds ago. Smokey, as we soon named him, has been altering our routines and our lives ever since. When he grew bigger than the rabbit and started looking at his fuzzy, spotted friend like he might be on the dinner menu , the rabbit went to the local Humane Society. When my daughter brought her new kitten home from college for eight months until she could find a new cat-friendly apartment, the two cats eventually reached a detente...but not before shredding the bedskirt of my new comforter set. When his long, fluffy, black gossamer fur started collecting on the bottom of the creamy white semi-sheer curtain that screened off the big bay window from the road and gave us a little privacy, I recognized a losing battle when I saw one and cut my losses. The curtains came down. I didn't think it was possible for a single cat to produce so much hair...but I soon learned otherwise after the vacuum cleaner intake hose got jammed up, and the utility sink in the basement overflowed from a clogged drain.

Smokey has staked his claim on the furniture as well. His favorite seat these days--when he's not curling up on our of our laps--is an antique overstuffed chair with carved hunting dog heads sprouting from the arms instead of knobs as ornamentation. My father-in-law had collected several of these chairs in his years of antique hunting, and had restored two of them for us. My ex and I spent ninety-five dollars a square yard on the woolen tapestry we picked for the upholstery, which with medieval-styled rabbits and deer romping on a field of navy and bunches of flowers, would have looked right at home at Windsor Palace. Smokey has reserved the chair nearest the crossroads of dining room and living room, and sits preternaturally upright in repose, one arm stretched the length of the armrest, his paw stopping just short of the carved dog head, looking for all the world like a corpulent Orson Welles in those old Paul Masson wine commercials. Adding insult to injury, he's commandeered my favorite pillow as well--velvet backed, with an elaborate needlepointed scene of scarlet-coated fox hunters on thoroughbreds clearing a hedgerow under a bright blue sky. You must admit the cat's got good taste. I derive some dregs of comfort by reminding myself that the chair was never all that comfortable to sit in anyway. And when was the last time I'd really used the pillow?

With my son getting ready to head off for college in a few months, it's been dawning on me recently that I'm going to have the equivalent of a heavy, warm, fur-covered boat anchor in my lap every time I sit down on the sofa for the next fifteen years. Nice on a cold winter night when there's a chill in the living room when there's no fire in the grate, not as wonderful when you're trying to slice into a pork chop while you watch "Law & Order" reruns with your feet up. Even more, though, it's going to be fifteen years of living with an inquisitive, unpredictable, languid, affectionate, unreadable and occasionally sadistic intelligence that's never boring.

The man in my life describes watching a bonfire at night instead of television as "only one channel, but it's always changing." I can safely say that Smokey's got his own single channel going as well, and it hasn't gotten boring yet. And until he decides to quit showing off the spoils of war instead of eating them...I'm just going to have to keep watching my step.

Marley & Rocket & Me

I just got over weeping through the end of the movie, "Marley & Me." My youngest son had bought it on DVD for his sweetheart, and the two of them were all settled into the sofa with me for a routine Sunday dinner-and-a-movie night to start the week. They'd seen it. They loved it. They thought I'd love it too. It caught me by surprise.

Let's stay straight off that it's a marvelous movie. A lot deeper and richer than I'd expected, having only seen the movie trailers, which were heavy on the slapstick and nonexistent on the character development. I even knew that **spoiler alert here if you've been living in a cave for the past year the dog dies at the end. Hey, I'm a firm believer that "all dogs go to heaven." It's an okay ending for any dog movie. You get to picture them up there romping in sunny, celestial fields, gnawing on a rawhide bone or chasing a fuzzy yellow tennis ball that never gets dirty or wet with saliva.

But what I didn't count on was the fact that not only did this incredibly destructive yet beloved movie canine look exactly like one of the best dogs I'd ever had...he died of exactly the same thing. It had been twelve years since I'd wept like a baby at the unexpected passing of a dog who drooled like a St. Bernard, slouched like a lion, and stood as tall as a pony. But there I sat on the sofa with two happy but mystified teenagers, surrounded by damp Kleenex, voice cracking and sobs lurching and gasping from my chest, explaining that unlike Marley's owner in the movie...I never got to say goodbye.

Rocket was the third one of my string of uniquely wonderful dogs. Muttsie came first, a beagle/dalmatian mix who strayed into my life, attacking our flock of Leghorn chickens one day when I was home alone on the farm. She sported one brown and one icy blue eye and a combination of spots and patches that made her look uncannily from some angles like Adolph Hitler. She was mine for fourteen years, and the phrase "dogging her master's footsteps" was invented for this dog. Shadow came next, a purebred Flat-coated Retriever with a glossy, silky long black coat and magnificent physique, and a stark deficit in the brains department. In nine years despite the "retriever" in his breed, he never learned to let go of the tennis ball he brought back to you for another throw. He wanted to wrestle you for it instead. I'm a quick learner--a game of "fetch" always started with two balls. The boys grew up using him as a shared pillow while they stretched out on the living room floor and watched cartoons. Shadow loved to run around with a stick in his mouth...though at a hundred pounds, the "stick" could be a tree branch and when he ran up joyfully behind you and accidentally whacked you with it as he flew past, you felt it for a while. If you were still standing.

Shadow eventually passed on after nine years, and there was a four-footed void to be filled. I've never known life without a dog, and I believe deeply in bringing kids up with a canine companion. I look at dogs and see furry, tail-wagging, divine packages of unconditional love. They don't hold grudges, they forgive you everything, and they are always happy to see you. Take two kids growing up in parallel universes--same houses, same yards, same schools, same friends--but give one of them a dog. I guarantee that the kid who has a dog has a richer life. So not getting a new puppy was never an option.

We found Rocket nearby in the neighborhood, one of a litter of gorgeous yellow pups produced by a union of a prim and proper purebred Golden Retriever and a randy neighborhood lab who just didn't respect boundaries. Word of warning for folks relying on a buried electric dog fence--it'll keep your dog in the yard, but it sure won't keep the other dogs out!!

The kids fell in love, and we brought Rocket home as soon as he was weaned at eight weeks. We "crated" him in the kitchen at night, a training tool that had worked well with Shadow as a puppy on the theory that dogs inherently like enclosed spaces where they can retreat and feel safe. This little guy, however, deeply (and loudly) mourned the sudden loss of his mother and siblings, and I spent the first three nights lying on the kitchen floor next to his crate to keep him company. By the end of the first night I figured that if I ever got another puppy at eight weeks, it would kill me. On the up side of things, I saw some truly beautiful sunrises.

The little guy started to grow like Clifford the Big Red Dog. He hit twenty pounds in just a few weeks and got too big to comfortably carry in my arms. Damn!! He kept on growing, and by the time he was six months old he stood tall enough to look over the kids' shoulders at their breakfast cereal on the kitchen table. I swept the contents of the middle kitchen counter to someplace else, and bought a few bar stools so that the kids could eat their meals at a higher dog-free altitude. So life's full of adjustments. We had the perfect dog! He romped, and fetched, and cuddled, and just plain lazed with us without impatience. He was another of what I think of as the "hundred pound club," but tall and rangy. He had grown into his puppy paws that had looked at the time like they belonged on a lion, and he slouched around the yard with a grace that was absolutely feline, accentuated by an extraordinarily long tail that carried and twitched like a big cat. He was the size of a pony, with a deep chest and a deep "woof" and a tawny coat that reminded me of Elsa the lioness in "Born Free."

For the first time I could remember, we had a problem-free pooch. No tendency to wander off like Muttsie, no fondness for chewing on us and the furniture and the cabinets like Shadow...Rocket was good-natured, and lovable, and well-behaved, and housebroken, and above all, cuddly. Maybe if we'd had him longer this honeymoon phase would have worn out. But after only a year, we would never get to find out.

He seemed suddenly in distress one night, wanting to go out repeatedly, unsure of what to do when he got there. In the circle cast by the yard's floodlight, I noticed that his sides seemed oddly distended. It was nine at night, but I called the vet and described Rocket's symptoms and appearance. "Don't even bother to bring him here," the vet advised. Take him as quickly as possible, he said, to an animal emergency center in Milwaukee, thirty miles away. This was serious.

We packed a layer of blankets into the back of the minivan, settled Rocket in, and I set off on a desperate mission. I'm sure that the statute of limitations has run on speeding tickets from twelve years ago, and these days with the job I hold I'm sworn to uphold the law and the Constitution. So let's just say vaguely that if there had been a cop that night equipped with a radar gun as I flew past edging close to triple digits, I would have been in big, big trouble. The expressway was virtually empty, though, and Rocket and I made it to the clinic without incident or arrest.

He was unloaded, and examined, and the diagnosis was that he had suffered a "gastric torsion." In other words, his stomach had twisted in that deep ribcage of his, cutting off the blood supply to his intestines. Surgery was an option, but it was expensive and most dogs would not survive anyway. What did I want to do? I pulled out the charge card and authorized a preliminary look around. The news was bad, one of the worst cases they'd dealt with. What did I want to do? I called my husband. Could we afford this? We took the charge card out again and said "go ahead." I spent part of the night at the clinic, part of it catching a few winks of uneasy sleep on my friend Judy's sofa in Milwaukee.

By morning Rocket had made it through $3,700 worth of surgery, and I stopped by the clinic to see him before heading home. He was bandaged, and hooked up, and looked like he'd been through a hell of a lot. But he was young, and incredibly strong, and as I stroked his head before leaving, I felt sure that he would turn out to be among the small but lucky percentage of dogs who could survive this. I would have stayed longer, and held him more, but my younger son's birthday party was set for that morning, and in another couple of hours a dozen little boys would be showing up in our backyard to paint a "teepee" made of scrap lumber and scrap bedsheets and put on little feathered headdresses and run around noisily and eat hot dogs and scarf down birthday cake.

The clinic called about twenty minutes before the first guests arrived. They were very sorry, but Rocket hadn't pulled through. I blinked back tears and told no one the news as I put on a headband with a blue feather myself and went out to greet the guests and their parents. Two hours later, the party was over and it was time to drive back down to bring home our dog.

I brought my oldest daughter with me. It was a silent drive to the clinic. We couldn't claim Rocket right away. The clinic was bustling that morning and we had to wait our turn. We sat side by side as dogs and cats and their owners came and went. A big yellow lab sat directly across from us, beside his master. Black, liquid eyes, golden coat, sturdy shoulders just asking to be hugged. My eyes started to mist up. Beside me, I could hear my daughter fight back a sniffle. We looked at each other, then back at the dog. I caught his owner's eye, and made a special request. Our dog just died...and he looked exactly like yours. Could we pet him please? The lab's owner graciously said yes, and we wrapped our arms around our new friend, who stood stoically as our tears fell and dried on his yellow fur.

Rocket's buried in the yard, with a lilac bush to mark his final resting place. In the movie, Marley's spot is marked with some large rocks, but I like the idea of something growing, and blooming, above my old companions. Muttsie has a lilac bush of her own, and Shadow rests beneath a rose bush.

I don't think I could possibly watch "Marley & Me" again. But for the first time in quite a few years, my mind is again enjoying the memory of a big, friendly yellow dog who graced our lives and passed much, much too soon.

Conversation Without Words!

I never thought it possible to hold a conversation with a complete stranger without exchanging a single word. But life's full of surprises, which makes it fun...when they're the good surprises!

I'd pulled up to the angled parking space outside a Walgreens in Chicago, next to an enormous white van. Preoccupied, I was there to fill a prescription for my father, who'd had a surgical procedure done just a couple of hours earlier. Then I planned to dash next door to the grocery store to pick up a few cans of soup and a loaf of bread to keep his meals "light" as instructed.

Living a couple of miles from a small town, I'm not used to plugging parking meters. One of the great virtues of life outside a major metropolitan area is that pretty much every big store and shopping mall comes with acres of free parking. I can't think of a single parking meter in the nearest city of about 35,000. When I buy groceries, I try to get rid of the spare change in my purse, laboriously digging through the bottom to find the exact combination of pennies, dimes, and quarters that will lighten the collection of coins weighing down my shoulder bag and return me one more piece of folding money from the checkout clerk. It drives my kids nuts. So what else is new?

So I rifled through the coin collection underneath the dollar bills, and retrieved a few dimes and a couple of nickels. Not bad, I thought. You could buy a least an hour or two of parking by the courthouse where I work in yet another small town with that handful of change. I stepped out of the car and locked it, then walked up to the side of the meter that faced away from the street. Damn. It only took quarters. I put the smaller coins in my pocket, then unzipped the purse and clumsily started fishing again. I came up with a single quarter, enough to buy me fifteen minutes of time at the pharmacy, certainly more than I needed.

I plugged the meter, then started to zip the purse closed. Nearby a horn started honking insistently. I looked up, and realized that the honking was coming from the white van. Staring at me through the windshield was the driver, a man a bit older than me, who caught my eye. He pantomimed that I actually needed to put money in the meter next to the one I had just plugged. Oops!

I smiled, moved a few feet down the street, and started fishing in my purse again. Damn my luck--that had been my last quarter. I pouted and shrugged in the van driver's direction, showing my empty palms to the sky. Then I got back in the car, turned the key in the ignition, and started to back out of the parking space.

I heard the honking once more. Curious, I put my car in park and looked at the van again. What, was he planning to hand me some change for the meter? The driver smiled, and pointed to the meter directly in front of his van. Then he started to inch slowly out of his parking space. I understood immediately--chivalry was not dead, it was alive and well on a pot-holed city street outside a chain pharmacy. The white van cautiously cleared the parking space it had occupied, then held back while I pulled my itty bitty subcompact car out and maneuvered it into the space I had mistakenly fed my last quarter to.

I laughed to myself at this act of courtesy, and as the driver of the van pulled abreast of my car, I opened the door and theatrically, extravagantly, blew him a big kiss. My smile could have lit up a moonless night.

Hours later, our random, silent exchange can still make me laugh! Whoever said you need words for a conversation?