Little Black Cat
Cesar's a nice boy in my middle school English class. He's repeating the eighth grade to improve his language skills. But he doesn't seem to mind. Cesar spends too much time in the school restroom, claims to see spirits, and misses a month of school to spend Christmas in Mexico - which may account for his repetition of the eighth grade. But he's rapidly becoming a better student, so it's okay.
One day as I rise from my desk, he says with seeming concern, "You okay, Mrs. H? You ain't coming off that chair so easy." Then he snickers.
That's not okay. Not the grammar and certainly not the reference to my antiquity. I fight the urge to lash out. "How'd you like a third run at eighth grade, smart ass?" I could say. But I don't. Cesar is teasing. It may be that I am a trifle insecure about my advancing years.
It's not that I don't know I have arthritic knees, that I'm getting older, that I need a nap every day. Of course I know. It's just that I hoped the kids didn't. Sometimes, truthfully, even I forget. My mind hovers somewhere between 34 and 41. But my 64-year-old knees are always a shocking reminder.
At home, I've learned to move with economy. When I bend down to tie a shoe, for instance, I might pick up cracker crumbs or check under the bed for the ear buds I lost. As long as I'm down here already, I figure, I can save myself another trip.
As well, I make a conscious effort to keep my mind sharp by playing Words with Friends every day. No, that's a lie. I play Words with Friends because I'm a hopeless addict and hate to lose - especially to my nemesis Karen Johnson, an old high school friend who defeats me with words like azoic and gavot. To win, I have to motivate myself sternly. If I can't score 30 points on the next word, I tell myself for example, my entire family will be executed by Nazis. Sadly, I've lost not only immediate family members, but also my DVR and - worst of all - my pet cat Blackie. Not that it's been easy to see my husband and children murdered by Nazis, but little Blackie has spent every day of the last 19 years growing old with me. While I sleep on my side every night, she crawls up to sleep length wise against my thigh. We are quite literally joined at the hip.
So it's exquisite relief to shake myself and remember it's only a psychotic game - that John, our kids, the DVR and my little black cat are still intact.
Blackie comes to us just after my dad dies. During that warm spring of 2000, I am inconsolable. To comfort me, my good husband adopts two cats - Willy and Agnes. Our boys are delighted. Willy and Agnes are named after Dr. Agnes Gomes, our family pediatrician whom we adore, and her husband Dr. Willy Gomes.
"Because they'll cure what ails us," my husband John says. He's loved my dad for many years, and I forget he's grieving, too.
Not in any way, shape or form are we looking for a third cat, but one rainy day in June we discover a poor little bedraggled kitten abandoned in the parking lot of the YMCA. John corners the terrified animal beneath a car until he is able to extend his long arm to grab her. In our vehicle, with the storm lashing against the windows, he thrusts her at me. The little cat, all at once limp and exhausted, surrenders the struggle in my lap as if to say, "I'm done. Do with me what you will."
Tommy, our ten-year-old, is ecstatic to see us walk through the door with yet another cat. His face blazes with joy.
"Don't!" I warn. "We're finding her a home. I can't be the neighborhood cat lady."
Little Blackie - it's all we can think to call her - wolfs down the moist cat food we place before her and, when her tiny belly is full, rubs herself against us in amazement and gratitude. Without a whimper, she succumbs to a bath in the kitchen sink. She even faces down Willy and Agnes, who are not in the least delighted about the newcomer invading their territory. It doesn't matter.
"You'll have to get used to me," Blackie indicates plainly as she plants herself in the midst of their hissing. "I'm not going anywhere."
She doesn't either. Blackie is our undemanding, affectionate little darling. How dare I think we could possibly give her away? Kenny and Tommy sling her around their shoulders to carry her all around the house. Until they both graduate from high school, our nearly seven foot boys coo to her in gentle falsetto voices. "Baby Blackie! Who's a sweet baby?"
It is to my husband, however, that Blackie pledges her undying fidelity. John is her beloved protector and savior. She lounges across his chest like a little queen panther and observes me coolly across the room. I am the other woman and no match for the likes of her.
More than anything, Blackie loves a particular window sill in our dining room on Koenig Street. In the heat of mid-afternoon summer days, the cicadas lulling her to sleep, she stretches luxuriously in the sun as I stroke her warm belly. If ever a cat deserves a sun-filled window sill, it's our little Blackie.
We wonder about her dark past. Where does she come from, and why was she abandoned? None of us can bear to think of her starving and scared with nowhere to turn. She weaves her way into the daily fabric of our lives - a contented, loving and blissful little creature. We call out her name as soon as we come through the door after school, and she always answers with the ragged little "meow" that can only be our Blackie's.
Sometimes, she surprises us. One evening I hear a flutter in the chimney.
"It's a bat. I just know it," I shudder to my husband.
My brother Tom, an exterminator at the time, instructs us to light a fire and flush it out. "Hopefully, the heat'll force it out the top of the chimney," he says.
Wrong.
I flee the house abandoning my husband to deal with the creature trapped in the chimney. As it turns out, it's not a bat but a large black starling who, despite my brother's prediction, does not fly out the top of the chimney but instead directly through the fire and into our living room.
It swoops wildly into the kitchen frightening 14-year-old Kenny who immediately leaps onto the counter top with a plateful of waffles still clutched in his hand. Tommy grabs a plastic baseball bat, my husband hurries to find a blanket, and the chase is on. But it's little Blackie who saves the day.
As the desperate bird careens through the dining room, tiny Blackie leaps six feet into the air and snatches it. The starling is easily twice the size of our kitten, but Blackie triumphantly drags it - with black wings flapping mightily - behind our living room couch.
My husband at last wrests the poor bird from a furious Blackie and mercifully sets it loose outside. We can hardly believe the savage instinct of our little black cat. Who would have guessed?
Willy and Agnes, our original cats, eventually pass away. Blackie, however, outlives them both. With determined grace, she accepts the new little Tortie cat we adopt the next year, and spends her days fending off the new kitten's playful advances to find sleepy refuge on a warm shelf in the basement.
"She's an old woman now," John and I murmur to each other sadly. Long after our boys have gone, Blackie lives on and grows ever dearer to my husband and me. We all grow old together. As if she sympathizes with my own stiff knees, Blackie spends more time with me. We curl up for long naps. Her wiffle of a snore as she reclines on my hip is a lullaby.
When she approaches 17, Blackie's litter box becomes an issue - in that she refuses to use it. Rather, she chooses to relieve herself anywhere that is remotely convenient: the living room carpet, the stair steps and even the bed, always fastidiously kicking imaginary sand over her puddles and defecation before moving to a dry spot to finish her nap.
"This cat needs to die!" John hisses furiously as we travel from spot to spot with Super Pet Odor/Stain Remover. In this way we vent our frustration fully knowing that neither of us would ever dream of euthanizing Blackie. She is like an infant baby or an elderly parent that must be constantly attended to.
So we make adjustments. The bedroom doors remain closed at all times to prevent Blackie from peeing on the beds. We purchase cat zappers to place in strategic corners of the house. They emit an unearthly, shrieking buzz guaranteed to send felines fleeing. Fortunately, only cats can hear the unbearable sound. Or so say the instructions on the box. As it turns out, anyone younger than 30 with functioning ears is also privy to the terrible sound.
"What the..." our sons Kenny and Tommy and daughter-in-law Savanna visit from Denver and immediately cover their ears as they enter the house. "What is that sound?" Kenny shouts as if a locomotive is roaring through our living room.
Puzzled, John and I look at each other. We don't hear a thing.
When Blackie at last confines her messes to the only open and noise-free spots in the house - the stairwells - we purchase pet mats online. Dutifully, she rids herself of all urine and fecal matter on the four mats strewn about the stairs. Every morning before he leaves for work, John wipes them off, throws them in the washer, and replaces them with clean mats. And every afternoon when I come home, I pull them out of the washer to replace the ones that Blackie soils during the day. It becomes a daily ritual. The washing machine runs from dawn to dusk.
Just after Christmas, though, we know Blackie is failing. Now blind, deaf and aching from arthritis, she loses another pound from her already frail little body. Her hind legs refuse to work, she won't eat or drink, and she stares out the window despondently. The day we take her to the vet, Blackie weighs just three pounds. I lie beside her all the night before on the family room sofa. She nestles close to me, and I stroke her head to whisper comforts.
"I'd like to hold her when it's time," my husband John says suddenly the next day before we leave for the vet's. I have wrapped Blackie in an old blanket and am surprised by his request. Not long ago he's instructed me that when the time comes to put down Blackie, I must be the one to take her to the clinic.
"I just can't do it," he tells me then, shaking his head. But today is different.
"She's scared to death at the vet's office," John explains. "If I hold her, she'll be calm."
He's right. John clasps her tenderly, and we both speak softly to her as the shot is administered. With her last trusting breath, Blackie peacefully surrenders in John's arms - just as she completely surrendered her kitten self to us 19 years ago in a rainy parking lot at the Y.
The bedroom doors are open now, the mats have been discarded, and the washing machine is silent most days. But we miss our sweet Blackie. John looks for her every day as he comes in the door after work, and I ache for the warm little weight of her on my hip as I sleep.
Every night I pray for my family - for the people I've lost now to Heaven and for the dear ones I worry about on earth. I don't believe, I realize, that I've ever prayed for Blackie, or any cat for that matter.
Tonight, however, I feel the sudden need to drop to my knees in order to ask the good Lord to keep an eye on Blackie. And none of that crap about animals not having souls. Blackie had the sweetest soul of any creature I've ever known. In no uncertain terms, I make it clear to God that there can be no Heaven for me unless Blackie's there, too.
Then, because I have lectured God enough, I relent. Drained of sorrow and still on my knees, I lean my face into the cushion of the couch and relax. I am remembering Blackie downing a starling twice her size. I remember the way she slept in the sun, comforted us when our boys left home, yowled for her Fancy Feast, and slept trustfully on my husband's chest. I think of a much loved little black cat who gave us 19 years of joy and grew old with John and me.
Before my knees begin to ache, I decide, I must remember not only to order the Almighty around but to thank him for the gift of our Blackie.
I'd better do it now. As long as I'm down here already.
One day as I rise from my desk, he says with seeming concern, "You okay, Mrs. H? You ain't coming off that chair so easy." Then he snickers.
That's not okay. Not the grammar and certainly not the reference to my antiquity. I fight the urge to lash out. "How'd you like a third run at eighth grade, smart ass?" I could say. But I don't. Cesar is teasing. It may be that I am a trifle insecure about my advancing years.
It's not that I don't know I have arthritic knees, that I'm getting older, that I need a nap every day. Of course I know. It's just that I hoped the kids didn't. Sometimes, truthfully, even I forget. My mind hovers somewhere between 34 and 41. But my 64-year-old knees are always a shocking reminder.
At home, I've learned to move with economy. When I bend down to tie a shoe, for instance, I might pick up cracker crumbs or check under the bed for the ear buds I lost. As long as I'm down here already, I figure, I can save myself another trip.
As well, I make a conscious effort to keep my mind sharp by playing Words with Friends every day. No, that's a lie. I play Words with Friends because I'm a hopeless addict and hate to lose - especially to my nemesis Karen Johnson, an old high school friend who defeats me with words like azoic and gavot. To win, I have to motivate myself sternly. If I can't score 30 points on the next word, I tell myself for example, my entire family will be executed by Nazis. Sadly, I've lost not only immediate family members, but also my DVR and - worst of all - my pet cat Blackie. Not that it's been easy to see my husband and children murdered by Nazis, but little Blackie has spent every day of the last 19 years growing old with me. While I sleep on my side every night, she crawls up to sleep length wise against my thigh. We are quite literally joined at the hip.
So it's exquisite relief to shake myself and remember it's only a psychotic game - that John, our kids, the DVR and my little black cat are still intact.
 |
| Tommy and Blackie |
Blackie comes to us just after my dad dies. During that warm spring of 2000, I am inconsolable. To comfort me, my good husband adopts two cats - Willy and Agnes. Our boys are delighted. Willy and Agnes are named after Dr. Agnes Gomes, our family pediatrician whom we adore, and her husband Dr. Willy Gomes.
"Because they'll cure what ails us," my husband John says. He's loved my dad for many years, and I forget he's grieving, too.
Not in any way, shape or form are we looking for a third cat, but one rainy day in June we discover a poor little bedraggled kitten abandoned in the parking lot of the YMCA. John corners the terrified animal beneath a car until he is able to extend his long arm to grab her. In our vehicle, with the storm lashing against the windows, he thrusts her at me. The little cat, all at once limp and exhausted, surrenders the struggle in my lap as if to say, "I'm done. Do with me what you will."
Tommy, our ten-year-old, is ecstatic to see us walk through the door with yet another cat. His face blazes with joy.
"Don't!" I warn. "We're finding her a home. I can't be the neighborhood cat lady."
Little Blackie - it's all we can think to call her - wolfs down the moist cat food we place before her and, when her tiny belly is full, rubs herself against us in amazement and gratitude. Without a whimper, she succumbs to a bath in the kitchen sink. She even faces down Willy and Agnes, who are not in the least delighted about the newcomer invading their territory. It doesn't matter."You'll have to get used to me," Blackie indicates plainly as she plants herself in the midst of their hissing. "I'm not going anywhere."
She doesn't either. Blackie is our undemanding, affectionate little darling. How dare I think we could possibly give her away? Kenny and Tommy sling her around their shoulders to carry her all around the house. Until they both graduate from high school, our nearly seven foot boys coo to her in gentle falsetto voices. "Baby Blackie! Who's a sweet baby?"
It is to my husband, however, that Blackie pledges her undying fidelity. John is her beloved protector and savior. She lounges across his chest like a little queen panther and observes me coolly across the room. I am the other woman and no match for the likes of her.
More than anything, Blackie loves a particular window sill in our dining room on Koenig Street. In the heat of mid-afternoon summer days, the cicadas lulling her to sleep, she stretches luxuriously in the sun as I stroke her warm belly. If ever a cat deserves a sun-filled window sill, it's our little Blackie.
 |
| John and Blackie |
Sometimes, she surprises us. One evening I hear a flutter in the chimney.
"It's a bat. I just know it," I shudder to my husband.
My brother Tom, an exterminator at the time, instructs us to light a fire and flush it out. "Hopefully, the heat'll force it out the top of the chimney," he says.
Wrong.
I flee the house abandoning my husband to deal with the creature trapped in the chimney. As it turns out, it's not a bat but a large black starling who, despite my brother's prediction, does not fly out the top of the chimney but instead directly through the fire and into our living room.
It swoops wildly into the kitchen frightening 14-year-old Kenny who immediately leaps onto the counter top with a plateful of waffles still clutched in his hand. Tommy grabs a plastic baseball bat, my husband hurries to find a blanket, and the chase is on. But it's little Blackie who saves the day.
As the desperate bird careens through the dining room, tiny Blackie leaps six feet into the air and snatches it. The starling is easily twice the size of our kitten, but Blackie triumphantly drags it - with black wings flapping mightily - behind our living room couch.
My husband at last wrests the poor bird from a furious Blackie and mercifully sets it loose outside. We can hardly believe the savage instinct of our little black cat. Who would have guessed?
Willy and Agnes, our original cats, eventually pass away. Blackie, however, outlives them both. With determined grace, she accepts the new little Tortie cat we adopt the next year, and spends her days fending off the new kitten's playful advances to find sleepy refuge on a warm shelf in the basement.
"She's an old woman now," John and I murmur to each other sadly. Long after our boys have gone, Blackie lives on and grows ever dearer to my husband and me. We all grow old together. As if she sympathizes with my own stiff knees, Blackie spends more time with me. We curl up for long naps. Her wiffle of a snore as she reclines on my hip is a lullaby.
When she approaches 17, Blackie's litter box becomes an issue - in that she refuses to use it. Rather, she chooses to relieve herself anywhere that is remotely convenient: the living room carpet, the stair steps and even the bed, always fastidiously kicking imaginary sand over her puddles and defecation before moving to a dry spot to finish her nap."This cat needs to die!" John hisses furiously as we travel from spot to spot with Super Pet Odor/Stain Remover. In this way we vent our frustration fully knowing that neither of us would ever dream of euthanizing Blackie. She is like an infant baby or an elderly parent that must be constantly attended to.
So we make adjustments. The bedroom doors remain closed at all times to prevent Blackie from peeing on the beds. We purchase cat zappers to place in strategic corners of the house. They emit an unearthly, shrieking buzz guaranteed to send felines fleeing. Fortunately, only cats can hear the unbearable sound. Or so say the instructions on the box. As it turns out, anyone younger than 30 with functioning ears is also privy to the terrible sound.
"What the..." our sons Kenny and Tommy and daughter-in-law Savanna visit from Denver and immediately cover their ears as they enter the house. "What is that sound?" Kenny shouts as if a locomotive is roaring through our living room.
Puzzled, John and I look at each other. We don't hear a thing.
When Blackie at last confines her messes to the only open and noise-free spots in the house - the stairwells - we purchase pet mats online. Dutifully, she rids herself of all urine and fecal matter on the four mats strewn about the stairs. Every morning before he leaves for work, John wipes them off, throws them in the washer, and replaces them with clean mats. And every afternoon when I come home, I pull them out of the washer to replace the ones that Blackie soils during the day. It becomes a daily ritual. The washing machine runs from dawn to dusk.
Just after Christmas, though, we know Blackie is failing. Now blind, deaf and aching from arthritis, she loses another pound from her already frail little body. Her hind legs refuse to work, she won't eat or drink, and she stares out the window despondently. The day we take her to the vet, Blackie weighs just three pounds. I lie beside her all the night before on the family room sofa. She nestles close to me, and I stroke her head to whisper comforts.
"I'd like to hold her when it's time," my husband John says suddenly the next day before we leave for the vet's. I have wrapped Blackie in an old blanket and am surprised by his request. Not long ago he's instructed me that when the time comes to put down Blackie, I must be the one to take her to the clinic.
"I just can't do it," he tells me then, shaking his head. But today is different.
"She's scared to death at the vet's office," John explains. "If I hold her, she'll be calm."
He's right. John clasps her tenderly, and we both speak softly to her as the shot is administered. With her last trusting breath, Blackie peacefully surrenders in John's arms - just as she completely surrendered her kitten self to us 19 years ago in a rainy parking lot at the Y.
The bedroom doors are open now, the mats have been discarded, and the washing machine is silent most days. But we miss our sweet Blackie. John looks for her every day as he comes in the door after work, and I ache for the warm little weight of her on my hip as I sleep.
Every night I pray for my family - for the people I've lost now to Heaven and for the dear ones I worry about on earth. I don't believe, I realize, that I've ever prayed for Blackie, or any cat for that matter.
 |
| Blackie 2000-2019 |
Then, because I have lectured God enough, I relent. Drained of sorrow and still on my knees, I lean my face into the cushion of the couch and relax. I am remembering Blackie downing a starling twice her size. I remember the way she slept in the sun, comforted us when our boys left home, yowled for her Fancy Feast, and slept trustfully on my husband's chest. I think of a much loved little black cat who gave us 19 years of joy and grew old with John and me.
Before my knees begin to ache, I decide, I must remember not only to order the Almighty around but to thank him for the gift of our Blackie.
I'd better do it now. As long as I'm down here already.
All our love, just so you know..I am embracing the neighborhood cat lady title with pride..would not want to go a day without a cat beside me. Pure comfort for me.
ReplyDeleteDorene, I'll never forget the pic on facebook of you in your bed with your cats! As soon as I saw it, I thought - that's me! Cat Ladies Unite.
DeleteEach sentence a treasure---I'm allergic to cats but couldn't hold back a tear or two! You have such a great gift Cathy!!!
ReplyDeleteThank you for this, my wonderful Coz! Love you!
Delete