“Dad, you need to get a cat,” Lisa said. I laughed at my daughter: “When I spend a month at your house, who is supposed to take care of the cat?”
I think Lisa said that because of her concern for me. I live alone, and she worries that I may also be lonely. She supposes that a cat would comfort me. But I am able to leave my apartment at any time, and stay away for unlimited periods of time because I have no animal dependents. (No plant dependents, either.) When my friends in Southern Indiana would go on vacation, I was the one called on to stay with the animals, “Max,” the dog, and the cat, “Penny.” And the house. I used to joke that should my friends return from vacation to find the house burned to the ground, they would not care as long as I was atop the smoking pile with the dog and cat safe in my arms. I provided the same service to my friends in St. Louis for their cat, “Mr. Diggums.”
The fact is, I really don’t need to get a cat; there is a cat that lives below me, and when it hears me clumping down the steps, it waits by the door and bum-rushes me to get into my apartment. I have, on occasion, let it into my apartment, a place it apparently finds fascinating. It claws open the partly closed bathroom door to explore the pink-and-black-tiled floors; it climbs onto the mint-green tile counter and walks across the sink. On one day of exploration, it went into a back room and clawed open a door to eaves that I use only for storage, a place I call, “where the wild things are.” I have ceded the space to dust and spiders, and when “The Cat Below” finally emerged, there were outriggers of dust on the tips of its whiskers.
I am not a “cat person.” I am slightly afraid of them because of the sharp instruments in their feet. I had a friend visit, and when “The Cat Below” saw us outside, it came to claim me. My friend — a cat fancier — picked up the cat as easily as if scooping up a stuffed animal dropped by child. How can you “scoop up” living razor wire? This reasonable fear of mine makes for interesting theater when I let the cat in, and want it to leave. It lets me pet it, and seems to like that . . . wait: the cat is male, so I will identify it as “he,” from now on. He lets me gently guide him toward the door, and doesn’t seem to understand that if he refused to leave, so be it: Here’s the tuna.
So, I do have a cat. He does not live with me, which is all right with both of us. We have an unspoken agreement: if I let him in, I have to let him do whatever he wants to do. But, I have a dog, too. He lives with my landpeople (landlord and landlady equal “landpeople”). When I am lacking in the brutishly loyal love of a slobbery canine, I make arrangements to visit “Doug,” under the pretense of paying my rent. Doug (though not slobbery) is, to paraphrase Tommy Chong, “mostly Labrador,” and is mostly black, with a graying muzzle and a love of scratches, scritches and rubs. I often overstay the stated purpose of my visit to get filled up on that dog-love.
So, I’m good: I’m healthy and happy and I have my animals, my dog and cat.