by Nancy Notincluded
The Nameless Kitty
There was once a cat with a black mask which would appear on my father's doorstep when he was single. My dad would pet it, then move it, eventually he began to feel sorry for it and feed it, and soon he was letting it inside. Of course the little cat became "his" when he bought her (it was a female) a litterbox. After that, they were inseperable.
I'm not sure how old she was when my dad met her, but when she passed onto Rainbow Bridge she was twenty-three or twenty-four, cancer was eating at her gums, and unable to leave the sanctuary of the small armchair my dad posessed for many years. My dad, unable to watch her euthanization, called my mom from work to stay with her. My mom understood and arrived to watch the little cat be put out of its misery. My dad, a tough guy, wore sunglasses those rainy days to conceal his tears.
I met that cat around the age of four or five. I was scared of her at first, eventually began to pet her, and soon began to offer her chocolate cookies. She was a friendly, obediant cat who enjoyed Tender Vittles, tuna, and other canned foods such as Fancy Feast. She would eat chicken and other leftovers from the table, too. At the age of six, I swung her around by her forelegs (and giggled when she spun in dazed circles when released), and picked her up in odd and undoubtedly uncomfortable positions. Still, she never tried to bite or scratch me. It did happen once, though, that early in the morning when I was seven I picked her up and tried to sprawl her across me on my bed. She was unwilling, however, and when I attempted to grab her one of her claws was embedded inbetween my knuckles. I tried to pull it out, she tried to pull it out, but she never did bite me. I bawled until I eventually freed myself, and soon afterwards my mother sauntered into the room, demanding to know why I was crying for her so early in the morning. I showed her my wound and she cleansed it, offering some relief. My dad, however, awoke when he heard his beloved cat being blamed, and defended her solidly.
She died in February. A year or less after she died, I became very lonely (she had been my best friend, always there when I went to sleep, always there when I woke up, and always willing to do homework with me). I started out by asking for a horse (to no avail), then a fish, a hamster, and a kitten. My dad agreed, after all of my wailing, to buy me one at the shelter. "A white one?" I asked slowly. "Yes, princess, a white one," he replied. "At Christmas. I'll suprise you with her." He wasn't planning to actually buy me one, but his one mistake was failing to warn my mother, who took me to Petco to buy the needed supplies. Ever the sensible one, she insisted we check out the pet adoptions, and tugged me towards them. She wanted to find some kittens for me just in case there weren't any at the shelter that I wanted. I peered curiously at a bundle of seven black kittens, sleeping atop each other in a neat stack, full-grown cats which mewed for attention, passive gray ktitens and furry white kittens. My mom pleaded with me to buy a Persian or a Himalyan Cat, but when they sat listlessly in my arms I refused. My eyes were drawn towards a small cage containing two wrestling brothers, an orange-and-white kitten and his brother, an orange tabby. I'll never know why I didn't choose the prettier orange-and-white, and I remember thinking about it in the car. My mom heeded to my pleas and drove me home immediately. I remember sprinting up the steps to our apartment, frantically ringing the doorbell, and flinging these words at my startled dad: "Daddy we went to Petco to get the litterbox and kitty food and saw this really cute kitten and I really want him not the white cat at the shelter so can we get him? Mommy said yes." My mom arrived breathlessly behind me and explained our plight to my dad. He was a good actor- I didn't find out he didn't want me to have a cat until this year, which is at leat four or five years after we adopted the orange tabby. Mom and I drove back, adopted the orange tabby kitten, put it in a Petco box, and drove home. My dad stood outside the apartment with our manager, "Kitty", and asked me to open the box to see what I had brought home. I complied, and he burst into his jolly laughter at the sight of the frightened kitten. I took it inside while Mom poured out some food and let it out. It ran to my bed.
The "old cat", as we call her, never had an official name... at the vet I put down "Snowflake", sometimes I called her Bandit, sometimes NoHo. No one really had a name for that cat. Frisky, the orange tabby, who is now three or four, grew to be mildly affectionate and somewhat aggressive (with the help of my roughhousing dad).
It's not buying Frisky that I remember most after the death of the nameless cat. It's what happened a few days after. After my dad got home from work, he told my mother a story of what happened that morning. "I heard light footsteps in the hall," he said. "Like a bird. I thought Nancy was going to the bathroom, so I waited for the toilet to flush. When it didn't flush, I thought either Nancy was sleepwalking or there's a robber in the house." Then, he said, "I heard Nancy's door open just a crack- like someone was just peering in." So he got up, and checked to see if my mom's car was gone. It was. He checked again. As he walked back into the house a second time, flustered, he "felt like his mother was there, telling him it was alright. The cat was with her."
I can't help but feel honored that the cat took one last look at me, sleeping in my bed, lonely. There was no NoHo, Bandit, or Snowflake there that night, and never again would there be. My dad asked my mom if she believed in animals having spirits. She did, she said. She believed the prized breeding and show dogs she was forced to leave behind in the Phillippines (for my sister and my own's sake) would be waiting for her in heaven, to greet her one by one- and her favorite, Trinket, would be the first in line.