Prologue
Black is not my favorite color. My mom should’ve warned everyone not to wear black yesterday when they came to the house. I much prefer blues and grays. Sometimes yellow works, but then that would clash with my handsome orangish-and-white mane.
Though the sun blazes high in the pale-blue sky on this Wednesday in late July, I’m a cool cat living in Newton, a suburb of Boston, with Kassie O’Callaghan—my mom. I’m home alone, again, as usual. But I’m staying out of trouble as I’m on a reconnaissance mission.
Won’t you come along with me?
My favorite plaything is missing. One day, my mom tossed him across the room saying, “Go get Puss!” Was Puss a new kitty about to crash my pad? Nope. Puss is a navy-blue-and-silver toy with eight paws, twice as many as I have, and smells minty and crinkles when I punch or chew him. I love him so much I could just lick him for hours.
So far in my search for Puss, I’ve stretched my white mitts under each piece of furniture in the dozen rooms in this house, and I’ve come up empty-pawed.
Seems we’re both lost.
I think I’ll skulk into a room where humans sometimes sit and talk or, in my mom’s case, curl up with something she calls a “book.” I love cozying up to her when she does that. She calls this the “family room.” Not sure why? I spend many of my afternoons in here spying critters running freely outside, wishing they were my playmates. But, alas, I’m an indoor kitty. So Puss is the next best thing.
But where is he?
How about this chair I sometimes nap in? It doesn’t smell citrusy like Mom, and it moves up and down when a human sits in it. Eureka! Not Puss, but paydirt, sort of. I found two furry gray toys with long tails. One by one, I whack them onto the floor. I’ll hide them later.
All this search and rescue is making me hungry. Time for lunch. As she always does before she leaves the house and goes who knows where, my mom left me something to eat in the room where clothes arrive so stinky they make my whiskers twitch and depart smelling like something I’d love to roll around in before taking one of my ten required daily naps.
Hmm. There’s a closet here, especially for my toys. Why didn’t I check this out first? Every Friday, a female human who doesn’t live here gathers my toys and tosses them in a wicker basket on the floor of the closet. When my mom opens the door, I scurry in either to rescue my toys or hide those I don’t want anyone to touch. I think it’s a game. Not sure any human would agree.
I’ll poke at the door first with my right paw. It shimmies but doesn’t open. Let me try the other paw. Nothing. Maybe if I raise my haunches and slam into it? Whack! Still the door won’t open. My cute white button nose alone can’t decipher if Puss is in there. I’ll have to wait until Mom gets home and ask her to open it for me.
I worship Kassie. She’s my human. She tells her play pals she chose me from the other kitties at the orphanage, but the truth is, I picked her. I was surprised, though, to discover when she brought me to this house that I’d be sharing her with another human. She calls him Mike when he’s home and Bastard when he’s not.
Mike Bastard (MB, for short) seems to ignore me unless Kassie isn’t around, and I meow at him until he gets the message it’s chow time. Over the years, MB and I have learned to coexist. I never chew his socks or pee where I shouldn’t. As much as kittenly possible, I try to avoid him when Kassie isn’t here. Once in a while, we exchange sounds, and then I slip away and curl up in friendlier and cozier places.
Okay, now I’m frustrated. So let’s check out the room where humans eat whatever they eat, which couldn’t be as lip-smacking good as the meal I just devoured.
With my full belly, the bay-window shelf looks inviting. I’ll look for Puss later, perhaps whenever Kassie shows up again. I’m not worried. She’ll help me find him!
I think I’ll swat this curtain aside so I can curl up and bask in the warmth of the early afternoon sun before it disappears and shows up again in the backyard. Just what the kitty doctor would order, if asked. Especially given the horrifying morning I just had.
Wasn’t yesterday distressing enough? Who were all those humans in black? I had a hard time decoding one from another, except for the few I identified through my highly tuned olfactory skills. Thinking I’d at least know MB, I searched for his voice among all the murmurs, but I couldn’t hear him at all. Maybe he doesn’t like black either.
And even though he wasn’t here, for some reason Kassie called him just Mike.
Oh well, it’s time for a mini-mani-pedi. Mini because I only have rear claws. Chewing is a nervous habit I picked up years ago in the orphanage I lived at before Kassie adopted me.
As I bathe my magnificent coat, I think about the humans in black who were here yesterday and hope they have one of those sticky thingamabobs like the one I’ve seen Kassie roll along her clothes each day.
My fur sheds like a blizzard, which I kind of like, because then I’m never forgotten.
I love rubbing Kassie’s calves, walking in a circle on her lap, sniffing her pillowcase. I adore claiming her chaise lounge as mine even after she moved it from that big room with the bed that’s toasty and sways when I prance across it to the room with a smaller bed that’s cold and stiff.
Across the back of the chaise lounge, Kassie keeps something she calls her mother’s “multicolored afghan,” which makes my highly advanced brain just about explode out my cute little ears I love to have scratched. The only afghan I ever knew was a hound who shared air, space, and attention with me at the place where I lived before those humans dumped me off at the orphanage. They called the hound Bruno, which kind of fit because he was way bigger than me.
Dumber than dog shit, though, and white, not multicolored.
Perhaps those humans kept Bruno because he didn’t shed as much as I did. I wonder if they would’ve kept me if they’d known about the sticky roller thingy.
Nevertheless, the multicolored afghan seems to follow me everywhere. One day about a year ago, I looked all over the house for Kassie. Up the stairs, down the stairs, in the showers. When I curled up in my cozy bed in the kitchen to wait, the shiny things that hummed, sizzled, beeped, and swished helped me nod off for a good snooze. Surely she’d show up when it was feeding time.
But Kassie went missing for a while. I waited, but she didn’t come home. Living with MB was not how I dreamed of spending the rest of my cat years, but I tried to accept this new living arrangement. Just shows I’m as adaptable as I am loose-limbed.
One night Annie showed up at the house. I recognized her as a playmate of Kassie’s. She’s a pretty human, but not as pretty or fruity-smelling as my mom.
Suddenly, I heard Annie and MB mention my name, so I scurried up the stairs to the chaise lounge, thinking I’d be safe there. Before I could say “I have claws and I’m not afraid to use them,” MB wrapped me in a fluffy white towel and shoved me in the same cage Kassie had brought me home in from the orphanage. Fearing MB was taking me back there, I yowled until my throat got sore and I direly needed water.
Annie placed me next to her in a bigger cage that moved. She talked to me softly and sang about an octopus that wanted to wrap its arms around me and eat me. Though I liked listening to her voice because she reminded me of Kassie, I knew what she sang was a lie. Puss would never eat me. Thinking of that now makes me miss Puss even more.
Before I knew what was happening, the multicolored afghan and I flew into the air, landing in Kassie’s arms. I was in kitty heaven and forgave her for leaving me with MB.
We ate and slept at Annie’s for a while. I kind of liked it there. After a few sunrises and sunsets, another human showed up for dinner one night. He smelled yummy, like the French toast Kassie often made on Sunday mornings. Kassie must have thought so too, because she kept sniffing his neck and licking his lips.
A week or so ago, Kassie rolled up the multicolored afghan, and we moved out of Annie’s and back into this house. I expected MB to welcome us home, but he was replaced with the French toast guy—my new competition. I heard her call him Christopher.
How about that? She named him after me!
Topher, July 2018
