Truly Feral

Hi!

I didn't die. I'm really here. I've just been on vacation, right?

Nope. No vacation.

I wrote a kitten book and I just finished it yesterday and sent it off. I have to apologize to all eight of you readers because even if you might be interested in reading a book about a feral kitten coming home, you've read almost all of it here. I hate reading a book and getting half way through and realizing that I've already read it. Don't you?

As I sit here, Blitz is running back and forth in the kitchen while playing with one of Teddy's dog kibbles. It will most likely get stuck under the stove and make my vacuum cleaner sound like it's breaking when I suck it up.

The little dirt bag.

Here's the thing that didn't make it into the book.

My mother called the other day. She's pretty healthy and all, but she has gout. I hope to God I never get gout because when I do, I'll begin every conversation with normal humans with, "I've got this pain."

Honestly, now that my joints are starting to feel crunchy, I'm beginning to understand why so many old people go on and on and on. And fucking on about their aches and pains.

"You don't know pain until you've had gout," she told me.

I resisted the urge to talk about the time I was in the hospital and the X-ray technicians needed me to stand upright for the myelogram and I kept passing out because my broken back was lighting up a whole bunch of nerve pathways at one time, hot, cold, cut, punctured, burned, and abraded all at one time.

I hate when people tell me I don't know pain.

But it wouldn't have made her feel any better about her pain if I'd argued that I did know pain. It would just make her feel like nobody was listening to her own pain. We humans really suck at listening, me especially.

So, I tried to listen and tried not to imagine too carefully what gout felt like. See, I hate seeing those 'funny' videos in which some poor slob does a face plant scorpion slide across concrete because I feel actual pain when I do.

Maybe that's why humans are terrible at listening to our parents complain about pain, because we can feel some of that pain. I tried to change the subject from gout.

"I wrote a book about my cats, Ma," I said.

"That's nice, Dear," she said.

Apparently, she can't comprehend the time and energy involved in writing a book, even one about cats. So, I let her go back to the gout and the way she couldn't walk for a few days and the doctor said, and she said, and the gout isn't gone yet, but feels a little less like an icepick was driven through her foot.

"How is your kitten?" she asked.

Wow. I'd settled in for the long haul and I'd reached the end of the trail about a half hour before I thought I would.

"He's funny. He likes to tuck a dog kibble under the kitchen rug then worm under it with his head and shoulders. It's a wonder I haven't stepped on him while I cook."

And I went on and on about my kitten. And on.

Finally, I caught myself. See, I'm the age that most women are becoming grandmothers. Nick is way too young for that, so I've satisfied that need by treating two cats and a dog as if they are babies.

It wouldn't surprise me if my friends laugh about that when I'm not around. I wouldn't mind. It would be true. Better that than to nag an eighteen year old boy about when he's going to give me grandchildren. That is never going to be fodder for the dinner conversation. It sucks to be on the receiving end of that question.

So, I managed to quell my grandmotherly instincts and ask my mother about her cat.

"Oh, Baby is doing just fine."

Baby is not a good name for any pet. It's just embarrassing. Baby.

Can you imagine going to the sliding glass door, opening it, and yelling, "Baby! Come here, Baby! Baaabeeeee?"

Mortifying.

"Baby is beginning to get old. She's fourteen."

I thought I remembered that she got her cat just a few months before I got mine so that would make Baby twelve, thirteen at most. But these kind of conversations were futile unless you were trying to ascertain levels of dementia. I was not. If my mother was going senile, I didn't want to know about it yet. She had begun to change long-standing family stories, but I figured she was entitled to that. I had no intention of worrying until she seemed to forget something important. When I'm eighty-five, I want to be able to change my stories too. I don't want some young punk telling me I remembered it wrong.

I'd phased out of the conversation for a bit.Thankfully, my mother was still talking about Baby. She was more of an indoor cat than she had been. She still didn't like anyone but my mother. She disappeared every time anyone came to the house. My mother told the whole story about how Baby came to her door when she was a kitten, a cold and starving feral kitten that was already more than half grown. I had heard this story. I knew that part was true. I'd only ever petted Baby twice, both times when I'd opened the door after everyone left my mother's house, both times when I'd been completely silent and had a bowl of food in my hands ready for her. Baby was almost completely feral. The only other person she liked was her veterinarian, the traveling vet who had examined my grandma's cat Buddy before he traveled to my house. But Baby was more than skittish. Baby was a one woman cat.

"Baby spends more time on my lap and now she sleeps with me at night," my mother said. She went on about her Baby. I guess I'm not the only one who wanted grandkids, or rather great-grandkids. Then she said that Baby also asked to be let out to the garage when she needed to use her litter box.

"Seriously? She asks to be let out?" 

Imagine not letting a cat have her litter box in the house because it was too messy. Yuck.

Then, she dropped the bomb.

"Who knows which of us is going to live longer, me or Baby. I really don't know what I'm going to do with Baby after I die."

And then, she let the conversation hang. I hated when she let the conversation hang. I resisted the urge to tell her that she wasn't going to be able to do anything when she died. Really, it was so tempting when she was angling to get me to agree to something.

"We can take her if you need us to. I'm sure she would be okay here."

I wasn't sure she'd be okay here. I had no idea if she'd be okay here. At least with my grandma's cat, Buddy, he'd let me pet him and brush him. Buddy had always liked me even when he didn't like anyone else. He'd liked Nick. Nick was the only great-grandkid that Buddy had let pet him. That made it easy.

But I told my mother that we'd take care of her, that she didn't have to worry, that we had room for one more cat even though she informed me that Baby hated male cats and dogs. We had two male cats and a dog. That was going to be so fucked if it happened.

Eventually, my mother had to get off the phone to go to her quilting meeting. Mike wandered into the kitchen where I still sat on the footstool. A lot of times, I sat on that footstool while I had conversations with my extended family.

"So, my mother made me promise to take her cat, Baby, if she died."

"Oh man, I've never even seen that cat in eleven years it's so wild."

"Yeah, and she hates male cats and dogs too. And she goes outdoors whenever she wants."

"You're going to have to bring her here? Really?"

"Yup," I said. "I am. I promised."

Mike didn't say another word, just shook his head and made himself a ham and cheddar sandwich.

Then, as he walked out of the kitchen with his sandwich in hand, he said, "You had better pray that your mom lives a nice long life. That cat would be absolutely miserable here. You know that, right?"

I know that.

Thank you for listening, jb