Dewey's Nine Lives

“Sometimes I think so but, you know, I’m not sure if you can ever really care too much. She really cared about everything that didn’t have a voice. She really cared. When I was a kid, the town decided to do this mosquito spraying, and these trucks would drive around with orange lights on top and spray something that was supposed to kill the mosquitoes. A few weeks into it, my mom said to me, ‘Do you hear that?’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t hear anything.’ She said, ‘That’s because it’s killing more than just the mosquitoes. It’s killing all the bugs. That’s why you don’t hear the birds anymore.’”

Barbara pauses to compose herself. “My mom, she was pretty smart, you know?”

Barbara knows she bottles things up, that she doesn’t confront her feelings, that she still has an overwhelming fear of those she loves leaving her behind. For two years after her mother and Bonkers died, she couldn’t bring herself to adopt another cat. She had a strong marriage, a wonderful daughter, a steady job, and a nice house. The simple things, some people might call them, the things you don’t cherish enough unless you’ve lived without them. The family had several fish, a few hamsters, and a turtle, but they didn’t have a cat. Barbara was happy, comfortable, loved, but she didn’t want to risk a cat. She didn’t want to lose another one. She didn’t want to open herself to another cat only to have it die on her. But nine-year-old Amanda really wanted a cat, and how can a mother refuse?

So they adopted a kitten named Max. He was wonderfully loving, with an endearing habit of sleeping on top of the refrigerator with his tail hanging over the side. But two years later, when he was four years old, Max collapsed. He was walking across the kitchen when, suddenly, he fell over and started trembling wildly, racked with the tremors of a grand mal seizure. Barbara saw it happen and started to panic. Max was so young, so healthy, and he was dying in front of her. It was her nightmare come true. As James frantically made telephone calls, Barbara held her writhing cat. His eyes were glazing over, his eyelids fluttering, his heart pounding wildly. Before she thought about what she was doing, she yelled to her daughter.

Amanda came running. She saw Max shaking and bleeding from the mouth. She started to scream and cry. It was a lot for an eleven-year-old, but when James and Barbara came home an hour later with the news that Max had died, Amanda rushed to her mother.

“Thank you, Mom,” she said. “I got to say good-bye to Max while he was alive.” She was a strong girl, Barbara realized, seeing for the first time in her well-adjusted daughter the frightened little girl she herself had once been, the one who had struggled so long and so quietly in a broken home.

It took only a month, and three protracted visits to see him at the humane society, before Barbara adopted Ninja. She wasn’t ready, but her family, especially her husband, was lost without a furry companion. Maybe, she thought, I can just live with him in the house. For Amanda and James. Maybe I can just treat Ninja like so many other people treat their cats: like animals who happen to share their space.

Her husband, James, was head over heels for Ninja. He would carry him into the kitchen in the morning, cradling him like a baby. He would ask if Barbara wanted to pet him, and she’d say, “No. Not yet. I like him, but we haven’t created a bond.” She just kept pushing Ninja away, over and over.

When he contracted a virus at twelve weeks old, Barbara rushed him to the vet. She was standing in the office, watching the doctor examine him, when she suddenly broke into tears, just as she had all those years ago when the camper pulled away from her house and she suddenly became convinced her mother would disappear while she was gone.

“I just lost a cat,” she sobbed. “I can’t lose this one, too. I just can’t. You have to help him.”

The veterinarian put her arm around Barbara’s shoulders. “Don’t worry,” she said, “it’s only a cold.”