Dewey's Nine Lives

“This cat is very spooky,” the veterinarian—who happened to be the man who opened the door that morning—kept saying as he talked Bill through the kitten’s injuries. “He fell out of the sky and landed on your car . . . that’s very spooky. This cat is very spooky.”

“That was his name,” Bill would always conclude when telling the story later (and he told it hundreds of times over the years). “From that moment on, he was Spooky.”

Spooky stayed at the veterinary office for a week. The vet donated his time; the only charge was for the medicine, but there was a lot of that. Spooky needed serious attention and care. He was battling infection, a stab wound, and major blunt-force trauma. Every inch of his body was scraped and bruised, and he was so torn up inside that he couldn’t eat solid food for a month. Bill had to spoon-feed him every meal. Spooky had several stitches in his chest, where the owl talon had pierced his lung, and he wore a protective cone-shaped collar so he couldn’t bite them off. There is nothing more pathetic, I can imagine, than a little kitten head poking through the bottom of a big white megaphone-shaped collar.

But even with the collar, Spooky was beautiful. He was tiny, only a pound or two, less than two months old, but you could see the majestic cat he would become: lean and angular, with bony hips that stuck out from a wiry body. His face was long and lean, with an almost pantherlike thrust around the mouth. It was a regal face, calm and sophisticated with big staring eyes, like the cats in ancient Egyptian carvings. In ordinary light, he was black. But the sunlight, which he loved, would bring out a shimmering copper undercoat. He was a practical cat, not prone to fits of scampering, plaintive meowing, or manic bouts of pencil chasing, but that copper coat hinted at his internal heat. Spooky was never going to let anyone or anything beat him.

Did Bill Bezanson love Spooky after a month of spoon-feeding? If pressed, he would say yes, then he loved Spooky. But thirty years later, that’s hard to know for sure. At what point, after all, does admiration become love?

But it isn’t the right question anyway. The important thing to know is that Spooky the cat loved Bill Bezanson. Immediately and forever. The first thing Bill would do, whenever he moved into a new rental house or apartment, was cut a hole in a screen. That way, Spooky could entertain himself while Bill worked long hours on assembly lines and in fabrication garages. Spooky spent most of his day outside. But as soon as Bill came home, Spooky came running. If he wasn’t there at the front door to greet him, all Bill had to do was step outside and yell, “Spooky,” and the little cat would come sprinting home. Often, he came running from four yards away. Bill could see him leaping fences at full speed. He’d come skidding right into Bill, weaving in and out between his leg, rubbing against him and almost tripping him. Bill would plop down on the couch with a beer, and Spooky would climb up on his legs, put his front paws on Bill’s chest, and lick him on the nose. Then he would stretch out on Bill’s lap. He didn’t care about getting back outdoors or having his own space; he just wanted to be with his buddy. Some nights, the two of them sat like that for hours.

It wasn’t just friendship. There was a kinship, a parallel in their lives that eased Bill’s discontent. Like Bill, Spooky had confronted the darkness of the world. Like Bill, Spooky shouldn’t have been alive. But he was. Spooky was alive and healthy and happy and somehow, in some way, that made Bill feel better about his own survival. At night, Spooky climbed into the bed. Bill always slept on his side, and Spooky would climb onto the pillow and lay beside him, his face pressed against Bill’s beard. He would wrap his paws around Bill’s arm and pull on it until Bill cradled him in the crook of his elbow. Even when he went to sleep without Spooky, Bill would wake up and find the cat curled on the pillow and his arm around its back. And it made a difference. After a decade of thrashing, Spooky’s presence calmed the nightmares. Bill knew, both consciously and subconsciously, that he needed to lie still. If he didn’t, he might hurt Spooky.