Dewey's Nine Lives

That wasn’t easy, unfortunately, for an unemployed metal fabricator in the middle of a recession. Bill couldn’t rent an apartment without a steady paycheck or money in the bank, and his personal housing crisis dragged on and on. For two weeks, Bill hunted for a job while the woman got madder and madder. Finally, he found work as a caretaker for the very ill. It was a good job in a bad economy, and quite a relief. The first thing Bill did when he arrived home from his first day on the job was to call out, “Spooky! Spooky!” He wanted to celebrate.

No Spooky.

No Spooky for dinner.

And no Spooky at bedtime, either.

Bill knew something was wrong. He searched the neighborhood. No sign of Spooky. The woman said the coyotes must have gotten him. Bill didn’t think so. He knew what death felt like, and he didn’t have the feeling. He just didn’t believe Spooky was gone. He figured Spooky must have been accidently locked in a garage or a work shed, and that when he broke free, he’d come home. At dusk, Bill would stand on the porch and listen for Spooky. Every night, he thought he heard Spooky’s distant meow. Zippo was out all the time looking for Spooky in his own way, so it could have been Zippo’s meow being carried on the wind. But Bill didn’t think so. He’d wake up in the middle of the night and swear he heard Spooky. He became convinced Spooky had fallen in an old well or been trapped in a hole, and he searched through the backyards and the forest looking for him. Bill had walked out on so much else in his life. He would never walk out on Spooky.

But the days passed, and there was still no Spooky. The woman wanted Bill and Zippo out. She was convinced the coyotes had gotten Spooky; she didn’t care about that lousy old cat anyway; she just wanted her house back. Bill fought her every day. There was no way he was leaving without Spooky. No way.

Three weeks later, he and Zippo were still there. The woman was standing in the doorway, screaming at him to leave. Bill refused. Again. Not without Spooky, he told her. Not while Spooky might still be alive. The woman turned in a rage, looked into the backyard, and turned stone white. She had to grab the door frame to keep from falling over. There, coming across the yard, was Spooky. He was very skinny, and very dirty, but he was alive.

Bill clutched him in his arms. “Spooky. Spooky,” he said, burying his face in Spooky’s fur. “I knew you’d come home.”

They left that night: Bill, Spooky, and chubby-tubby Zippo. Bill didn’t even have a place to go. He just took his cats, his few possessions, and left. He and the cats slept in his car until the first paycheck came through.

A year later, he struck up a conversation with a stranger in a bar. After a few drinks, the man said, “Oh, wait a minute, you’re that guy. You lived with my mom. She took your cat to the dump, man, and threw him out with her trash. She almost died when that cat came back.”

The dump was twenty miles away. Twenty miles! It took three weeks of walking, but Spooky came back. He had survived a strike from an owl. He had outfoxed four coyotes and withstood a swipe from a bear. He had been thrown out with the trash and found his way home. He was a survivor in every sense of the word.

Eventually, though, there comes a point when we can’t come back. Zippo reached it first, in June 2001, at the age of eighteen. He had gone into the animal hospital for routine surgery to remove a tumor. Bill called later that morning, all smiles, and asked how Zippo was. The veterinarian, Dr. Call, had been Zippo and Spooky’s veterinarian since they first moved to Washington fifteen years before. One morning soon after moving there, Bill had seen a dog hit by a car. He ran into the road, scooped up the dog, and drove it to the nearest vet. The dog was biting itself and screaming; it was in tremendous pain. When Bill reach for him, the dog reared back and bit him on the neck and shoulder. On the examination table, it thrashed and screamed. It was frantic with terror. Dr. Call walked in, touched the dog gently with his bare hand, and it calmed right down.

Bill was so impressed, he brought Spooky to see Dr. Call the next day. Spooky loved him immediately. And Dr. Call loved Spooky. He later nursed him through the coyote attack and the bear attack. He shook his head in amazement when he heard about the owl. He always called Spooky his miracle cat.

But now Dr. Call was sniffling into the telephone, trying to keep his voice from cracking. Zippo, he told Bill, had a reaction to the anesthesia. He had died in the middle of surgery. Big, sweet Zippo. Just the day before, he had seemed so full of life. Now he was gone. Bill was in shock. Spooky was devastated.