Dewey's Nine Lives

But by the time Mary Nan and Larry visited Sanibel Island, Tabby was getting older. After Larry left the military, the family moved back to his hometown of Carrollton, Missouri, a little community of about four thousand people, where he had seen Mary Nan for the first time at the skating rink when she was almost sixteen and he was barely twenty. In Missouri, Larry worked as a maintenance man; Mary Nan kept the house. They were content. But the cold Missouri winters were hard on Tabby’s joints, and after twelve good years, she began slowing down. Mary Nan took a blanket Larry’s grandmother had knitted and folded it on the floor in front of the heater vent. Tabby sat on the blanket until she was steaming hot, but the cat sauna didn’t help her aching joints. Tabby was the love of their lives, and she was in decline.

There was no way Larry and Mary Nan were leaving her behind. Not for a month, not for a week, not even if it meant the end of Mary Nan’s dream of a life in Florida (and it was her dream, not Larry’s) and a long trip back to Carrollton, Missouri, in defeat.

“I have one more place to call,” Larry told his wife after two weeks of searching. “If this doesn’t work out, we’ll head home.”

He made the call. “I just want to tell you up front,” he said, “that I have a cat, and I’m not getting rid of her.”

“So what?” the man on the other end of the line replied. “I have two.”

A few weeks later, Larry, Mary Nan, and Tabby Evans had moved all of their possessions into a little bungalow across the street from the Colony Resort on Sanibel Island. This time, Mary Nan knew she was in paradise to stay. The resort was on the eastern, residential end of the island, away from the crowded shops and high-rise developments. The individually owned bungalows and condominiums of Colony Resort were scattered around a property filled with palm trees, bushes, and the grassy areas between them. To the east, a boardwalk led across 160 feet of sparsely overgrown sand dunes to a wide white beach and the gorgeous blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico. A short walk down the beach was the tip of the island, with its famous light-house. After dark, the sky was black and full of stars since no street-lights have ever been allowed to mar the quiet wonder of a Sanibel Island night.

Even Tabby, fifteen years old and increasingly arthritic, was rejuvenated. Mary Nan donned a pair of khaki casual shorts and a permanent smile, bought a fat-tired bicycle with a basket on the front, and Tabitha rode with her everywhere. While the girls were out on their leisurely errands, Larry used his weekends to screen in the porch on the back of the bungalow, and after a strenuous morning of basket-sitting (that wind can be murder on a cat’s fur!), Tabitha would lay out there all afternoon, warmed by the sun and refreshed by the cool island breeze. Mary Nan and Tabby spent hours together on that porch, Mary Nan with her cross-stitch and Tabby with nothing to do but enjoy her old age.

Maybe it was the sight of Tabby luxuriating on her private porch that attracted the little dappled cat. Maybe it was the obvious love (and food) Mary gave her sweet Siamese. Or maybe it was just inevitable. Sanibel Island in the 1980s was crawling with feral cats. You would see them everywhere: running through the bushes beside the street, poking around backyard barbeques, scrounging through the sea grass-covered empty lots that would, over the years, be turned into oceanfront estates, hotels, and high-rise condominiums. Maybe the dappled cat was just trying to find an easier way to survive in paradise when she followed Mary Nan and Larry home from their walk one night. She couldn’t get onto the porch, but she was hanging around the front door every time they came out.

“I’m going to give that kitten some milk,” Mary Nan told Larry after a few days of watching the cat watching her. The poor thing was as skinny as a sandpiper and nearly as skittish, but once Mary Nan started feeding her, she never left the yard.

“I figured,” Larry muttered, rolling his eyes with a bemused smile.

“What should I name her?” Mary Nan asked the two little boys who lived next door.

“Call her Boogie,” they said.

“What’s a boogie?”

The boys looked at each other. “I don’t know,” one of them replied.

“Okay,” Mary Nan said with a smile. “Boogie it is.”

Two months later, Larry stopped outside the front door on his way to work. “Mary Nan,” he called to his wife, the good-natured exasperation evident in his voice, “you better come out and see what you’ve done.”

On the front porch were three gorgeous, wiggly, sop-eared kittens. Boogie’s kittens.

“I guess we have five cats now,” Mary Nan said, going inside for a jug of milk. Four for the yard, and Tabitha asleep on the porch.