Dewey's Nine Lives

A year later, the resort manager retired. Larry became the manager, Mary Nan took over the front desk, and the whole family moved across the street to a bungalow on the resort property. By then, Tabitha had passed away. Her health had been in serious decline for months, but Mary Nan and Larry couldn’t bring themselves to put her down. In her last week, Larry had to go to the mainland for business. Mary Nan and Tabitha went for the car ride. Riding on that torn-up seat hump was still Tabby’s favorite activity, even better than the bicycle or the porch. To sneak her into the hotel, Mary Nan had to swaddle her in a blanket and pretend she was their child, just as she had when Tabby was a kitten, but the effort was worth it. While Larry worked, Mary Nan drove Tabitha around Fort Myers and twenty miles up and down the coast.

When they got home, they took Tabby to the vet. “It’s time,” he said simply. Mary Nan and Larry didn’t reply. They knew he was right, and it was the hardest thing they had ever endured. Tabitha had been like a daughter to them. She had comforted them with her presence, her persistent love, and her refusal to date the wrong men. Even though they knew she was suffering, putting her down was like tearing away a piece of their hearts. That afternoon, Larry and Mary Nan sat together on a bench, just staring at the ocean and crying in each other’s arms.

But they still had four cats: Boogie, the original dappled kitten that had walked into Mary Nan’s heart, and her three babies. They were outdoor cats, of course, but they apparently had no intention of ever wandering out of sight. Since Sanibel Island summer days were often hot, Larry built a cat house outside the bungalow porch. The box was about four feet by four feet, with a wooden roof for shade and mesh walls to let the breeze blow through. It even had a fan with a mesh cover to keep the kittens cool on those rare sweltering days when the ocean winds didn’t blow.

From the comfort of her porch, Mary Nan watched her cats, thinking of those quiet days with Tabitha and wishing she had such a nice fan for her own house. She watched soon after as one of the cats gave birth to a gaggle of moist, hairless kittens on the roof of the cat house. And she watched the next day as one of the mewling babies, still with its eyes shut and too small to walk, rolled right off the roof and out of sight. Mary Nan ran out expecting an injured or dead little kitten, but the baby was alive and unhurt, lying in a bundle on the grass and crying softly for its mother.

I really should get these cats fixed, she thought.

With so many cats to feed—there were now seven—Larry placed a line of bowls outside the bungalow door. Every morning, before his own breakfast, he filled each one with food. The cats came running . . . all to the same bowl. No matter how many options they were given, they all wanted to eat out of the same bowl at the same time. The kittens would crawl over each other, stumbling, falling, getting in fights, while the older cats stuck their snouts in the bowl and gulped down food while trying to ram each other away with the top of their heads. Mary Nan and Larry couldn’t help but laugh.

Eventually, the food began to attract more feral cats. First it was ten. Then twelve. Then . . . where did that cat come from? Larry would wonder. Do I know that cat? It sure seems eager and entitled. But . . . Aww, what the heck, Larry thought, give them another handful of food. Mary Nan was the one who began to name them. It seemed the best way, in conjunction with spaying the cats she considered her own, to keep the colony organized. But the cats refused to cooperate. They kept coming and going, but mostly coming in greater and greater numbers. It wasn’t long before you couldn’t walk ten steps at Colony Resort without a cat racing across your path. Every time Mary Nan and Larry walked down the boardwalk to the beach—and they walked down to the beach holding hands every single evening after work for two decades—a parade of cats followed them like a herd of ducklings. They could hear the stampede of paws pounding along the boards, the sound mixing finally with the soft crashing of the waves as the little group cleared the last of the dunes. Some of the cats would wander into the dunes—you know how cats are with sand—but most waited on the boardwalk, wrestling each other or chasing invisible-to-the-human-eye “bugs” until Larry and Mary Nan returned from their evening stroll. Then the gaggle would turn back along the boardwalk and head for home.

Chazzi, Taffy, Buffy, Miss Gray.

Maira. Midnight. Blackie. Candi. Nikki. Easy.

“Can you remember any more?” Mary Nan said over her shoulder, with the phone still to her ear.

“I don’t know,” Larry said in the background. “Did you say Chimilee?”