Dewey's Nine Lives

After Cookie’s death, Lynda wrote a remembrance of her precious cat. It closed with this: “There is nothing more to say—life will go on, although I will miss her each and every day! Jennifer will get married, I will have precious grandchildren, I will love and lose more pets. But one thing is certain: there will never be another pet who will be my best friend; there will never be another animal who could bring the joy that Cookie brought to my life.”

Amen.

SEVEN

Marshmallow

“He was a tough cat. For a cat that was a runt and so weak, he ended up being a pretty strong man. He reminds me of Grizzly Adams a little bit. You know, big heart but you can’t see it on the outside. Marshmallow rarely showed his true colors.”

“Only to you, huh?”

“Only to me.”

I’ve known Kristie Graham her whole life. I was beside her at her communion. I attended her high school graduation. I did the floral arrangements at her wedding. I even changed her diapers. When she was younger, of course, when she was just a sweet baby girl. When I started college in Minnesota in my thirties, after a bad marriage to an alcoholic that left my life and finances shattered, Kristie’s mother, Trudy, was one of my first new friends. While I attended class, she’d often babysit for my daughter, Jodi. When I wasn’t working, we’d sit for hours and drink coffee while our children played. That’s what Kristie remembers, anyway, that her mother and I drank gallons of coffee. She was only four or five years old at the time, so her memories are pretty scattershot. She remembers that my washing machine didn’t spin, so I stirred my laundry with a big wooden spoon (maybe once, for about a week). She remembers that my rusted car never seemed to run (only occasionally); that I bawled my eyes out when Elvis died (not true; it was her mom who cried); and that I was, in her words, “a very hardworking, hard, hardworking woman.” (I’ll agree with that one. I had to be!)

I simply remember a wonderful girl. Trudy’s oldest daughter, Kellie, was Jodi’s age. She was a beautiful, outgoing kid. Kristie, three years younger, was just as beautiful and outgoing, but she never felt she could compare to her sister—even though Kristie was the one who would eventually become homecoming queen. So at the age of three, she went the other way. Kristie became the snot-nosed kid of our little coffee club. Literally. That girl always had something encrusted beneath her nose. If you put her in a clean white dress to have her picture taken at Sears, she walked out of the car covered in dark smudges. It didn’t matter how clean the car was. She found a way to ruin the dress. And I’m not making this up. The picture happened. Even Kristie admits (with some pride, I think) that back then, she was always covered with “runny booger dirt.” I guess that’s why I called her Pigpen. I loved that kid. Pigpen was my term of endearment.

But the thing I remember most about Pigpen Kristie wasn’t her dirty face and soiled dresses. It was the way we had fun. She and Kellie were the laughing-est, goofing-est, playing-est kids I’ve ever met. I remember Kristie and a few others convincing (or possibly forcing) Susan, the daughter of another friend, to slide down the laundry chute. Thank goodness there was a pile of laundry at the bottom, because it was a twelve-foot drop. I remember being the “house mom” for big slumber parties of eleven or twelve preteen girls, and always having to come in at 2:00 in the morning to tell them to pipe the heck down. I remember being snowed in during a ferocious blizzard and coaxing Kristie, Kellie, and Jodi to dance and lip-sync to 1970s soft rock songs. Then Trudy and I put on costumes and “sang” a few 1950s girl-group hits. We laughed for years about the Weekend of the Blizzard when, as always, we girls made the best of a tough situation.

I also remember Kristie’s cat, Marshmallow. He was a huge, fluffy, off-white fellow who, really and truly, resembled a marshmallow. Not that I saw him much. I usually only glimpsed his tail as he was running away. I liked him, but I’m not sure Marshmallow would have been special to me if it weren’t for one thing: He was special to Kristie. If ever a child loved a cat, it was Kristie Graham. She loved her Marshmallow. The girl talked about him all the time.