Dewey's Nine Lives

Now, Camden United Methodist was not a formal church. It could be formal about some things, like its doxology and its sanctuary, but in general it was a blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth congregation. The administrative offices were, to say the least, not pristine. The old parsonage was a one-story, cottage-style house from the early 1920s, with creaking floorboards and clattering windows, and the small space was overflowing with boxes and files. The pastor was from the laid-back school of liturgy, always sporting an open collar, an absent-minded smile, and a joke for his parishioners. Even Kim wasn’t the typical fussy church secretary. It seemed to her, after a bit of reflection, that a stray cat might fit right in.

But she wasn’t sure. The pastor’s office of a small-town church was a community gathering place. People were always dropping by, not just to talk about problems but to gossip and shoot the breeze. What if they didn’t feel comfortable with the sweet, moon-faced gray cat now lounging in their secretary’s chair? Was it really appropriate for the part-time secretary, who had been in town only a few months, to let a cat live in the church?

Meow, the gray tabby said, right on cue.

Fortunately, the next person to enter the parsonage was Ms. Carol Ann Riggs. Carol Ann had been a member of Camden Methodist since moving to town in 1961. She was in the choir and on several committees and knew just about everybody, so she often dropped by to say hello and see if anything needed doing. Her daughters had gone to college and then moved away, so Carol Ann had, in a sense, taken to mothering the Camden Methodist congregation. She was also, as Kim discovered, a lifelong cat lover.

“Oh, you have to keep her,” Carol Ann said, when the little tabby sauntered over to sniff her hand and meow. “She’s just dah-lin.” She didn’t tell Kim that she was pretty sure she’d just adopted a prison cat. There were a gaggle of them that lived in the alley behind the jail, waiting for the prison cook to throw out the scraps. It wouldn’t have been any problem for this little kitten to stroll a block down Broad Street, then cross the street to the parsonage door.

Instead, Carol Ann simply said, “Kim, you’ve got to hold on to this little sugah.” And since Carol Ann had been a member of the church for decades, and since her husband’s family had been in Camden for generations, that was all the endorsement Kim needed.

The next time Carol Ann dropped by the parsonage—and she suddenly found more excuses to do that than ever—the little gray tabby was sitting in the middle of Kim’s chair. Kim was perched hazardously on the front edge.

“She tried to sit on my lap,” Kim told her, a little embarrassed, “but she hated how many times I got up and down. So she took the comfortable part of the seat.”

Meow, the cat said, as if in agreement, before jumping down to let Carol Ann pet her. She slept most of the day, snuggled behind Kim on the chair, but every time someone came in, she meowed and ran to greet them.

“Well, hey, little girl,” most people would say, reaching down to pet her. “Aren’t you darling?”

And she was. The little cat was irresistible. Even Carol Ann, who had owned and loved animals all her life, had to admit this kitten was special. Maybe it was her round face, which was so soft and babyish. Or her sweet disposition. Her meow was so peaceful, and her approach so gentle, that you couldn’t help being drawn to her. She was spunky. She was friendly. But more than that, she was endearing. That’s the word: endearing. You couldn’t look at her sauntering across the floor toward you with her sweet eyes upturned without thinking, aaawwww.

Still, the kitten almost certainly elicited smirks from the more starched-collar members of the congregation. They never said anything, at least not to Kim, but nothing that happened around there, neither rude look nor sly remark, ever slipped past Carol Ann.

“They just didn’t like animals,” she explained. “I can put my finger on each one of them right now, and I know they didn’t have animals in their homes. They weren’t raised with them, you see, so they never understood them. They didn’t think it was appropriate for a church to have an animal.”

Any tension, though, was quickly defused by the church’s pastor. He was a young man leading his first congregation, but he was good with people and impossible not to like. He had been at Camden Methodist only a few weeks longer than Kim Knox, but if he had any nervousness about his recent promotion to head clergy, he dealt with it through an endless stream of good-natured banter and positive affirmation. He may not have been a cat person, and he may have wanted to please his new parishioners, but he wasn’t the kind of man to kick out the less fortunate, no matter how often they shredded the toilet paper in his office bathroom or how much hair they shed on his couch.

Really, his laugh seemed to say whenever Church Cat came up, what’s the harm?