Love Saves the Day

Also I can’t eat in front of Laura the way I did with Sarah, because I don’t want Laura to know too much about my eating habits. For example, I have to drink three laps of water for every five bites of food. When I lived outside, I learned that water that’s been standing still for a long time usually tastes bad. Now I like to rattle my water bowl with my right paw before I drink from it, so I can see the water move and keep it tasting fresh. Sarah understood this and only filled my water bowl up halfway. But Laura fills it all the way to the top, so some of it sloshes onto the dark, polished floor and leaves light spots on the wood when it dries. Laura’s mouth presses into a straight line when she sees those spots, and I think she’d be mad if she saw me sloshing the water bowl on purpose. Yesterday she brought home a blue rubber mat with ridiculous cartoon drawings of smiling cats all over it (is this what Laura thinks cats are supposed to look like?), and she put it under my food and water bowls so nothing spills onto the floor anymore. Probably it would have been easier to just stop filling the water bowl so high, but even if I had a way of suggesting this to her, I doubt she’d listen. Laura has to do things her own way, Sarah always says. I guess I should be grateful she still lets me eat in here, with all of Sarah’s and my old things around me, instead of insisting I eat someplace else. I don’t think I’d be able to force much down without having safe, familiar smells around me.

I haven’t been getting enough sleep, which also makes me feel less healthy and alert than I used to. Sleeping is usually one of my favorite things to do, and this is something humans would be wise to learn from cats. Humans never seem to get enough sleep, and Laura and Josh haven’t napped once since I’ve been here! (The last few months I lived with Sarah, she was smart enough to follow my example and started napping with me more frequently.) But sleeping is harder for me now, because every time I wake up I get confused about where I am and why everything smells different. I have to remember all over again that I live with Laura and Josh now instead of Sarah, and when I remember it hurts from my chest all the way down to my stomach. It’s gotten so I’m afraid to fall asleep because it hurts so much to wake up.

Sometimes, though, I get fooled for a few moments, and that’s the hardest of all. Like right now. It’s early in the morning, before anybody’s left for work, and I’m in the back of the closet having just opened my eyes. I smell the can of my old food opening and see a woman with Sarah’s hair bending over my bowl. Good morning, Sarah, I meow. Sarah looks up in surprise, and when her hair slides back from her face I see it isn’t Sarah at all. It’s Laura who’s looking at me, wondering why I just meowed when I’ve been quiet most of the time since I’ve been here. It was Laura’s hair, so much like Sarah’s, that tricked me.

Besides her voice when she sang, just about my favorite thing about Sarah was her hair. I loved to rub my face against it and bury my nose in it. I could spend hours batting at it with my front paws, or watching Sarah twisting it in and out of ponytails, or noticing the way each strand sparkled and turned a slightly different color from the other strands in the sunlight that came through our windows. Once I was sitting behind Sarah’s head on the back of our couch with my nose and mouth nestled in her hair, and I chewed off a big mouthful. Sarah got mad (although she couldn’t help laughing when she saw me sitting there with a chunk of her hair in my mouth as if it were a mouse I was carrying back to my den). I don’t know why I did it, exactly, except I was thinking how nice it would be if I could have some of Sarah’s hair to take with me to my little cave in the back of our closet.

One of the times when Anise came over to our apartment, she cut Sarah’s hair for her. Anise’s hair always looks different every time she comes over. Sometimes it’s very short and straight, and other times it’s long and curly. Sometimes she even puts streaks of different colors in her hair, like green or pink.

Anise always tells Sarah that she’s been wearing her hair the same way for thirty years—long and straight—and that she should change it now and then “just for fun.” (What’s fun about change?!) This one time, though, she actually talked Sarah into it. Anise sat her down in one of our kitchen chairs with a towel around her neck, and attacked Sarah’s head with scissors until her hair was much, much shorter. While Anise worked they talked and laughed about The Old Days, when they were young and too poor to afford new clothes or professional haircuts, so Anise made their clothes and cut their hair for them.