Kitty
T
hursday morning I wake up from an incredibly weird dream. In it, I’m dressed in football gear, complete with helmet, and I’m apparently playing defense. I don’t really watch much in the way of sports, apart from the occasional hockey game on TV with my dad when he was still here. What horrifies me is that the football has the face of a cat. And the quarterback for the other team happens to be Miles.
When he tries to throw the cat-ball, I tackle him to the ground. The gratification quickly morphs to mortification because when we hit the ground, we’re both naked. Apart from the helmet. He’s still wearing that. I shake off the dream and get ready for my day.
Hattie’s already in the kitchen, slathering butter on toast. She slaps on some avocado and tomato slices, covers it with another slice of toast, and wraps a paper towel around it. She kisses me on the cheek, gives Mom a hug from behind, and rushes to the
door. “I’ll be home for dinner. Text me if you need me to pick anything up. Love you both. Bye!”
“Have a good day and drive safe!” Mom sips her coffee and flips to the obituary section of the newspaper. It’s a morbid way to start the morning, but it’s part of her routine.
“Egg and cheese on an English muffin?” I ask as I pour myself a cup of coffee. We take turns making breakfast for each other.
“I’m easy. Whatever works for you.” Mom smiles, but her focus is on the paper.
It only takes a few minutes to get breakfast ready and bring it to the table. The chair that my dad used to sit in is always set with a placemat, and his favorite mug sits empty in the center. Sometimes I wonder if it’s become such an ingrained part of her routine that she doesn’t even realize she still does it.
“Do you have a busy day?” she asks conversationally, setting the paper aside so she can eat.
“Just my usual rounds, plus that new client I picked up, but I’ll be home early enough to help with dinner. I need to do an inventory check later, so I can make space in the garage.” It’s where I keep most of my cat-sitting supplies. It’s also where all the sponsorship overflow items are stored. At this point I’ve filled the entire garage and part of the basement.
“Space?” Mom perks up.
“I have a new order coming in.”
“Oh.” She deflates. “Will you need help with that? Do we need more shelves in there?”
“I should rent a storage unit.” When I started the Kitty
Whisperer four years ago, I assumed it would be my side hustle, not my full-time job. And for a while it was a part-time thing. I also worked in an office, organizing schedules. It was not riveting work. When it seemed like I was going to have to either step into one role or the other, I made the decision to go out on my own. And now here I am, running my own business. I never expected to make an actual living. Or to basically take over part of my mom’s house, and that’s with my office space being at Kat’s.
Mom waves a hand around in the air. “You don’t need to do that. We have the space.”
“It’d be nice if you could park your car in the garage in the winter, though.” Especially when there are three vehicles to push snow off and move around when there’s a storm. The garage was supposed to be a temporary home for my business supplies.
“Eh, I’ve survived this long. What’s a couple more years?” She pats my hand and takes another bite of her sandwich. “This is great, by the way.”
“I’m glad you like it.” I focus on my own sandwich for a moment, mulling over that last comment about a couple more years. I shouldn’t read into that. I’m in my midtwenties. I don’t intend to live at home forever, but it seems like I’m being given a timeline. Two years isn’t unreasonable, so I’m not sure why her comment unsettles me.
We finish breakfast, and I load the dishwasher while she washes the pans. And then I’m off to see my first four-legged furball of the day.
Bumbles is a striped tabby with a scrunched-up face and a
slightly surly demeanor. He’s the cat version of Miles. His owner is an elderly man who has severe cataracts and only partial vision, so I stop by on a regular basis to help tend to Bumbles’s needs.
I ring the doorbell and wait for Mr. O’Toole to open the door. It often takes a few minutes for that to happen. I check my messages and find I have a new one from Miles.
I don’t love the silly fluttery feeling in my stomach. As a result, I hold off on checking it. I’m about to ring the doorbell a second time, worried about the possibility that Mr. O’Toole has lost his hearing aids again, or worse. He’s ninety.
The tough part about working with a lot of elderly people is that they occasionally have accidents. I’ve yet to be the one to find a client in a serious state, thankfully, but I’ve been on the receiving end of a few sad phone calls. Those are always hard to handle. While I spend the most time with their pets, I still get to know their owners and we share a special bond because of our cat love.
Thankfully, the front door swings open. “I couldn’t find my pants!” Mr. O’Toole shouts. “Or my right hearing aid!”
Even though I try to keep my gaze fixed on the bald spot on top of his head, my gaze dips. The screen door separates us, creating a haze and semi-barrier between me and Mr. O’Toole, but I can very clearly see that the pants situation is still a problem. He’s wearing a long gray button-down that was probably once white but got mixed in with something dark and a tweed jacket, as is customary for Mr. O’Toole. His boxer shorts are navy. One of his white socks stops just under his knee, and the other one slouches around his ankle. He’s wearing gray slippers.
“Shall I help you find them?” This isn’t a first.
“That would be great, Miss Kitty. One second they were in my hand, and the next they were gone. It’s like a ghost up and stole them.” He throws his hands in the air, his bushy eyebrows shooting up and then pulling together, resembling two caterpillars dancing on his forehead.
He opens the screen door and shuffles back a few steps to let me in. The house smells like a combination of mothballs, cat litter, and cooked onions. Not the most appealing, but it certainly could be worse.
Bumbles, his striped tabby, comes lumbering through the kitchen, meowing loudly. Much like his owner, he’s ancient, and also not a fast mover. But he tries his hardest to run, despite being almost as round as he is tall. I’ve tried to explain to Mr. O’Toole that he shouldn’t feed Bumbles people food, but he says it’s one of the only good things left in life, so why should either of them suffer.
He has a point.
“How is my favorite striped tabby?” I crouch and hold out a hand. Bumbles rubs his face on my hand, gives me a little nip—that’s his surly side coming out—then bumps against my knee and headbutts my thigh on his way to my pocket. He does an about-face and rush-bumbles back to the kitchen. A digital British accent calls out “Treat” several times in a row.
To help Mr. O’Toole, I’ve been teaching Bumbles to use communication buttons. So far we have
treats, outside
, and
pets
. The treat button is unsurprisingly his favorite.
“Good boy, Bumbles!” I call out.
He trots back to where we’re still standing in the front hall, meowing with zeal. I pluck a treat from my pocket, and he gobbles it up, then heads for the kitchen again.
“We’ll figure out the pants situation before we deal with Bumbles, shall we?”
“He’s been hitting buttons all morning. I ran right out of treats,” Mr. O’Toole grumbles.
It doesn’t take me long to find his pants. They’re slung over the railing on the staircase.
Mr. O’Toole disappears down the hall to his bedroom to finish getting dressed, and I feed Bumbles and clean his litter box.
When I return, I find Mr. O’Toole in the kitchen with his pants on. One of his shirttails hangs out from the back, and his fly is down, but it’s an upgrade from being pantsless.
I agree to a cup of tea, although I won’t be drinking it, since Mr. O’Toole is a frugal man and reuses the same tea bag at least four or five times before he throws it out. Regardless, I sit with him on the front porch, and we chat while I brush Bumbles to help cut down on his hairball problem.
“What about a boyfriend, Miss Kitty? Any young men looking to court you?”
I smile at his phrasing. Mr. O’Toole grew up during the Second World War and married his high school sweetheart. She passed away a decade ago, and just last year he started “courting” one of the other ladies in the neighborhood, who he calls a “spring chicken” compared to him. She’s eighty-two.
“No boyfriend. Work keeps me busy.”
“You’re too young to be working this hard. Have I mentioned that I have a great-grandson in the NHL? He’s a bit young for you yet, but give him a few years to catch up.”
“You have mentioned your great-grandson. He just graduated from high school last year, didn’t he?” Mr. O’Toole tells me about his great-grandson every time I visit.
“That he did. Got snapped up by the league just like that.” He snaps his fingers and startles Bumbles. “He’s sowing his oats right now, but eventually he’ll be ready to settle down with a nice girl like you. But by the time that happens you’ll probably have found yourself a husband.”
“Only time will tell, I suppose.” I chuckle and change the subject. “Oh! I took on a new client this week. Prince Francis is a sphynx cat.”
“A sphynx cat, you say. Those are the naked ones, aren’t they?”
I chuckle. “That’s right, he’s hairless.”
“Can’t say I’d love wandering around in my birthday suit all the time, but I guess he’s a lot less likely to be coughing up hairballs.” He slurps his tea noisily.
We chat for a while longer, until I’ve managed to comb out enough fur to make a whole flock of birds comfortable nests, and then I tell Mr. O’Toole that I have to go visit with my next client.
I take my teacup to the kitchen and dump it down the drain, then remind him that he can turn off the Treats button if Bumbles is using it too much. And then I’m off to see Prince Francis.
When I get to the house, I realize I don’t have a key. I’m about to message Miles, but I find he’s beaten me to it.
Miles:
key is under the dying plant and tuna might be PF’s fave food.
I compose a thank-you message three times before finally erasing the entire thing and sending a thumbs-up emoji instead.
I open the door cautiously, in case Prince Francis is waiting close by with the intention of bolting. But apart from the stack of unopened mail on the floor, the hallway is empty. “Hello, Prince Francis, it’s Kitty! I’ve come to love you!”
Silence follows as I flick on the light and close the door. The first thing I notice is that the horrible porcelain dolls are no longer staring at the entryway because they’re lying on top of each other. One of them is on the floor, facedown.
“Uh-oh, Prince Francis, have you been up to no good?” I cross over and pick the doll up, unsure if I’m relieved that the face isn’t shattered. I set it back on the sideboard and continue to the living room.
It’s as if Miles hadn’t swept up the floor debris at all yesterday. Below the two shelving units flanking the fireplace are new piles of fallen items. I scan them, and the fireplace mantel, which is now missing several gnomes, but I don’t spot Prince Francis anywhere.
I check behind the couch, since it’s a go-to hiding spot for badly behaved kitties.
But I notice the curtains shift across the room. I also note, for the
first time, that they’re not in the best shape. There are pulls along the bottom, a sure sign that Prince Francis has been using them as a scratching post or a ladder. I follow the line of the curtain all the way to the rod that stops about a foot from the ceiling.
And there he is, perched like an angry, adorable gargoyle on top of the rod, staring down at me.
“Hello, Prince Francis! Did I scare you?”
He stares back at me, still as a statue.
“Would you like to come down and have a treat?” I pull the small baggie I carry with me from my pocket—in case of emergency or cuteness overload—and shake it.
His right paw and eye twitch, but still nothing.
It’s a standoff. Well, a one-sided one, anyway.
And the best way to end it is to ignore the culprit. I take a seat in the lounger, and a minute later he jumps onto the table and paws at the bag of treats sitting there.
I set one by his paw and give him a scratch behind the ear as he gobbles it up. “We need to get a handle on this destructive behavior, Prince Francis. Your mom would not be impressed if she knew what kind of shenanigans you were getting up to while she’s away.”
He purrs and makes a squeaky sound, like a dog toy being chewed. Eventually he climbs into my lap, and we spend a good while sitting there, me petting him, him purring. It’s clear he’s used to lots of affection, and with his human away, he’s feeling abandoned.
It’s a symbiotic exchange of love and comfort. And while in some ways it’s conditional because he knows there’s food attached
to me and my warm lap and my affection, it’s not the kind of conditional love that humans are guilty of, the kind that can break a heart. Cat love is different. You know you belong to them when they choose you, not the other way around. It’s a special kind of bond.
And in some ways, I can understand why certain people have an inclination toward dogs instead of cats. They’re forever children who require love and attention. But when a cat needs your love, you know you’ve become theirs.
I snap a quick picture and send it to Miles along with a short message:
Prince Francis is soaking up the love.
I want to show him that Prince Francis isn’t a naughty gremlin. That he has love to give if a person is willing to give a little themself.
I have a feeling that if I let him, Prince Francis would spend all day in my lap, but I have other furry friends to attend to, so eventually I encourage him to get up so I can feed him properly and take care of the litter situation, another thing I forgot to ask Miles about.
Once I’ve fed Prince Francis—he has special plates of his own—I go in search of the litter box. I don’t find it anywhere on the main floor, so I go upstairs. The ascent brings with it a spike of anxiety, along with old, painful memories I try not to let float to the surface. Not entirely rational, but I take a deep breath and
remind myself that this house is empty apart from me and Prince Francis. All I find are a few knocked-over items in what appears to be the master bedroom.
I head back to the main floor, stumped, until I spot the cat door leading to the basement. Once I open it, I can smell that I’ve hit the jackpot. And not in a good way. I use my cardigan as a barrier between me and the horrible odor that grows progressively worse the closer I get to the bottom of the stairs.
“Well, this might explain some of the destruction,” I mutter, then gag, because I’m breathing in not just the smell of ammonia, but also a lot of cat doody. Prince Francis has taken a stand, his irritation with his inadequate bathroom facilities dotting the floor in little piles.
He appears beside me and plunks his butt down on my foot with a squeak.
“It’s pretty gross down here, isn’t it?” I ask.
He licks his paw.
I cringe, because I’m standing on litter.
I take a photo of the situation and send it to Miles, irked once again that he didn’t take care of this before he left. I’m not entirely confident I’ll know where to find the extra litter, and I can’t see any through the tears, my eyes are watering so badly.
It’s neglectful to leave it like this, but I’m also at risk of passing out from the fumes, so I climb the stairs and head for the back porch, gulping down fresh air.
I’m so busy trying to breathe and shake the stinging in my nose that I accidentally send a picture of my nostrils to Miles.