Deadline# 6, Narrative Draft

Lying in bed and falling asleep, I wondered how much longer my husband, Chris, would be outside working on his novel. I heard the door open and shut then the sound of boots falling to the floor, one after another. My husband called to me from the living room of our tiny, tiled apartment, asking me to guess what happened. I called back asking what had happened as he entered the bedroom. He told me he had a muse to help him during his writing session. I wondered who this muse was and why this person was outside our apartment so late at night. Seeing the puzzled look on my face, Chris informed me that the muse was not a person at all. It was a little black and brown cat. “Can we keep her?” he asked with the enthusiasm of a young boy. “Well, she probably belongs to a neighbor, and I have allergies,” I replied reluctantly, not wanting dampen his spirits. It was that evening I learned that the decision of where pets live may belong to the pets instead of the owners.

Over the next several weeks, the little cat put much effort into befriending us. Chris would go outside to work on his novel, and the cat would run up the stairs and sit beside him in the role of his muse. Although not very interested in getting to know me at first, she befriended my husband and would show up any time he was around. She decided she belonged to him and even displayed signs of jealousy like clawing my back when I sat outside next to him. The jealous actions subsided however, when she realized Chris would not stand for those behaviors. Soon I was able to pick the little cat up and we became friends as well. A nightly pattern began to develop. We would come home and she would run up the stairs to meet us. One night it started to rain, and we became concerned about the little cat we had begun to call Traffic Cop. We opened our front door and she was standing there meowing for us to let her in. She slept on a towel outside our bedroom door with a shallow sour cream dish filled with water beside her. Thinking she would be fine outside since the rain had passed, we put her outside the next day. That night we were awakened by the sound of incessant meowing outside our front door. Because we didn’t want the neighbors to complain, we let Traffic Cop in. She had made the decision. Our apartment was her new home.

We discovered Traffic Cop was pregnant just after she became a resident of our apartment. The fact that this small cat, still a kitten herself, could have avoided this dilemma if we had taken her in earlier became apparent to us. Assuming we would easily find homes for the kittens, and experiencing Traffic Cop’s determination to live with us, I spent numerous hours hovered over library books researching kitten birth and care. We helped the mother-to-be make the transition from outdoor cat to indoor cat by setting up a birthing nest with a new, soft, green blanket in the living room closet, although she still performed housekeeping duties on her nest outside in the oleanders. She was now happy she could eat and drink in our apartment. But the evening we brought home a bag of kitty litter, she looked up at us with excitement reminiscent of a child who just opened a birthday present. Then a special day came. I was home alone with Traffic Cop. She started acting extremely uncomfortable. She came over to me as I sat in my canvas camping chair, in our sparsely furnished living room. I asked her what was wrong, knowing that it was probably time for her to give birth. I had prepared for this moment by poring over countless books on the subject of kitten births. Against all the information presented in the books, Traffic Cop was moaning, in pain and pawing at me as if pleading for help. The books said cats want to be left alone while giving birth. Books are often wrong.

As I was attempting to calm the frightened, little cat, her water broke and kittens were on the way. She looked up at me as if she was worried I would be mad at her. I continued comforting her as I put her on the blanket in the closet. All of a sudden, she jumped up and across the room and straight into an empty, pots and pans box that was nearby on the floor! She went through the opening of the cardboard box so fast it closed behind her. About a minute later she came out and was beholding a little, black creature on the floor in front of her. She had an expression of surprise on her adorable, little face. “Look what I have!” her expression seemed to say as her eyes met mine. Her instincts kicked in, and she went straight to work as a mother, cleaning the kitten and making sure it could breathe. I rushed to the phone to call my husband so he could experience the miracle that was taking place in our home, but I could not reach him. Just as I was hanging up the phone, Traffic Cop’s head turned toward me and her eyes opened wide. She quickly jumped back in the box. She excitedly came out of the box again. “I have another one!” she seemed to tell me as she gave me a quick glance. She repeated her actions of entering the mysterious box and bringing forth a new life three more times. When I finally reached my husband on the phone, I greeted him with, “Congratulations Grandpa! We have five new grandchildren!” The next morning, I awoke to Traffic Cop on my pillow beckoning me to follow her. The kittens were all bundled in the soft, green blanket so snug I could not see any of them. I gently unwrapped the cocoon of a protective cover and counted the little beings inside. I was wrong. We had six grandchildren. Chris asked if I wanted to keep all of the kittens. I explained that the books had said that over time, the mother will pick her favorites and ignore the others, and that the siblings will not all get along as they grow older. We made a plan to keep Traffic Cop and decide which kittens to keep after observing which ones she preferred. Not having the read the books I had read, Traffic Cop took on the motherhood role as many human women do and loved her children equally, and the kittens, despite an occasional skirmish, displayed extremely high regard for each other. This family would not be broken apart!

After moving into a larger, newly remodeled, carpeted apartment, it was evident adoption was on the horizon for this loving family of cats. While shopping for large bags of cat food at the nearby pet store, a small black kitten was abandoned by its owner. As the cashier told me the story of how the little cat had come to find a temporary home in a green, plastic basket on the counter next to the cash register, I could not help but notice how he resembled Traffic Cop’s kittens. The cashier had made plans to take the kitten home with her and bottle feed him. I had a feeling that kitten belonged with the family of cats that roamed my apartment, but after telling my mother as an April Fool’s Day joke that I brought another cat home, I let the feeling go. A couple of weeks later, I went back to the same pet store. I walked in and immediately noticed a green shopping basket on the counter with white t-shirt inside that appeared to be squirming. One peer into the basket and I knew it was the same little black kitten that had been abandoned two weeks earlier. The same cashier I had spoken to on my prior visit was at the counter and said to me, “What a coincidence you came in tonight, because he is sick and was just brought back in by a family that begged me to have him.” The cashier told me she was planning to take him home with her again and try to nurse him back to health. I could see by the kitten’s lethargic body and drooping eyelids, that he needed medical attention. I offered to take him to a veterinarian and pay for it out of fear that he might die otherwise. She quickly agreed to my offer and said goodbye to him in a way that told me she was not planning on taking him back. I carried the baby cat, still wrapped in the old t-shirt, to my car and gently placed him beside me on the luxurious, velour seat of my old Cadillac. He began to perk up and as I drove to the all-night animal hospital, he attempted an exploration of the apparent room on wheels. Upon discovering that the medical tests were negative and the source of illness had been food poisoning, I drove home with the kitten, trying to think of someone who would want to adopt him. I unlocked the door, opened it, and the little black kitten and I were greeted by a cluster of black fur and yellow-green eyes staring up at us. “What did you bring us?” Traffic Cop and the kittens on the floor seemed to say. I held the baby cat down for the other cats to see. They immediately began to clean him and care for him like they always had for each other. He was out of my hands. The kittens had just adopted a baby brother.

The little bundles of fur, now fully grown, are taking naps on pieces of furniture and curled up in boxes. I still see the faces of the little kittens on these cats, when they look up at me. I hear the cats purring as they sit by me while I work. These cats have taught me about survival, birth, nurturing, and the importance of family. What I am most grateful for however, is that it is not always the people who determine where pets will live, but the pets that do the choosing.