Although I suspected Shotzy had been an outdoor cat for a good portion of his life, he seemed perfectly content to stay inside, except for one remarkable exception. As if an alarm had gone off, at about six o’clock every night he’d cry to go out. Then, almost exactly one hour later, he’d be back. He did this for several months before I finally discovered what he had been up to.
One day a neighbor who knew about Shotzy showing up at my doorstep told me she thought the cat might belong to an elderly woman who lived down the street. Worried that I had mistakenly adopted someone’s pet, I took Shotzy to the woman’s house the next day.
When a white-haired woman opened the door, Shotzy bolted from my arms, ran into the house and made himself at home in a big recliner. The woman just threw her head back and laughed, saying, “Jimmy always did love his chair.”
My heart sank—my Shotzy was obviously her Jimmy.
I explained I had taken him in and only discovered the day before that he may have already had a home. Again, the old woman chuckled. She invited me in and explained that the cat did not belong to her.
“But, I thought you called him Jimmy,” I questioned.
The woman, who said her name was Mary, explained that Jimmy was her husband’s name. He had died about a year before, just a few months after being diagnosed with cancer.
Before Jimmy died, he and Mary would eat dinner at five o’clock every night.
Afterward, they would retire to the living room, Jimmy to his favorite chair, to talk about the day’s events. The couple had followed that routine every night for the sixty years they were married. After Jimmy’s death, with no other family nearby, Mary said she just felt lost. And more than anything, she missed their nightly after-dinner talks.
Then one night a stray cat meowed demandingly at her screen door. When she cracked open the door to shoo him away, he ran straight to Jimmy’s chair and made himself comfortable, as if he had lived there forever.
Mary, who had never had a pet in her life, found herself smiling at the animal. She gave him a little milk and then he cuddled on her lap. She talked to him about her life, but mostly about Jimmy. At about seven o’clock, at which time she normally turned on the TV and made herself some hot tea, the creature slipped off her lap and went to the door. At six o’clock the next evening, the cat was back. Soon, Shotzy and Mary had their own routine.
“Now, I believe in the Good Lord,” Mary told me. “I don’t know about all that reincarnation stuff, but sometimes it feels just like I’m talking to Jimmy when that little cat is here. I know that sounds strange, and I guess what’s important is that the cat is a real comfort to me. But it’s interesting to think on, all the same.”
So Mary and I continued to share Shotzy. At my house, he revealed to me the many daily joys that come with living with a cat. At Mary’s, his presence served to fill the six o’clock hour with happy companionship.
Our marvelous cat seemed to have an uncanny knack for always being in the right place at the right time.
Lisa Hurt
An American Cat in Paris
When people think of pets in France, they think dogs. Dogs being served little platters of steak tartare in fine restaurants. Tiny, fluffy poodles poking their heads out of fashionable pocketbooks.
As for my wife and me, when we think back on the two years we lived on rue St. Didier in Paris, we think of a very different sort of pet. We think of Chuck. Our Rhode Island-bred, orange-and-white, tiger-striped, lazy, hungry and sometimes biting cat, Chuck.
Not long before moving to our cramped sixth-floor Parisian apartment, we were introduced to Chuck at the Providence Animal Rescue League. Unlike the kittens there who eagerly poked their paws through the bars of their cages, Chuck just sat on a little shelf in the back of his pen and looked up at us with a wounded expression. “I know you’re not going to choose me since I’m a full-grown cat,” he seemed to be saying, “so I’m not going to try and sell myself.”
But when my wife gently lifted him out and gave him a hug, Chuck allowed himself to purr very softly, and we adopted him on the spot. A few months later, when it became clear that we would have to move overseas because of her job, most French people we talked to urged us to bring our new pal along. But our American friends did not agree.
“It wouldn’t be fair to him,” said one friend. “He’s just getting used to life as a housecat.” Still, it didn’t take long for us to decide that Chuck was now a full-fledged member of the family, and where we went, he went. I think we said something like, “Chuck is used to our routines, and we don’t want to break that up.” Inside, we knew that it was the two of us who were used to Chuck’s routines, and we badly wanted his comforting presence in a big, foreign city where we knew not a soul.
During those first few months in Paris, when we could understand little that was said to us, were afraid to speak up in stores and restaurants, and felt like strangers right down to the soles of our shoes, Chuck’s new European-style habits gave us much-needed laughter and encouragement. He was delighted with French food—Friskies au boeuf, to be exact—and he cheerfully rode the bus to his veterinarian in a cat carrier that allowed curious passengers a full view of his impressive orange-and-white mane.
“Il est superb!” exclaimed one delighted French matron with a boxy hat and high-necked Chanel suit. A construction worker from Madrid gravely examined and lightly prodded him then, despite our objections, declared that “he must be Spanish.” Chuck even developed a nodding friendship with a nightingale that sang its song each evening from on top of a nearby hotel. And he made us realize, seeing his round, fluffy shape up in one of our many windowsills, that we were not, in fact, alone.
We soon found out, however, that the French windows Chuck loved so much could swing wide during a windy night, as could the French doors that led to our minuscule balcony. When my wife awoke for work one morning and saw those doors banging in the wind, she instinctively began to search the apartment. Chuck wasn’t in any of his usual hiding places and since the drop from our balcony was probably a fatal one,we feared and expected the worst.
The sidewalk below held no clues, nor did the neighbors we questioned in nervous, flailing bursts of English and French. We tried taping cardboard signs with a crayon drawing of Chuck and our phone number up and down rue St. Didier, but as the day passed by, we felt more and more hopeless. An indoor cat whose claws had been taken out by a previous owner, Chuck wouldn’t have known what to do or where to turn if he had found himself without a roof over his head. And now it was getting dark. “Bon courage,” said our concierge clasping her tortoiseshell cat Violette in strong arms, “bon courage.”
The hours dragged on that night, and eventually my wife and I came to terms with the simple fact that we had lost our best friend.
“It’s my fault,” I said again and again. “I should have put in locks or something so he couldn’t get out.”
“No, it’s both our faults,” said my wife. “We should have let Chuck stay in Rhode Island where he would have been safe. I can’t get over how empty it feels in here without him, and this is how it’s going to be from now on.”
The apartment seemed to hold nothing but useless Friskies boxes, sweaters with orange-and-white hair on them and cat toys that jingled as we accidentally brushed past them. My wife tried taking a bath, but it wasn’t a real bath without Chuck there to jump up on the bidet and watch the water foam and gurgle as it swirled down the drain. I tried flipping through Paris Match, but what was the point without the fat, furry body that always inserted itself if you spread open a magazine or book.
It was early the next morning when the telephone jangled us out of sleep. “I theenk I have your cat,” said the voice, and proceeded to give an address at the far end of our long St. Didier block. Though I didn’t believe it could possibly be Chuck, I grabbed his basket and ran as if pushed along by little jet-puffs of hope.
I can’t remember now what the building looked like or the elevator that took me to t
he seventh floor. All I can recall is the image of the chubby, long-haired pet we had brought to Paris from Providence lounging casually in the corner of this stranger’s bedroom and looking about as pompous as I had ever seen him.
“Chuck jumped through the bedroom window of a sleeping Frenchman,” was how my wife ended up describing the whole thing at work the next day, “after leaping from balcony to rooftop to balcony to balcony.” Several times she and I walked along rue St. Didier pointing skyward to trace the truly impossible route. Several times we agreed that there was just no way a shelter cat with no claws should have been able to traverse so many slippery rooftops.
When visitors came to our small apartment in the weeks and months after that, they never failed to comment on the green garden fencing that was sloppily nailed over each of our lovely French windows. Most also noticed the rickety wooden gate I had hammered into place to block the door to our balcony. “Why are you obscuring these beautiful views?” they would ask. “And why did you put that fence in front of such an ornate, Parisian patio?”
When my wife and I heard this we would simply smile at each other and explain nothing. But as a certain orange friend purred safely down in the crack between two couch pillows, we would think, “Chuck has had his Paris adventure. Now it’s time for him to stay put, so we can have ours.”
Peter Mandel
Waiting at the Door
My grandmother became a widow in 1970. Shortly after that, we went to the animal shelter to pick out a puppy to keep her company. Grandma decided on a little terrier that had a reddish-brown spot above each eye. Because of these spots, the dog was promptly named Penny.
Grandma and Penny quickly became very attached to each other, but that attachment grew much stronger about three years later when Grandma had a stroke. Grandma could no longer work, so when she came home from the hospital, she and Penny were constant companions.
After her stroke, it became a real problem for Grandma to let Penny in and out because the door was at the bottom of a flight of stairs. So a mechanism using a rope and pulley was installed from the back door to a handle at the top of the stairs. Grandma just had to pull the handle to open and close the door. If the store was out of Penny’s favorite dog food, Grandma would make one of us cook Penny browned beef with diced potatoes in it. I can remember teasing my grandmother that she loved that dog better than she loved her family.
As the years passed, Grandma and Penny became inseparable. Grandma’s old house could be filled to the brim with people, but if Grandma went to take her nap, Penny walked along beside her and stayed by her side until she awoke. As Penny aged, she could no longer jump up on the bed to lay next to Grandma, so she laid on the rug beside the bed. If Grandma went into the bathroom, Penny would hobble along beside her, wait outside the door and accompany her back to the bed or chair. Grandma never went anywhere without her faithful companion by her side.
The time came when both my grandmother and Penny’s health were failing fast. Penny couldn’t get around very well, and Grandma had been hospitalized several times. My uncle and I lived with Grandma, so Penny was never left alone, even when Grandma was in the hospital. During these times, Penny sat at the window looking out for the car bringing Grandma home and would excitedly wait at the door when Grandma came through it. Each homecoming was a grand reunion between the two.
On Christmas Day in 1985, Grandma was again taken to the hospital. Penny, as usual, sat watching out the window for the car bringing Grandma home. Two mornings later when the dog woke up, she couldn’t seem to work out the stiffness in her hips as she usually did. That same morning, she began having seizures. At age fifteen, we knew it was time. My mother and aunt took her to the veterinarian and stayed with her until the end.
Now the big dilemma was whether to tell Grandma while she was still in the hospital or wait. The decision was made to tell her while she was in the hospital because when we pulled up at the house, the first thing Grandma would look for was her beloved Penny watching out the window and then happily greeting her at the door. Grandma shed some tears but said she knew that it had to be done so Penny wouldn’t suffer.
That night while still in the hospital, Grandma had a massive heart attack. The doctors frantically worked on her but could not revive her. After fifteen years of loving companionship, Grandma and Penny passed away within a few hours of each other. God had it all worked out— Penny was waiting at the doorwhen Grandma came Home.
Barbara J. Crocker
Flying Free
For the first twelve years after I took over this farm of ours, there wasn’t a goose on the place. Then one June morning, a sad-faced lad of ten came up the road with five downy goslings peering over the rim of a basket, “The old man says we got to move again,” he said. “To town this time. These here’s pets. They’d follow me to hell an’ gone.”
I paid ten dollars for the lot, and before the day was out they were following me to hell an’ gone. It could be quite funny to have them always tangled around your feet if you could take the time to laugh at it. But it was downright exasperating when you had to get somewhere.
Soon the goslings grew saucy, roamed farther afield, and their feather stubs began to stab through the yellow and gray down. They became gawky and insatiably curious about everything on the farm. Across the road, my neighbor, Walter, began to watch the goslings instead of television. Walter was reporting to the doctor rather often now and wore a pacemaker. He didn’t move too fast or too far anymore.
“I’ve seen geese before,” he said, “but these are different. They’re really clowns, these. I sit here half the afternoon sometimes just laughing at them.”
He’d been an outdoorsman all of his life. It seemed to me that a man who used to be so very much alive couldn’t have many things left to laugh at when he had to be content with watching the world through his window.
“And they’re clever, too!” Walter told me. “You know what they do now every time the dogs come near them? They beat it for your porch and line up outside the front door. They know bloody well a dog isn’t going to try any shenanigans there!”
It seemed no time at all before the geese were acting as though they owned the place. They threatened, bullied, shrieked obscenities at every new face and nothing could keep them out of the garden. One September morning I found them in Walter’s garden, and they had made a mess of it. I wanted to pay for it, but Walter wouldn’t hear of it.
“Could’ve stopped them myself if I’d wanted to,” he said. “But they were havin’ an awful lot of fun thinkin’ they were deep in sin. And besides, the doc had me in for a checkup yesterday. He told me not to get in an uproar over things.”
Looking at Walter, I thought he was much grayer than usual. “How did the checkup go?” I asked.
“The doc switched me onto a new medicine,” he said. “But he told me not to start readin’ any more continued magazine stories.”
It was awkward trying to laugh with him. A man like Walter ought to live forever.
November blew down on us, and one night when the wind was throwing the moon around, my geese began to holler. A minute later my phone rang.
“You wonder what’s got into your geese? ”Walter asked. “There’s a flock of Canadas goin’ over. Guess yours are tryin’ to flag them down.”
When I went outside I could barely see the Canadas. There were thirty or forty of them may be. In a few minutes, Walter came over and we watched them together. Meanwhile, my five earthbound geese were tilting their heads at the sky and calling at the top of their lungs.
They kept up their silly calling long after the sky was quiet and empty. We turned to go in and Walter said, “Something kind of special about a flock goin’ over. Kinda sad, too. You know it’s gettin’ near the end.”
He was right. We had seen the last of the Canadas and also the last of autumn. Next day the first flints of sleet came bounding down, and before the week was out snow covered everything. My geese had to give up foraging now, and t
hey parked on the front doorstep. They seemed strangely quiet.
I didn’t share Walter’s excitement when he told me that those fool geese of mine were now teaching themselves to fly.
“Craziest thing you ever saw,” he said. “Every morning about sunup they line up over in the corner of your front pasture. And then they rev up and point their noses into the wind and go whoopin’ across the whole bloody field. And I swear they’re gettin’ now so’s their feet don’t hardly touch bottom!”
Then one morning when I was rounding the corner of the barn with a couple of pails of calf feed, I met a goose who was sufficiently airborne to knock my hat off. He and the others were ridiculously awkward at first. Even after the geese could gain enough altitude to clear the treetops, they still made comical mistakes, landing in the middle of the cattle, or on the roof of the barn and then tobogganing down over the edge and onto the manure pile below.
Then, suddenly, the awkward comedy was over. Their flying became sure and triumphantly beautiful, and when they floated by over my head, there was a grace and a majesty to them that made my throat tighten.
Walter said he saluted every time they went by his window. He spent a good deal of the time on his back now, but he had rolled his cot alongside the window so he still saw more of the geese than I did. And it was he who reported the tragedy to me.
“Better go out and look behind your lilac bush,” he told me one night when I got home. “Your springer and your pointer—well, the geese came down right in front of them, and they sort of ganged up on one. It couldn’t lift out of the way fast enough, I guess.”
Because I was pretty sure those dogs would do the same thing again first chance they had, I took my pail of oats into the machine shed that night, and when the geese followed me I shut the door on them. “That’s all for this year,” I told them. “You’ll just have to stay put.”