He was there when, at ten years old, Barbara’s father broke the news. He had a new girlfriend by then, and they were leading a glamorous life in an upper-class suburb of Detroit: vacations, stylish clothes, wine tastings. One weekend, he took Barbara and Scott to a movie, something their mother couldn’t afford. As they were settling into their seats, he turned to Barbara and said, “I got married.”
“No, you didn’t,” she said.
“Yes, Barbara, I did. Last month.”
Barbara sat in the dark movie theatre, crying. She didn’t know what she expected, or why she was upset. Her father was married to someone else. It was done. It had already happened. She didn’t even know why it bothered her. She had known forever that he wasn’t coming back.
She didn’t talk to Smoky about it. That night, she just held him and cried. He snuggled against her and purred.
It was hard on her mother, too. It was hard to watch her husband living a fancy life; hard to watch him occasionally (very occasionally, according to Barbara) give her children things she couldn’t afford; hard to watch him find happiness with someone else. The economy in the late 1970s was bad across the nation; in Flint, Michigan, it was abominable. Jobs were disappearing, abandoned houses were burning, and the unemployment rate was spiking above 20 percent. Whole neighborhoods collapsed as General Motors closed assembly lines, and the workers were often on strike. One day, when the family took a rare trip to the Courtland Mall, someone stole the spare tire off their car. That’s how desperate the situation was in Flint. Against this backdrop of despair, Barbara’s mother struggled through community college, while working full-time and raising three children, to earn an associate’s degree in nutrition. She wanted to be in charge of a kitchen instead of just a cook, but her dreams of getting ahead were thwarted by frequent layoffs, increased competition for even the worst jobs, and the closing of one nursing home after another.
Barbara’s mother had little sympathy for the autoworkers. She didn’t like the management of General Motors, which was rapidly moving jobs to Mexico, but she didn’t particularly like the line workers, either. In nursing home kitchens, she was getting paid $3.35 an hour for backbreaking work on early morning and weekend shifts. The GM employees were making five times as much, with health insurance and benefits. The town was rife with rumors of workers who clocked in before going deer hunting, then came back to clock out for their full day’s pay. At the bus and truck plants, people said, inspectors sometimes found vodka bottles inside half-built vehicles. Every time the autoworkers went on strike, half the town was vociferously for them. The other half—a spattering of heartless executives but mostly those unemployed or working bottom-of-the-pyramid jobs—felt like Evelyn Lambert, whose constant refrain was, “What do they have to complain about?”
“I would take that job in a minute,” she said of the autoworkers, with increasing bitterness. “I’d take that pay. I’d take half that pay in a second.”
But you couldn’t get a position in the Shop, as the auto plants were known, unless you knew someone in the Shop, and Evelyn Lambert wasn’t that lucky. So she continued to work long days for $3.35 an hour in the industrial kitchens of Flint. The hours were so long, and Evelyn was so often working multiple jobs, that there were whole weeks when Barbara didn’t see her mother. She’d be at work when Barbara came home from school, and she wouldn’t get home from her last shift until school started the next day. On her days off, she would take long walks. At the time, Barbara thought her mother was trying to escape, very briefly, from her responsibilities and frustrations. Looking back, she realized that her mother always came home from her walks carrying an armload of wood and dragging a bag full of soda cans. The wood was to heat the house in the winter. The cans were worth ten cents each at the recycling center. Between the soda can money, a religious devotion to clipping coupons, and some complicated calculations on exactly when to write checks so they would clear at the bank, Barbara’s mother kept the household afloat. She often went hungry, but everyone else got fed.
That included the cats, which usually numbered about twelve. It’s expensive to keep so many cats, especially when you’re scraping for pennies, but Barbara’s mother would never cut back on their needs, and she would let them leave only for legitimate adoptions. It would be naïve not to think that Evelyn Lambert needed those cats to give her life direction and meaning. Even twelve-year-old Barbara understood that. But she also understood that her mother cared about the cats. She understood and loved each one of them, and that love comforted her. One of Barbara’s favorite memories was seeing her mother relaxing in her favorite chair in one of her rare moments of peace, with big, lovable Harry sprawled on her lap. Harry talked constantly, and he had a great big rolling purr that never seemed to stop. Everybody called him Mr. Happy because that purr was like joy exploding out of him all the time.
Harry was Barbara’s mother’s favorite, a big sweet bear of a cat who always wanted a lap whenever Evelyn Lambert had one to offer. With that sweet personality, everyone assumed he’d be adopted right away. And he was. But two weeks later, the new owners brought him back. There was always an excuse when this happened: It scratched my sofa, it scratched my kid, its litter box stinks, or even, it’s just not like I thought it was going to be. What was the excuse for Harry? Barbara only remembers that big Harry came back.
At that time, a year or two into being a foster parent, Evelyn Lambert let the cats roam freely inside and outside the house. Then one of the cats, Rosie, ate rat poison that had been left outside by the neighbor. Barbara’s mother rushed her to the animal hospital, but it was too late. They had no choice but to put Rosie to sleep. A few weeks later, Harry wandered into the main road and was hit by a van. That was the moment that changed Evelyn Lambert’s mind. Never again did she let any of her cats out of the house. After Harry’s accident, she was a passionate advocate of keeping cats indoors. Now all the rescue agencies advocate this, of course, but in 1978 she was ahead of her time.
Fortunately, Harry survived the accident. A neighbor saw him lying on the side of the road and called the cat lady. Evelyn ran out with a blanket, eased Harry onto it as best she could, and rushed him to the veterinary clinic. Poor Harry had first been abandoned and then hit by a van, but the only effect on this kind soul was that, with a shattered hip, he walked sideways for the rest of his life. When he sat on Evelyn’s lap, her head often bobbing as she teetered on the edge of exhausted sleep, Harry’s leg always stuck out awkwardly to the side. But his injury never stopped those deep, booming purrs.
Barbara’s brother Scott also had a favorite cat. Her name was Gracie, and she was a thin gray kitten less than half the size of Happy Harry. She had been abandoned by her owner because she was incontinent and had trouble making it to the litter box. She had feline leukemia, but back then, there was no such diagnosis; the vet thought she had digestive problems. An incontinent kitten can be an issue in a house full of cats, but Scott and Barbara would do anything for their mother. They loved the cats, of course, but that love was mixed up with their pride and admiration for their mom. The passion she felt for the animals, the way she sacrificed to help them, were the defining aspects of their childhood. Everything they experienced was limited by the twin poles of passion and sacrifice; everything they did for their mother was defined by those poles. Was there a little pity, too? Perhaps. Barbara defended her mother. Always. Whenever anyone called her crazy, she told them, “Well, who else is going to do it? Who else, I ask you, is going to help those cats?”
Not once, even as a teenager, did Barbara think, If it weren’t for all these cats, I could have something more. She helped clip coupons. She went without seconds at dinner. When she was thirteen, she started volunteering at an animal clinic. The Lamberts couldn’t afford regular medical care for their cats, but by volunteering, Barbara earned free emergency care when needed.
Since Evelyn Lambert couldn’t turn Gracie away—she could never turn away any cat in need—Scott adopted her. He cove
red the floor and walls of the mudroom with newspaper and brought in a litter box, a food dish, a few toys, and a chair. He sat with Gracie in the mudroom for hours; he even did his homework in there. Whenever Gracie had an accident, Scott threw out the soiled newspaper and brought in a few more sheets. He didn’t think of it as a chore. It wasn’t something anyone asked him to do. He just loved the little cat.
But Gracie was sick, and without medicine (or even a correct diagnosis), she didn’t live long. She died on a freezing February night, and despite the weather, Scott was determined to bury her. He spent the next morning in the wind and ice, crying and banging at the dirt with his shovel, but the ground was frozen solid. He cursed and cried and banged until his hands and face were numb. Finally, out of frustration, he lifted the shovel over his head and slammed it down into the little crevice he had made in the icy dirt . . . and sliced right through the television antennae line.
At that moment, the phone rang. It was Adopt-a-Pet. Someone had thrown a kitten into the Dumpster behind the local pizzeria. She was in surgery because the tops of her ears and half her tail had frozen during the night. Despite the amputations, she was expected to survive. The operation was paid for, but there was no money or space for the hospital to keep the kitten after she woke up from the anesthesia. Barbara’s mom didn’t hesitate. “We’ll take her,” she said. “We’ll be right over.”
That cat was never adopted either. Her name was Amber, and she lived with Barbara’s mother for nineteen years. She was stocky and shaped like a sausage, with little cups for ears and hardly any tail, but everybody who knew Amber adored her. Despite the terrible cruelty that led her to the pizzeria Dumpster, she always loved people. She would cuddle on any lap and purr, purr, purr. She was sweet and affectionate, but she was also tough. She was the house’s school marm; she didn’t let anyone get away with anything. The only female cat who stayed longer than a few weeks, Amber was queen, and everyone knew it. As Barbara recalls, in a house with twelve cats, Amber ate first, drank first, did anything she wanted first. She was the boss, and she had too much respect for Barbara’s mother to let any of the other cats misbehave. The house had a large unfinished basement the cats were herded into periodically while the living areas were given a thorough cleaning. Amber made sure all the cats followed orders. She made sure they tried to amuse themselves in the crowded basement. Then, one by one, she sent the boys up the stairs to meow at the door. When Amber came to the door, cleaning time was over. When the queen spoke, even Evelyn Lambert listened.
So there was Harry for Evelyn; Gracie for Scott; Amber for everyone; and for Barbara, of course, there was Smoky. While Evelyn was working, or collecting cans, or just plain exhausted, Smoky was there. No matter what Barbara needed, no matter why, he was always there.
In the end, they were a family, the Lamberts and their cats: a determined mother, a couple of hardworking kids, three permanent cats—Smoky, Harry, and Amber—and a revolving cast of visitors that gave the family an extra reason to pull together. Maybe it wasn’t a traditional family, but it was full of love, something that can’t be said often enough. There were hard times, of course, especially as the children grew up. In her last year of high school, Barbara grew weary of her mother’s complaints about work and her incessant need to be right. (Her mother later admitted she was scared to admit she was wrong about anything because she didn’t want Barbara to know she was weak. She thought everything might fall apart.) She was tired of the poverty and the struggle. She didn’t understand why her mother didn’t just get a better job, why they had to be so different from everyone else, why she had to spend her childhood as the bucktoothed girl with the hand-me-down jeans and the crazy cat-lady mom.
When she graduated from high school and moved to Flint for community college, she didn’t speak to her mother for a month. But it didn’t take Barbara long to figure out how cruel the world can be and how difficult it is to improve yourself, especially when you were exhausted from the daily struggle to survive. Often, she longed for the comfort of home and her old life: Smoky’s head on her arm, Harry’s constant purring, Amber’s sweet meows. “Normal” life, outside the bounds of cats and poverty, was a little too . . . normal. She craved the company of her cats. But even more, she worried about her mother. She felt obligated to her. Barbara had never known a day in her life when she felt her father loved her. Her mother was the parent who stayed. She was the one who loved her, every minute of every day.
She watched as her mother lost Harry, then Amber. She watched as foster parenting of kittens became so admired, and popular, that Adopt-A-Cat didn’t need Evelyn anymore. She went home to her old room and noticed that Smoky, as sweet as ever, had gone completely gray around the muzzle. He still loved her as fervently as before, but he, too, had become old and tired—as tired as Evelyn Lambert had always been. Barbara felt the tears as she held him, remembering their life together. She had by then stopped thinking of her childhood as a curse and had learned to embrace her eccentric mother, her hand-me-down jeans, her buckteeth (which were mostly in her mind anyway), and her outsider status as valuable lessons in perseverance and love. She had never, even in her darkest moments, stopped cherishing the cats. She cherished every moment with Smoky until the day he died and was buried, like all the other kittens who never found love outside the Lambert home, beneath the old apple trees at the back of the yard.
But if the house of cats ultimately took on a patina of charm for Barbara Lajiness, life never got any easier for her mother. On the day Barbara graduated from high school, her mother lost another job. Eleven years later, when Barbara married and settled in Ann Arbor, her mother was still working as a cook in a Flint, Michigan, retirement home. Her car died and she couldn’t afford to fix it, so she walked to and from work every day. Every weekend, Barbara drove to Flint to take her grocery shopping. It was a struggle, always a struggle. Every day since her divorce was a fight to survive.
When Evelyn retired at age sixty-five, Barbara moved her mother to a small apartment a few blocks from her house in Ann Arbor. Harry, Amber, and Smoky had passed away, and the only cat left from the great Lambert foster home of Fenton, Michigan, was Bonkers, an older cat that had been abandoned by a neighbor a few years before. Bonkers was a fluffy black cat with a white chest and a calm disposition. She preferred lying about, mostly in the sun or on someone’s lap. She wouldn’t hurt anything, with the possible exception of walls, which she was always running straight into with her head. That’s why they called her Bonkers. Sweet, harmless Bonkers.
Unfortunately, the apartment complex didn’t allow pets. So Barbara and her husband, James, took in Bonkers, leaving Evelyn Lambert truly alone for the first time in her life. Almost every day, she came over to their house, but it wasn’t really to see her, Barbara knew. Evelyn Lambert wanted to spend time with Bonkers. She would sit on the porch or in the big living room chair, petting Bonkers and staring down at his back as if staring into the past. She told her daughter, “I’m sick, sweetie. You know I’m sick,” but Barbara figured it was depression. Evelyn missed the house she had struggled to keep through all the tough times. She missed her garden and her cat cemetery and her lifetime of memories. What could she see, when she looked back on her life, but a path carved out by heartbreak and disappointment? What could she possibly find in the future? Evelyn Lambert had moved from a house full of love, as well as struggle, to a lonely apartment in a new city where they wouldn’t even let her keep her beloved cat.
“I don’t feel well,” she said. “You don’t understand.”
Barbara figured, in time, her mother would adjust. Harry. Amber. Gracie. Smoky. She had always found a way to survive; she had always discovered a purpose. But she called one morning and told Barbara, “I can’t take it anymore, sweetie. Death has been sitting in the apartment with me.”
Barbara rushed over. Her mother was in severe pain. She had been awake all night. “Why didn’t you call me?” Barbara kept asking as they rushed to the emergency room. “Why di
dn’t you call me in the middle of the night?”
“I didn’t want to wake you.”
It was breast cancer, untreated for years, and it had metastasized into her spine and legs. There was nothing they could do but ease the pain, which Barbara realized her mother had been secretly carrying for years. The doctors gave her medicine and sent her home, but the suffering was too much, the cancer too ferocious, the damage too severe. Within a month, she was back in the hospital.
“How’s Bonkers?” she asked Barbara as she struggled for breath. She was so weak, she could barely form the words.
Barbara swept a piece of her mother’s gray hair from her forehead. “Bonkers is fine,” she lied, fighting tears. The truth was that Bonkers was gone. Barbara had spent the previous evening looking for her, but the cat was nowhere to be found.
Barbara’s mother nodded, smiled weakly, and closed her eyes. “Bonkers,” she muttered under her breath. The next day, no longer conscious or able to breathe on her own, she was placed on a ventilator. She had told Barbara repeatedly that she didn’t want to survive like that, with a machine keeping her alive. But she didn’t have a living will. She hadn’t given her written consent. After a vehement argument, which hurt Barbara as much as anything in her life ever had, the doctors agreed to remove the ventilator. The morphine would keep her comfortable, but it wouldn’t prolong her life. She had only a few days to live. Barbara sat on the bed for the rest of the day, watching her mother die.