That night, Barbara Lajiness had a dream. Her mother and Bonkers were together, waving at her from the distance. They were in some vague, undefined place, but her mother was mouthing the words, Everything’s fine, don’t worry, everything’s fine.
The next morning, Barbara walked onto her porch to retrieve the morning paper and glanced into the neighbor’s driveway. There, in the shadow under a pickup truck that never moved, was Bonkers. Barbara didn’t need to step any closer to know that Bonkers had gone off to die, and that she had passed away peacefully in her sleep. She stood on her porch in the cold morning sun, looking at Bonkers and bawling, her coffee cup steaming in her hands.
Finally, she called James. They buried Bonkers in the backyard, under a lilac bush Barbara’s mother had helped her return to life with fertilizer and eggshells.
The next day, Evelyn Lambert passed away. She was only sixty-six years old.
It’s not easy for Barbara Lajiness to talk about her mother. Even eight years later, with a loving husband and a wonderful daughter and the hilarious companionship of Ninja, now known as Mr. Sir Bob Kittens, she has to stop every sentence or two to wipe away the tears.
“I admire her,” Barbara says. “There are a lot of things I could criticize about her life, but having done that, having put other lives ahead of her own, kitty’s lives . . . that’s pretty admirable. No matter what anyone can say about her and the choices she made, she cared about everyone and everything else to a fault.”
“Do you think she cared too much?”
“Sometimes I think so but, you know, I’m not sure if you can ever really care too much. She really cared about everything that didn’t have a voice. She really cared. When I was a kid, the town decided to do this mosquito spraying, and these trucks would drive around with orange lights on top and spray something that was supposed to kill the mosquitoes. A few weeks into it, my mom said to me, ‘Do you hear that?’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t hear anything.’ She said, ‘That’s because it’s killing more than just the mosquitoes. It’s killing all the bugs. That’s why you don’t hear the birds anymore.’”
Barbara pauses to compose herself. “My mom, she was pretty smart, you know?”
Barbara knows she bottles things up, that she doesn’t confront her feelings, that she still has an overwhelming fear of those she loves leaving her behind. For two years after her mother and Bonkers died, she couldn’t bring herself to adopt another cat. She had a strong marriage, a wonderful daughter, a steady job, and a nice house. The simple things, some people might call them, the things you don’t cherish enough unless you’ve lived without them. The family had several fish, a few hamsters, and a turtle, but they didn’t have a cat. Barbara was happy, comfortable, loved, but she didn’t want to risk a cat. She didn’t want to lose another one. She didn’t want to open herself to another cat only to have it die on her. But nine-year-old Amanda really wanted a cat, and how can a mother refuse?
So they adopted a kitten named Max. He was wonderfully loving, with an endearing habit of sleeping on top of the refrigerator with his tail hanging over the side. But two years later, when he was four years old, Max collapsed. He was walking across the kitchen when, suddenly, he fell over and started trembling wildly, racked with the tremors of a grand mal seizure. Barbara saw it happen and started to panic. Max was so young, so healthy, and he was dying in front of her. It was her nightmare come true. As James frantically made telephone calls, Barbara held her writhing cat. His eyes were glazing over, his eyelids fluttering, his heart pounding wildly. Before she thought about what she was doing, she yelled to her daughter.
Amanda came running. She saw Max shaking and bleeding from the mouth. She started to scream and cry. It was a lot for an eleven-year-old, but when James and Barbara came home an hour later with the news that Max had died, Amanda rushed to her mother.
“Thank you, Mom,” she said. “I got to say good-bye to Max while he was alive.” She was a strong girl, Barbara realized, seeing for the first time in her well-adjusted daughter the frightened little girl she herself had once been, the one who had struggled so long and so quietly in a broken home.
It took only a month, and three protracted visits to see him at the humane society, before Barbara adopted Ninja. She wasn’t ready, but her family, especially her husband, was lost without a furry companion. Maybe, she thought, I can just live with him in the house. For Amanda and James. Maybe I can just treat Ninja like so many other people treat their cats: like animals who happen to share their space.
Her husband, James, was head over heels for Ninja. He would carry him into the kitchen in the morning, cradling him like a baby. He would ask if Barbara wanted to pet him, and she’d say, “No. Not yet. I like him, but we haven’t created a bond.” She just kept pushing Ninja away, over and over.
When he contracted a virus at twelve weeks old, Barbara rushed him to the vet. She was standing in the office, watching the doctor examine him, when she suddenly broke into tears, just as she had all those years ago when the camper pulled away from her house and she suddenly became convinced her mother would disappear while she was gone.
“I just lost a cat,” she sobbed. “I can’t lose this one, too. I just can’t. You have to help him.”
The veterinarian put her arm around Barbara’s shoulders. “Don’t worry,” she said, “it’s only a cold.”
Barbara had discovered why her cat was named Ninja on the first or second day, when she opened a door and discovered him crouching at the end of the hall. Completely startled, the kitten sprang up onto his hind legs with his front legs straight out in front of him like an off-balance zombie. He stood like that for a few seconds, watching her. Then he started jumping sideways toward her, waving his arms from side to side in a sort of demented karate move. He jumped all the way down the hall, his neck cocked crazily to the side, his front paws never touching the ground. It was the strangest thing she had ever seen, and it was no accident. Ninja, Barbara soon realized, did his bizarre karate dance whenever he was startled . . . or scared . . . or annoyed . . . or excited. Amanda’s teenager drama, in particular, got his ninja juices flowing. Whenever Barbara heard her daughter yell, “Oh my god, Ninja,” she knew exactly what was happening. The cat was doing his demented jumping moves on her.
Ninja wasn’t a fighter, though. He was just weird. He was all swagger, no bite. And that name, after Barbara finally acknowledged the depth of their bond, just didn’t seem right. Appropriate, maybe, but not right. Ninja, after all, was his prison name.
So Barbara started thinking about a new name. One night, she and Amanda were watching a nature program about bobcats. Ninja’s face, they realized, kinda sorta resembled a bobcat’s face.
“But he can’t be a bobcat,” Amanda said. “He has to be a bobkitten.”
Bob Kitten. Good, but not quite regal enough. So Barbara dubbed him Sir Bob Kittens.
At his next vet’s visit, Barbara told the assistant they had changed Ninja’s name. It was now Mr. Sir Bob Kittens. And yes, that was official. Put it on the form.
Of course, one name isn’t big enough for a cat like Mr. Sir Bob Kittens, even if that name does have four parts. Soon he was also Mr. Pumpkin Pants. Because he’s an orange kitten with big furry thighs, of course. Mr. Sparkle Pants followed soon after. Same reason: the thighs. By the time Barbara’s husband dubbed him Fluffalicious (fluffy and delicious, I guess), Amanda thought her parents were totally weird. But they didn’t mind. They loved Mr. Sparkle Pumpkin Kitten Pants.
The relationship wasn’t perfect. As Barbara always said, Mr. Kittens was a character, not a cuddler. He was always in the room with Barbara, but he preferred to lounge in a cozy spot ten feet away, as if it was a mere accident they ended up in the same space together. He only cuddled if he was in the mood, which was not that often and therefore extra special when it happened. He was a quiet cat, full of twitches and quirks but not much need for vocal communication. He almost never purred or meowed. Only if he really, really needed somethin
g would he bother to speak to Mom and Dad. That usually happened when he smelled his favorite treat: bacon. As soon as he smelled bacon, he bounced into the room on his hind legs, swinging his front legs in that demented ninja dance. If the bacon was really crispy, just the way he liked it, he went absolutely nuts. One day, James made the mistake of giving him bacon on the dining room table. After that, he bounced up on the table for his dinner every night. He wouldn’t eat anywhere else.
He was a good kid, though. Really he was. Yes, he grabbed Barbara’s legs and tried to trip her every time she walked up the basement stairs. He liked the surprise, the way she yelled when she nearly fell and broke her neck. Yes, he laid on James’s laptop whenever James tried to work. Even if he closed the lid on him, the cat wouldn’t move. He’d just lie there, hanging out both ends like a kitten gyro, a big goofy grin on his face. But Mr. Sir Bob Kittens was more than the class clown. Every morning, when Amanda was getting ready for school, he walked around her room, sniffing everything. He was like a big brother, standoffish and proud, not above a few tasteless jokes but always watching out for his little sister.
Or maybe Barbara just liked to imagine that. Maybe the morning sniffathon was just another part of Mr. Sir Bob Kittens’s daily routine, because Mr. Sir Bob Kittens was a cat who liked his routines. Every morning, he woke Barbara at exactly 5:00 A.M. for his breakfast. That was fine during the week, when Barbara had to get up for work, but not so nice on the weekends. Especially since she didn’t even get a thank-you nuzzle. Mr. Kittens preferred James, who always wandered in as the coffee was perking, for his morning dose of petting. He loved being petted in the morning . . . but only in the morning . . . and only by James, a routine that began in those first weeks when Barbara was trying to keep from loving the new kitten too much.
Yes, he was a handful. Yes, he was wild. But look at it a different way. His mad scramble for bacon, his crazed eyes, his fear of loud noises and aluminum foil, his extra furry pumpkin-pants thighs, and especially his demented karate dancing—they were hilarious. Who wouldn’t fall in love with a cat like Mr. Kittens? Despite his aversion to cuddling, Mr. Sir Bob Kittens was as close to Barbara as Smoky or Harry or Amber or Max or any of the other cats in her life had ever been. When she felt sick, he looked at her. When she felt weak one morning, he put his front paws on her knees and meowed in concern. When it was Barbara’s turn to collapse in the kitchen, falling first into the table, then clinging desperately to a chair, then slumping helplessly to the floor, Mr. Kittens was there to climb on her knees, look her in the eyes as she blacked out, and scream as loudly as he could.
The cause was bleeding ulcers. One had ruptured a blood vessel, and Barbara had lost three pints of blood. A short course of medicine and a new diet cured the problem, but during a follow-up exam, the doctors detected something not as easily treated: breast cancer, the disease that had killed her mom. Barbara’s comfortable life, the one she had worked so hard to craft out of a childhood of disappointment, came crashing down around her. She had surgery, followed by radiation. When the doctors told her chemo was recommended, but was her option, she thought of her mother in those terrible last days. Barbara was forty-one; she didn’t want to be on a ventilator at forty-five, with her daughter standing beside her hospital bed, watching her die.
She chose the chemo. She’s still on it. She has lost her hair, but she figures, hey, that’s five months without shaving her legs. And a great excuse for getting out of all that dreadful holiday stuff. Her daughter, a typical teenager, used to tell her she looked embarrassing and needed some makeup, but now, so what? Who cares? Every day could be your last. If it makes you happy, don’t regret it. She eats cupcakes, not all the time but sometimes, and she doesn’t feel any guilt. She appreciates them instead. She tries to appreciate everything, even Mr. Kittens nudging her out of bed at 5:00 A.M. every morning. She feeds him and pets him—yes, he sometimes lets her pet him now—and sits in the kitchen and marvels at the morning and the coffee and how very cute Mr. Sir Bob Kittens really is.
She has her husband, James. Her marriage, always strong, is stronger now. She has her daughter, Amanda, and the overwhelming desire to see her grow up. She has Mr. Sir Bob Kittens, who has started sleeping at her feet when she’s recovering from her treatment and even, occasionally, cuddling up beside her chest. He may not be the world’s best cuddler, but through these simple acts, she knows he cares. She knows that life is good.
And when life is bad? Well, Barbara Lajiness still gets to see Mr. Sir Bob Kittens up on his hind legs, swinging his forelegs and hopping down the hall in that wild, wonderful, demented karate dance.
How could anyone, anywhere, not laugh at that?
THREE
Spooky
“I had a cat for twenty-one years. . . . He shouldn’t have survived . . . yet he did survive to bring so many hours of joy to my life for so many years. And to this day, you can sometimes feel his wet nose touch your leg as he still waits for my spirit to join him.”
Bill Bezanson grew up on a family farm outside the small town of Romeo, Michigan. Even today, Romeo has a population of only three thousand people, a newspaper that costs eighteen dollars for a yearly subscription, and a downtown whose claim to fame is that it has never been destroyed by a major fire, something apparently quite common in the old logging communities of Macomb County. After living for thirty years in Spencer, Iowa, a town whose downtown was destroyed by fire in 1931, I agree this is quite an accomplishment.
I also understand the isolation of the family farm, at least in the 1950s and early 1960s, when both Bill and I were growing up. In those days, you didn’t have television or video games or computers to keep you connected to the outside world. You had a radio—and a ham radio, if you were interested in that hobby. You had an old truck, which might have a CB. And you had a telephone. It was a party line, with a local operator, and half the time the connection was so fuzzy you couldn’t understand a word. When my family finally bought a television around 1960, my father mentioned it to his cousins in South Dakota. The phone connection was so bad, they thought our family had tuberculosis—TB. They prayed for us for an entire year.
What you also had on the farm in those days was family and work. Even as a child, you worked from dawn to dusk during the harvest. When the sun went down, you went to sleep. If you couldn’t fall asleep, you could look out your bedroom window and see a million stars but only a single house light way off in the distance. That was my experience anyway. Bill Bezanson couldn’t see the light on the next farmhouse no matter how dark the night, and as for neighborhood children . . . well, there weren’t any other children around. There was nothing outside the town of Romeo, Michigan, for a young farmboy but fields and trees.
And animals.
The Bezanson farm had two barns, so Bill’s dad gave him a room in the smaller one—the breeding barn—for his rescued animals. Bill had dozens of them: foxes, possums, dogs, cats, whatever wandered into his path and needed help. Anything that was hurt, Bill Bezanson nursed back to health. He even had a skunk that ran all over his shoulders and played hide-and-seek with him in the hayloft. If anyone else came near the breeding barn, that skunk lifted his tail. But with Bill, he was as playful as a kitten.
Bill’s favorite animal, though, was his rescued raccoon. The mother raccoon had been hit by a car, and the babies were huddled in a tree by the side of the road, staring down at her lifeless body. They were tiny, distraught, confused, no doubt cold and hungry, and nearly petrified with fear. Only one survived. Everyone called him Pierre LaPoop, after the love-crazed French skunk Pepé Le Pew on the old Bugs Bunny Saturday morning cartoons. Bill’s grandmother named him. The baby raccoon had pooped right on her lap the first time she held it.
Pierre was a good raccoon, loyal and loving. He and Bill would play together in the barn, toss sticks in the yard, walk together through the fields like a stereotype of a sandy-haired Midwestern boy and his loyal dog. Often, Bill even had a fishing pole slung over his shoulde
r. But raccoons aren’t dogs. They are wild creatures, curious and mischievous and, let’s face it, more clever than the average pooch. Pierre could catch fish with his bare hands, peel ears of corn, pick carefully through the garbage, and open doors. One day, the family came home and found Pierre sitting on their kitchen counter, casually throwing plates. There were broken plates all over the floor. There had been a run of raccoonlike behavior from Pierre—petty thievery, picking locks, incessant hand-washing in the rain barrels (raccoons are notoriously anal retentive about hand-washing)—so smashing the family’s dinnerware was the proverbial straw that broke the farmer’s back. No argument was going to save Pierre this time. Bill’s dad threw him in the back of the truck, drove him twenty-eight miles away, and dropped him off at an abandoned barn.
Three weeks later, Bill and his dad were fishing at a nearby lake, and a raccoon started chattering at them from a tree. Bill looked up into the branches and said, “Pierre, is that you?”
Pierre came sprinting down the tree, climbed up Bill’s leg into his arms, and started licking his face and biting his nose.
“Well, I guess we’ve got to keep him,” Bill’s father said. “I can’t afford a plane ticket.” In truth, the old farmer was touched by the bond between his son and the wild animal. He wouldn’t have driven Pierre away again if he’d had his own plane.
Maybe it was Pierre that made Bill want to be a forest ranger, his dream job for most of his childhood. Everyone else thought he should become a veterinarian. He had a talent with and love for animals like no one they had ever seen. But things change. Pierre LaPoop grew up and started thinking about a family. Raccoons are docile when young, but they often become aggressive and nasty when they reach mating age. Not Pierre. He simply left the barn. Found a wife and moved off to a far corner of the farm. One day, Bill and his father were sitting on the back steps of their farmhouse. Bill looked off toward the fields and saw Pierre coming toward him, four little brown bundles waddling at his side. His mate stood at the edge of the cornfield, pacing nervously, while Pierre picked his children up with his mouth, put them on the porch, and introduced them to his lifelong friend. They stayed only long enough for Bill and his father to hold each child. Then they turned back to the cornfield and headed home.