CHAPTER SIX: THE GIRLS

My prep time was ticking away. I had been wrestling with, (mostly avoiding) possibly the most important decision of all. It was so important that I tried to ignore it with the hope that it would disappear. You see, my life belongs not only to me, my children, and my career; it belongs to my two room mates as well. These endearing souls ‘own’ me in a way that only a parent can relate to. Although they are not my children, they are. And although I am not their mother, I am. We are of the same mind. We adore and loathe one another depending on the situation. We bicker, nag, moan, and groan. We snuggle, cuddle, purr and play. We are each dependent upon the other and our days would simply be incomplete without both a physical and emotional encounter. The ‘girls’ are as much a part of my day as breathing. This is why, at the end of each day, I push the garage door button, gather my things and enter the house trilling, “Here kitty kitty kitty!”

Cleopatra, who can sometimes be a handful, is normally waiting patiently on the steps. She has heard the garage door open and knows what’s in-store. Patra (as I call her), is a mottled white cat with black spots. Or is she a black cat with white spots? My girlfriend calls her a ‘Cow Kitty’ which I suppose is very fitting. She makes crazy-eights on the floor, sways back and forth and hums as she awaits my touch. As I get nearer, her lovely little kitty voice welcomes me with “Eeeehhhhh!” She sounds more like a parrot than a cat.
I meet her warm caresses with a playful yank on her tail and a ruffling of her feather-fur. While I chat her up, I feel my blood pressure slide downward and the air a bit easier to breathe.

Proceeding up the steps, with her by my side ‘eehhing’ all the way, I call out for her pseudo-sister who is a Siamese mélange with an attitude, “June Bug,” I croon, (her real name is Skylar June) “June Bug. Where are you baby girl?”

To this loving welcome, I receive nada. No soft whimper or shy meow and certainly no puppy-like euphoria. It’s the same every day. She ignores my arrival altogether. When I find her, she’s usually cozied up in my bed. Other than for a requisite trip to the litter box or to slurp from the water bowl, I doubt she ever leaves my bed. Hold on. Did I say ‘my’ bed? What a joke that is! I actually call it ‘the girl bed’, because from my point of view, it belongs to all of us girls. Skylar June however, has a view of her own and like a petulant two year old, calls it ‘mine.’

Before Sklylar or Cleopatra, I had a male cat. His name was Tibet. I tagged him with that because I was new to cat ‘ownership’ and thought he was exotic. His eyes were mysterious and his markings unique. Because he looked elegant, sleek, macho and brave, I felt he deserved a name of equal proportion. When I discovered that, in reality, he was a common, domestic tabby cat, with markings like those of a few million other tabby cats, I dropped the pomp-and-circumstance and called him Tibby. He could not have cared less. My daughter on the other hand, zeroed in on his neurotic personality and referred to him as Le Chat Poulet, which when literally translated, means the ‘chicken cat.’ He could not have cared less about that either. But more often than not, because he was the only male in our house, I called him ‘The Man,’ and that one, I think he liked.

Years later, (after the acquisition of June Bug and Patra) Tibby grew ill and left the three of us behind. Now, his ashes watch over his harem from the top of my dresser, so although it is no longer the case, there was a time, when the ‘girl bed’ willingly sanctioned a boy.

But back to Skylar June. With no response to her summons, I venture into my boudoir to search her out. It’s apparent from the moment I enter that the mushroom-colored puddle in the middle of the bed is not liquid; it’s a ball of curled up sleepiness. I speak to her tenderly and my reward once again is…nothing. Not a heave or a twitch. Since I know for a fact that she is not deaf or dead, I carry on my soliloquy, hoping for a crumb of recognition. “JUNE BUG,” I say a little more forcefully. “Wake up, you lazy old cat! Don’t you want to say hello to Mommy?”

At about this point, she will lift her sculptured head, fix me with her azure eyes and bestow on me, the most adoring, affectionate gaze. Her whiskers nearly smile, but I know all the while, that she is subliminally muttering, “Go away, bitch! Can’t you see I’m sleeping?” She will then resume her nap and dismiss me with a sigh.

Ya gotta love Skylar June.

So these are the girls, and I had no idea how we would get along without one another for two whole months. I needed a Caregiver who was worthy of the title. Of course, the flip side of this coin was… Who the hell would want them? My cats look cute, but like babies, they have their downside. They pee, poop and shed copious amounts of hair. Skylar has a digestive problem and yaks all over the house–not just your household variety hairball yak, but she can projectile vomit… performing on a cue only she can hear. And if you’re really lucky, one or both of them just might present you with a half eaten mouse. (usually the back legs and tail) So the real question here is: Who in their right mind would accept responsibility for these two misfits…and not just for a weekend, but for two months?
I heaved a sigh, grabbed a pencil and paper and began to list possible solutions.

Option #1, Boarding: Take them to the vet’s where they would have 24 hour supervision. This translated into sticking them in a cage with a water bottle for two months with an occasional pat on the head from a 16 year old vet tech. This idea gave me the creepy crawlies, so I X’d it off.

Option #2, My next door neighbor Barb: Barb is wonderful and has often watched over them without complaint when I have gone on short, 4 or 5 day excursions. “Sure, I’ll be glad to,” she said initially when I approached her. “But not this weekend or this other weekend, oh and the third week in October we’ll be in—” Her heart was as always, in the right place, however, too many variables made this option feel unstable.

Option #3, A house sitter: Someone to live in my house rent-free for two months who would assume temporary custodianship of the girls in their own habitat. This idea had me a bit uncomfortable, (would you like a stranger living in your home?) but I reckoned I could suck it up for their sake. A friend of a friend said yes to this arrangement, but backed out, slamming the door on option #3.

“What about three different people,” offered up Jack as he threw in his two cents worth. “You know, someone to commit to Mondays and Tuesdays, someone else for Wednesdays and Thursdays, and a third victim for the weekends.” (Jack however, was not offering his services, just his opinion) I actually had volunteers to this half-witted notion, but the more I considered it, the plan seemed fraught with potential problems. I foresaw blown assignments, overriding obligations, unexpected emergencies…basically too many cooks in the kitchen. Seeming like the dumbest option yet, it too was deleted from the running.

I was faced with dead ends at every turn in this maze. France was my destiny, but how could I go forward without this tremendous puzzle piece in place? My action plans were bottoming out while I was slipping into a quicksand of depression.

“I’ll take them,” my savior calmly stated one day when we were at the office chatting. And by ‘chatting’… I mean I that was whining for the umpteenth time about my inability to solve this cat dilemema.

“They can come and live with me,” Dr. G. continued. “I have a finished basement that is entirely empty. They can stay there.”

“Wh-what?” I stammered. “Are you out of your mind? You already have two cats of your own, to which, I might remind you….YOU’RE ALLERGIC!
My mouth hung open and my eyes locked on his face.

Poor Dr. G. doesn’t just possess two cats that he is highly allergic to, he does so because of me and my son Brek. His offer just now, was not the first time he had stepped up to participate in cat-rescue. What happened was this..

One night, I was wakened from a sound sleep by my son who stood at the foot of my bed holding a cardboard box.
“Mom!” he whispered “Mom, are you asleep? We have a little situation here.”

As I groggily opened my eyes and sat up, he came around to the side of the bed and exposed the contents of the box. Three muddy, flea ridden, weeks old kittens were mewing sorrowfully inside. Brek and his buddy had been out driving around, as teenage boys do, when they spied a car offloading kittens on the side of the road. The driver then hit the gas and drove off. The boys scampered into the woods after the orphans and managed to rescue three of the six they had seen abandoned. Now these bawling, sniveling kittens were being presented to me, as my soft-hearted son was baffled as to what to do next.

Together, we ran warm water and bathed them over and over, each lather producing a rebirth of fleas. We then nursed them from eye droppers with warm honeyed-milk and wrapped them in fresh laundered towels. Because I already ‘owned’ Tibby and Skylar, I knew I needed to quickly find homes for these three discards.

Carting the pristine little fluff balls to work the next day produced no takers. No one was impressed by how adorable they were. It didn’t matter that they were cute and furry—and clean—no one at the office wanted them… until, at the very end of the day, Dr.G., whose heart is even softer than Brek’s, entered my office.
“Tough day?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yea,” I said forlornly while tickling the top of one kitten’s head.

“I’ll take two if you’ll take one,” he said, knowing I was plumb out of options.The end result of this drama was that Cleopatra came back home with me, increasing my menagerie to three, and the kind, albeit allergic Dr. G became the guardian of a brother-sister duo that were at that time, known as Batman and Marley.

Rewinding to the present: “It will be just fine,” he said, brushing my guilt aside like a piece of lint. “It’s the perfect solution. You can go away worry free, they will have plenty of space to roam and I will send you daily updates on their conduct. Decision over; they will live with me!”

Relief flooded my body and I gratefully embraced him, as there was no one in the whole world I could have trusted more.

So this was how my crucial and nearly unsolvable problem, got solved and how Skylar June and Cleopatra became the wards (with a de-luxe apartment underground) of my employer: my boss, my friend, Dr. G.