Homer's Odyssey

by Gwen Cooper

  I had thought a great deal about the best way to introduce Homer to his new home. My first resolution was that he should be confined to a relatively small area for a day or so. I felt he was more likely to grow comfortable and familiar with his surroundings if he wasn’t intimidated by too much space all at once. While this would be true of any cat—Scarlett and Vashti has been introduced to their new home one room at a time over a period of several days—I reasoned that a blind kitten in particular was likely to be overwhelmed by more than a single new room at first. And, I was sure, he would be far more likely to get lost or tripped up, unable as he was to create a visual memory of how one room led into another. Truth be told, I wasn’t entirely sure he would ever be able to do this—and I was more anxious on this score than I cared to admit—but I had gained a certain amount of confidence after watching Homer seamlessly navigate the exam room in Patty’s office after one or two passes, and I had decided to worry about these eventualities if and when they came up.

  I also planned to keep him completely separated from Scarlett and Vashti until his stitches came out. Vashti was very social and extraordinarily patient, but she hadn’t encountered a new cat since I had first adopted her and introduced her to Scarlett—and I suspected that, sweet-tempered though she was, she’d also grown accustomed to being the “baby,” and to receiving all the attention Scarlett never seemed to want anyway.

  Scarlett had been far from overjoyed when I’d first brought Vashti home. Although in fairness to Scarlett, it should be noted that Vashti, who had been infested with a horrific case of mange (fur loss and itchiness caused by tiny mites on her skin), had come home with me fresh from a sulfur dip at the vet’s office. The sulfur had not only turned what was left of her long white fur a startling and unnatural shade of yellow, but also left her reeking with the stench of rotten eggs.

  Vashti had been beside herself when she realized that added to the ecstasies of being well fed and itch-free for the first time in her six weeks of life was another cat for her to play with. Scarlett had spent the next few days alternately hissing at and fleeing from this tiny, smelly, bright yellow puffball that followed her everywhere and cavorted in joyous circles around her whenever she put so much as a paw out from under the bed, where she’d taken up a resolute temporary residence.

  Scarlett had grudgingly gotten used to Vashti, however, and had even come to enjoy having another cat to scamper around with. So I was hopeful that, with time, Homer would integrate just as seamlessly into our family.

  I entered the front door of Melissa’s house carrying Homer in his purple kitten carrier, and Scarlett and Vashti ambled over to sniff at it curiously. Homer persisted in not making any sound, but I felt his weight shift as he balled himself up in the far corner of the carrier. Vashti peered with interest at the carrier’s contents, but Scarlett took one whiff and immediately backed up several feet, a deeply disgusted expression on her face. Oh, God … not another one …

  “You guys can meet your new brother later,” I told them and headed into my bedroom, closing the door behind me. “Later” can be “never” as far as I’m concerned, Scarlett’s retreating backside and haughty tail flick clearly indicated. But Vashti wasn’t used to being shut out of a room that I was in and gave a few half-swallowed squeaks of protest (ngeow! ngeow!) from the other side of the door.

  The spare bedroom I was utilizing at Melissa’s house was connected to a small bathroom, which was where I had set up Homer’s litter box. I set the carrier down beside it and unlatched it, lifting Homer out and placing him in the litter box. There were three things I wanted to be certain Homer would know how to find: his litter box, his food dish, and his water bowl. I knew that blind people learned how to find things in their homes by counting the steps from, say, a kitchen stove to the dining room door. While I didn’t expect Homer to actually count his steps, I thought that if he got to know the rest of our home in relation to where those three things were, he’d be more likely to find them on his own.

  I’ll admit I was apprehensive, both that Homer might be unable to find his litter and that he might not know what it was for. Scarlett and Vashti had immediately grasped the concept of a litter box and hadn’t required any additional training. I was therefore unsure how to litter-train a kitten, and hoped I wouldn’t have to.

  When I set him in the litter box, Homer immediately squatted and peed, then dug around furiously to bury it. “Good boy,” I told him. “Good boy!”

  From there I walked slowly, and with deliberately loud footsteps, through the door that led to my bedroom, where I had set up his food and water in the exact center of the room—easier to stumble upon by accident, I guessed, even if Homer couldn’t learn or remember on his own where they were. I crouched next to the two tiny bowls containing dry food and moist food (I wasn’t sure if Homer would be able to smell dry food, so I’d put down both), tapping the tile floor next to them with my fingernail and making a pss-pss-pss sound that I’d found always served to summon Scarlett and Vashti.

  Homer, when he had finished tidying up in the litter box, obligingly hopped out and made his way over to where I crouched. His neck bobbed from side to side beneath the plastic cone he still wore. He walked in that bandy-legged way of very young kittens, and he wove unsteadily, as if he were slightly drunk. Although I was usually haphazard when it came to storing shoes and clothes in the closet, I had been careful to clean all extraneous items from the floor of the room, to minimize any chance that Homer would bump into something. Even the shoes I’d worn that day and removed upon my arrival at home had been placed on top of my desk, and there was nothing to impede his progress from the doorway of the bathroom to where I was stationed ten feet away with his food.

  Still, Homer seemed confused at first by all the empty space around him. The bedroom was relatively small, probably no more than 150 square feet, but it clearly struck Homer as cavernous. He hesitated for a few seconds, his head raised and his little comma of a nose crinkling as if he were attempting to discern a clear path by smell. But the repeated tapping of my fingernail on the floor seemed to reassure him. Once he realized there was a purpose to the sound, and that the sound came from me, he made a fast-trot beeline toward it and the food bowl. His nose bumped into the small mound of moist food, and he took a few eager bites.

  I had no idea if water had a smell that was discernible to a kitten and didn’t want to leave it to chance that he would find it on his own. I had placed the water bowl next to the dish that held the dry food, and I wiggled a few fingers in the water. “Are you thirsty, kitty?”

  At the light splashing sound my fingers made in the water, Homer raised his head from the moist food and cocked it slightly to one side. Then, as if he’d intended to do it all along and had simply been awaiting a cue, he buried one minuscule paw in the bowl of dry food and immediately began to fling it into the water bowl. The sound it made as it hit the water was nearly identical to the sound my fingers had made splashing around in the bowl, and Homer turned a proud, expectant face in my direction.

  I burst out laughing. “Not exactly what I had in mind,” I told him. “Let’s try this again.”

  I walked back over to the litter box and called Homer over. As he had before, he headed straight for the sound of my voice. When he reached me, I once again picked him up and placed him in the litter box. This time Homer appeared confused. Didn’t we do this already? Then I repeated the walk over to the food bowl, and Homer once again ate eagerly from the moist food. I waggled my fingers in the water bowl, and Homer once again flung the dry food into it.

  I wasn’t sure if Homer found this entertaining or if he was doing what he thought I wanted him to do. Either way, I decided it was best for all concerned if I moved the water bowl out of range of the dry-food dish. This time, when I splashed my fingers around in it, Homer walked over and drank. Scarlett and Vashti, when drinking from their water bowl, would center their heads over the bowl and drink from the middle. I noticed that Homer, however, carefully
pressed his tongue against the inside of the ceramic bowl, forcing up a few drops at a time into his mouth. I remembered when he’d fallen face-first into the water bowl at the vet’s office, and it occurred to me that he was afraid it might happen again.

  By now, the square of sunshine in the bedroom window had purpled into twilight. I heard Melissa’s car pull into the driveway. The front door opened and closed, and then there was a light knock at my bedroom door. “Is he here?” Melissa’s voice said softly through the door. “Can I see him?”

  “Come on in,” I replied in an equally restrained voice.

  Melissa opened the bedroom door a crack, poking her face in and peering around before she quickly opened the door just wide enough to slide her slender frame through, closing it soundlessly behind her.

  Homer was sniffing around the edge of the bed, but he came to an abrupt halt when he heard the door open. He turned his face up in Melissa’s direction. The blackness of it, in the middle of that plastic cone and unbroken by color of any kind, looked like the velvety black heart of a sunflower.

  “Ohhhhhh,” Melissa whispered. Her hands flew to cover her mouth. “He’s so tiny!” She took a step toward him, and Homer uncertainly backed away. Melissa looked at me. “Can I pet him?”

  I patted a spot next to me on the bed. “Let’s see what he does,” I told her.

  I was curious to see what would happen. Many cats are shy of newcomers—it’s one of their most common traits. And Homer had more reason to be leery of new people than most cats. But I had also sensed, when I’d first adopted him, that he was friendlier than the average cat.

  Now we would see.

  Melissa settled next to me on the bed, and both of us held our breath. Homer walked slowly in our direction. “It’s okay, Homer,” I said. He appeared unsure how to get from the floor, where he was, up onto the bed, where the sound of my voice was coming from. He reached out a paw tentatively and sank his claws into the bed’s comforter, which hung all the way down to the floor, tugging it slightly as if testing its weight. Finding it to be strong enough for climbing, he hauled himself up onto the foot of the bed.

  “Hey, Homer,” Melissa said. She lightly patted a spot on the bed in front of her. “Come here and say hi.”

  Homer trotted across the bed with his wide-legged, neck-rolling gait, his fur even fluffier after his climb. Purring loudly, he placed his two front paws on Melissa’s leg and stretched his head up again, sniffing the air around her. Melissa gently rubbed behind his ears and under his chin, and he fervently pressed the entire front of his face against her hand. It was as if, because there were no eyes to become irritated by such a gesture, there was nothing to keep Homer from rubbing as much of his head as he could against someone else.

  It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that I’d always been somewhat intimidated by Melissa. She had been a good friend to me—after all, she’d taken me in with my two cats after Jorge and I had broken up—but it had always seemed to me that there was something flinty and unyielding in her. That she was compassionate was something I knew; Melissa clocked even more hours than I did with nonprofit causes. But on a strictly personal level, she could be tough. She had little patience with my everyday fears and foibles, and this made sense—because when you were as beautiful and wealthy as Melissa was, what could you possibly know of ordinary human failings?

  But holding Homer, something in her seemed to unbend. Her face lit up in a way I’d never seen. We flipped on the TV to catch part of an old movie and chatted idly for a while about nothing in particular—her day at work, a party we were supposed to attend later in the week—but she was almost wholly focused on Homer, who purred and nestled happily into her lap.

  Eventually, Homer climbed out of Melissa’s lap and walked carefully toward the side of the bed. When he reached the edge and his outstretched paw encountered empty space he paused, obviously flummoxed. My first impulse was simply to pick him up and place him on the floor. It would be so easy for me to do it for him, I thought.

  Homer, however, gave no indication that he was waiting for assistance—from me or from anybody. He backed up into a slight crouch, then took a wild leap. He landed with enough force that his front legs splayed out a bit, and the bottom of his cone hit the floor and bounced back up. “Oh!” I exclaimed, one hand rising involuntarily to my face. But Homer was fine. He collected himself for a moment, then took off in a loopy half run toward his food dish. I was somewhat surprised, yet enormously pleased, to note that he seemed to remember exactly where it was—either that, or the smell of the moist food was detectable enough to guide him in its direction.

  “Are you concerned about how unsteadily he’s walking?” Melissa asked.

  I had been concerned about it, to the point that I’d been mulling over whether I should call Patty in the morning. But I heard myself saying, “No. I think … I think it’s just because of that cone he’s wearing.”

  I’d started out wanting to deny I was worried, in that irrational way that makes saying you’re unworried seem like the same thing as being unworried. As I said it, though, I knew it was probably true. At first I’d thought the cone was too heavy for Homer and was tempted to remove it, even if it meant jeopardizing his stitches. But then I realized that it wasn’t the heaviness of the cone—it was the fact that it was interfering with Homer’s ability to use his whiskers.

  Cats have two sets of “eyes”—their actual eyes and their whiskers. Cats’ whiskers are three times thicker than the rest of their fur, and the roots go far deeper than other hair roots, connecting all the way into their nerves. Whiskers are a constant source of sensory feedback for a cat: They detect air currents that alert cats to movement around them, and they sense the presence of furniture, walls, and other solid objects, acting as a sort of extended peripheral vision that helps a cat maintain balance and a sense of orientation in space. They’re part of the reason why cats are so famously able to see in the dark.

  But Homer’s whiskers were trapped inside that cone, unable to do him any good. Deprived of both regular vision and sensory input from his whiskers, he was truly and completely blind. It was the reason why he staggered about the room like someone who’d been blindfolded and spun in circles. Any cat would be thrown off balance if deprived of his whiskers. Homer was doubly so.

  Removing the cone, however, would mean the possibility of scratched-out stitches. Much as it pained me, there was no question that Homer’s cone would have to remain where it was for the time being.

  Melissa and I finished watching the movie, and when she left I decided to turn in early. Homer followed me—either by smell or sound (or both)—into the bathroom and sat next to the sink while I brushed my teeth and washed my face. He used his litter box one more time, finding it with no trouble whatsoever, then trotted back into the bedroom after me. I turned out the lights and settled into bed, planning to pull Homer up, but he was already climbing after me on his own. The street outside was quiet as I lay down and settled onto the pillows, and the silence in the room was broken only by the faint sounds of Melissa chatting on the phone in the other room, and of Vashti squeaking in mild indignation (because Vashti had, heretofore, always slept with Mommy) on the other side of the bedroom door.

  Homer crawled up the length of my body, climbing onto my chest and turning around in a circle a few times before settling down on the spot just above my heart. I was drifting off when I heard an odd, squelching sound and felt something tickling my ear.

  I opened my eyes but couldn’t make out much in the dark. Then I realized that Homer was nursing on my earlobe. The cool outer edge of his cone pressed against my cheek. His front paws kneaded the patch of pillow directly behind my ear, and his purr was a low thrum, steadier and more subdued than it had been earlier while Melissa was petting him.

  I held my breath, sensing that if I moved at all, Homer would stop what he was doing—although he probably should stop, shouldn’t he? I felt a little silly. It was the kind of thing where, had somebody burs
t unexpectedly into the room, my impulse would have been to shove Homer away from my ear and insist, It’s not what it looks like!

  This was an entirely new experience for me, something that neither Scarlett nor Vashti had ever done. It was obvious that Homer had missed having a mother, that—whatever Patty or I wanted to tell ourselves about how Homer would forget, may have already forgotten, the trauma of his early life—on some deeply fundamental level, Homer remembered that he’d been deprived of something he was supposed to have. He was supposed to have a life that included a mother’s care, that was comprised of affection and adequate nourishment and comforting rituals in the dark.

  My hand rose to stroke his back, and his purring grew louder.

  I realized something else. It meant something to be trusted by this cat. There was a difference between being trusted by cats or even animals in general and being trusted by this kitten in particular. I was too sleepy to pursue the thought, or articulate it in any logical way, but I understood in that moment that this was something I’d felt without being aware of it from the first moment I’d picked Homer up in the vet’s office.

  My last conscious thought was that Melissa had known this, too, and that it was why she had appeared so much softer when she was holding him.

  4 • The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee

  “Alas,” said he to himself, “what kind of people have I come amongst? Are they cruel, savage, and uncivilized, or hospitable and humane?”

  —HOMER, The Odyssey