Sleeps with Dogs

by Lindsey Grant

  This would be my first Turkey Day away from home as an adult, as well as my first time hosting, and the money from these overnights would certainly help offset the grocery bill for the feast. I’d been doing some research into the best (read: most affordable) turkeys, and I thought I could keep the bird to $25 or less, especially if I went to Grocery Outlet. The guests didn’t need to know where I bought it from. No organic, well-adjusted, Heritage Tom with good genes and high self-esteem. We’d likely eat a Butterball bird, much abused in his lifetime, because that’s what I could afford.

  Even taking into account my appreciation for this happy house and its occupants, and the utility of the money I was making, I didn’t feel that these pros excused or entirely offset Simpson’s early morning wake-up calls. I was a girl who needed her eight hours. Unable to imagine his exertions on my neck and back as a form of acupuncture, I tossed away the comforter, momentarily burying him in bedding. After pulling on my favorite sweatpants, the heather gray kind with elastic around the ankle circa the Gap in 1989, I climbed over the baby gate that partitioned the kitchen from the rest of the house.

  Leilani, the German shepherd mix, was stirring in her bed tucked in the back corner of the breakfast nook. The Hansens had found her years before while on vacation, falling instantly in love with the stray pup. After very little deliberation, they bought her a one-way plane ticket on their flight, direct to San Francisco.

  Larry the cat was Sara’s before she ever met Andy, and he became equally theirs when they’d married eight years prior. The way Sara told it, Larry was there before Andy, and had been there for the duration of their life together. He’ll probably be here after Andy, too, she’d joked. This didn’t necessarily give Larry preference over Leilani and Simpson—or Andy, for that matter—but certainly seniority.

  Larry suffered from hyperthyroidism, leaving him extremely lean and in need of medication twice a day. In the past, mixing that medication with some wet food had been the only contact I’d have with him in a day. He was an exclusively outdoor cat, only venturing so far indoors as the mudroom for meals and cat naps atop the washer in his round furry cat bed. It was a rare occasion indeed that he joined Simpson and Leilani in the kitchen.

  After he ate his doctored meals, he was off again to lead his mysterious cat life. Though he was a scrappy tomcat, a prowler and a hunter, his pure white coat and subdued demeanor lent him an air of stoicism utterly absent in Simpson.

  Named after the famous animated family, Simpson was the younger of the cats and was about as different from Larry as he could be. In perfect counterpoint to Larry’s uniformly snowy coat, Simpson was jet black with a white bib and boots on all four paws. He was comically obese, and next to the skeletal Larry, he looked even more grotesquely overfed. Where Larry was the quintessential feline—aloof, independent, and completely indifferent to humans and animals alike—Simpson was so desirous of constant affection (and constant feeding) that he made himself a pest.

  Fat as he was, Simpson was able to leap from the floor to the kitchen island to the countertop faster than I could swat him down. Whatever I was preparing, be it dinner, a cup of coffee, or Larry’s medication cocktail, Simpson would be on it in a flash. So his food came first, always, to occupy him and keep him out of my face. He ate atop the fridge, a vantage point that allowed him to see who else was eating what, where, and when.

  Leilani was far more relaxed about her morning meal. I scooped a cup of kibble out of the bin in the cabinet, and the dog was soon settled in front of her breakfast. I intentionally left Larry for last, since his morning regimen was far more involved for the both of us.

  Larry had been sick for a while—for at least as long as I’d been pet-sitting him and his housemates. The only changes in his care over that year or so had been how much medication he got and how frequently, and then later, in what he was eating and in what quantities. But any differences in Larry himself had been small and slow, and the Hansens never seemed overly concerned.

  When I arrived for this visit, they had left the usual note of greeting on the butcher block in the kitchen. Lately he is only interested in eating baby food, but he eats it with gusto! The last of their instructions read, If he starts to go downhill, no heroics, okay?

  I’d been prepared for Larry’s condition to have declined and expected I’d need to watch him closely throughout the week, keeping him comfortable and making sure he got his meds down with the new liquid diet. But that sentence, tacked on to the end of a hastily scribbled note, gave me great pause. I wasn’t aware when I’d signed on for this week that Sara and Andy might be outsourcing his end days to me. Once I actually saw Larry, I was struck with the certainty that he would not make it through the week.

  They had grossly downplayed the fragility of Larry’s state. He’d essentially stopped eating. When I fed him the first night, the most he took in was some juice from the canned tuna I’d put in his chipped blue dish on top of the dryer in the mudroom. I had to force-feed him his medication, which left him understandably pissed at me. Soon after I’d emptied the syringe between his jaws, he regurgitated the meds mixed with gastric juices in foamy dribbles, his emaciated body convulsing.

  The worst part, though, was the open and frankly horrific-looking sore on his side, pink and deep purple where it festered. The hair had fallen away, and he worried the exposed area incessantly so that his whole right side was damp and cowlicked. His spine and tail were even bonier than before, a wasted frame under loosely hung fur. His eyes still retained such majesty, though—gray blue and perfectly cat-eyed.

  That first morning before I left the house, I got down on face level with him.

  “You listen to me, Lawrence. Your parents will be home in six days, and they will be so happy to see you. You hear me?” I kissed him on his head, which had the same velvety texture as it always had. I hummed a bar of The Who’s “You Better You Bet,” too, because it was the only song I could think of. Then I locked the mudroom door behind me, trying with everything in me to ignore the hot, bilious anxiety rising in my throat.

  My time with Larry, Simpson, and Leilani coincided with another cat client in Alameda that requested daily visits for the week. Though the owners had another residence nearer to their workplace, they kept their cats at this second, sparsely furnished apartment by the beach. The street-facing one-bedroom unit was almost entirely given over to the cats, save for an extremely sexy candy-apple-red espresso machine that gleamed from its place on the counter in the efficiency kitchen.

  The cats they kept at this apartment were all feral. I rarely saw them but for a tail poking out from behind the curtains in the living room, or glowing eyes under the bed. As I was required to be there for thirty minutes, I took my time changing the water and portioning out their food, trying to occupy as many minutes as I could laying eyes on each of the five cats who lived there. Conveniently, that took up most of the half-hour visit, checking all of the closets and cabinets that were left ajar for the cats to wander freely through or hide within.

  If any time remained, I’d stand in the kitchen admiring the machine. Next to the shabby, cat-scratched furniture, amidst the dusty clumps of fur that blew through the drab and dirty apartment, that machine was even more spectacular.

  Those half hours spent in the company of the wild, reclusive cats were a welcome change from my nights across the island. Mostly because the cats—antisocial, averse to human touch, and seemingly divorced from any need for companionship beyond that which their fellow cats provided—were so refreshingly different from Simpson’s campaign for food and attention and Larry’s hospice care. I felt certain that these cats, were they to escape the confines of this carpeted cage, would do just fine on their own.

  When I arrived back at the house in the evening, Larry was waiting on the porch banister, looking regal and wise as he tracked my movements, slowly blinking at me as I passed him on my way to the side door.

  “Buenas noches, Larry! Why don’t you come on inside for some loving?�
�� I called to him as I entered the mudroom. I didn’t think he was fooled; by loving, I meant medicating.

  Leilani heard me coming, and she exploded through the dog door from the backyard, dashing excitedly from the mudroom and into the kitchen behind me. Of course, Simpson was waiting there, meowling with a fury like I hadn’t fed him for days. He seemed unaware of, or unconcerned by, his comrade’s rapid decline. His emergency, as ever, was getting fed. I quickly dumped a handful of cat food in Simpson’s dish before leashing Leilani to go out for her walk.

  As starved as she was for some individual attention, I gave her a perfunctory walk. I was preoccupied with the certainty that Sara and Andy had already said their goodbyes to Larry. With that final instruction to me, no heroics, they’d reconciled themselves to Larry’s imminent departure from their lives.

  I was racking my brain as to what I could do for him beyond just sitting by and watching him gamely carry on, however feebly. I wanted to make a Save Larry sign or carry him with me on my daily dog walks in a custom-made cat papoose, just so he wouldn’t be alone in his last days. He probably didn’t mind the solitude; maybe he even preferred it. Like the ferals I was caring for, he seemed to eschew our human fussing and fawning, preferring instead to simply carry on with the business of being a cat. But I minded.

  I was all but oblivious to the streetlights coming to life along the residential streets. I instinctively stopped at the stop signs and crossed at the lights, but I jumped a foot in the air when an overwound poodle lunged at us, barking through the wrought iron bars of its fence.

  Larry turned away from the Gerber beef stew I offered him that night, dignified in his demurral. I understood his refusal of food as his instinctual way of showing that he was finished trying to survive. Every time I rubbed his gums with the pudding-like substance, I felt like I was betraying this knowledge.

  Biscuit was this way at the end; that’s how my parents knew she was so sick. One week in early spring, she stopped touching her Alpo. After a day, rats came out of the woods and ate it all up for her. Apparently the vets knew quickly, just from palpating her stomach and organs, that she was riddled with tumors. My parents brought her home for me and my sister to see her again, though they knew it couldn’t be for long. She still didn’t eat; she just lay in her doghouse on her blanket, watching me come and go with her sweet dark eyes and licking my hand appreciatively as I diligently refreshed her rat-chewed food and untouched water in hopes she might change her mind and chance a nibble.

  Once I accepted that Larry’s final demise was not a matter of if, but when, I settled into the routine of devoting my evenings to making him as comfortable as he could be.

  Before I subjected him to the disgrace of the 1 cc of forcefed meds, he sat for oh-so-gentle strokes. I had to caress his thinning coat just so, or he shrank away like I was hurting him. If I got it right, though, he purred like he was a young cat again, angling his head up, then all the way down, and then twisting around, showing me all the pleasurable spots that remained.

  Larry was notorious for spraying in the house, so when—if ever—he came inside, he was allowed only as far as the kitchen. I put his cat bed on the breakfast-nook chair next to my own, and he and I spent those dark autumnal hours together. He slept while I watched syndicated episodes of Sex and the City and planned the Thanksgiving menu.

  I’d been studying up on my dad’s methods for cooking the turkey, which included a broth-soaked undershirt or otherwise expendable-but-clean rag to cover the bird for the first few hours, among other unconventional but essential steps. It was easy enough to ignore all his instructions for making the giblet gravy, as I would not be handling or eating any of the turkey neck. I also requested my mom’s stuffing recipe and my sister’s famous green bean casserole made with fresh beans French-cut by hand. Even with the preplanning, though, I suspected I’d make frequent phone calls to the whole family throughout the holiday for last-minute directions and clarification.

  Before I retired with Simpson to the corner bedroom, I tucked Larry into his deep round sheepskin bed and went through the ritual stroking with him. I wondered if my hands on his neck, back, and rump, which he angled in ecstasy, gave him the only pleasure there really was for him anymore.

  Meanwhile, at the cat pad, the ferals seemed to be adjusting to my presence. They actually walked across the living room while I was there in the apartment, instead of keeping to the closets and cabinets or under the bed until I left. I didn’t have much, or any, prior experience with wild cats, so this was an education. I was surprised at how beautiful, how dignified each cat was. I guess I’d thought that ferals were crazed beasts with an electrocuted-looking tail and razor-sharp claws, like the cats depicted on Halloween decorations. What I was realizing, though, is that these animals are not defined by their relationships to us—or lack thereof. They are defined by their cat-ness. Which is, after all, what they are. These were not pets, just cats. For the first time I understood that the one could exist apart from the other. Perhaps that was the pleasure that those particular owners experienced: observation of, not necessarily interaction with, the animals they shared their home with.

  My last night at the Hansens’ arrived, and Larry was nowhere to be found. I busied myself with the dog and cat who I’d all but ignored all week. On our walk, Leilani soaked up my attentions like a neglected child would, poor girl. When I fed Simpson, I pet him until he bit me in irritation. It seemed he and I just couldn’t see eye-to-eye; with him, it was either never enough or way too much.

  Just as I was about to throw on my coat and canvass the neighborhood for Larry, I heard his quiet call coming from the mudroom. I was so relieved to see his face that I nearly missed his weeping wound.

  There was blood and fluid soaking the fur around the sore, which looked angrier than ever. He refused food and water with such polite defiance that I spared him the medication altogether. I doubted very seriously that it would do much except make him cross with me. Instead, I put his bed on the chair next to me and let him be quiet in my company, together in the warmth of the kitchen.

  While he rested, I made a baked potato and turned on the television. When I turned my back to him, though, he disappeared. It didn’t take me long to find him curled near the pillows in the master bedroom, as close to the smell and feeling of his owners as he could be. In all the times I’d ever stayed at the Hansens’, and certainly within the span of that week, Larry had never jumped the gate that partitioned the kitchen from the other rooms. He knew his boundaries and hadn’t ever trespassed into the depths of the house.

  Before I went to bed myself, I restored Larry to his usual spot in the mudroom. I kissed his soft head goodnight and tried to convey some measure of comfort and love with my strokes, carefully avoiding his sickening sore. I wanted to bring him with me into the house, consequences be damned. But I left him there in his bed on the dryer and locked the door to the house.

  On our last night with Biscuit, I had a fight with my parents about sleeping in the basement. I don’t remember if they even conceded in the end. I just pulled the quilt off my bed and curled up next to Biscuit in the carpeted area at the base of the steps to the garage. We slept that way, her with her ratty, torn blanket and me wrapped in my own. Or she slept. I just tried to absorb the feel of her, the distinct corn-and-processed-cheese aroma of her paws that always evoked Doritos for me, and the gentle rise and fall of her belly—a place I’d rested my head so many times before. I pet her until my shoulder went numb. I must’ve slept at some point because in the morning I woke to find my parents standing over us. They took her back to the vet then, where they waited while she went to sleep for good.

  At some point in the night, I woke up abruptly to the sound of Larry crying. I threw on my sweatpants and climbed over the gate into the darkened kitchen, flipping on lights and unlocking the door to bring him in after all. But he wasn’t in his bed. He wasn’t on the steps or in the driveway. He wasn’t perched on the banister, watching the street with th
ose intelligent eyes.

  In the morning, when Simpson threw himself against the locked bedroom door, I got up quickly. The anxiety of the night before had carried over into my dreams and right into the morning. I bundled up again to go out to the mudroom, but Larry’s bed was still empty. I put my hand where the slight imprint of his body fit, but the sheepskin lining was cold.

  I left a note for Andy and Sara, due to arrive home that afternoon, in the same place they’d left theirs. Larry took off in the night and I haven’t seen him since. I am probably overreacting. He always comes back! My false bravado was hardly convincing.

  Had Sara and Andy been my own clients, and had I been in a position to engage in communication with them as such, I likely would have been far more forthright about my feelings. But as it was, the cordial, newsy note left on the butcher block was the extent of our business-related correspondence. All complaints and non-urgent concerns were directed to my colleagues; they could decide to forward my input on to the client, or not. Yet another tricky nuance of the business that I didn’t fully grasp until it unfolded in real time. I had to learn these lessons as I went, and sometimes they proved far more painful than I could ever have anticipated.

  I packed all of my things and made the bed, vacuumed the floor, and scooped out the litter box. I did the dishes and checked the bathroom and bedside tables for any forgotten jewelry or hair ties. I tossed my stuff into the car, still looking for the shape of Larry by the porch. From a distance, I mistook the white of a grocery sack beneath my car for his shadow.

  After three agonizing days of waiting for news on Larry, my colleagues passed along an email from Sara. I’d just returned from the big pre-Thanksgiving grocery-shopping trip, taking my mom’s advice to go late on a Tuesday to avoid the day-before crowds and still get fresh produce with which to cook.

  Sara had attached a photograph of Larry in his younger days, sitting atop the Hansens’ back fence. With it was a brief explanation of how the neighbors had found him, alive but just barely, lying in their backyard. They’d always kept food and water out for Larry, and they suspected he was making one last journey to his spot when he had a heart attack. Andy and Sara did not see him alive, but they buried his remains in their own backyard beneath the lemon tree.