Tj and The Cats

by Hazel Hutchins

  That was gruesome, but interesting. Gran’s cats were indoor cats — even Cleo, who had been adopted as a young stray two months ago. It made you forget that all this leaping, batting, clawing, see-in-the-dark stuff was because cats were made to hunt and kill. Carnivores. If you were a carnivore in the wild you didn’t pick up cat crunchies at the grocery store.

  “Did you read about how cats purr?” I asked.

  “I found lots of theories — bones vibrating at the base of the tongue, blood rushing through the big vessels in a cat’s chest.” Seymour checked his notes. “Newest research suggests that cats can move their vocal chords so quickly that a vibrating column of air in the throat sounds as a purr and is just the right frequency to set the cat’s entire body vibrating. That’s why you can feel by touching that the cat is purring.”

  I preferred my own Big Machinery Theory. It had the same kind of catchiness as my Sponge Theory.

  “Here’s another fact,” said Seymour. “When cats sit in the sun and groom themselves they are also licking vitamin D that forms on their fur.”

  “How can vitamins form on cat fur?” I asked.

  “Here’s the book. Read about it for yourself,” said Seymour. “Here are my pictures.”

  The first one was a mummified cat. The second was a cat coffin.

  “I tried to draw some live cats too,” said Seymour.

  This time the drawings looked like dinosaurs with fur. I didn’t say that, of course, but Seymour and I have been friends a long time and sometimes he reads my mind.

  “I didn’t make them look like dinosaurs on purpose,” said Seymour. “They just keep coming out that way.”

  I turned the picture upside down. Nope, it didn’t look any better. It didn’t look any worse either. I looked at the book from which he’d copied.

  “I’m good at dinosaurs because I’ve been to the museum to see them so many times,” said Seymour. “Maybe if there was a cat museum or something…”

  Seymour kept talking, but I wasn’t listening. I’d gone from looking at pictures of cats to reading what was written underneath. It was a whole page about cats and people and how they get along together. It was clicking on all sorts of little lights in my brain and making me feel a lot better. It was making me feel so much better that I decided to take a chance.

  “Look,” I said to Seymour, “why don’t you come over to my place after school? I’ve got something better than a cat museum. Actually it’s better and worse all at once.”

  “What is it?” asked Seymour.

  “Just something,” I said.

  Of course he couldn’t leave it at “just something.”

  “What is it?” he asked me all through math.

  “What is it?” he asked all through science.

  In music, where Ms. K. didn’t ask us to play because she knew we’d practiced, Seymour asked for the two hundredth time.

  “What is it?”

  Amanda looked across at me hopefully. It’s not easy for her, sitting behind Seymour all day.

  But I didn’t tell him. I wasn’t sure what he’d say and anyway, I wanted it to be a surprise.

  Chapter 8

  “Cats!” said Seymour, looking around our kitchen. “You’ve got cats!”

  Cleo was peeking over the top of the refrigerator.

  Kink was playing paddy-ball with something under the stove.

  Huge, gigantic Max had tried to stuff himself into a tissue box on the counter and had flattened it completely.

  As we stood there, a small black shadow made a quick dart down from a chair to streak along the hall — Killer’s first daytime appearance.

  “Where’d they come from? Where’d you get them? What are their names?”

  Seymour can ask a lot of questions when he gets going.

  “Are they all yours? Is this why you wanted to do the cat report? Why didn’t you…” He paused to sniff. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I’m cat-sitting them for two weeks as a favor to my Gran,” I said. “I’m an ailurophobe, so it’s kind of tricky.”

  “A what?” asked Seymour.

  “An ailurophobe,” I said. “Cats give me the creeps.”

  That’s what I’d read in Seymour’s book. An ailurophobe can be someone who hates cats or someone who has an unexplained fear of cats. It was the last part that really interested me. Now I understood that feeling of panic and drowning. Giving it a long name like ailurophobia made it seem okay to feel that way.

  “Since you don’t like cats, you’re probably an ailurophobe too,” I said.

  “Not me,” said Seymour. “I’m just allergic.”

  I looked at him. His eyes were watering like crazy and he was sniffing for about the eighth time. Cleo and Kink began to rub back and forth against his legs.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” said Seymour.

  Out the front he went. As the door closed, I felt let down. It had been fun, just for a minute, to have someone else to talk to about the cats.

  I didn’t have time to feel sorry for myself. Max walked up and bit me in the ankle. He didn’t draw blood, but it was a bite all right.

  “Max!”

  He bit me again.

  “Max! Cut it out!”

  Cleo began to meow up at me. Was she going to bite me too?

  Suddenly Kink exploded. In a tremendous burst of energy he tore around the kitchen, raced down the hall to the laundry room and flew back to the kitchen again.

  I was hit with a flash of understanding. Something was wrong. Cats were like all those dogs on TV shows that try to warn people. My heart began to pound.

  “Okay,” I said.

  The cats sensed that I was now on their side. Cleo and Kink bounded ahead of me down the hall. Max nipped at my heels.

  They herded me into the laundry room. I expected to find Killer laid out with a heart attack or a hole in the wall where the dryer had blown up. Instead I found something much worse. It was so awful all three of them began to howl wretchedly.

  The terrible truth was — their food bowls were empty.

  Their food bowls were empty! No wonder there’s a special word like ailurophobia. Cats drive a person crazy!

  I fed them. I watered them. I tried to ignore what was sitting at the other end of the laundry room, but I couldn’t. Things were getting just too smelly.

  I used to think cleaning my room was the worst job in the world. It’s not. Cleaning the kitty litter for four cats is the most disgusting, revolting job in the world. Only for the world’s greatest Gran would I do something like clean out a tray of dirty kitty litter.

  Mom and Dad came home late. When they did arrive it was like a hurricane again. The phone rang, laundry flew, food burned and all Mom and Dad wanted to talk about was the store.

  I copied the cats. I found myself a place to hide and stayed there until bedtime.

  Chapter 9

  The cats developed a routine.

  In the mornings Max stared at my cereal bowl while I ate. I left a few drops of milk in the bowl and set it on the floor for him. Maybe I was the one who was developing a routine.

  When I came home at lunch, Cleo wanted me to pet her. I used the brush and cut down on the hair ball index at the same time.

  After school, Kink did his special thing. He exploded. He burst out of paper bags, attacked my feet and ran around the house like a whole herd of cats. I cleaned up after him as best I could.

  At night, between bouts of midnight hockey or general prowling, all four of them climbed on and off the bed to sleep with me. Cleo slept on one side. Kink slept on the other. Max slept across my feet. Killer slept on my chest. Sometimes I felt like a hot dog in a furry bun. It was a true test of willpower for an ailurophobe, especially since there was a good deal of growling and hissing as they protected their sleeping spots. It’s not easy to sleep beneath a blanket of fighting cats. Every morning I felt like I’d been through a war zone.

  Seymour, meanwhile, was really getting into cats. He’d ask
ed his mom about allergy medicine so he could come and study them in person. He’d found a book about cats and disasters. Seymour loves disasters.

  “Hurricanes, volcanoes, earthquakes — cats have warned people about them all,” Seymour told me. “They have some kind of sense that tells them when a disaster is coming. Sometimes it can be explained by the way cats are so sensitive to sound and vibrations, but not all the time. Cats know things.”

  “Kind of like Ms. K.,” I said.

  That morning Ms. K. had told me that growing boys need more than three hours of sleep a night. How did she know that’s all I was getting?

  “Cats even know directions,” said Seymour. “If you take a cat away from home in a closed box and put it in a maze, it still knows how to get back home.”

  That’s all I needed, another nightmare about cats and mazes. I still hadn’t found where Killer hid out during the day.

  “And there’s one really weird thing, but it’s hard to prove,” said Seymour. “It’s called psi-trailing. A person moves and the cat gets left behind. Months later, the cat shows up on the owner’s new doorstep, even though it’s never been anywhere near that house before. Even Ms. K. can’t do that — not without an address anyway.”

  “I wouldn’t count on it,” I said.

  Ms. K. had written How are your four feline friends? on the bottom of my math homework. She knew we were doing a cat report, but I hadn’t told her I was living with four of them. How could she have known?

  “Cats have helped rescue people from floods, car accidents, fires…”

  Seymour was interrupted by Ms. K. calling the class to attention.

  “We’ll be starting the science report presentations next week,” she announced. “Would anyone be ready for Monday?”

  Amanda’s hand shot into the air.

  “I can be ready,” said Amanda, “but I’ll need four more sheets of poster paper and could I use the computer and two tables and the slide projector?”

  When class let out, Seymour was more upset than I’d seen him in a long time.

  “Four sheets of poster paper, the computer, two tables and the slide projector!”

  I understood. Every year when it’s time to do reports, Amanda does the best one of the class. Usually she goes a little overboard and our report ends up looking just a little pathetic next to hers. With the list of equipment she’d given Ms. K., however, this year there could be real trouble. Seymour pretends he doesn’t care, but the truth is he likes to do good reports — even if they are always about dinosaurs.

  We headed downtown. On Friday afternoons Seymour and I buy slushies and then stop at the store. It had been neat to do when the store first opened. My parents’ hardware store has all sorts of good things like camping gear and baseball equipment. Today, however, walking around looking at what was on the shelves seemed pretty pointless. Nothing in the hardware store actually belonged to us. It was all there to be sold to other people.

  Seymour was restless and he headed home. He was still thinking about Amanda and the science reports. I hung around getting more and more restless myself. Finally I took some washable markers and began drawing mustaches on all those smiling people whose photos get put in empty picture frames so customers will want to buy them.

  I’d just given a blonde lady a long blue beard when I looked up. Ms. K. was walking towards me. I put the frames back and stood in front of them.

  “Do you know where your mom and dad keep the motor oil, TJ?” she asked.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Except I didn’t. The car section was all mixed up and I had to walk around and around the store like a real jerk before I found it.

  But the worst part was that when I carried the two quarts of oil to the till for Ms. K., my dad came up waving something in his hand.

  “Some rotten kid has made a real mess of these,” he announced. He set the picture frames on the counter in front of Mom and Ms. K. and everyone else. The blue marker was still in my hand, and if I stood there even two seconds longer they were all going to figure out who the rotten kid was.

  I had to get out of there. And I had to get out fast. Suddenly I remembered I had the perfect excuse.

  “I forgot about the cats! I’ve got to go home and feed them,” I exclaimed and hurried out of the store.

  Maybe Seymour was right about cats saving people from disasters after all.

  Chapter 10

  “TJ, why are you still in your pyjamas?” asked my mom the next day. It was almost noon. She’d come home to pick up lunch and take me down to the store. That’s what she always did on Saturday afternoons.

  “I’m not coming to the store,” I said.

  “Why not?” asked my mom.

  “Hardwareaphobia,” I said.

  “Hardware-a-what?” asked my mom.

  “Hardwareaphobia,” I said. “Fear and dislike of hardware stores.”

  “Oh dear,” began my mom, sitting beside me on the sofa. “What’s wrong, TJ?”

  “Nothing’s wrong,” I said. I slid down to the other end of the sofa. “I just have it, that’s all — hardwareaphobia. I even had a hardware store nightmare last week.”

  My mom looked at me silently for a moment.

  “So you’re not coming,” she said.

  “Nope,” I said.

  I thought maybe my mom would yell at me or order me to come or phone Dad. She didn’t. She frowned, but she didn’t say anything.

  I didn’t feel very good after she left. Mom and Dad had always dreamed of having their own business and they were working really hard to make it successful. I knew that. I hadn’t meant to make her feel bad about it — I just really didn’t want to be there. And to tell you the truth, I hadn’t even known what I was going to say until I opened my mouth and the words came tumbling out.

  “Does that ever happen to you?” I asked Max.

  He didn’t answer.

  Max was sitting on my lap. So long as he was awake it was fine, but after a while he’d fall asleep. Sleeping cats weigh a lot more than cats that are awake. Max was up to about the weight of an elephant when Seymour phoned.

  “Why aren’t you at the store?” he asked.

  “Because,” I said.

  “Glad you explained it to me,” said Seymour. “I’ll be over as soon as I take my allergy medicine and find a tin of tuna.”

  The allergy medicine was so Seymour wouldn’t get all stuffed up. The tuna was so he could lure Killer out of hiding.

  Of course he lured the three other cats as well. Around and around the house he went with the open tin and three cats meowing and howling on his heels. Finally Seymour put half the contents of the tin on a plate in the kitchen for the three howlers.

  “Where does Killer show up at night?” asked Seymour.

  “My room,” I said.

  We went into my bedroom and closed the door. Seymour held the open tuna tin on high. After a few moments we heard a small sound at the top of my closet. I hadn’t even tried to search there because it was such a mess.

  We looked up. A small, black, pointy thing was moving ever so slightly above the lumps of junk. A moment later we could see a bit of fur and a second black, pointy thing. At last two amazing copper eyes looked down on us like glowing pennies. It was Killer all right.

  We set the tuna on the bed and waited. Killer dropped from the top of my closet to my bed. She walked cautiously up to the dish and began to eat.

  “I don’t think she’s a killer at all,” said Seymour. “I think she’s just nervous.”

  “Gran might have called her Killer to give her confidence,” I said. “Gran does things like that. Why did you want her?”

  “I read another neat book about cats last night,” said Seymour. “You know how black cats and witches go together?”

  “Maybe,” I said. I hoped he wasn’t thinking of putting Ms. K. into our cat report.

  “Well, in the Dark Ages, people who were thought to be witches were burned at the stake — and so were blac
k cats,” said Seymour.

  “That’s awful!” I said.

  “So many black cats were killed that it practically wiped them out. According to the book, most black cats today have at least a tiny bit of white on them. I want to check Killer and see if it’s true.”

  We checked Killer’s fur. On her chest was a tiny cluster of white hairs that formed a very small star.

  “There was something weird about white cats too,” said Seymour. “Where’s Max?”

  Max was waiting just outside the door, hoping for more tuna.

  “White cats with blue eyes are deaf,” said Seymour. “At least a lot of them are.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “What does hair color have to do with eyes?”

  “It’s something called genetics,” said Seymour. “Cats like Cleo with three colors on their coats are female. And white cats with blue eyes…”

  “Max,” I said, bending down to him, “if you can hear me, meow twice.”

  “Come on,” said Seymour. “This is really true. Walk up behind him and make noise.”

  I walked behind Max, shouted “Yaaaaaahhh!” and stomped on the floor like crazy. Max took off like a shot. All the cats took off like shots. Seymour frowned at me and shook his head.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “I said deaf, not dead,” said Seymour. “Don’t stomp — you shook the whole house. Don’t even clap your hands — it moves air currents and cats’ whiskers can feel it. Their paddy paws feel vibrations too, so you’d better be really careful walking up behind him.”

  Seymour was turning into a regular cat encyclopedia.

  “Creep up and then just give a little yell,” he said.

  Max and Cleo were both in the living room. Cleo was pacing back and forth restlessly at the window. She’d started to do that lately. Max was washing himself. His back was to me. Very slowly I walked across the carpet. I waited a few moments.

  “Boo!” I said.

  Cleo’s head turned instantly, but Max just kept cleaning himself.

  “Boo! Yahhhhhh! Whoooo!”