Kitty Cornered: How Frannie and Five Other Incorrigible Cats Seized Control of Our House and Made It Their Home

by Bob Tarte

  I followed the wail to the bathroom to find Moobie twisted and hanging from the vanity drawer pull by her front leg. It looked very bad. But after I had rotated her forty-five degrees, lifted her straight up and out, and set her down on the floor, she gave her frame a brisk shake and started to amble away. She meowed indignantly when I snatched her up again and demanded that she let me know she was okay as I ran my fingers up and down the bone. Nothing seemed broken, but surely she must have sprained or dislocated the leg. I put her on the floor to watch how she walked, and she led me to the alleged entertainment center. She sat down on the rug and laser-beamed a stare that said, Now that we’re here, how about a couple of those kitty treats?

  “You’re out of your mind,” I informed her.

  Back in the bathroom, I explained to Linda what must have happened while I washed the treat crumbs off my hands. Despite her coned condition, Moobie must have decided to try to drink from the spigot. By the glow of a bubbling snowman-head nightlight, she had made the leap up to the countertop without a hitch, but the loop of a faux-brass pull protruding from a slightly open drawer had trapped her in the process of hopping down. “We’re lucky we were here when this happened,” I said.

  “We have to do something about her.”

  I threaded a hand towel through the drawer pull. “There.”

  “We have to get that collar off her. You have to get that bitter apple tomorrow.”

  “I will.”

  “And I didn’t like you shouting at me about the light.”

  Unnerved by Moobie’s close brush and annoyed at the unfair rebuke of my behavior under duress, I retreated to the upstairs bedroom to rummage around for something to read. Agnes complained when I elbowed her off the bed. “Go tell it to your mother,” I said.

  WHEN I HAULED myself out of bed the next morning, I checked on Moobie. She didn’t show any ill effects from her brief stint as an extension to the drawer hardware. After feeding the cats, I plodded out to the mailbox for the Sunday paper, which got immediately added to the pile destined for the birdcages. I had given up trying to get through the newspaper faster than the parrots, and unlike me they paid equal attention to the advertising supplements and editorial sections.

  The outside air didn’t sear my bare flesh upon contact, which was an improvement over the previous day, and one lump of clouds seemed marginally less gray than the rest, hinting at the presence of a functioning sun. We had a chance of popping into double digits for the day.

  “That cat’s out there again,” Linda hollered from the dining room.

  A couple of weeks earlier, she had first reported seeing a white-and-black stray in the woods across from the trailer park. Staying in the shadows so as not to spook the cat, I peered through the bathroom window to find her sitting on the back deck close to the basement door. I suspected that she sought the heat that gushed out of our energy-inefficient house. “She must live in a hollow log out in the woods to stay warm,” Linda said. She apparently read my mind about the temperature, though I couldn’t claim credit for the cartoon log.

  Forgetting yesterday’s blistering cold, Agnes led me down the basement stairs and whined to go outside, but I didn’t let her go. In a rare exercise of good judgment, I decided that it wouldn’t be wise to mix a street-smart outdoor kitty that survived by outwitting small defenseless creatures with an indoor kitty that survived by outwitting a tall, skinny defenseless creature.

  “Sorry,” I told her. She complained with a whiny trill when I left her standing at the door. She recovered her sense of fun in time to try to kill me on the flight upstairs, tangling herself underfoot with the agility of a mountain stream. I wasn’t necessarily afraid of an outright attack on Aggie by the stray. She didn’t strike me as any kind of tiger as I peeked out at her through the bathroom mini-blinds again. But my visit with Joan had reminded me of the dangers of feline leukemia, and I wanted to keep Agnes safe for future attempts upon my life.

  ON MONDAY I motored to The Pet Supplies Megastore That Runs Out of Everything on my way home from work and nearly collapsed at finding a plastic bottle of bitter apple spray on a shelf. I waved off the cashier when she asked if I would like to sign up for The Pet Supplies Megastore That Runs Out of Everything Rewards Card, suspecting that my buying preferences would be shared with the Aisle Blockers so that they could more effectively obstruct my shopping.

  Back home, as I stood in the living room holding the bottle in my hand, I decided that spraying it on Moobie constituted an activity and, as such, needed to be postponed. I stalled by pretending to read the label. “Don’t apply to an open sore,” I told Linda.

  “Is that what it says?”

  “No, it’s just common sense. I’ll give it a try after I take a nap.”

  Impeding my departure to slumberland, Agnes had curled up on my pillow nursing a bad mood. “You wouldn’t go out anyway,” I said. “It’s really cold. And you might get chased by a ferocious feral kitty.” She uncoiled as I stroked her forehead with a finger, turned into a wriggling eel as I petted her back, then surprised us both by biting my hand. I froze, wondering if I was so far gone that I had somehow mistaken Lucy for Agnes. She cringed as if I was going to whack her, something we hadn’t seen since her earliest, insecurity-wracked days with us; we figured that a former owner must have abused her.

  “It’s okay,” I told her. “You’re just having a bad winter. You’ll be able to go out again soon.” She bleated like an unhappy sheep as she galloped away. I called Moobie, begging her to join me in the exquisite experience of an afternoon snooze, but she was already fast asleep on the couch. I slid under the pile of covers and surrendered to the heat and sweet unconsciousness. Twenty minutes later I sputtered awake to the tap, tap, tapping of Moobie hitting the bedroom door with her cone. I opened it, and she sauntered in with her funnel bobbing like a pigeon’s head.

  I scrunched her against me on the mattress and located the tiny little nothing that remained of her incision scar. Her leg would never be more fully healed than now. I sprayed the spot with three pumps from the bitter apple bottle. Curious how bitter the bitter apple might be—apple with a trace of bitter, or mostly bitter with a hint of apple, and why add any apple at all?—I touched the nozzle with a fingertip, applied the residue to my tongue, and felt my face cave in on itself. It made alum seem sweet in comparison.

  “That’ll fix your wagon.” I untied the cone and slipped it off her head.

  My heart sank as she gave the spot a lick, paused to curl her upper lip in displeasure, then settled in for a serious tonguing session. Apparently she was doomed to wear the collar for the remainder of her life. She hopped down to the floor and I followed. Foregoing the usual wait for service at the bathroom spigot, she trotted up to the nearest water bowl and drained it dry, which floored me. I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen her drink from a bowl. Returning to the couch, she resumed her snooze.

  Later in the week I considered returning the spray for a refund, since the bottle was still full minus a mere three puffs. But I didn’t want to give the cashier a fresh opportunity to suggest that I sign up for a rewards card.

  EVEN THOUGH I’VE never liked to initiate activity, I set a whole lot of wheels in motion when I opened the door and let the white-and-black kitty onto the porch. Petting her as she munched kibbles, I consoled myself with the thought that I hadn’t actually been the decision maker. I was simply the hand that opened the door, and she had done the rest. But I still had to live with the consequences.

  The last thing that we needed was another cat. Three cats were as demanding as all of the ducks, geese, and parrots combined, plus they refused to repeat snappy phrases like Dusty. A fourth cat would also shatter the complex social arrangement that Agnes, Moobie, and Lucy had worked out. Agnes hated Lucy and Moobie. Lucy disliked Moobie and Agnes. And Moobie ignored Agnes and Lucy. With her combination of nervousness and blazing independence, the stray could only add what Linda called “trouble with a capital T.” I worried about h
er through the night.

  As I swung my legs out from under the covers the next morning, I prepared myself for two possible scenarios. Now that the rain had stopped and the world had frozen again, the cat would have the left the premises and returned to her beloved fields of ice. Or I would step into a tableau straight out of a kitty calendar with the stray snoozing happily on her pillow. Instead I found myself in the middle of a merry- go-round. Not just the stray, but the stray and two other cats revolved in a perpetual motion machine of on-porch, off-porch pursuit and retreat. I couldn’t imagine how long this had been going on, but if the activity could be harnessed it had the potential of solving the energy crisis.

  I was still groggily attempting to process the idea of three cats on our porch (though seldom all three at the same time)—and I hadn’t even needed Jack’s high-tech video trapping gear to put them there—when Linda came in. “Saddleback!” she cried. “And who’s the other one?” According to Linda, the cat that she had named Saddleback for his distinctive fur pattern had been making appearances in our yard for the past several months in pursuit of Agnes. The second lothario was a strapping male tabby that we had never seen before. He paused momentarily, threatening to gum up the Tyrolean clockwork, lamenting loudly that any female would reject him.

  As our white-and-black stray slipped outdoors to the porch steps, the tabby hurried behind her with Saddleback in tow. She planted her toenails in the frozen ground, poised to race away across the yard, but zipped back onto the porch instead and hopped up onto her cardboard box. From the ramparts of the carton she defended her femininity, hissing at the tabby and then Saddleback when they padded back inside to flank her. Darting between them, she raced down the porch steps and halfway to the mailbox, spinning the wheel of kitty activity another full revolution.

  Then she arrowed back inside. I continued my imitation of a useless plank as Linda shot out her foot to dislodge the gallon jug of water that had been propping open the front door. It slammed in the faces of the males, who suddenly noticed our presence and remembered that as outdoor cats they were duty bound to shun us. They didn’t stick around long enough for me to pass along detailed directions to my sister’s house, but I pointed in her general direction as they trotted off.

  “Don’t tell her I sent you,” I called after them.

  THIRTEEN YEARS AGO on a frigid New Year’s Day, Agnes appeared in our backyard scavenging sunflower seeds that had fallen from our feeder. She didn’t zoom off when she saw my face. She all but leaped into my arms and commanded me to bring her indoors. Once inside she clung to my lap like a burr, conspicuously ignored our pet birds, and immediately mastered the litter box. It was clear that she wasn’t a feral cat. She was someone’s pet who had been dumped on our doorstep.

  And when I first met Bill Holm, he was sharing an apartment with a small, ferocious cat named Abby. As we listened to Harry Nilsson’s Aerial Pandemonium Ballet on Bill’s appallingly bad record player, Abby emerged from beneath the sofa to sink her toenails into my ankle or her teeth into Bill’s dangling hand. A few days later, as Bill was watching The Joker’s Wild on his unspeakably terrible black-and-white TV, she jumped up and clawed his eye, sending him to the emergency room with a scratched cornea. It was clear that she wasn’t a house pet. She was a feral cat who had been dumped on him by a friend.

  Our stray was neither house cat nor feral cat. She was somewhere between the two, as I learned when I tried approaching her later that morning. “You’d better stay in here,” I said to Linda at the living room threshold, probably echoing my brother-in-law’s words minutes before he bought a DVD player for his porch. “She seems to trust me, but she doesn’t know you yet,” I added, ignoring that Linda had been the cat’s original object of affection.

  I extended a hand to the stray as I stepped onto the porch. Although she didn’t try to claw a tunnel through the wall as a feral cat might have done, she vaulted up onto the farthest windowsill and eyed me warily. An overloaded coatrack, an unused exercise bike in front of it, Linda’s boulder collection, and a space heater in front of that kept my glad-handing at arm’s length. I ducked out the front door and around the side of the porch to the window, huffing in the cold as I greeted her with my mildest, “Hi, honey.” The sill turned catless. I realized that I was no more appealing than Saddleback.

  I tried another tactic and dropped a handful of kibbles in her bowl. She made a beeline for my ankle, raised her heart-shaped face to mine, and delayed attacking the food until I leaned down to pet her. When she had finished eating, she squeaked, clearly requesting that I replace the water jug. And as soon as I propped the door open, she skittered outside, raced around the corner of the house, and disappeared. I reached the dining room window just in time to watch a gray smudge rocketing down our neighbor’s driveway and winking out as it approached the riverbank.

  I should have been pleased; I didn’t want to live like Joan and Jack. Instead, I felt let down.

  “That’s the last we’ll see of her,” I said.

  With each visit to the window my longing for her grew. Few cuckoo clocks could equal my vigilance. Yet just before evening I stepped out to replenish Lucy’s kibbles and there was Frannie curled up on top of her cardboard box. Frannie. The name just then had popped into my head and suited her perfectly, pending spousal approval. Though I had wanted her to return with all of my heart, now that she was here my heart muttered second thoughts. But I had named her and that meant she belonged to us—if she was capable of belonging to anyone.

  THE NEXT AFTERNOON Linda called from the basement and told me to come see the unusual ducks on the river. I threw on my coat, slung my binoculars around my neck, and Agnes trotted out the basement door behind me.

  The gloriousness of the day startled me. Bright blue sky pressed down on the bare trees, dislodging tufts of snow and squeezing drops from icicles. “See them?” asked Linda. I couldn’t figure out what she meant. We were still a good three hundred feet from the Grand River, shrouded by branches, shrubs, and fog gathering on my eyeglasses until I unwound the scarf from my nose. “Those flashes of light,” she said.

  Following the blur of her waggling finger I picked out a few pulsating specks on the ribbon of water.

  “I don’t see how those could be ducks.” I hurried anyway, looping my arm through hers and cracking ice beneath our feet as we scurried down the driveway. Agnes arched her body in pursuit of us. Scouring the snowy ground, she ran directly for us then veered off in an arc of disinterest that purported to put her in our vicinity by happenstance.

  As we drew past the neighbor’s house, Agnes abandoned her pretended fascination with a buried jar lid as an excuse to gallop toward us again, this time rubbing against my boot as she fell in at my side. “See them?” Linda asked. I nodded, hanging back behind the willows. The sun glinted off the white sides of five ducks in the unfrozen center of the river as if from polished metal. Some of the ducks faced the current, some bobbled backward while I peered through my binoculars. “Buffleheads!” I called out—black-headed ducks with a cone-shaped white patch on the head—a new bird species for our woods and a welcome alternative to Moobie’s funnel. Hearing their name, the ducks pulled a Rumpelstiltskin, suddenly flying off.

  Linda hadn’t gotten a decent look. I had spoiled the moment by trying to get too close. But she was happy that I was happy, and Agnes was even happier as she lingered and raced, lingered and raced, following us back home to the basement door. The only thing that pleased her more than being outdoors was being outdoors and showing off for us. Spring was still a dim light in the distance, but it had inched close enough to cause winter to momentarily relent. Agnes breathed in the coming change of season and liked what she smelled outdoors.

  Inside was a different matter. Her good mood petered out after she trotted up into the living room and pressed her nose into the crack beneath the door to the porch. She caught the scent of the new cat and growled in trepidation.

  “I know just how you feel,” I said.<
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  Chapter 7

  The Cat You Can’t Do Anything With

  Frannie was only with us for forty-eight hours before Linda and I had our first disagreement about her. It began with a shriek from the kitchen as a mouse launched itself at Linda from the cupboard under the sink. I made the mistake of laughing and as a result was immediately assigned an activity.

  “We need to get the live trap fixed,” Linda said.

  I fished it out of a drawer. “An elephant stomped on it.” I waggled the metal door flap, which would only open about a quarter of an inch. “But if scallops invade, we’re ready for them.”

  The stomper wasn’t amused. “Then we need to get a new one. I’ll call Bonnie at the hardware store and have her hold one at the front counter.” Clearly I couldn’t be trusted to find a trap on my own.

  I tried to improve my standing by coming up with something better. Pointing at Frannie on the porch, I said, “There’s our solution.”

  “You mean our problem,” Linda said.

  “You’ve seen her outdoors. She’s a lean, mean killing machine.”

  “And we’re not letting her in the room with our birds.”

  “No, not right away,” I said, though she was looking domesticated to me already. “We can teach her how to act.”

  “Frannie?” Linda said. “A can’t isn’t like a dog. You can only teach a cat to do what it already wants to do, and some are worse than others.” Illustrating the point, Lucy plopped down to the floor and strode toward the litter box. Linda watched her like a hawk. I turned away.

  I had ever-increasing faith that Frannie would turn into a lap cat. But after just two days, she had become a porch barnacle, which was the last thing that I would have expected. I figured that she would use her carton as a field office for launching raids upon the squirrels. But she clung to the pillow on her box through high and low tide alike, detaching herself mainly to crunch kibbles from her bowl. Just when I started worrying that she and Lucy had somehow traded bodies, I realized that Saddleback and the heartbroken tabby had been staking out our house. I saw the pair lurking behind our monster pine, and after dark the tabby sidled onto the outside steps to serenade Frannie.