The Cat That God Sent

by Jim Kraus

  “Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe if I had faith like you did, then it would be easier. I envy you, you know? God showed you a path and all you have to do is follow it. I would really like that. To be like you. You have a church and a job and a cat. I don’t have any of that. I guess I’m a little jealous.”

  “Tassy, you have nothing to be jealous of. Really. You can find the way. You just have to have . . .”

  “Faith? Hope? Pastor Jake—that’s all I had when I left home. And now where am I? Broke and lost and . . .”

  They both stopped talking. Petey looked first at Tassy, as if urging her to continue, to tell the truth, to get out whatever secret she was hiding. Then he looked at Jake the same way. But neither would speak. Both simply stared at the fast-moving water, filled with sediment, making the bottom of the river a mystery.

  Emma picked up the phone a dozen times and almost dialed the number once. Then she laid it back down.

  No, I can’t do this. What would I say? Would she even tell me about Jake? If it were me—would I?

  “Winston, what would you do?”

  Winston didn’t answer. He lay in the middle of the hallway and snored noisily.

  Emma stared at the phone.

  Then she picked it up and began to tap in numbers.

  “So, Eleanor, what did you think of the new guy? Besides the cat, that is. Stupid animal. We’re going to be the laughing stock around here. A pastor with a cat. That’s what they’re going to call us—the Cat Church.”

  Eleanor carried a pitcher of iced tea out to the patio and set it down carefully onto the metal table with matching metal chairs. The style would be considered retro in most settings, but these were original metal-tubed chairs from 1956. Vern religiously stored them in the garage each winter and cleaned them every spring, scraping off any rust and repainting the rusted areas with a coating of rustproof paint. They were now multicolored, but solid.

  “I liked the cat being there. Did you see Irene Lindquist there? She said she would never come to a church ever again.”

  “She just came to laugh at the cat.”

  “So? She’s at church. And she heard a good sermon. Maybe that’s the way God works.”

  “With a cat?” Vern said, swatting away the idea like a pesky gnat. “God uses cats, now, does he?” He took a long swallow of tea. “Not enough sugar in this tea. Or lemon.”

  “Next time, fix it yourself, you old goat.”

  Eleanor had changed from her Sunday dress to an old housecoat. Vern didn’t like her to wear a housecoat outside. “Looks like pajamas,” he’d barked.

  “It’s just like a dress, that’s all—but more comfortable,” Eleanor had barked back.

  They had had this discussion for more than twenty years and had not yet resolved the issue.

  “Anyhow, I liked them both—the cat and the pastor. And besides Irene, I noticed a few other faces I haven’t seen in years. Maybe the cat is a good thing.”

  “Over my dead body,” Vern said. “No church I go to will start featuring a cat. Next thing you know, he’ll want to have hootchie-cootchie dancers up front. That’ll draw them in. What would you think about that?”

  Eleanor picked up some grapes she had bought on sale at the Jubilee Foods in town.

  “A cat is not a hootchie-cootchie dancer, Vern. And besides,” she said as she chewed, “there’s not enough room on the platform for hootchie-cootchie dancers. Maybe we could have one. What’s one hootchie-cootchie called? Just a hootchie?”

  Eleanor smiled to herself, knowing Vern would never find that amusing. She was right. He didn’t.

  “Well, he didn’t talk enough about sin,” Vern said with a scowl. “Needs to talk more about sin. That’s what we need. Sin talk. Maybe that’ll get a revival going.”

  Eleanor sighed.

  “Sure, Vern. Let’s talk more about sin. That will draw in the crowds.”

  “Worked in the old days. Big tent meetings. All they talked about was sin.”

  Eleanor was about to say, “And when was the last tent meeting in Coudersport?” but didn’t. The afternoon was much too pleasant to spend arguing.

  “Yes, Vern,” she said quietly. “A big tent. That would do it. Crowds would come to a big tent.”

  Vern responded by smiling, staring at the apple tree in the backyard, and wondering when it would be the time to spray it for bugs. He enjoyed spraying things for bugs.

  “NO. THE CAT WAS THERE. WITH THE PASTOR! HE CAME IN THROUGH THE FRONT DOOR.”

  Irene lowered herself into her plaid La-Z-Boy and raised the footrest as she listened to her mother’s response. She wondered if she could teach her mother how to use e-mail. That would be so much easier and less taxing. A five-minute phone call, filled with shouting, wore Irene out.

  For her first church service in decades (other than the service from the Vatican she watched on TV on Christmas Eve) this one wasn’t all that bad. She had actually listened to the sermon, mostly, and had kept her eye on the cat that was paying attention to the pastor.

  Verna’s organ playing hadn’t improved in the past years, but they had sung two hymns that she remembered from her childhood, and each brought back a tender memory of her father singing them wildly off key. Irene had managed to choke out most of the words.

  “I LIKED IT. THE PASTOR IS A GOOD GUY. NO. NOT GOOD-BYE. A GOOD GUY.”

  And with that her mother hung up and Irene dropped the phone, nearly exhausted.

  Maybe I’ll go next week. Maybe. If the cat goes.

  “Well,” Big Dave said, smiling, “didya like it?”

  Big Dave was still in his church clothes—a blue work shirt with a tie and newer jeans.

  Carl swirled the coffee in his plastic cup. He was on his way home and stopped in after the service.

  “Wasn’t bad. The cat was pretty funny. Like he was trained to do that or something.”

  “Nope. Just a stray. He showed up the same day as the pastor. He came in here with him.”

  “Well, I gotta say I don’t like sitting still for an hour like that, but it wasn’t bad. Your new guy is okay. He didn’t yell at all. And no lightning strike, either.”

  “You know, I did check the Weather Channel before I came. Just to be on the safe side.”

  It will be an answering machine. I’ll just hear her voice and then I’ll hang up. No harm in that, right?

  Emma dialed half the numbers and hung up eleven times, stopping and staring at the phone, debating, and then on the twelfth attempt, she dialed all the numbers and let it actually connect and ring.

  And no one answers a business line on a Sunday afternoon.

  It rang once, twice, then the sound of a connection.

  “Hello, this is Barbara Ann Bentley. May I help you?”

  Good grief! She actually answered the phone! Who does that?

  “Umm . . . uhh . . . Hello,” Emma’s heart raced.

  “Hello. Can I help you? This is Barbara Ann Bentley, of Bentley Pageant Consultants.”

  Get a hold of yourself, Emma. You’ve operated on horses and wolves. You’ve held the insides of animals in your hands. You can talk to a pretty woman. Talk!

  “Umm . . . hello, Barbara Ann, this is Emma Grainger. You don’t know me . . . but we have a mutual friend. I think he’s a mutual friend.”

  Barbara Ann was nothing if not pert, chipper, and super-polite and positive.

  “And who might that be, Ms. Grainger?”

  Neither Tassy nor Jake went further with the truth than they already had, much to Petey’s dismay. He chirped, cried, churred, and meowed a hundred ways to Sunday, but neither of them continued to talk.

  Jake thought Petey had seen some sort of larger animal—like a fox or a coyote—and was trying to warn them.

  Tassy stood up hearing the word coyote.

  “Do they eat people?” she asked, pivoting around, trying to locate the telltale movement of brush that would indicate a predator lurking nearby.

  “No,” Jake said, reassuring her. “T
hey are more afraid of us than vice versa.”

  “I wouldn’t bet on that. I’ve seen movies where a pack of wild dogs . . . or maybe it was wolves . . . chase these guys down and pick them off one by one. They’re big animals with lots of teeth.”

  “I don’t think we have any wolf packs in Coudersport, Tassy.”

  “Are you sure? This is like way out in the woods. I grew up in Philadelphia. This is like the jungle in comparison.”

  Jake could tell that she was more than a little frightened.

  “You want to go back?”

  “Yes. I do.”

  Petey kept hopping and chirping, as if he was trying to get them to stop walking and keep talking, but to no avail.

  “Okay. Let’s walk back. Petey can guard us, okay?”

  Tassy offered a nervous giggle. “He wouldn’t be any good at protecting me. They would eat him up in a minute. A wolf would, anyhow.”

  Petey offered one more meow, long and drawn out, as if expressing his resentment at being called an ineffectual guardian.

  If I am going to be a snoop, might as well be honest.

  “Jake Wilkerson.”

  “Jake Wilkerson?”

  Have I made a mistake? This isn’t the same Barbara Ann? This is sooo embarrassing.

  “Yes. Jake Wilkerson. He’s a new pastor up here in Coudersport. I thought you knew him when he was in Butler. I must be mistaken. So sorry to have bothered you on a Sunday.”

  Barbara Ann remained very perky. “Oh, it’s no bother. I often answer the phone myself on Sunday. A lot of pageants are held on Sunday afternoon. The smaller ones. Big ones are Saturday evening. But I have some up-and-coming clients. Sometimes they are in a crisis and need some advice. Like what color eye shadow goes with a magenta gown they have to wear because their original choice got lost or torn or something. Or do I really need double-faced tape if I’m not very big . . . you know . . . up there. I always had to use it. You know what I mean?”

  Emma thought she sort of knew what Barbara Ann meant, so she agreed. “I do. I guess.”

  “Jake Wilkerson. So you know Jake. Are you two dating or something?”

  What answer does she want? I think she would rather have him brokenhearted and never dating again. After her, who could come close?

  “No. He’s new in town. And he brought his cat into my office. I’m a veterinarian.”

  “A vet? I always wanted to be vet. I would love to take care of bunnies and kitties. But I found out there is a lot of math. I’m not real good at math.”

  “Well, there is not as much as you might think. You could still do it, I bet. Get a math tutor if you have a hard time with it. A lot of people in my class did.”

  “Really?” Barbara Ann said, brightening. “Wow. Maybe I could. Could I do this pageant consulting while I went to vet school? I really like helping girls be beautiful and win prizes and stuff.”

  “Well, I don’t see why not,” Emma replied. “Anything is possible.”

  Emma heard an atonal hum, then Barbara Ann said, “Jake Wilkerson. Yes, Ms. Grainger. I know Jake. Very well.”

  Tassy retreated into the RV, waved good-bye to Jake and Petey, and closed the door behind her. Jake heard the lock bolt securely.

  Jake felt a little guilty about scaring Tassy, but he really thought Petey might have seen or smelled a coyote. Why else would the cat be making all that racket.

  The two of them went into the parsonage. After preaching, even though it was only a single sermon, Jake went into what he called his “shut-down” mode. He put a disc in his stereo—some soft jazz music. He had a dozen such discs and he could never really tell them apart. He switched on the TV, found a basketball game between two teams he did not care much about, put it on mute, and laid down on the couch, with a scrunched-up pillow under his head. He would spend the next few hours there, alternating between watching and listening and napping. Such remains of a Sunday afternoon were the most delicious times of the week.

  Petey sat in the middle of the room, keeping an eye on Jake, and watched him fall asleep.

  So that’s all he’s going to do this afternoon? Petey thought. I knew that being able to talk would come in handy sometimes. Like today by the river. They both need to open up. They should have figured out what I was trying to say. I made it as obvious as the noses on their faces.

  Petey sniffed loudly, licked his paw a bit, wiped off his face—both sides—and sauntered to his favorite chair.

  If he can sleep, so can I.

  In his thoughts, Petey smiled.

  Jake is entitled to take a nap once in a while.

  He circled the chair cushion several times until he found the most perfect spot in which to lie.

  I shouldn’t be hard on them. I don’t like to think about my past either. I try not to think about it. I don’t know why those humans acted like they did. Hurtful. And those people seemed like normal humans. But . . . God saved me from that, didn’t he?

  He lay his head down and closed his eyes.

  Maybe I’ll think about that some other time. Maybe.

  “You do?” Emma replied. “Did you go to his church?”

  “Yes. But it wasn’t his church. He was an associate there. That’s all. Not a senior anything.”

  Emma wanted to come out bluntly and ask the questions she really wanted answered, but was pretty sure that blunt would not work with Barbara Ann.

  “So the two of you went to the same church.”

  “We did. Or he did. I was there first. My uncle—he’s the senior pastor there. Has been there for years and years.”

  “Is it a big church? The church Jake is at now is really sort of tiny.”

  Emma thought she heard more than a note of smugness in Barbara Ann’s reply, “I knew it. He didn’t tell anyone where it was. I just knew it would be tiny. I figured the church would be a little desperate. And yes, my uncle’s church is big. It is the biggest church in Butler. And has been the biggest for years and years.”

  “Barbara Ann, I hope you don’t mind me being direct. But if you would, maybe you could tell me about the particulars. You know—what happened. Girl-to-girl, you know?”

  Emma heard a long sigh.

  “I will, Ms. Grainger. As a warning. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “Jake and I dated for like forever. A year, I think. We even talked about getting engaged. Just talked about it. That’s all.”

  “This was while he was on staff?” Emma wasn’t sure why she was so intently curious, but she was, and having found a person willing to offer an explanation, she was determined not to let it go to waste.

  “Yep. My uncle liked him at first. I did, too. Jake is a nice guy. Really he is.”

  “Did he do something bad? What?”

  Another deep breath and a sigh.

  “Not bad in a bad way. But bad enough. Bad for a pastor. We were taking this thing—a seminar or whatever—that my uncle taught for couples, on how to talk about stuff, how to be honest—all that sort of stuff.”

  “Sure, like premarital counseling.”

  “Except that we were definitely not premarital. We were dating, that’s all. My uncle said it would be a fun thing to do as a couple. So we went. One of the exercises was to be totally honest about something we had hidden inside of us. I told him—and I am kind of embarrassed even now—that I used to touch up my hair color in high school. Not now. It’s totally blonde all by itself now.”

  “Your picture on your website looks very pretty, Barbara Ann. Very pretty.”

  Emma could tell that Barbara was beaming.

  “Why, thank you, Ms. Grainger. That’s very kind of you. Anyhow, when it was Jake’s turn, he started telling me some really disturbing stuff.”

  “Disturbing?” Emma braced herself.

  “Yes. Disturbing. He told me he was having doubts about being a pastor. He even admitted to having doubts about God and faith—like maybe God wasn’t always there helping us. Like maybe he’s just watching and not saving us and
doing good stuff for us.”

  “Really?” Emma replied, hoping that she sounded as shocked as Barbara Ann sounded, all the while thinking that such feelings of doubt sounded pretty normal to her.

  “Yes. For a pastor to say that—that’s just not right. So I told my uncle and my uncle confronted him and asked if it were true and Jake had to say it was and then my uncle had to fire him. He couldn’t have a pastor who didn’t believe in God.”

  “Did Jake really say he didn’t believe in God?”

  “Not exactly. But close enough. If you think God is just watching—that’s like not believing in him.”

  “Wow,” Emma replied, not really meaning she was surprised or shocked, but that she was just amazed at the whole incident.

  “Wow, exactly. So I had to tell Jake that if he wasn’t going to be a pastor, we weren’t going to be a couple. I intend on marrying someone who can be the pastor of a church someday. That’s important to me. I have an image to be concerned about. I couldn’t go around dating an atheist, could I? Who would use a half-atheist beauty pageant consultant?”

  “Nobody?”

  “Exactly.”

  Emma inhaled deeply this time. After a moment, Barbara Ann posed a question. “You said Jake has a cat?”

  “I did. Petey. A very special cat, if you ask me.”

  “Now, that is amazing,” Barbara Ann said. “Him having a cat. I take it his mother doesn’t know about it.”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe.”

  “She doesn’t, Ms. Grainger. I am sure of that. She is a very controlling person. I am sure she would not go for him having a cat. Not at all. It’s a good thing she lives all the way in Meadville. If she lived close . . . well, I am not sure what would have happened.”

  “Barbara Ann, I have to thank you so much for being honest with me. This explains a lot.”

  “So, you asked me for the truth—girl-to-girl. Now it’s your turn to tell me the truth, Ms. Grainger: Are you two dating? Girl-to-girl.”