by Lissa Warren
Other than routine checkups, our trips to the vet in subsequent years were for minor things: an eye infection that cleared up when we sprinkled a little L-Lysine onto her food; a bout of feline acne on her chin that went away in a week with the help of a few Oxy pads—which, make no mistake, she did not care for. On the whole she was a very healthy cat, and we saw to it that she led a happy life.
But as kittenhood transitioned into cathood and Ting became the cat with the pistachio eyes, Dad’s health started to decline. His heart couldn’t compensate for the bypass grafts that hadn’t taken—couldn’t build enough new pathways to deliver the blood and oxygen he needed. He had a stent put in, and it helped—for a time. Mom retired to be home with him.
It was me, not Mom, who’d been home alone with Dad the first time he’d had an angina attack. We were living in Cleveland then, and I must have been nine or ten. It was a crisp fall Saturday, and we were doing what we normally did at that time of year—sitting on the floor of the family room, watching the Michigan game while snacking on Little Caesars breadsticks and dipping sauce, and playing with Star Wars figures.
“Who’s this green one?” Dad asked.
“Greedo,” I said.
“Who’s this fat one on the throne?”
“Jabba. He’s atrocious.”
It went on like that until late in the fourth quarter when the game got good, at which time I knew better than to try to engage my father in anything remotely resembling conversation.
The Wolverines were down by three and trying to get within field-goal range when my father dragged himself onto the couch. The rest of what happened comes to me in snatches—fragments due to the passage of time, or the fear I felt, or the episodic nature of childhood memory. What I recall is that his white Hanes V-neck was soaked with sweat, which was also pouring off his forehead. Me running to the kitchen to get him paper towel. Him telling me to dial Mom at work, then telling me to hang up on her and dial 911. Him saying I should unlock the front door and put Cinnamon in the bedroom. Him waving to me as the ambulance pulled away.
But now it would be Mom who’d be home with Dad if something bad were to happen. Mom and Ting, that is. Dad and Ting had developed a close bond, settling into a daily routine that involved a lot of napping, for both of them. So that he could see her as he fell asleep and as he woke, and because he knew how much she loved heights, he positioned Ting’s kitty bed on top of the armoire directly across from their bed. Of course, she needed a way to get up there—the armoire was as tall as I was—so Mom and I helped Dad construct an elaborate “stairway to the stars” that included a scratching post atop two end tables, bookended for stability by a coffee table and a TV stand. The cleaning ladies must have thought we were nuts, but Ting was happy up there, so we were. Always an F. Scott Fitzgerald fan, Dad started referring to her as “the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg.”
According to a ten-year study conducted by the Stroke Center at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, cats improve the health of cardiac patients. Of the more than four thousand participants in the study, those with cats showed a 30 percent lower risk of death from heart attack than those without. So said the senior author of the study, who, it should be noted, had a cat named Ninja. Mom and I had no doubt that Ting provided health benefits to Dad—that petting her, or perhaps her mere presence, lowered his stress level, and probably his heart rate and blood pressure as well. We liked to think that the families of the other 82 million pet cats in the United States were benefiting similarly.
In addition to having a calming effect on Dad, Ting was his main source of fun. Mom and Dad’s bedroom floor was strewn with cat toys—a catnip-filled lobster Dad dubbed “Larry,” a little felt ball with a tiny bell inside, various and sundry cotton-covered mice, a ladybug that squeaked when you poked it. We frequently entered the room to find him lying on the floor by the bed (no easy task for him to get down there), running his hand beneath the dust ruffle to locate Ting’s newest favorite. Every friend or relative who called to see how he was doing got a ten-minute recap of Ting’s latest antics. So did the tax guy, the handyman, the snowplow guy, and the guy who does our lawn. Anytime we couldn’t find her, all we had to do was go to wherever Dad was watching TV, ask if he’d seen Ting, and her little head would pop out from beneath the collar of his robe at the sound of her name. If left undisturbed, she’d sleep against his chest like that for hours.
All of us adored Ting, but there was no question whose cat she was.
Chapter Three
Dusk
Dawn follows Dawn, and Nights
grow old
and all the while this
curious cat …
—Oscar Wilde
Though he didn’t have a cat growing up, my father had always had a soft spot for them. So when I woke up from an after-school nap one early-fall Tuesday when I was eleven or twelve, I wasn’t entirely surprised to find him standing by our front window, watching a cat explore the pachysandra that encircled the giant pin oak in our front yard.
“She’s healthy,” he said, “not hungry. Hunting for sport, not food.”
“How can you tell?” I asked him.
“It’s in the way she moves.”
I stood there with him for a time, observing. He was right; her moves lacked urgency. She was beautiful, though—not exotic like our cat, sturdy to Cinnamon’s sleek, but a gorgeous striped tabby with a long, proud tail.
“Do you think she lives around here?”
“I do,” said Dad, “but she may not be a house cat. She might be from the farms.”
The next town over, Avon Lake, was rural, while ours, Bay Village, was suburban. Avon was where we got our eggs and our corn, our pumpkins and our berries. It was two blocks away from Nantucket Row, the street on which we lived—not far for a cat to wander, if a cat was so inclined.
Soon the tabby started to make her way along the row of yew shrubs that led to our front door. Dad went and opened it—just the main wooden part—and we stood and watched through the storm door, hoping the cat would come close enough for us to get a good look at her. A minute later, that’s exactly what she did.
There was nothing timid about her. She sauntered onto our front porch and came right up to the door, fogging the glass with her little cat breath. She was two feet away from where we were standing, but we stayed very still and she couldn’t see us. We had a good view of her, though. Her eyes were kiwi green, and they were impossibly, inexplicably lined, top and bottom, with a color best described as crème brûlée. She had no collar, but she didn’t look wild. Her fur wasn’t matted; she didn’t have scratches, or nicked ears, or sores. Like Dad had said from the get-go, healthy.
“Should we let her in?”
Dad paused a long time before answering. “I don’t think we should,” he said. “She might belong to someone.”
“Who would let her roam like this?” I started rattling off all the things that could harm her—cars, dogs, the neighbor boys with the BB guns.
“People raise cats different ways,” he said. “Not everyone has a fenced-in yard.”
“How could they not?” I asked him, puzzled.
“Some people can’t afford it,” he said. “Others don’t like to be contained.”
Neither reason made sense to me—or sense enough, at least. If you had a cat and you let it out, you should have a fence.
“But what if she’s hungry? And what if she doesn’t have somewhere to sleep? It gets cold at night now.”
He could see he wasn’t going to win this one, and truth be told, I’m not sure he wanted to.
“We’ll feed her and fix her a bed,” he said. “But we can’t let her in the house. She has to be free to go home if she wants, and if she has fleas and we let her in, Cinnamon could get them. You don’t want that, do you?”
He had me there.
The stranger cat was still at the door, so we backed away slowly and headed for the kitchen. Dad grabbed a pouch of Cinnamon’s Tender Vittle
s and an appetizer-size paper plate to put them on. I got a plastic cup and filled it with water. We carried them to the front door and, to our delight, the cat was still there.
“You go,” said Dad. “You’re less intimidating.”
She backed away when I opened the door, but only far enough to let me slip out. I put the water in the corner by the mailbox. Dad reached out and handed me the food, which I put down beside it. The cat watched me carefully the whole time—curious, not scared. She didn’t approach me, so I didn’t approach her, even though I wanted to pet her. I stepped back inside and closed the storm door. She went to the food and started eating, but not in a ravenous way. A treat had been offered and so she ate it, but this cat wasn’t starving.
Dad went and found a cardboard box and a couple of bath towels Mom wouldn’t miss. He pushed the flaps down into it, turned it on its side, and bunched up the towels to make a nice bed—one that the box’s true bottom would shelter from the wind. The cat was done eating by then and was busy grooming herself, so Dad slipped out and placed the box in the corner closest to the house, the open part facing the wall with just enough room for the cat to squeeze in.
From back inside he and I watched her as she sniffed the box and, after a few minutes, made her way into it and settled down for the night. It was almost dark by then.
Dad and I fed the cat like this for the next three weeks and, as far as we know, she slept on our porch each night. It was late October by then, and we knew that soon it would be too cold for her. Mom took her picture and made up a flier announcing that she had been “found.” I went with her to post it in the supermarket, the bowling alley, and the bank, the three highest-trafficked places in the town. She called all the local vets to see if anyone had reported a missing tabby. No one had, but she brought them flyers, too. We took out an ad in WestLife, our local paper. A week went by. No calls.
I started studying the weather reports in the Cleveland Plain Dealer religiously, and when I read that the temperature was going to dip into the 30s, I informed my parents—in that special ultimatum way that preteens always do—that if they didn’t let the cat come into the house, I was going to sleep on the porch beside her to keep her warm. I also informed them that her name was Dusk, because that’s what time it was when we found her, and that’s what time she always came back. I figured she’d be harder to leave in the cold if she was a cat with a name.
I needn’t have worried, though. Unbeknownst to me and Mom, Dad had already prepared a room for the cat—my old playroom, where Cinnamon never went. It was located at the top of the staircase that started right beside the front door. We could smuggle her up without Cinnamon seeing—without Cinnamon feeling threatened or betrayed. Dad had already put a litter box up there, and a cardboard box/bed like the one on the porch, so she’d understand that she slept here now. Dad said that his only concern was whether she’d let us pick her up and bring her in. None of us had even touched her.
Except, of course, all three of us had—when the other two weren’t looking. My father confessed to it first. He’d been petting her for weeks, ever since she had started brushing up against his legs when he went to change her water. I made my confession next: She really liked behind-the-ear scratches.
“Also her chin and neck,” said Mom, outing herself in the process. “But I always washed my hands right after—in the bathroom sink with soap.”
It was decided that Dad would do the honors. I would man the front door and Mom would man the door to the playroom while he scooped her up and carried her upstairs. Whatever fiasco each of us was envisioning didn’t come to pass. Dusk arrived around 6:30, and with it, Dusk the cat. By 7:00 she was catching sparrows in her sleep beneath our Ping-Pong table.
We knew we could love her, but we knew we couldn’t keep her—couldn’t give her the run of the house because of Cinnamon, couldn’t keep her upstairs like Emily Dickinson. It wouldn’t be fair to her. She deserved a home of her own, with a fenced-in yard where she’d be happy and safe.
Mom started talking her up at work and, within a week, had found her a family. Dad arranged not to be there when the people came to get her. The first time I kissed her was when I kissed her good-bye.
Chapter Four
Happy Holidays
A kitten is the delight of a household. All day long a comedy is played out by an incomparable actor.
—Champfleury
Mom is Catholic and Dad is Jewish, so in our house we celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah. My whole childhood, both of my parents went out of their way to make sure I was exposed to both religions—and, because they loved and supported each other, it was usually Mom signing me up for JCC summer camp and Dad driving me to CCD classes.
Although it lasts for eight nights, Hanukkah is always simple: We light the menorah (Dad strikes the match; I hold the candle; Mom takes it from me and places it), exchange small gifts, and eat something vaguely Jewish, such as brisket or stuffed cabbage that Mom and I have made using a recipe we got from Aunt Harriet, Dad’s sister. No special music, no silly outfits, no decorations. Easy peasy, in and out. Nice, but nondisruptive.
And then there’s Christmas.
The best word to describe Christmas in the Warren house is “overkill.” We actually don’t go crazy on presents—maybe four or five gifts each—but we’re over the top on everything else.
It begins with cookie madness. We bake raisin-topped molasses thumbprints, seven-layer bars with extra coconut, peanut butter blossoms with Hershey’s kisses, gingerbread men with homemade frosting, and, of course, sugar cookies in the shape of candy canes, bells, reindeer, Santas, snowmen, trumpeting angels, stars, ornaments, and Christmas trees—all of which we top with red, white, and green sprinkles or (for the bells, stars, and angels) those little edible silver-colored balls that kind of hurt your teeth.
Next comes Dad’s favorite, the icebox cake, which consists of two rows of dark brown Famous Chocolate Wafer cookies, each cookie cemented to the next with a thick layer of fresh whipped cream, to which we’ve added vanilla. We secure the two rows to each other with a generous coating of more whipped cream. We chill it overnight, then cut it on the diagonal. Voilà—zebra cake.
Then it’s on to the rum cake, with an emphasis on the rum. We make at least a dozen each year, keeping a couple for ourselves and gifting the rest to neighbors, colleagues, and unsuspecting friends. In theory, the rum—the main component of the icing that’s drizzled across the top—burns off while we mix it in the saucepan, but we use so much (double what the recipe requires) that the cakes can pack a punch. Plus, we poke holes in the cake and pour the icing into them, upping the taste as well as the alcohol content.
To our credit, we’ve resisted the urge to dress Ting up in festive outfits (though a fuzzy pair of reindeer antlers once spoke to us quite loudly). This does not mean, however, that she’s not a part of Christmas in other ways. In fact, Ting does her very best to ruin Christmas every year. Dad says it’s because she’s Jewish, and he sticks to his guns even when I remind him that Judaism is matrilineal.
Our first Christmas with Ting, we made the mistake of decorating the boxes with curling ribbon. Apparently it too-closely resembled the pigtail pipe cleaners she plays with. She shredded them—all of them—before we could stop her, tearing much of the wrapping paper in the process.
A few of the presents were in gift bags, but even they weren’t spared. It turns out that Ting also liked tissue paper. More accurately, Ting liked licking tissue paper. Unfortunately, we didn’t notice this until Christmas morning, when we doled out spitball-covered gifts.
Mom always decorated the mantel in the living room with little china figurines of Christmas mice that we’d bought for her at the Hallmark store over the years. Her collection boasted about two dozen of them, including mouse nibbling giant peppermint, mother and father mice decorating tree, mouse on ice skates, mouse balancing on snowflake, tobogganing mice, Santa Mouse and, the coup de grâce, mouse in a manger. And all of them g
ot displayed beneath an original Lapayese del Rio oil-on-canvas abstract still life that Mom and Dad had gotten in Madrid on their honeymoon. It was a crazy juxtaposition of kitsch and high art, which was kind of why we loved it.
When Mom arranged the mice on the mantel, we always tried to make a thing of it. Votive candles were lit. Bows made of red and green plaid were tied to every stationary object, especially our myriad animal statues—from the ceramic zebra by the TV, to the ceramic giraffe beside the old butter churn, to the metal rhinoceros on top of the antique smoking cabinet. Christmas music—namely, the “album” my high school choir put out, complete with the usual suspects, “O Holy Night” and “The Little Drummer Boy”—was played, and rum and Cokes were consumed (assuming there was any rum left after making the cakes).
When Mom was done decorating the mantel that first Christmas with Ting, I made the mistake of holding her up to have a look. At the time she showed little interest—so little, in fact, that Mom was offended. But apparently Ting was just playing it cool. Later that night, for whatever reason, Ting decided she wanted to check it out in earnest. It wasn’t easy. To get to the mantel, she had to jump from the floor to the armchair to the ledge of the bay window to the TV, and then a good three feet to the mantel. And the mantel itself was very narrow. Unfortunately, Ting was very nimble.
In Ting’s defense, I don’t think she recognized the figurines as being mice, per se. She did, however, recognize them as being loads of fun to bat off the mantel one by one. We heard the crashing from upstairs, but in our rum-soaked state attributed the sound to icicles falling off the roof. “Oh, that’s lovely,” Mom had said. “Tinkle, tinkle, tinkle.”
It was the next morning before we saw the mass grave of mice strewn across our living-room floor.