The Old Cat and the Kitten

by Mary E. Little

  “We had cats—sometimes lots of cats, and kittens. They lived out in back, in the barn, and they were wild. Sometimes, when one of the old cats had kittens, I’d get to feed them, but mostly they fed themselves. Sometimes I’d pick one out for my own special pet, but my mom never let me bring it in the house, and it would run wild, then, with the rest. Oh, I used to want one so bad, just my own kitten to take care of and play with, but Mom never let me.”

  She stopped, and she and Joel looked deeply at each other. He said nothing. Then she went on.

  “Once I tried to pick one up too soon after it was born, and the old mamma cat jumped up and scratched and bit me. I was a bloody mess and screaming my head off, and Mom came running out and carried me inside. She put some stuff on my bites and scratches that hurt something awful and made them bleed a lot more. But she was mad. ‘Don’t you ever mess around with cats again, you hear me?’ she yelled. ‘Now you see what they like. They cute and pretty when they little, but they grow up—kittens gets to be cats, and cats is mean and vicious. All they good for is to keep the place clean of rats and mice.’”

  She pulled on her cigarette again. Joel still said nothing.

  “We moved back to the city soon after that. One of the kids in my class at school had a cat, and I used to go to her house and play with it. It was black, with white around its face and on its chest and paws. It was sweet and gentle and when it had kittens there was one just like it, and the girl said I could have it. I begged and begged, but Mom wouldn’t let me. I never had a pet of my own.”

  “You got one now, Mom. You got a kitten if you want it.”

  She pulled her feet down off the chair and stood up.

  “You kidding?” she said, grinding out her cigarette in the sink. “That poor thing won’t last a week. Anyway, you wouldn’t want to risk its life with them two, now would you?” She jerked her head in the direction of the little bedroom.

  “Well—we’d sure have to watch them, make sure—but Mom.” He got up and stood beside his mother at the sink. “It might not be such a bad idea. They got to learn. Kids ought to learn how to treat little things, ’specially if they’s helpless. They got to learn that animals feel, same as they do. And if you love them they’ll love you back.” He followed her into the living room and switched on the television, careful to turn down the volume.

  “Those two,” he went on. “They sure a awful nuisance, but they ain’t mean. They could learn—it might be good for them.”

  “I’m too tired—let’s get ready for bed—we’ll talk about it tomorrow.”

  Joel said no more and switched off the television, but he smiled to himself as he made up his bed on the sofa. His alarm clock was set as usual for quarter past six. He reset it for midnight.

  After his mother went to her room, he went back into the kitchen. He poured milk from the refrigerator into a small glass jar and found a chipped saucer containing a soap pad under the sink. He washed the saucer out and dried it and set it beside the glass jar, then he stopped with his hand on the refrigerator door. What the heck—he’d lined up a job for Saturday mornings when Louella, the teen-ager next door, baby-sat for them. (He was tall for his age; when he told the manager he was thirteen going on fourteen he got the job. That was only a part-lie; after all, he would be thirteen going on fourteen in ten month’s time.) So he could pay.

  He took out an egg and broke the yolk into the milk, then he stirred it, screwed the cover on the jar and shook it. He climbed up on a chair and searched the top shelf of the pantry cupboard. Sure enough, he found several little jars of baby food, saved for use if one of the children was sick. There was applesauce, spinach—not much good for cats—but behind these were several jars each of lamb and turkey and beef and liver and egg yolk. He brought some of these down within easy reach, then he turned off the light and went back to the living room. He took off his shoes, but lay down, still dressed, on the sofa, arms crossed over his chest. It was not until some time later that he turned over on his stomach and finally went to sleep.

  HE WONDERED WHERE OLD CAT HAD TAKEN the kitten. At midnight the back yard was bright with moonlight, but he could not find them anywhere. He went to the side of the garage and began to call, softly, so as not to wake anyone in the house.

  “Come on, Old Cat—come get your dinner, Old Cat, Old Cat. Come on, Old Cat, come on.”

  In the alley he went toward the roses, and with his foot he carefully moved the heavy clusters, which reached the ground, but there was no cat or kitten underneath.

  Disappointed and puzzled, not knowing what to do or where else to look, he turned back the way he had come. As he reached the corner of the garage, Old Cat came toward him from the driveway.

  “Where you been, Old Cat? Where you got that kitten? What you done with her, hey?” His hands were too full to stroke Old Cat as he rubbed around Joel’s ankles. “Don’t you trip me, Old Cat. Show me where that kitten is. She got to eat some more. Come on, show me. Show me, Old Cat.”

  He had to step slowly because Old Cat kept rubbing around his ankles, making walking difficult. When he reached the driveway, Joel set the things down and squatted, stroking Old Cat.

  “What you done with that kitten, Old Cat? Where is she, huh? Where . . .”

  From somewhere within the garage came the sad, sharp cry of the kitten.

  Joel walked to the back of the garage to where the sideboard stood below the little window. There was just enough room underneath it for the piece of old blanket, pulled down from the place where the boy had so carefully laid it for Old Cat. It made a soft bed for the kitten, who lay there now, awake and hungry.

  “You old comedian, you!” Joel said with affection. “You wouldn’t stay where I fixed it all up for you—you had to go pull it down so the kitten—”

  He suddenly thought of something else. While the kitten was lapping up the egg and milk, he searched the garage until he found a large tin cookie box containing odds and ends, mostly small, broken parts of things. He removed the lid, which was about three-quarters of an inch deep, and carried it out to the back yard where he scooped up enough sand from the Fiends’ ­sandpile to fill it, then he took it back and set it beside the kitten’s nest in the garage. When the kitten had finished eating, he would set her in it and hope she’d learn what it was for.

  But here Old Cat took over.

  That lid was much too small for Old Cat to ­use, and his efforts to fit on it, turning and scratching and trying to make himself small enough to keep his hindquarters inside, were marvelous to see. He worked very hard and finally managed to squat so that some of his excretion went into the lid. He was so pleased and satisfied with himself that he scratched and kicked most of the sand out of the lid, and Joel had to sweep it up and put it back into the tiny litter box.

  Thinking about Old Cat, Joel kept awake, laughing, long after he got back to his sofa, and the next morning it was difficult for him to describe it all to his mother.

  “You never seen anything so funny, Mom,” he sputtered. “He’d turn and squat and then decide he was going to miss, then he’d turn and squat again. And the funny thing, Mom—the funny thing, I don’t think he really had to go at all. I think he was just trying to get it ready for the kitten.”

  “Did it work?” she asked. “Did the kitten use it when you put her in?”

  “I didn’t put her in, Mom—he did. Old Cat shoved her into the box and wouldn’t let her out ’til she did something. And you know what, Mom? I think that shows that somebody showed him a litter box once. Like I said—pro’bly when he was little and cute somebody took care of him. And then for some reason they—they abandoned him.”

  He took hold of his mother’s arm.

  “Mom, you got to promise me—promise me, Mom, you won’t ever abandon that little kitten—even when she grows up.”

  “Grows up? We don’t even know if she’s gonna make it ’til bedtim
e.”

  “Yes, she is. She’s gonna make it all right—you should see her eat. She’s gonna be all right, Mom. Promise me—please.”

  She didn’t answer him immediately. It was true that if she promised anything, she kept her promise. Therefore, she never made a promise until she was sure of keeping it.

  “We’ll see,” was all she said. Then “Come on, now, help me get the Fiends ready for nursery school.”

  PART THREE

  The Boy

  Chapter One

  ONCE THE RAINY SEASON WAS PAST, summer moved in early. The air was delicious with the fragrance of roses and honeysuckle and fresh-cut grass, and the many small sweet blossoms of roadsides and flowerbeds. Summer cottages were being opened and aired and readied for long weekends and vacations. The lake now sparkled with sailboats and buzzed with motorboats; and there were some eager swimmers already diving into its crisp waters, Joel among them.

  In his free time, Joel spent the sunny hours with his friends, fishing, swimming, bicycling around the lake. And at the end of the long warm days there was Old Cat, now, to come home to: Old Cat and the kitten. His mother had taken the kitten into the house, and she and Joel had carefully taught the Fiends how to handle her. Bitsy was surprisingly gentle. She loved to have the kitten sleep with her in her bed, never knowing that as soon as she fell asleep the kitten was put outside with Old Cat. A litter box was placed for the kitten under the washbasin in the bathroom, and sometimes she was allowed to play indoors during the day. Seth quickly learned that kitty scratched if he teased her, so he was never rough with her and soon lost interest. He really liked his little racing cars better than he liked the kitten.

  Old Cat was never allowed to set foot in the house, but then he never seemed to want to. He waited patiently outside the back door until the kitten was brought out.

  Joel was worried about Old Cat’s eye, and one day he unlocked the sideboard in the garage and took out from one of the wide, flat drawers a big, beautiful book with full-color photographs. The short text was about the different breeds and the history of cats and their behavior. There was very little on cat care and nothing on treatment or medication except the advice to “see your veterinarian.” There was only one picture of strays.

  The book was from the public library and was so long overdue that Joel had been afraid to take it back. He had borrowed the book two years ago when he was little, but old enough to remove the overdue notices from the mail before his mother could see them, and they were there inside the cover of the book: two postcards and a bill for six dollars and ninety-five cents. The book was in good condition; he had simply loved it so much he couldn’t bear to take it back. He had hoped that some day he could pay the library for it as a “lost” book. He’d heard of kids doing that so they could keep the book and use their library cards again.

  He had also heard that the librarian was “easy.” Now he hoped that if he returned the book and paid a part of the fine—he didn’t know how much it would be for such a long time—maybe she would let him take out a book on how to cure a cat’s injured eye. He hated to give up this beautiful book, but now he had a real live cat and what was good for Old Cat came before anything else.

  His microscope money, nineteen dollars and forty cents, was in a tin box that had held cough drops. His newly earned money—what was left after his own weekly needs and Old Cat’s food were paid for—lay loose in a corner of the drawer. Of this, he left what he thought he’d need for cat food until Saturday’s pay, and took all the rest—about a dollar and sixty or seventy cents. Then he locked the sideboard and set off on his bicycle.

  The library was a small, old, pink-brick building with bay windows. It was set in a landscaped lawn on a shady street just off the main street of the town. He had gone there often before his keeping of the cat book had made him afraid to go back.

  He went up to the desk and stood there for a moment, clutching the book; then he thrust it toward the clerk.

  “Here, Miss,” he said. “I kept this book too long; I can’t afford to buy it, so I’m bringing it back. How much do I have to pay?”

  The young clerk took the book, looked inside the cover, then beckoned to the librarian, who left her desk in the reading room and came over. She looked at Joel, then looked at the book, noticing the charging date and the overdue notices under the flap. Then she looked at Joel again.

  “Why did you keep it so long?” she asked. “Why didn’t you return it? You know, you could always borrow it again after a day or so.”

  “I—uh—I didn’t have a cat then.” Joel found it hard to explain. “I—well—I just kept looking at it, and—well—then it was too late.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I have a cat. And I got to find out how to help him. Will I—do I have to pay it all at once? Could I take out just one book if I pay some money—now—and pay the rest later?”

  The librarian still looked closely at him. She was perhaps in her early forties with short dark hair slightly graying. Her white blouse set off an olive skin deepened already with a touch of suntan. She smiled.

  “I expect we’ll be able to work out something,” she said. “Did you know this book is an adult book? It is what people call a coffee-table book. But I’ll just charge you the children’s fine. That would be—let’s see, that would be—uh—fifty cents.”

  “For two whole years?” Joel couldn’t believe his luck. “Gee, I’ve got that much right here.” He handed her the money, then asked, “And can I have a book that tells you what to do when a cat has a cut across his eye?”

  “Oh—that sounds serious. Perhaps you’d better take your cat to a veterinarian. How did that happen?”

  As she walked with him over to the bookshelves, Joel found himself telling her all about Old Cat, about how he had waited so long for him to come close, then the great overflow of love from the cat, and the remarkable matter of the kitten.

  “He’s really some cat, that Old Cat of mine,” Joel told her. “He already had that cut—it was beginning to heal over—I don’t know how he got it. It’s all healed over in a scar now, but it looks like there’s something wrong with his eye. I just don’t know what to do.”

  The librarian chose two books, and they sat down at a table and looked them over. In the chapters on eye care, both books recommended that eye injuries be treated by the veterinarian.

  “That costs a lot of money, don’t it?” Joel said. “But I guess I can manage it for Old Cat.” He chose one of the books to take home and study, so that he could learn more about caring for a cat.

  “If you check that book in when it’s due and leave it for a day, you may borrow it again if no one else has taken it out,” the librarian reminded him; then she added, “I would dearly love to have a cat, but my husband is allergic to cats—some people are, you know.”

  “Yes, I know. My stepfather is. He says cats give him asthma, and he won’t let one come near him. He says—”

  Joel stopped. Dad had been away for a year now. Would he ever come back, really, for good? He knew his mother received money from him, but he didn’t think it was very much, or that it came very often. He had not thought of this before. What would happen to Old Cat—and the kitten—when—if Dad came back?

  “You do have problems, don’t you?” The librarian smiled at him. “Anyway, let’s look in the telephone book for the veterinarian nearest you.”

  There were only two veterinarians listed in the telephone book. “I suppose a town this size is lucky to have two,” she said as she copied the names and addresses and phone numbers on a card. “If you can’t get either of them, I suppose you’d have to go all the way into the city. There is an animal shelter here, but—I don’t know—I’m not sure what they do.”

  She wrote down the information about the animal shelter, also.

  “If worst comes to worst, you can try that,” she said. “But, it—well—i
t just might be a good idea to find out, first, what it’s like.”

  She wished him good luck with Old Cat and Joel thanked her for all her help and pedaled home, trying to squash a little worm of fear that had begun to squirm inside him.

  Chapter Two

  OLD CAT LAY FLAT ON THE GROUND fending off the bites and blows of the kitten who attacked his ears, his chin, his paws, until he rose and, with back arched and tail overhead, he circled her. She somersaulted and lay on her back, boxing with all four feet, then with all the force of her twelve ounces behind it, her left paw felled his sixteen pounds. He rolled over on his back, feet in the air.

  When Joel opened the back door and came out into the yard, Old Cat cuffed the kitten away in earnest and wound himself around Joel’s ankles. Joel bent down and stroked his head and neck, and Old Cat, with hindquarters pressed against Joel’s knee, rubbed his forehead on Joel’s instep until, as usual, he fell over and rolled on the ground. The kitten bounded over and began to climb Joel’s pantleg, and Old Cat, claws sheathed, grabbed Joel around the other ankle and held on.

  “A guy can’t even walk across his own yard anymore,” Joel complained, laughing as he sat down on the ground and vainly tried to detach one cat after the other. He managed to pull a Ping-Pong ball out of his pocket and bounce it on the driveway. That took care of the kitten, and Old Cat, purring loudly, crawled onto his lap and nuzzled into the crook of his arm.

  “I’m sure sorry about that eye, Old Cat,” Joel said as he stroked the glossy fur. “But the vet says that you won’t even notice when you go blind in it. He says it’ll take awhile, and you’ll get so used to looking out that other eye, you won’t even know this’n don’t work any more.”