The Old Cat and the Kitten

by Mary E. Little

  The worst part about the visit to the veterinarian had been getting Old Cat there. He had struggled, but finally gave in to being put in a box; but then Joel could not manage to hold the box on his bicycle. In the end he had wrapped Old Cat in the piece of old blanket and carried him, walking all the way there and back.

  Even worse, perhaps, was listening to his mother afterwards.

  “Well! I hope you’re satisfied,” she said. “All that money! You said you even spent some of your microscope money. For what? After you waiting half the afternoon, the doctor took five minutes to tell you there wasn’t anything he could do for that cat’s eye! All that time, all that money, for nothing—nothing! You want to throw away your hard-earned money on that old cat, don’t expect me to back you up. And don’t you ever—”

  “But, Mom—”

  “Why you have to—”

  “But I do have to.”

  “Why?”

  “Because—because well, I have to do whatever he needs—I gotta do whatever I can because—because he has to depend on me—and I can’t just not do it, can I?”

  “At that price?”

  Now, as Old Cat nudged and butted and rubbed against him, Joel thought he’d paid little enough. The change in Old Cat, from fighting tom, to this loving, playful animal was almost like a miracle. And Joel had not only watched it happen, but had helped to bring it about.

  TODAY WAS SATURDAY. JOEL HAD SPENT FOURhours this morning doing chores at the supermarket while Louella, the girl next door, baby-sat the Fiends. Friday and Saturday were his mother’s busiest days at the beauty parlor; her free day was Monday. Joel had always, before Old Cat came to live with him, had half of Saturday for his own free time, but now, until school was out for the summer, he had to baby-sit on Saturday afternoons after he finished his job at the supermarket. As long as he stayed at home and kept a watchful eye on the Fiends, he was allowed to have a friend come to keep him company, and today Wayne was coming over. They were going to practice their basketball shots into the ring Dad had fixed on the garage over the driveway, before he had left for the city so long ago.

  Wayne, the youngest of four brothers, was a year older than Joel and almost three inches taller. He was becoming a first-rate jump-shooter and was helping Joel try to improve his shooting and dunking. They spent an hour at practice, then after Joel split a popsicle for the Fiends, who were playing in the sandpile, they sat down on the back steps and opened the tall cans of soda that Wayne had brought.

  “That Old Cat of yours—looks like he gets bigger and better-looking every time I see him,” Wayne said after a long swallow of pop. As Old Cat came over and crawled into Joel’s lap, Wayne went on, “He’s sure a loving cat. I never seen an old tom so loving. You sure got him tamed.” He reached over and stroked Old Cat, who nestled closer to Joel. “He ain’t so scared of me as he used to be, but I don’t think he takes too much to anybody but you.”

  Joel told Wayne about the trip to the veterinarian.

  “It sure cost a lot of money, but I didn’t have no choice. I called that animal shelter, but they don’t have a doctor over there. I don’t know what they really do.”

  “I do.” Wayne spoke with disgust. “You want to keep away from there, man. All they got is a bunch of little cages, and they put the animals in there and feed them ’til they get too many. Sometime they get people to keep some, like a foster home, until they find homes for them. But even so most of the time they got more than they have room for. So about once a week, maybe, they crowd them into a kind of drum or some kind of a tank-thing and—well, they call it ‘putting them to sleep.’”

  “How you know all about it?” Joel asked. “You never took any of your dogs over there, did you?”

  “No! And I never will.”

  He pulled on the soda again.

  “My brother Leroy, just after he graduated from high school—he worked over there for a couple of weeks that summer. You know, all us kids, we always liked animals, and he thought he’d have a ball looking after a lot of dogs and cats and maybe learning what to do for them if they was sick or injured. Well, they don’t do ­nothing like that. When people come there to get a dog or a cat, they supposed to have it fixed so they don’t breed any more pups or kittens. They get a vet to operate on them for that, and sometimes he gives them shots or something, but only if somebody is going to take them home. Mostly, if they sick or injured, they just get put right into that—that thing—I think they call it some kind of a chamber.”

  “Golly!” Joel rubbed Old Cat under the chin. The kitten woke from where she had dropped to sleep and pranced over to the boys. Wayne picked her up and fondled her.

  “Yeh. Leroy said it was bad enough when the animals was sick or hurting, but it was worse when they was lively and healthy. He had to see them get put into that—that chamber, cats and dogs together sometimes, and the guy who operated it used to laugh at all the screeching and hollering that went on in there before they was dead. At least—Leroy said that otherwise he seemed like a decent guy. Leroy thought maybe he just laughed because it kinda upset him, too.”

  “Man!” Joel was appalled. “I thought they was supposed to be humane. I seen a picture in the paper of some kittens they was giving away to a good home, and a dog somebody had adopted.”

  “I guess they figure they’re being humane. They probably figure it don’t matter if the animals suffer while they’re getting—put to sleep—because when it’s over, they’ll be out of their misery. There’s just too many animals nobody wants—any more—and in the summertime especially, they just can’t keep them more’n a few days—there just ain’t enough room. It’s worse maybe here than some other places because of the lakes. People from away come on vacation and just leave their animals behind.”

  Both boys quietly drank their soda, thinking. Then, “How long does it take?” Joel asked. “How long in that—chamber-thing before they’re dead?”

  “Leroy said he didn’t know, really. The guy used to set it for ten or fifteen minutes. Leroy was supposed to help him pile up the dead animals, and then they buried them all together in a sort of pit. And one time one of the cats wasn’t dead. The guy said it would have to go back in with the next batch. Otherwise it’d just get buried alive with the dead ones. That was when Leroy quit. He just walked out and came home and never even went back to get his pay. Seems like if all them animals have to be killed—‘put to sleep,’ like hell!—there ought to be a better—hey, there! Leave me a piece of my T-shirt to take home, huh?”

  He tried to pull his T-shirt away from the kitten’s teeth, then from each paw as she climbed over his chest and around his neck.

  “Hey, Bitsy,” he called. “Come rescue me from this little monster. And keep her off the driveway, please, so we can practice some more. OK?”

  Bitsy took the kitten to the far side of the yard, and when she dragged a piece of honeysuckle around in a circle, the kitten chased it. She played with Bitsy until she flopped, tired out, and slept again.

  Old Cat sat sleek and handsome on the top of the back steps as the boys went back to their practice.

  Chapter Three

  ANOTHER WEEK WENT BY, ANOTHER week of golden days and sweet-scented breezes. With the promise of school closing at its end, the week would have been perfect but for the bad news: Joel’s job would now be turned over to an older teenager in a new program of “summer jobs for youth.” He hoped he could find some other job soon because he needed the money. Even his microscope money was low. Bitsy and Seth would go to a summer nursery school, and he would have most of each summer day to himself. If they would let him in, he intended to join a nature-study group—he would be the youngest member—that went on field trips three days a week. The rest of the time he’d be on his own. This would be the first summer his mother had not made him attend a day camp, but she had finally agreed that this past year he had earned his freedom.

&nb
sp; On Sunday evening they ate their supper of cold cuts and potato salad out in the back yard. The food was put out on a card table, but they sat on the ground, picnic fashion, and ate from paper plates. The car had been parked in front of the house so the Fiends could ride their tricycles in the driveway. Old Cat lay in a corner of the yard, the kitten, full-fed, asleep between his paws.

  “Some day, God willing, we going to have a real patio, with a cookout grill and lounge chairs and a nice table with an umbrella over it and some nice plants and shrubs and flowers ­growing around.” Joel’s mother lighted her cigarette, then wrapped her arms around her knees and gazed out at the rich, velvety-dark treetops against the fading sunset over the lake.

  “And we’ll be able to look out over the lake and not just see the tops of the trees around it.”

  “And I’ll help with those plants and flowers,” Joel promised. “Maybe even right here I can do something with that stuff growing along the back of the yard this summer. Maybe I can plant you a flowerbed. Maybe—”

  “Yes ‘maybe.’ And ‘someday’—”

  The clang of the telephone from within the house interrupted her.

  “Get it, will you, Joel? It’s probably just a wrong number. If it’s that old biddy wanting me to come in and give her a permanent on my free day tell her, ‘No!’ Politely.”

  Joel came running back almost at once.

  “Hey, Mom! Guess what? It’s Dad! Dad’s on the phone. He says he’s got good news for us. Hurry up!”

  As his mother dashed past him, Joel looked out into the darkening yard. He could just make out the shape of Old Cat asleep with his chin over the kitten between his paws.

  THERE WOULDN’T BE MUCH TIME—HARDLY enough to get everything ready to go.

  Dad wanted them there by next Friday, so that they’d have the whole weekend to get settled into their new home.

  His new job in the chemical plant was ­permanent—as permanent as any job could be nowadays—and a house, partly furnished, was ­provided for them.

  “You going to have your own room, Joel! And you can fix it any way you like. And Dad says the junior high school nearby is supposed to be one of the best schools in the city. He says he’ll still be on wages for a while, but he’s been promised a promotion and a good monthly salary, soon as another man retires. Maybe I can help out ’til then and get a chair in some beauty parlor over there. The company even runs a nursery school for a small fee.”

  It was late. The Fiends were asleep, and Joel and his mother were sitting as usual in front of the television, but they hadn’t turned it on.

  “Will there be a yard—a backyard?” Joel wanted to know.

  “I suppose so. It probably won’t be the patio of my dreams, no lake view or anything like that. But, oh Joel, I’m so happy! I don’t care if we don’t have fancy things—Dad wants us all to be with him! We’ll have a real home again. Isn’t that grand, Joel? Isn’t it grand? I’m so happy!”

  She was radiant. He had never thought about it before, but now Joel saw that his mother was really a beautiful woman.

  “What you staring at, boy? I’m your mom, remember? And we’re moving. We’re going to a new home, with Dad in the city. What’s the matter with you?”

  Her world was full of riches; Joel’s was full of loss. He knew before he spoke that what he feared was true and all his joy with Old Cat was coming to an end.

  “I’m thinking about Old Cat, Mom,” he said. “How we going to take him and the kitten; and where they gonna be—”

  “Now you look here, Joel.” His mother turned on him. “Don’t you go spoiling all this on account of those cats. You know as well as I do we can’t take them with us. You know that, Joel—now, don’t you?”

  “But Mom, they our cats! We responsible for them. You promised—”

  “No! I never did promise. I was careful not to, in case something—in case Dad came back, or something.”

  “You mean—Mom, you mean you want us to—abandon them?”

  The pain in Joel’s voice, in his face, struck her and she sat silent, lips tight, searching for a way to ease his hurt.

  Then, “We don’t have much time, Joel.” She tried to speak slowly, gently. “There’s not much time—to see if you can find a home for those cats. I just don’t see anybody wanting to take on that old cat. Tell you what we’ll do: we’ll put an ad in the paper. I’ll divide the cost with you. But Joel—you responsible to me, too. And to the Fiends, and to Dad. Besides, I’m going to need you to help me get things sorted and packed, and got rid of. I won’t be thinking much about cats from now on.”

  “Not even the kitten, Mom? I thought—I thought you liked having that kitten. You said you wanted your own pet.”

  “Sure, I liked the kitten, but it’s not as important to me. I got other things now to worry about—it’s just not important to me, now.”

  “You important to it, Mom. It’s got to live and have a home, too.”

  “Go on, Joel! You talk like cats were people. They’re cats, and cats can take care of themselves.”

  “Yeh—like they was when Old Cat came around. Like the kitten was, half-dead when Old Cat brought her—”

  “I told you I’d go halves with you on an ad in the paper. There ought to be somebody in this town that’ll take them—at least the kitten.”

  “So Old Cat got to lose his home and his friends and his kitten—where’s all his love going to go?”

  “He won’t be any worse off than he was before. Come on now, we got to get to bed. We got to get up early in the morning and get moving—really get moving, hey—right?”

  Joel didn’t answer. He lay awake on the sofa long after his mother had gone to bed, thinking about Old Cat, trying to hope that somebody would take care of him, see that he was fed. But would that be enough? If Old Cat could react to kindness with so much love, could he not feel the hurt of being unwanted and abandoned? If cats could love, couldn’t they also grieve?

  Perhaps the folks who would move into their house after they left might feed Old Cat and let him stay. But suppose they wouldn’t? Or had dogs? And how long would it be before people moved in?

  Hours passed before Joel, exhausted, turned over on his stomach and fell asleep.

  Chapter Four

  THERE WERE NOT MANY CALLS IN answer to Joel’s ad in the paper. There were just too many kittens and puppies and not enough homes, so that his ad was only one of many for animals being given away, free.

  “You don’t have to pay/If you’re giving them away!” the clerk chanted when Joel asked how much the ad would cost. Nobody wanted Old Cat. Some people who wanted a kitten wouldn’t take a black one; some held out for a Siamese or part-Siamese. One person wanted a black kitten but wouldn’t take a female.

  At the bottom of the newspaper ad column was a note in bold face type:

  IF YOU DON’T SUCCEED IN PLACING YOUR ANIMAL IN A GOOD HOME, LET US HELP YOU.

  This was followed by the name and address of the local animal shelter.

  “Looks like you might have to take them over there, Joel. That is, if you don’t want to leave them loose to take their own chances and take care of themselves.”

  “No! At least, I wouldn’t ever take Old Cat there. The kitten might be safe for a few days, but not Old Cat.”

  Joel told his mother what Wayne had told him about the animal shelter.

  “I don’t believe it!” his mother retorted. “There’s a picture in the paper every week of animals they find homes for or rescue or something. You hadn’t ought to take his word for a thing like that. Maybe that kid needs to have his mouth washed out with soap.”

  She was just leaving to deliver the Fiends to summer nursery school, then go to work.

  “I’ll be home early this afternoon, maybe by lunchtime. My last appointment is this permanent at nine-thirty.” She stood silent for a moment t
hen, “Time’s running out on us, Joel,” she said. “We only got one more day. And we need to get everything ready to put in that U-Haul by tomorrow afternoon. We want to be out on the road by sunup on Friday.”

  They had put a sign out in the front yard: ­FURNITURE AND HOUSEHOLD GOODS FOR SALE—CHEAP and had disposed of some things in exchange for a little money. Dad had said not to bring much—only a few things that they just didn’t want to part with—because the ­company house had most of what they’d need. Most of their things were old and shabby. The few unsold, unwanted items, things for which there would be no room in the U-Haul, such as Joel’s old sofa, would simply be left behind.

  Whenever people came to look at their stuff, Joel and his mother tried to interest them in taking the cats, but nobody wanted cats now. The kitten was admired, but no home was offered for her.

  Joel hated the comments some of the people made, and the attitude of many of them about cats.

  Kittens are cute, but they grow up to be cats, and who needs cats? Not poor people for sure. When they get to be cats you’d better turn them out to fend for themselves. They’ve got nine lives. They can take care of themselves. It costs too much to have them operated on to stop them from having more kittens. All you have to do is wait until there are too many strays all over the neighborhood, then call the State Pest Control. They’ll come and exterminate them, same as they do other varmints. When there are so many, too many, it’s only common sense to put them out of their misery.

  Cats—cats full of love like Old Cat. Common sense—common sense, maybe. But it’s not right! It’s just not right, Joel thought.

  Joel searched until he found the newspaper ad and the telephone number of the local animal shelter.

  “Yes, may I help you?” The voice was that of a young woman, soft and gracious.

  “I wanted to ask you—about cats—and kittens.”

  “Oh, we have some adorable kittens up for adoption—almost every kind and color you could want. Can you come in?”