The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook

by Joanne Rocklin

  The Villain comes over carrying a cardboard box. He removes some scary-looking things, spreading them all out on the coffee table in the living room: a long, snakelike, see-through tube, a needle that looks like a little weapon, and a coat hanger. He takes out a paper pouch, tears it open, and removes a clear bag filled with something that looks like water. He puts that bag into our salad bowl, which Mom has filled with warm water.

  “We’re going to warm up this fluid solution and then get it under Zook’s skin,” he says. “Think of it like the Gatorade athletes drink when they’re dehydrated. The solution is made up of some good stuff: sodium and potassium and calcium, which Zook needs.”

  “Yum,” I say.

  The Villain dries off the bag. Then he attaches one end of the long tube, called a drip line, to the bottom of the bag. He attaches a needle to the other end of the drip line. He pushes the hooked part of the coat hanger through the top of the bag and hooks it to our living room bookshelf.

  “Look at Dylan’s hands,” says Gramma Dee. “Beautiful hands, like the hands of God painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.”

  When Gramma Dee says that, the Villain laughs. “Not quite,” he says.

  “What’s the Sistine Chapel?” I ask.

  “The Sistine Chapel is a famous chapel in Vatican City, which is a tiny country inside of Italy,” Gramma Dee says.

  Gramma Dee is always going on about the trip to Italy and India she’s going to take with Soma one of these days, when they’ve retired and saved up enough funds. Gramma Dee pulls an art book from our shelf to show us this special ceiling. Sure enough, there’s God, with wavy hair, a long gray beard, and muscles, kindly stretching out his big hand to give life to a tired-looking Adam. It was painted by a famous artist named Michelangelo way back in the 1500s.

  My mom giggles. “I think you’re being overly dramatic, Ma,” she says.

  “No, I’m not,” says Gramma Dee, looking at the painting and then at Dylan. “Those are healing hands, and that makes them beautiful.”

  I look at the Villain’s hands. His fingers are slender and brown. They look like ordinary hands to me, except for the long nails on his right hand for all that guitar-plucking. I watch them suspiciously.

  “Bring on the patient,” the Villain says.

  My mother brings Zook from our bedroom, where he’s been snoozing. He’s wrapped up in my Raiders sweatshirt and only his head peeps out.

  “I’ve wrapped him up in case he protests,” she says.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “Honey, Dylan will be injecting him,” my mother says.

  I knew that. On the other hand, I didn’t. You can know and not know something at the very same time—ever notice?

  I glance at the Villain for some sign that he recognizes Zook. Of course, he’s already seen Zook because he and my mom picked him up from the vet last night. So he’s had plenty of time to compose himself.

  Right now, the Villain’s all business. “Let’s begin,” he says.

  Beside our living room bookshelf is this giant tattered chair covered in brown corduroy that can easily hold two people, maybe three if two of the people aren’t that big. It’s always been a TV chair and a scratching post for Zook. But now it’s turned into a kind of hospital chair. Zook’s in my lap, lying on my sweatshirt. I’m sitting close to the chair’s arm, which is like a barricade, so Zook can’t squirm away. The Villain is squeezed beside me, and Freddy beside him.

  The Villain whispers, “Good boy, good boy” as he’s petting Zook. Then suddenly, he reaches over and lifts up the scruff of Zook’s coat between Zook’s shoulder blades. With his other hand, he jabs in the needle.

  “EE-OWEY!” howls Zook.

  Fred and I jump.

  “Doesn’t hurt him,” says the Villain calmly.

  “Yeah, sure,” I say. “Maybe he doesn’t need any more fluids, now that he’s home with us. He’s been doing OK today.”

  The Villain takes my hand so I can feel where the needle is. He puts his hand over mine. “See? It’s just Zook’s coat, not his flesh. Now, keep your hand on the needle so it doesn’t get pulled out.”

  “How long’s this going to take?” my mother asks.

  “About ten minutes,” says the Villain.

  “We’ll go make the pancakes,” says my mom. She and Gramma Dee leave the three of us sitting in the chair.

  “Now watch the fluid in the bag,” the Villain says. “It will slowly go down as the fluid drips through the tubing into Zook.” He points to a line on the bag. “When the fluid gets to this line, he’s had enough.” He pushes a little wheel on a small box attached to the tubing, and I see the fluid slowly begin to go down.

  The Villain still has his hand over mine because Zook is squirming. He begins to sing a really dumb song in his soft Marvin Gaye voice, over and over.

  I bought me a cat and the cat pleased me.

  I fed my cat under yonder tree.

  Cat goes fiddle-i-fee, fiddle-i-fee.

  Freddy starts singing that dumb song with him. I’m sure he doesn’t even know what “yonder” means, but Freddy doesn’t care. Soon Zook stops squirming.

  “How’s it going?” Gramma Dee pokes her head out from the kitchen.

  “Good,” says the Villain. “We’re almost done.” We watch the bag. The Villain’s hand over mine is warm. He smells like coffee.

  “Oona, listen to me,” says the Villain quietly. “I give you my word. This will help Zook. I promise.”

  His promise feels like a gift. Sitting beside the Villain, his warm hand over mine, I want to believe him so much! I stop thinking about clues of villainry and anyway, I can’t find any at this moment. Even if the Villain is the greatest actor in the world, I don’t care. All I want is Zook to feel better. I even start singing that dumb song, too.

  When the fluid gets to the line, the Villain lifts my hand and pries the needle from Zook’s coat. “There,” he says.

  I once saw a TV show where a doctor cured a baby by opening up her chest to get to her heart, a procedure no one in the world had ever done before. It was a long time ago, in the 1940s. The baby’s lips were blue because there was a blockage somewhere and her blood didn’t have enough oxygen in it. So the doctor stitched one of her heart arteries to another artery. That way blood with enough oxygen in it could get to her lungs. Suddenly, the baby’s face glowed, her lips and cheeks pink and healthy-looking! Really, it was like a miracle. Everyone in the TV operating room cheered, and so did I. I will never forget that show.

  I’m not saying Zook’s procedure is just as dramatic, because first of all, that was a television show and they used all those special effects and everything. And second of all, this is not the first time in the world anyone has ever given a cat fluids. Still, it feels dramatic. Zook jumps off my lap, looking perkier than he’s looked in quite a while. Fit as a fiddle, actually.

  “Breakfast’s ready,” calls my mom.

  The pancakes smell good.

  “This stuff expensive?” I ask, pointing to the big cardboard box filled with more bags of fluid and tubing.

  The Villain shrugs.

  “How about I contribute my dancing money?” I say. I’m thinking that what we have here is our very own cat rescue society.

  The Villain smiles, shaking his head no.

  “Great idea!” yells my mom from the kitchen.

  That’s another weird talent of my mom’s: hearing things through walls when I’m on the other side.

  oday, just as we get to the schoolyard, I notice that Riya is wearing one green sock and one purple-and-pink striped sock. Riya is very careful about what she wears, so I don’t think this is a mistake. I myself am wearing two white socks. It’s the only color my mom buys for us because it’s easy to make a pair again if one sock is swallowed up by our building’s washing machine. My mom says that every new washing machine comes with two things: a free box of soap and a monster deep down in the machine’s bowels with a huge craving for smelly so
cks. Yum.

  White socks happen to match my O’Leary’s shirt—not that I care that much about matching.

  “I think what you did at the vet took a lot of chutzpah,” says Riya.

  Riya has complimented me before on my chutzpah, which means “nerve.” She learned the Yiddish word from her grandmother, who learned it from Gramma Dee.

  The thing is, I haven’t told her anything about what happened at the vet.

  “Wait a minute. How do you know what I did at the vet?” I ask. “I wanted to keep that story private for a while.” Because I’m still pondering a few things. Why exactly I did it, for instance.

  “Oh,” says Riya. She gives me a quick look, guilty around the edges. Then she looks down at her socks. “Wasn’t it you who told me? Oh. Right. It was my didu.”

  Which, I guess, is another thing her grandmother learned from Gramma Dee.

  There’s a little cluster of kids by the basketball net, as always, doing layups. The first thing I notice is that most of them are wearing socks that don’t match, even some of the boys.

  Riya notices me noticing. “Over the weekend a few of us decided to start a fad,” she explains. “We want to see how fast it will catch on throughout the whole school. Maybe the whole city!” Then she adds quickly, tossing her hair, “I didn’t think you’d be interested.”

  She’s right, of course. A girl who wears a Raiders sweatshirt all the time, moving on to an O’Leary’s T-shirt only a few days ago, isn’t going to be thinking about her socks. Anyway, it’s a dumb fad. A done-before, ho-hum, no-point fad.

  Still, I would have liked a chance to say no.

  Leo calls out, “Hey, Oona! ’Napped any cats lately?” His left sock is white, the right one blue with yellow peace signs all over it, which I’m guessing he borrowed from one of his parents.

  Somebody else says (I can’t tell who because I’m looking at Riya who is NOT looking at me), “Pizza delivery? Over here!”

  I was going to yell out something red-whoppery, such as needing to go straight to work at O’Leary’s in my uniform right after school. But then I figured, why even bother responding to immaturity? There was more snickering all around about cat-napping, etc., etc. Of course they heard it through the grapevine, just like in that song. Phonevine, actually, and textvine, and e-vine, stretching from Gramma Dee to Soma to Riya and beyond.

  I walk away. I vow NEVER to speak to Riya again.

  This morning the Rowdies, who include most of the sock people, are in fine form. They’re talking, shuffling their feet, looking inside their desks for stuff. I try to concentrate because Mr. Fry, as usual, has something interesting to say. He is talking about a Theory of Noticing, although he doesn’t call it a theory, exactly.

  “Galileo saw things that made him believe that the Earth orbits around the Sun, rather than the other way around,” Mr. Fry says. “Even when people arrested him and made him take that theory back, he still said, ‘But it moves!’”

  Somebody in the back of the room burps, and it could have been a not-on-purpose burp, but of course that burp is the funniest thing the Rowdies have ever heard.

  “And scientists have long noticed that the east coast of South America seems to fit together with the west coast of Africa, like a giant jigsaw puzzle that someone broke up. And other scientists thought that theory was absolutely ridiculous. ‘Continents drifting apart,’ they said, ‘ha, ha!’”

  “Ha, ha, ha! Hee, hee, hee! Ho, ho, ho!” go the Rowdies under their breaths.

  “That’s how great thinkers come up with theories,” Mr. Fry continues. “They observe things, but they don’t always observe the same things others do, especially when others are observing the obvious, but wrong, things. And I hope that you youngsters are creative in your observations, too.”

  Jigsaw puzzle continents!

  I sit up straight in my seat. My mouth falls open, because I have just heard one of the wisest things a teacher has ever said! Except maybe Mr. Fry shouldn’t use the word “youngsters.” That always sets off the Rowdies.

  I look around to see if everyone else is as excited about Mr. Fry’s Noticing-the-Obvious-but-Wrong-Things Theory. Nobody is, as far as I can see. They’re talking to one another or hee-hee-heeing or, because it’s almost recess, staring up at the clock. I feel bad for Mr. Fry with his kind, kind eyes and wet hair. To my surprise, tears roll out of my own eyes, and then a whole lot of really loud caps roll out of my mouth.

  “EVERYBODY PIPE DOWN!” I shout. “PLEASE!”

  There is a stunned silence, and things do quiet down a bit, especially when Riya says, “Yeah!” from across the room. I look over at her and we have an eye-conversation, the kind that usually happens between siblings or true loves or meant-to-be-cousins. Her eyes say, Hey, I get it. My eyes say, Thank you, best friend of mine. I’m not angry at you anymore. And then the bell rings.

  During recess, Mr. Fry and I have another ten-minute father figure session.

  “Well,” says Mr. Fry, shutting the classroom door. He sits on his desk, pulling himself up with a little grunt.

  He doesn’t really have to do that for me, sit on his desk and look so scrunched up and uncomfortable, trying to be friendly and cool. In my mind Mr. Fry is already nice, even if he’s not cool. I do notice that one of his socks is blue and the other sock is black, although in his case it was probably because of bad lighting when he got dressed. I’m positive he wasn’t part of that dumb fad grapevine.

  “Well,” says Mr. Fry again. “Thank you for that intervention. Feeling better?”

  I wasn’t expecting a thank-you! I nod my head. “I just wanted everyone to hear the wise things you were saying.”

  “Well. You were quite dramatic, I must say,” says Mr. Fry, and he grins. Mr. Fry is handsome when he grins, which isn’t very often. He smiles, but that’s a whole different thing from grinning—ever notice?

  Mr. Fry isn’t wearing a wedding ring. Some married people don’t. “Mr. Fry, are you married?” I ask.

  Mr. Fry blushes faintly. “No,” he says. “Not yet.”

  It sounds like he already has someone in his life, and I am glad for him. “I was just curious,” I say.

  “Well,” says Mr. Fry.

  After a while, the school bell rings. Mr. Fry slides off the desk and says, “By the way, I like your shirt. I haven’t had O’Leary’s pizza myself yet. Supremo, eh?”

  “I highly recommend it,” I say.

  Riya and I walk home together after school.

  “I was hoping that my mom and Mr. Fry would go out for tea sometime,” I say. “But now I think it would be weird for my mom to be good friends with my teacher.”

  This time Riya doesn’t want to ignore our fight from that morning. Her words burst out all in a rush, not in caps, but bent over in italics, as if she’s been holding them in too long. “Oona I’m sorry I told what you did at the vet and I’m sorry I didn’t include you in that sock thing but of course socks aren’t as important as Zook!”

  “Apology accepted,” I say.

  She isn’t finished. Her words in italics pour out even faster. “And Oona no offense but I was beginning to think YOU were weird wearing that sweatshirt all the time! I know it was in honor of your father and that took a lot of chutzpah wearing it no matter what. But really you’ve been sort of weird no offense and now I bet you’re going to be wearing that oversize O’Leary’s thing every day!”

  “Well, my sweatshirt’s a cat bed now, and none of my other tops fit me,” I say, frowning, and yes, taking offense.

  Riya stops walking. “A cat bed?” she says.

  “Zook’s,” I say.

  I snort. Riya snorts. Then we’re laughing our heads off, shrieking and snorting and not caring who hears.

  “Hey, I can lend you some tops if you like,” Riya says, catching her breath after a while. “We’re the same size now.”

  I look over at Riya. I hadn’t noticed, but yes, we’re the same size. Riya used to be the smaller one! Everything’s changin
g. Continents are drifting and new stars are forming and my sweatshirt’s a cat bed.

  “OK,” I say.

  f sunshine were called prune juice, it would still be sunshine. Words are just words—ever notice? The word “villain” doesn’t have as evil a meaning to me anymore.

  But still, I am trying to think of the Villain as Dylan now. That way “Villain” doesn’t pop out of my mouth and cause a big uproar. It’s hard, but a lot of the time, it’s not.

  On this sunshiny Saturday, our family is invited to see what Dylan has done to his backyard.

  I am finishing up my breakfast with Gramma Dee. She’s a vegetarian, but her big exception is smoked fish, and she’s brought some over. We’re the only ones who love smoked fish in our family. My mother says it’s too smelly, and Fred’s scared of that fish with its surprised googly eyes lying there on the plate. And that’s fine with me. Because when Gramma Dee and I eat smoked fish together for breakfast, we usually have a nice heart-to-heart.

  Gramma Dee wipes her mouth. She has something on her mind, I can tell, and she’s taking her time looking for the right words. She leans close to me and says, “Between you and me, Dylan’s a little meshuga, in my humble opinion.”

  I almost choke on my fish. “What?” I say.

  Meshuga is another Yiddish word. It means “crazy.” And when Gramma Dee says “in my humble opinion,” she doesn’t really mean that. She means just the opposite, like “smart” or “terrific” opinion. Believe me, she wouldn’t give her opinion if she thought it were wrong.

  “He and Soma and their gardens! Your mom calls them ‘urban farmers’! But who needs to grow their own vegetables and fruits and herbs in this day and age? My great-grandparents grew their own food, but that was in the old country. OK, it was mostly potatoes. But they were farmers. They didn’t have a perfectly modern Whole Foods and a Safeway within driving distance.”

  My mom comes into the kitchen. “Keep an open mind, Ma,” she says. “Wait until you see it.”

  “Urban farmer! That young man’s beautiful hands are for music and healing,” says Gramma Dee. “Not for digging in the dirt.”