The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook

by Joanne Rocklin

  Right then and there is when I come up with my Common-Letter-of-the-Alphabet Theory.

  There are three important things about Dylan, and they all begin with the same letter: the letter H.

  1. Dylan is a nurse. He HEALS.

  2. Dylan’s HANDS are strong, but gentle, like the hands Michelangelo drew on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

  3. Dylan makes my mother HAPPY.

  That has to mean something, right? Is it possible for a three-H person, a healing nurse with Michelangelo hands who makes my mom happy, to abuse a cat?

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  Is it possible I was noticing the obvious but wrong things, like all those long-ago great thinkers used to do, the ones who were very wise, but very, very mistaken about the Earth and the Sun and the continents?

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  A street address on a cat’s collar. A pirate’s braid. A name that rhymes with villain. Obvious but wrong clues of villainry? I don’t know. I haven’t had much experience with villains. But I’m beginning to think that my Name Theory isn’t all that great a theory.

  There is one possible way to find out the truth.

  My mother and my grandmother think taking Zook with us to Dylan’s backyard is a crazy idea.

  “No, Oona,” my mother says. “Zook’s been an indoor cat for too long now.”

  “Well, I think it’s a good idea,” I say.

  Dylan has come over to give Zook his morning fluids. When he hears my plan, he takes my side. “Why not?” he asks. “The sun will be good for him.”

  Of course he has just said my two favorite words. Well, my two favorite words when they are standing right next to each other. And Dylan sure doesn’t sound like someone with something to hide.

  “Yes, why not?” I ask.

  My mom and Gramma Dee are old pros when it comes to answering that question.

  “He’s old,” says my mom.

  “And he has a condition,” says Gramma Dee.

  “Also, he may run away,” my mom points out.

  We look over at Zook, and we all laugh. Zook is lying on his back on the braided kitchen rug. His legs are splayed comfortably, his fat belly facing the sun that is streaming through the window. He’s waving one paw, trying to capture a floating speck of fluff. Zook looks like a hairy sunbather at the beach.

  “I don’t think he’ll run away, in my humble opinion,” I say.

  So off we go, with Zook in his carrier.

  We enter Dylan’s backyard through the driveway. The backyard is a blaze of sunshine and smoke. I blink as I enter. It is so sunny, everything looks yellow and white at first. Then, as my eyes get used to the sunshine, I see amazing colors, like crazy paint poured all over the place. Blobs of red, swirly swoops of yellow, a jumble of orange and purple. And great big splashes of cool green in between.

  Mario and Maria are barbecuing pizza dough on a grill.

  “Dylan’s our newest zucchini supplier!” says Mario. “Who knows? We may start using other vegetables at O’Leary’s.”

  “It’s about time, Mr. Creature of Habit,” says Maria.

  That surprises me, because I’d always thought that Mario and Maria agreed on everything, especially the wonderfulness of fried zook!

  Dylan is grinning. He looks proud of his garden, and there are a hundred reasons to be proud, believe you me. “Let me give you a tour,” he says.

  The garden is small, but its paths meander and circle. We walk around and around, and the garden seems to grow bigger as we walk. Plants are everywhere, in pots, in big dirt-filled boxes, and in the ground. Dylan gives all the amazing colors their vegetable names. Early Girl tomatoes and little pale orangey-green Sun Gold ones. Scarlet runner beans. Green zucchini with yellow blossoms. Furry green beans winding around his chain-link fence. Plump strawberries like polka dots, and the big purple flowers of an artichoke plant. And herbs (urbs!) everywhere: mint and basil and thyme, and others, lots of others, except I can’t remember all their names.

  “I have plants from all over the place,” Dylan says. “Here are California natives, poppies and goldenrod, growing in the sun near a Japanese maple and New Zealand flax.”

  A multi-culty garden! I don’t have to imagine a faraway magical forest, that game I always play in Soma’s garden. Dylan’s garden is magical already. And I don’t want to be anywhere else but right here.

  Zook flops down and lolls around, doing his hairy sun-bather act. Every now and then he gets up to smell or nibble. I am watching him carefully. No, I can’t say he recognizes where he is, but he sure looks happy.

  Soon we’re also lolling around, on garden chairs that Dylan has brought out. Our stomachs are stuffed with barbecued pizza and fried veggies and ricotta cake and cold mint tea.

  “OK, I like this garden,” admits Gramma Dee, kicking off her sandals and wriggling her toes. “My mind has been opened. So, Dylan, where did you learn to do all this?”

  I’m staring at the purple artichoke flowers, happy to learn that an ugly duckling vegetable like an artichoke can blossom into something so beautiful. The purple of its flower makes me dizzy, but in a sleepy, happy way. I burp softly; I can’t help it. Beside me, Freddy laughs. Rowdies and five-year-olds think burps are the funniest things—ever notice?

  Dylan is talking about an old, old man, some relative of his. I’m not really listening at first.

  “… my great-uncle Phineas, the coolest, kindest guy on the planet. Phin for short. I was like a grandson to him because he had no children of his own. I came to live with him when my parents died. He taught me the guitar. And he taught me everything I know about growing things. He put in all the trees here and a lot of the raised beds himself. I just added a few more, pruned a lot, weeded a lot, and beefed up the soil a bit.”

  Now I’m sitting up. I’m not dizzy anymore. My mind is as sharp as a rose thorn.

  “Phin wrote me letters when I was traveling around on my bike, working in different cities. I always made sure he knew where I was, and he always made sure to write. About this garden, or a book he was reading, or his spinach and dumpling soup. Or his cat.”

  “His cat,” I say hoarsely. I look over at Zook, who is drinking from a leaky faucet at the side of the house, where a hose is attached. And now I’m waiting. I’m waiting for the story I’ve begun to hope for. The story I knew, deep-down, was there all along.

  “Yup. He had this old cat he’d picked up at the pound for company. Phin was lonely when I was gone, I guess. ‘We’re two old cats, just hangin’ and howlin’ together!’ Phin wrote me.” Dylan stares down at his hands as if Phin’s letter were right there. Then he shakes his head and looks up at the beautiful garden. “Oh, man, he loved that animal!”

  Zook is rolling around on a gravel path, scratching his back. Then he lumbers over to one of the raised beds, climbs in, and rolls around some more.

  “Will you look at that?” Dylan points to Zook. “Cats are all the same! Phin said his cat used to roll around in the garden dirt like that, too. In fact, his name was—”

  Mud.

  “—Mud. Saddest thing, though. Phin moved and took Mud with him, but one day Mud just jumped out an open window and disappeared.”

  Open window. Miraculo. Jewel.

  Now Dylan reaches for his guitar beside the lounge chair. “I think this calls for some Muddy Waters,” he says.

  “What’s Muddy Waters?” Gramma Dee asks.

  Dylan opens his eyes wide, as if he just can’t believe Gramma Dee asked that question. “Whoa. You don’t know who Muddy Waters is?” he asks. “Muddy Waters was a famous blues singer. He sang the blues and he lived them. So did Phin. And that cat, Mud, did, too. Muddy was another reason for Mud’s name, because that cat could sure sing. At least, that’s what Phin said. OK, listen here.”

  Dylan picks up his guitar, looks straight at my mom, and sings.

  Baby, please don’t go,

  Baby, please don’t go,

  Baby, please don’t go down to New Orleans, />
  You know I love you so.

  I’m sitting here thinking I’m going to tell them the truth, right now. But there’s my mother smiling with her whole body, and you know she’s not going to New Orleans. She’s not going anywhere, because she’s staying right here in this happy garden. And Dylan sings another song about mojo and another about something called hoochie coochie and another about rollin’ stones, and they are songs that are sad and happy at the same time, the saddest and happiest songs I’ve ever heard. You wouldn’t think that’s possible, but it is. And my mother’s still smiling at him, happy, happy, happy. I’m going to tell them the truth. After this song. No, after this song. No, after this next song, for sure.

  Then: “EE-OW! EE-OWEY!”

  I don’t have to tell anybody anything, because here’s Zook, doing it for me. Zook, singing the blues with Dylan.

  Dylan stops his playing. Zook stops singing. Dylan strums a few chords, like a soft, low growl. “Ee-ow! Ee-owey!” sings Zook, softly and growly, too. Dylan’s long nails pluck a loud whine; his left hand whizzes up and down the neck of the guitar. “EE-OW! EE-OWEY!” howls Zook, not missing a beat.

  Dylan lays down his guitar, and Zook is quiet, too. But the music and Zook’s song are still humming in my ears. Now Zook’s rubbing up against Dylan’s leg as if he owns him, and all of us are quiet, staring at that cat. Dylan leans over and scoops up Zook.

  “Another thing about Mud,” Dylan says softly. He holds one of Zook’s paws in his big Michelangelo hand. “He had twenty-six toes, Phin told me. That’s very, very rare. Most cats have only eighteen.”

  Dylan picks up each of Zook’s paws, one after the other. We are all silently counting, even though everyone, except Dylan, already knows the total.

  “It’s him,” whispers my mother. “I’ve told you how Oona and Fred found Zook.” But she tells the story again about that sunny Saturday, about finding our cat, Phin’s cat, stretched out in a pot of geraniums. Then she reaches for Dylan’s hand and she kisses Dylan’s fingers, one by one.

  “Oh, my, oh, my,” says Gramma Dee.

  Maria and Mario are shouting something in another language, which I’m guessing means WOW in either Italian or Spanish.

  So there you go. It’s like when you’re lying on the floor doing a jigsaw puzzle and there are only a couple of pieces left and you know where they belong, easy. You snap them into their places, all the curvy parts and the angles and the corners fitting together exactly the way they should. Snap. Snap. Snap.

  Except this is a real-life jigsaw puzzle, with all the missing pieces in place. Life isn’t usually like that, but today it is.

  “THAT IS SO ROMANTIC!” yells Riya when I tell her on the phone. “You found Zook, and because of that your Gramma Dee met my didu, and because of that your mother met Uncle Dylan, and now Zook has found more loved ones. A happy ending! It’s karma!”

  “I guess,” I say.

  I don’t understand karma very well. Riya says nobody except incredibly wise people do, but it’s something about past lives and present lives and future lives and how they are connected somehow, and how nothing in our lives happens accidentally. It’s very complicated and there are big books written about it.

  The truth is, it was all because of my yellow whopper, not karma. And that sure spoils the happy ending, like a big splotch of mustard on a clean cloth napkin.

  Because I didn’t find Zook.

  I stole him.

  ylan is teaching us a few things. He and Freddy have a little rosemary garden growing in one of the big blue alley pots. And Dylan’s teaching me and Freddy how to give Zook his fluids. We sit in our hospital chair with Zook between us. Freddy grabs the fur of Zook’s neck and holds it tightly. Dylan guides my hand as I jab the needle in. I do it gently but firmly, just like Dylan tells me to, and Zook doesn’t even flinch. Freddy announces he’s going to be a doctor or a nurse or a vet when he grows up; maybe he’ll be all three. My mother and Dylan grin at each other because Freddy sounds so cute when he says that. But honestly, I was thinking the same thing myself. Those jobs are possibilities for both of us.

  We unhook Zook from his needle and my mom takes him into her arms. We all stand around, stroking Zook’s damp fur. “Oh, Zook,” says my mom, bending her head to nuzzle the top of his head. “Do you think he minds if we call him Zook instead of Mud?”

  “Of course he doesn’t mind!” says Fred. “That’s his name now. Mud’s the name from another story.”

  My mother looks up. “Another story?”

  “I’ve been teaching Freddy how to read by telling him cat stories,” I say quickly. “I’m using rebuses.”

  “Rebuses!” says my mom. “I’d forgotten about those. That’s how Oona’s father taught her to read,” she explains to Dylan.

  “I’ll be right back,” Freddy says. He runs into our bedroom and returns with some paper and his crayon box. “I’m going to tell this story. I’m going to make some rebuses, too.”

  Freddy sits on the floor with the paper and crayons in front of him. He pulls his left ear, his story ear, and begins.

  “Well, a cat landed SPLAT, and when he got up again, he still had all those toes and that diamond, but now he had brown fur.

  “‘EE-OWEY! Where am I?’ he meowed.

  “He was lying on his back, so he looked down at his belly and there was some white fur in the shape of California, and some black hair where our city, Oakland, is. ‘Oh, Oakland. Cool,’ said that cat. ‘I’ve always wanted to go there.’

  “So he wandered and he wandered, but too bad, the pound man found him and put him in a cage at the city pound, which made that cat so sad. But then one day a lonely old man came to adopt him and that man’s name was …”

  Now Freddy stops to carefully draw a fish with a triangle on one side. He writes “RW IN” and points to that triangle.

  “Fin,” I say. (Some other time I’ll tell Freddy that the sound of the letter F can sometimes be written PH.)

  “Good,” says Freddy.

  “The man’s name was Fin. So Fin named that cat Mud because Mud had brown fur, and also he liked to roll around in the mud in Fin’s nice backyard. Mud ate fruits and vegetables from the yard and got very, very fat. Fin fed Mud lots of fiddle-i-fee under his tree, and Fin and Mud were happy together. But one day, Fin had to move because his house was falling apart and he needed a new one. He didn’t get a chance to put Mud’s name and new address on a name tag. Too bad! Because one day Mud jumped out the window just for fun. Cats like to do that. But too bad! Mud was lost because it was a new street and he forgot where he lived.

  “So Mud wandered and he wandered and he got skinnier and skinnier. Mud ate hard rolls and bones from garbage cans and that broke some of his teeth. He got into a fight with a wild dog who took a bite out of his ear. And one terrible day …”

  Fred pauses dramatically. He looks at me and Mom and Dylan, and his eyes get big, and a whole bunch of caps roll out of his mouth: “A GREAT BIG HORRIBLE MEAN TERRIBLE VERY SCARY …”

  Fred draws a large blue head with green googly eyes and sticking-up black hair and a mouth with yellow jagged teeth, breathing red jaggedy fire. We all stare at it.

  “Hmmm …” says my mother. “Nothing comes to mind.”

  “A monster?” Dylan asks.

  “Yes!” says Fred. “And monster doesn’t rhyme with anything.” Then Fred writes BB underneath the monster head.

  “Oh, BB-gun monster,” I say.

  “Of course,” Freddy says.

  And I’m thinking Freddy’s got that exactly right. We’ll never, ever know who that monster was, but that’s the best name in the world for someone who shoots at cats. Worse than an ordinary villain, in my humble opinion.

  Fred continues his story.

  “‘EE-OW! EE-OWEY! You got me!’ meowed Mud. That BB-gun pellet hurt a lot. And he wandered and he wandered some more and went into an alley with garbage pails, where he found some other cats for friends and some leftover pizza, and he fe
lt a little better. Right next to the back of the pizza place was a beautiful, beautiful part of the alley, with big blue pots with lavender and geraniums in them. And there were plenty of fat mice and all the water he needed, dripping from a hose. Now he had everything except people friends to take care of him. And one day he remembered that the diamond on his empty name tag was magic! So he wished upon it! He wished he could see Prince Fredericko and Princess Oonella again, old friends from way, way back. He found something better, because one day, one happy lucky, lucky, lucky day, he found …”

  Fred draws a rectangle with lots of windows and wheels and a big RW underneath.

  “A Recreation Wehicle?” I ask.

  “Don’t be silly,” says Fred. He taps the rectangle a couple of times. “Rhymes with?”

  “This is hard,” says Dylan.

  “Can you give us a hint?” asks my mom.

  Fred slowly writes B-U-S, sounding out the letters. Then he puts a big X over the B and shouts, “US, of course!”

  “Wow,” says my mom. “Great. You have an excellent teacher.”

  “Prince Fredericko and Princess Oonella! Very imaginative. Good stuff, kid,” Dylan says.

  Fred looks so proud of his story, I don’t even take credit for the prince and the princess part.

  Let’s say you’re doing that jigsaw puzzle and some pieces are missing. Maybe those missing pieces were thrown out with the trash by mistake, or maybe they’re in a shadowy corner under your bed that the broom can’t reach. It doesn’t really matter. You can imagine their shape and color in your mind. After a while, you don’t even notice the holes anymore, because what you are imagining feels so right. Fred’s just told the pieces of Zook’s story I myself should have imagined all along.

  All of a sudden, I feel a big, yellow-whoppery lump growing in my belly.

  hin has been on all our minds.

  Well, my mind’s been aware of him, but also my belly, because of that big, sour, yellow-whoppery lump inside of it.

  We show Dylan Zook’s diamond. He holds the pendant in the palm of his hand and rubs the diamond with his thumb.