The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook

by Joanne Rocklin

  I turn back to the computer. Thank you for your kind words, Amanda, I write. And sorry for the loss of your hamster, Scratchy.

  My mother comes back into the kitchen. “I can’t find Fred anywhere,” she says.

  “He was just here a little while ago,” I say. In my mind, Freddy’s a quick flash of blue shorts and the sound of the fridge opening and closing.

  By the way, Amanda, why do you prefer hamsters over guinea pigs and gerbils? What’s the difference, anyway?

  I delete that last question because it doesn’t sound very sympathetic. I’ll do my own research, or ask Amanda in person sometime.

  The bathroom door slams. I can hear my mom running from room to room. She opens the front door and shouts for Fred in the hallway. Then she’s back in the kitchen, her face almost as pale as our walls.

  “Oona, he’s not here,” she says.

  I stand up so quickly, my chair falls over. My mom grabs her purse and phone. We don’t even bother with the elevator, racing down the stairs. No sign of him up or down the block. Luckily, my mom got a spot for the car right in front of the building, so we get right in and she zooms over to Dylan’s. I jump out of the car and ring his doorbell. No answer. I press the bell so hard, my finger hurts. I can hear the ring echoing inside. I start pounding on the door. My mother runs to the backyard.

  Please please please, both of you be here!

  My mom races out front again, breathing hard. “No one’s there. No answer on Dylan’s cell, either,” she says.

  She phones Gramma Dee. She phones Soma. She phones O’Leary’s. She phones and sends texts to friend after friend after friend, her fingers flying over the teeny keyboard.

  We drive through the neighborhood, me looking out the window to the north, my mom to the south.

  “I’m going to drop you off at our building in case he comes back,” says my mother. We are both crying. “Wait right there. I’ll continue driving around. If I don’t see him soon, I’m calling the police.”

  I stand in front of our building. People hurry by, carrying bags filled with flowers from the farmer’s market, listening to music on their iPods, eating ice cream. It seems as if everyone is smiling, because that’s what sunshine makes you do. No one knows that something terrible has happened in our family. Freddy has disappeared.

  Today is Saturday, sunny and warm. The air is still and clear, and you can hear the birds over the traffic noise, and smell the eucalyptus tree over the traffic smells. Just like that other Saturday. Freddy knows every detail of the story, even though he doesn’t really remember that day, the day we found Zook. But he thinks he does, because he’s heard about it so many times.

  I run down the driveway to the back of our building. The catmint and yellow yarrow that my father and I planted are growing tall in the cracked concrete. I don’t see Fred, but I know he’s been here. The hose is stretched across the alley. Water is dripping from one of the blue pots, the one with the rosemary that Fred and Dylan planted together.

  Then I see Freddy’s foot. There he is in the shade of the camellia tree, hunched up against the fence across from the ELVIS LIVES sign on the alley wall.

  I kneel down.

  “Hey,” I say.

  Freddy’s brought a ziplock bag filled with bunny-shaped crackers, a half-eaten nectarine, and a large chunk of sourdough bread. He plans to be sitting there for a while.

  “What’re you doing here?” I ask, as if I don’t know.

  “Waiting,” he says. “For Zook.”

  “Zook died, Freddy,” I say.

  “Well, he’s coming back. Cats have hundreds and hundreds of lives. You don’t know everything.”

  I sigh. “OK. I don’t know everything. But we may have to wait a long time.”

  Fred looks at me, then looks away. “Who cares? I’ll be here.”

  “Mom’s really spooked, Fred,” I say.

  “No she’s not,” says Fred. “She knows where I am. Doesn’t she?”

  I forgot. Five-year-olds think moms can read minds.

  “No, she doesn’t know where you are,” I say.

  Fred’s face kind of crumples up. He’s torn between Mom and Zook now.

  I sit down and put my arm around him. I feel like I have an important job to do, the most important job I’ve ever had: making Fred happy again and bringing him home. I hear Bleet the goat rustling in the grass on the other side of the fence. I lean against the fence as if I have all the time in the world to wait for Zook with my brother.

  “Are you thirsty?” I ask. “It’s hot, even under this branch. Mom has cold apricot nectar in the refrigerator.”

  “I’m not thirsty. I drank from the hose when I watered my plant.”

  “Your rosemary’s looking really good,” I say.

  He glances over at the pot. “I hadn’t watered it for a long time.”

  “Rosemary doesn’t need much water,” I say. “It’s drought-tolerant, like Dylan said. Hey, how about we plant more herbs in the other pots, and maybe some lavender and geraniums? Even a giant pickapoo plant! Bring some lawn chairs back here, too. We could have our own private, beautiful back garden, just like we used to have when Dad was with us. Let’s buy the plants today.”

  “What’s a pickapoo plant, anyway?”

  “I made that up. Actually, Dad did. It’s anything you want it to be, I guess. I’m trying to get you to smile.”

  Fred doesn’t smile.

  And then comes the question I knew he would ask, sooner or later. “Dylan’s coming back, too, right?” He asks it quickly, like he doesn’t really want an answer.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  I feel sad that Dylan is Freddy’s father figure. Freddy doesn’t really remember our dad that well. But maybe if I keep telling stories about Dad, he’ll think he does, especially if I put Zook in those stories.

  I reach for a bunny cracker.

  “Hey, do you remember the night Dad heard a rattling noise from the kitchen and called the cops? And the cops showed up and it was only Zook with his head stuck in an empty vegetable soup can? And they arrested him?”

  Fred’s eyes grow big. “Dad?”

  “No, Zook. They put pawcuffs on him and took him downtown for questioning.”

  “You’re being silly.”

  “Dad put up two bags of kitty litter for Zook’s bail.”

  I get a small smile out of Freddy for that one. I’ll take it.

  “And do you remember how Dad cut out some magazine pictures and pasted them on the wall, low down, so Zook could enjoy his own private art gallery?”

  “I think I do,” Fred says. He’s wrinkling up his forehead, and you can tell he’s trying very hard to remember.

  We take turns dipping into the bag of bunny crackers. Fred’s appetite has been good these past few weeks. That’s why we weren’t that worried about him. We should have been. My heart hurts when I look at my brother, small and lonely, with that Sad Fred Look.

  “Listen, who says Zook will show up again in the same place we found him?” I ask. “Miraculo and Jewel and Beau and Mud ended up in all sorts of places, in all kinds of weather. And it doesn’t have to be a Saturday. He could come back any day of the week.”

  BINGO! Fred gives me a quick, happy look, a look which zings me with happiness, too. “You’re right!” he says.

  I’m thinking there must be a special color for a whopper you really, really want to believe, and sometimes you do. You imagine that if you tell it, even to yourself, maybe it will come true. A whopper about living things having lots of lives, for instance. Or a whopper about someone being a villain so you can keep his sweet, singing cat. Or a promise like the one Dylan made, that Zook would get well.

  It’s the color of a wish, if a wish had a color. Maybe it’s a color that’s only seen in outer space. Or maybe it’s multicolored, wrapped up like a birthday gift.

  “And you know what else? I think there’s a chance Dylan will come back,” I say. “A really, really good chance he’ll come
back.”

  Fred scrambles to his feet. “Let’s go tell Mom,” he says.

  e are all at O’Leary’s—me, Freddy, Mom, and Gramma Dee. Mario and Maria are sitting at the long table, eating with us, too. I like that. My Secret Used-to-Be-Probably-Never-Was-True Love is at a corner table with his own family. Maybe he notices that the owners are sitting with us, like we’re celebrities or something. I hope he’ll ask me how I know the owners, and then I can tell him coolly that, oh, we’re all old, old friends, and also, Fred and I are employees of the establishment. Well, pizza interns of the establishment. The whole staff is teaching us pizza know-how.

  In fact, the pizza we’re all digging into is one that Freddy and I helped make. It’s pretty good. Manic Moe gave me some tips for stretching the dough, except I’m not good at tossing the dough into the air and catching it, like he does. Manic Moe says that part will come with experience. Freddy himself swirled on the sauce. We also put the herbs and vegetables on top—zucchini blossoms and tomato slices and green peppers and basil and rosemary.

  The rosemary is Fred’s. The rest of the vegetables and herbs are Dylan’s. Nobody at our table mentions that. Maria told me that Dylan gets up at the crack of dawn and delivers it all, still wet with dew. I guess he hasn’t started his long bike trip yet. We ourselves haven’t seen him in almost three weeks.

  “Fabulous,” says Gramma Dee. “Best pizza I’ve ever had at O’Leary’s.”

  “Not bad for trainees,” says my mother. She has sauce on the corners of her mouth. It’s a very juicy pizza.

  Mario glances quickly at his watch. Then he looks up as the bell on the door tinkles. “Just in time,” he says. “It’s our delivery.”

  Well, it’s Dylan who’s making that delivery, carrying a wicker basket, even though it’s six P.M. and not the crack of dawn. He looks at me, then at Freddy, who runs to him and hugs his legs.

  “I knew it!” Freddy shouts. “I knew you’d come back!”

  Dylan picks him up with one arm and comes over to where we’re all sitting. He gently places the wicker basket on the table, and we all lean over to see what’s in it.

  It’s not vegetables and herbs. It’s an orange-and-white kitten.

  “Zook!” Freddy says. “It’s Zook!”

  Dylan lifts the kitten from the basket and gives it to Fred. The kitten splays its limbs, then suddenly relaxes its body against Freddy’s shoulder.

  “Of course, he isn’t Zook anymore,” Freddy says. “He’s Elvis, now.”

  “Elvis is a girl,” Dylan says.

  “So what?” says Freddy.

  I quickly count Elvis’s toes. Eighteen, not twenty-six. But I do notice that her eyes are a beautiful blue, like blue suede shoes, and when I squint I can see a white map of California on her belly.

  Dylan hasn’t looked at my mother yet, but then he does, and my mom is crying tears of joy, as beautiful as diamonds. He sits down beside her and they hug, and she gets tomato sauce on his shirt. They look like people in love at the end of a movie, an ending that’s both happy and sad, like the blues. Of course, it’s not the end of anything. But I will still tell this story to Baby Hope of the World, who, in my humble opinion, they’ll probably have.

  I really think Dylan would have come back even if I hadn’t secretly texted PLEASE DON’T GO, WE LOVE YOU SO, FROM OONA on my mom’s cell. Maybe Mario told him to come back, too.

  I really think Dylan came back to us because of true love. And also because Freddy and I made that wish on Zook’s fake diamond.

  Oh, Zook. Thank you for everything.

  1. Stories are whoppers, but in a good way.

  2. If a story is going around and around in your head, that gets annoying—ever notice? So tell it to someone. Or write it down.

  3. You make a story yours by taking pieces of your world and putting them in your story to make a whole other world. These pieces are called details.

  4. A story doesn’t have to be true, but it does have to be real. That makes it truly a story. So even if it’s a fantasy, try to make the whopper-getter believe it could really happen. That’s where details help.

  5. The more you tell or write your story, the more you want to add some details to it. That’s OK. Each time you complete a new version of your story, that’s called a draft. Details are like jigsaw puzzle pieces, helping your drafts become whole.

  6. If the ending fits, use it. Even if you say “To be continued” because you’re having so much fun with the story, there still has to be some sort of ending. It doesn’t even have to be a totally happy ending. It could be happy and sad at the same time.

  7. Your story will make you, the whopper-teller, feel good when you tell it or write it.

  8. Your story will make the whopper-getter feel good, especially if your puzzle pieces are pieces of that person’s puzzle, too.

  Thank you, Eric Silverberg, for making me aware of the work of Barrel of Monkeys (barrelofmonkeys.org). BOM inspires kids in public schools to write their stories, which this wonderful Chicago theater troupe then performs. “The kids become stars and the world is saved. The End.”

  And thank you, Rupa Basu, for broadening our lives in so many ways. And Sarah Jackson, for your practical wisdom, and Michael Silverberg, for your loving support, always. Thank you, Karen Gaiger and Jim Gaiger for all the laughs. And Jackee Berner and Marjan Shomali for your beautiful writing spaces. And thank you, Gerry Nelson, for the subcutaneous fluids, and much, much more. A big thank-you to my editor, Maggie Lehrman, and the rest of the Abrams team, and also to my agent, Erin Murphy, for those encouraging shout-outs. Thanks to Chris Buzelli for his wonderful cover and Robyn Ng for the interior artwork.

  And thank you to my grandchildren for their stories, too.

  I am grateful for the assistance of everyone at Montclair Veterinary Hospital, Oakland, California, especially Dr. Gary Richter, who knows that Howard Fiske, DVM, is a figment of my imagination.

  And to all my pets, past and present, especially our cat Mitzi, working on her umpteenth life despite the BB-gun pellet—thank you for everything.

  JOANNE ROCKLIN is the critically acclaimed author of several books, including One Day and One Amazing Morning on Orange Street, which earned starred reviews and which School Library Journal called “sweet and tart and sure to satisfy.” She’s also the author of Strudel Stories, which was a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year and an American Library Association Notable Book, and For YOUR Eyes Only!, which was a School Library Journal Best Book and a Bank Street Best Book. She lives in Oakland, California.

  This book was designed by Maria T. Middleton. The text is set in 13-point FF Atma Serif, a modern typeface that incorporates transitional elements similar to those found in Baskerville. FF Atma Serif was designed by Alan Dague-Greene in 2001 for the FontFont type foundry. The interior illustrations were drawn by Robyn Ng.

  This book was printed and bound by R.R. Donnelley in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Its production was overseen by Erin Vandeveer.