Ever by My Side

by Nick Trout

  “Ah, son, not to worry,” said my father when I finished the story. “Easy mistake, especially for someone who’s grown up around dogs and not cats.”

  Of course I wasn’t worried, just a little embarrassed, but what struck me was the way my father jumped to my defense, eager to provide a valid excuse. Amazing, I thought, how that parental “papa bear” or “mama bear” instinct to protect never goes away.

  “Why haven’t we ever had a cat?” I asked, as Dad and I left the footpath behind and headed down a gravel trail, over a brook, and back to the world of asphalt and concrete that led to our house.

  Dad looked at me as though I had come up with a novel idea.

  “We had cats when I was a kid,” he said, adding, “lots of them.” Then he took a moment to sift through these memories until he found the answer. “For me, it always comes back to not being able to know what they’re thinking. You look into a dog’s eyes and they let you know what’s on their minds by their expression. With cats, there’s not much written on their face.”

  “Maybe not,” I said, “but there’s usually a great deal written in their body. Besides, I think the element of mystery and independence is part of their appeal.”

  Dad’s shrug told me he couldn’t argue the point, but at the same time, he didn’t necessarily agree.

  There was more to my story, but I like to think he and I just ran out of time, our final walk across those memorable fields at an end, our cue for the conversation to conclude. Looking back, though, I think it was more that I chose not to let him in on the last part of my story, because it was, after all, more of a feeling than an actual event.

  Nigel and I had only a few days left before we returned to England. We were driving down Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles on the way to the beach to “catch a few rays” and “play a little Frisbee” (by the end of the trip we were trying a little too hard to be hip to the local jargon and it never felt right coming from us). We had ditched the Ford Tempo and suitably upgraded to a friend’s Jeep convertible, so, as you can imagine, we were feeling pretty good.

  “Why is it,” said Nigel, “when you watch a movie, and it’s filmed somewhere on the East Coast, the ocean is always on the right of the screen, but in California, the ocean is always on the left. Why is that?”

  I thought about it, tried to summon up an appropriate waterfront scene in Jagged Edge or Fatal Attraction, and couldn’t, but reckoned he was probably right.

  “Very astute,” I said, adding, “I don’t care what they say, you’re not as stupid as you look,” not knowing then that Nigel was about to lose the Jeep’s keys in the sand and we would spend four hours hunting for them.

  But that was for the future, because at precisely that moment I turned on the radio and out of the speakers popped Sheryl Crow’s “All I Want to Do Is Have Some Fun,” and suddenly I was caught up in the song and the lyrics and my precise location in the world and at that very moment I vividly remember thinking, Wow, this really is great—this country, these people, this land of opportunity.

  Nigel tuned in to my reverie as we pulled up at a red light.

  “Please, don’t do that again.”

  “What?”

  “Sing along in a convertible. If you feel you have no choice I recommend being alone in confined spaces where no one else has to suffer.”

  I smiled, pretended to start up again as Michael Hutchence and INXS let rip with “Need You Tonight.”

  “You think you’ll be back?” he asked, as if he could intuit where my mind had been wandering.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s been a great three months.” And then felt the need to add “So, maybe.”

  Nigel studied my expression, hesitated, and smiled as the light turned green.

  “Huh,” he said, the Jeep accelerating as he shifted from first to second.

  “What?” I said, and getting no reply, tried again, even louder.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” said Nigel, still smiling, “only I’ve seen that look before and I think you meant to say ‘definitely’!”

  Part Two

  STARS AND STRIPES

  8.

  C Is for Cat

  I thought his name was Reggie, but apparently I was wrong.

  “His full name is Reginald C. Cat.”

  And with this, the floppy feline was deposited in my lap though he chose not to settle. Within seconds he hopped down and strolled out of the room in the manner of someone who knows his exit is being watched. I had to ask the obvious question.

  “What does the C stand for?”

  The little girl with the freckles, neatly trimmed bangs, and the gummy gaps in her smile considered me as though I might not be all there.

  This was our first encounter, our memorable first conversation, and back then I had no idea that this girl and her peculiarly named cat were about to become an integral part of my life.

  Three years earlier, I had been walking the dogs with my father in the English countryside, professing my indifference to a future in America. I returned to my final year of college and thanks to a series of unfortunate events, there was a chance that I might fail to qualify. In my soft-tissue surgery rotation, one of my mentors, Dr. White, requested my assistance on a thoracic surgery. For many students, scrubbing into surgery can be a nerve-racking endeavor, teeming with opportunities to contaminate the sterile field and ruin any chance of success. Masked, gloved, and gowned, about to make the opening incision, Dr. White asked me to pass him the foot pedal for the electrocautery unit, meaning to kick it his way underneath the operating table. Determined to be helpful, I reached down to the floor, picked up the pedal with my latex-gloved hand, reached over the prepped surgical site, and cheerily said, “Here you go!” All I heard was a communal gasp at my heinous breach of sterile technique before being ejected from the OR. And then, during a rotation in equine medicine, I was in charge of overnight treatments for the horses. In a daze, I stumbled into a stall with what I believed to be an appropriately prepared meal, walked away, and thought no more about it until the following morning when an irate clinician screamed at me for trying to kill his patient.

  “Do you know what happens to horses that eat beet pulp that’s not been soaked properly?”

  Clearly I did not, so he barely paused.

  “They get something called ‘choke.’ Ever heard of it? Think it might be called choke for a reason? If it wads up and gets stuck up in their esophagus they can die. Fortunately for you this particular horse was smart enough not to touch it.”

  In spite of another good reason not to become an equine veterinarian, I managed to get by, to pass the rotation and my final examinations, and graduate—a proud, newly minted member of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. I took a position as an intern at the University of Liverpool, what they called a “house officer,” and it was during this time that the addiction to surgery took hold and had me dreaming of opportunities in America.

  I could argue that programs offering both didactic and practical training in small-animal surgery were few and far between in Britain, forcing me to look further afield. Still, I didn’t need to put an ocean between myself and the Yorkshire Dales, but ambition and the insight gained from my previous visit to the United States had given me the necessary nudge to apply for a three-year residency position at Tufts University and the Angell Memorial Animal Hospital of Boston. Why not, I had thought, it wasn’t as though I stood any chance of getting in. And before I knew what hit me, I was standing with Mum, Dad, and the dogs, saying my goodbyes, burdened with a one-way ticket that felt like a mistake—that smacked of finality and, worst of all, of running away.

  I hate goodbyes. I tend to blank them out and with this one all that remains is an overwhelming memory of reassuring my parents, letting them know that this was temporary, a vacation from which I was certain to return. Funny how a little patch of bumpy air at thirty-five thousand feet cleared my mind, helping me focus on a new and flagrant truth—ther
e were now three thousand miles separating a son infatuated by a dream at odds with a father’s harmless aspiration. I was abandoning the only people who had been, and always would be, there for me.

  When I started my residency, the designation of “Doctor” took some getting used to. This sounds silly, but in Britain veterinarians graduate with no title. This custom hails from the hierarchy applied to our counterparts in human medicine. British med school graduates are called doctors, but if they are fortunate enough to become surgeons, paradoxically, they revert back to the more highly esteemed title of “Mr.” or “Ms.” Because veterinarians are licensed to practice animal surgery, they too are afforded the professional honor of being Mr. or Ms. To be honest, after all those years of college, I quite liked the idea of getting a title that packed a punch of academic respect understood by all, and not only the enlightened few.

  From the get-go, my experience of being an actual doctor was quite different from my earlier stint in Philadelphia as a veterinary student. Somehow I had failed to appreciate certain characteristics of the American pet-owning public. Perhaps I had been indoctrinated by my own country, with its system of socialized medicine, and was overexposed to amenable, accommodating owners who demonstrated an unquestioning trust in their animal’s veterinarian. Perhaps those folks from Philly had taken pity on an enthusiastic if ineffectual apprentice. Here in New England, however, I was blind-sided by an attitude I would eventually grow to love—edgy, persistent, dedicated, and educated. Complacency met a new reality and I found myself on the defensive.

  “What d’ya mean you’re going to put my dog on antibiotics just in case! Which antibiotic? For how long? Is your choice based on a culture and sensitivity test and if not, why not?”

  For the first time in my short career I had to articulate my veterinary thought processes and offer up what had previously been an inner monologue. I had to learn to appreciate the art of clinical justification and honest communication. Cards on the table and hold nothing back. If you don’t know, say so. Make time to shut up and listen. If your clients are uncomfortable or unhappy, give them a chance to let you know. It wasn’t long before I came to the realization that animal health care is at its best when it becomes this kind of focused, collaborative effort rather than a product to be dispensed and accepted without question.

  Those first few months of the residency program were all about adjustment. No matter how much I enjoyed my previous visit, I was still a stranger in a strange land. And how different a land it was. When Nigel and I drove across the country, our vehicle served a specific purpose, allowing us to traverse thousands of miles from A to B. How had I failed to notice the American car culture? Why did everything necessitate a vehicle? Why did it feel as though so much of my day was spent inside a vehicle? Why does every quaint town in central Massachusetts look virtually identical, every major intersection marked by another indistinguishable white wooden church and the absence of meaningful signposts? No wonder I felt as if I was living in my car. I was permanently lost, ensnared by the stubborn New Englander’s philosophy that “If you don’t know where you are, you don’t belong here”!

  Making matters worse was my ignorance of American pop culture and my indifference to American sports. What was Saturday Night Live? Who was Walter Cronkite? What’s a Ding Dong? What happened at Kent State? So much uncommon ground; so little familiar about the fabric of our lives. Invited to “shoot some hoops” with a few of my colleagues after work, I truly believed all I had to do was show up and the necessary dribbling and dunking skills would come naturally. Not for one moment did I consider my basketball skills to be at the level of a seven-year-old. If the cricket bat and ball were in the other hand I imagine most Americans would fare just as poorly playing “silly midwicket” or trying to bowl “a googly,” but I wasn’t thinking straight because I was in such a hurry to fit in.

  Probably because I was so busy trying to assimilate all things Americana, I never had time for loneliness. I was too excited, too engaged to feel isolated and unhappy. I wasn’t looking for companionship. I wasn’t looking to fall in love. And maybe that’s precisely why I did—hopelessly and irrevocably with a woman named Kathy.

  Ours was not the kind of romance that might entice the likes of Sandra Bullock or Kate Hudson when they read the movie script. You know the one, the Pride and Prejudice plot—boy meets girl, there’s a show of early indifference, a thaw, an admission of mutual love, and everyone lives happily ever after. No; to my way of thinking, ours was much better.

  Kathy and I met while I was at Tufts University. We were wearing paper mask and bouffant cap disguises, trading baby-blue stares across sterile space in the OR. There could be no love at first sight based on physical appearance (though I was not to be disappointed). However, there could be total focus on what so many of us crave in a good relationship—the discovery of a big personality and a wicked sense of humor.

  Kathy was working in the large-animal hospital, primarily anesthetizing horses, but if she swung by the small-animal side, we would find each other and end up sharing a story and a laugh. I recall one particular exchange from early on.

  “How was your weekend?” I asked.

  “Not so good,” she said. “I was up in Maine, out sailing with my daughter and my niece.”

  I tried to remain nonchalant, to “be cool.” Maybe everyone sails in America, just like everyone has a swimming pool and goes out to dinner at least once a week. But we both knew that wasn’t what gave me pause. This was the first time I had chatted up (or, to use the lingo of my new surroundings, “hit on”) a woman who was letting me know she had a child.

  “You have a yacht?”

  “No,” she said, “I was with a friend, a boyfriend … this was the final straw and now he’s an ex-boyfriend. He ran us aground. Coast guard had to come and rescue us. Scared us all to death.”

  I nodded, sagely, as though affairs of nautical consequence run through the veins of all the men of Her Majesty’s empire.

  “That’s too bad,” I said, stifling a grin.

  “Why’s that,” she said, bowling me over with a big smile that lit up her eyes. “Because now you can ask me out?”

  “No,” I said, enjoying my advantage, “because I was hoping you might take me on a boat ride!”

  Ask anyone who’s been there—when it feels right, you just know it. An instantaneous connection between us made something shift inside me. In less than two weeks of dating, I knew this was the woman I wanted to marry.

  When I first met Kathy’s daughter, Whitney, I was standing in the living room of their farmhouse. And it was here that Whitney was introducing me to their cat, Reggie.

  “So what does the C stand for?”

  “C is for cat.”

  I nodded like the simpleton I obviously was, delighting her with my show of slow understanding.

  “Got it,” I said, “Reginald Cat Cat. But is it okay with you if I call him Reggie, for short?”

  The little girl worried, deliberated, rocking her head and shoulders in unison from side to side and finally came back to me with a carefully considered nod.

  “I suppose so,” she said.

  It wasn’t long before I had moved in with these two relatively unfamiliar and intimidating creatures—a five-year-old girl and a New England barn cat. Whitney would become my step-daughter, though we abandoned the unnecessary “step” part of the designation long ago. The cat would become the cat in my life, finally, my first cat, the cat who filled my feline void, the cat against which all other cats would be measured—Reginald C. Cat.

  The Renaissance man’s guide to familial integration suggests one should be prepared for hostility, standoffs, icy stares, tantrums, and the line all men fear hearing from a child who is part of the package deal in a relationship—“You can’t tell me what to do because you’re not my real dad.” Fortunately Whitney demonstrated none of these traits. On the contrary, I could not have wished for a more welcoming, cheerful, and affectionate soul. Ins
tead, my anticipated confrontation, and battle against indifference, centered on the prickly feline in my new arrangement.

  Unlike Whitney, Reggie could not be won over by bedtime renditions of “The Very Quiet Cricket” or hours of playing dollhouse. From across the room he would regard me with a look I interpreted as “You’re pathetic,” occasionally training his green eyes on Whitney as if to say, “Quit selling out on me.” Every time I would go up to him, clucking, cooing, calling his name, my voice ridiculously singsong and high-pitched, he would freeze, wait until I closed in, and then leap away at the last minute. It was similar to one of those cheesy horror movies where the audience knows Damien is really the son of Satan while his parents misinterpret all his demonic antics as the spirited high jinks of an angel. Reggie was sweetness and light around Kathy and Whitney, affectionate, malleable, and calm. Alone with me he would practically whisper, “I don’t have to pretend around you” as he hissed or flashed me the middle claw before dancing off to the barn, with just enough of a flourish in his tail to let me know he was actually enjoying himself.

  Some of Reggie’s standoffish personality may have stemmed from unknown traumas in his early life. Kathy had gotten him as a stray about five years earlier, picked up by a Good Samaritan who found an emaciated but handsome male short-haired tabby cat wandering the streets in search of food. Nobody knew his age, except to say he was an adult with a mouth full of permanent teeth in fine working order. His head was broad and his skin felt thick and durable, suggestive of an animal neutered later in life, his body lapping up all the available testosterone before it was stolen, and he had all his claws. Judging by the healed rips and holes in his ears, he had been in some fights and knew how to defend himself. In short, he was a “slumcat.” But it was precisely the bad boy in him, this cheeky, indifferent ’tude that made him all the more irresistible. He was simply too cool and I realized I was trying too hard.