Category — critters

Twelve years ago, a few days before Halloween I found myself heading into downtown Atlanta after work. The wasbund (we were just engaged at this point) surprised me with an early birthday present: a trip to the Atlanta Humane Society to pick out a cat. Our orange tabby was more fond of him than me at the time, and he knew how much I missed my childhood cat.

As I walked past the kennels along the wall, I spotted a small Russian Blue/Siamese mix. We made eye contact and he let out a little sing-song meow as he rubbed his face against the wire door. I asked to hold him, and he curled up against my chest and tucked his head under my chin as if he had waited all his life for my embrace. After a few minutes of cuddling, the wasbund insisted I put him back to look at a silver tabby kitten. I reluctantly obeyed, but Ivan had another idea. The minute they put him back in his sad little metal box, he began to scream and smash his face frantically into the wire door.

I tried to concentrate on the six week old kitten, but I couldn’t. My tears came quickly and forcefully. I stepped back from the wall of cats and shook my head.

I can’t take it. We’re taking him home. Bring me that cat.

We thought he was maybe two months old, he was so small and thin, but he was actually six months old. He’s named for the Russian czar Ivan the Terrible; he was found behind an elementary school and developed an insane appetite for scraps. Our kitchen trashcan was raided nightly while we slept, and I felt so sorry for him the night he managed to turn it completely upside down, so he wasn’t even rewarded for his efforts. I did not feel sorry for him when I discovered the bites he stole from the tomatoes I left to ripen on the counter.

Ivan never lost his taste for scraps. His favorites were refried beans, canned string beans, creamed corn, twinkie filling, boston creme donuts, yogurt and ham. He had a special cry for ham begging- a ham song- and anyone who dared open a package of lunch meat in a two mile radius was serenaded. One Christmas, Mom left the end of the ham wrapped in tin foil on the stove top overnight. We awoke to a kitchen floor covered in chewed up bits of tin foil and a very full cat deep into what can only be described as a ham coma. His weight topped out at 19 pounds a few years ago. Just a month ago, he eviscerated two Krispy Kreme whipped cream filled donuts while we slept. My sister found them frosting side down on the kitchen floor, and when she picked them up she realized they were hollow. Ivan chewed a hole through the pastry, carefully extracted the filling and discarded the rest. Just like the naked pizza crust he always left in the box, licked clean of even the tomato sauce.

Ivan never inspired ire, no matter what his offense. He was entirely too charming and sweet to reprimand. He loved everyone. Other cats, dogs, people big and small. Ivan is by far the friendliest cat I have ever known, a complete and total lap whore who truly did not understand why another animal wouldn’t co-exist peacefully with him. He could smell a nap brewing anywhere in the house, and there he was, ready to curl up with whoever was sporting heavy eyelids.

He sensed a heavy heart just as easily. In those first chilly days after the split, after I lost my cherished marmalade monster, after the wasbund took Adicus, I drowned in the wreckage of the life I had imagined for myself since I was seventeen. Ivan came to bed with me every night, chirping and mewling, smashing his face into my hands, curling up against my chest as I wept my way to the sweet escape of exhausted sleep. The increase in his chatter and antics in our waking hours seemed eerily like a concerted effort to fill an empty house and the space that hope left vacant in me.

Over the last few months, his appetite waned to nothing. He had a cold for a few days this winter, and when he recovered fully and quickly I heaved a sigh of relief. When I came home from my trip to see my parents, he wasn’t in great shape. He was tired and weak, though he still kept his schedule- including making his rounds of the property, he just didn’t have his usual spark.

He trotted off down the driveway Monday night, just before I came home, and we haven’t seen him since. He’s never prowled this long without coming home. We called for him all day and searched the yard. Ivan answers my call with a reliability that humans never manage; he would call back to me as he sauntered up to the porch.

Part of me wants to hope that he’ll show up for breakfast, but mostly I know better and it just seems cruel to entertain the possibility of anything better than a confirmation of the knot in my stomach and the ache in my poor, raw heart.

lazy will the loam come from its hiding
return this quiet searcher to the soil…
-the decemberists “don’t bear it all”