The Year of the Cat

At last we are home. I feel a little guilty about leaving Trinket so soon. The kids have no idea what to expect from a cat. I am not sure I do. I have an hour to figure it out.

I put down food and water for her. I have arranged all of her bowls on a decorative place mat. She ignores the food. Same routine as at Scott's. She is skeletal; I try not to dwell.

I carry her to the litter box, so she knows where to find it: artfully placed on its coordinating mat to the left of the foot of the short flight of steps to my basement. It is an unfinished basement. I wonder why I bothered with all the coordinating. It’s the Mom in me, I suppose.

I introduce Trinket to all of her toys. Since none of them resembles a live, panicked bird, she is disinterested. She scampers back to the basement to the base of the fireplace chute where we once detected a mouse.

She is frozen there. Staring.

Oh good. A mouser. Let the games begin.

But I must go to the orthodontist at once, and first must tell the children three simple things:

1 - Don’t let Trinket outside for any reason, even by accident.

2 - If she does anything weird, call Scott.

3 - If she poops, pees or barfs on anything, just leave it for me. I can dole out KP duty details once we’ve all gotten used to each other.

I go to the orthodontist. Uneventful thank God.

I return to my car to find 4 missed messages from my home and my children’s cell phones, and Scott is calling me.

I answer in a panic.

He tells me that the kids have been calling him. Trinket seems to want to retreat to the basement. I tell him about my mousing suspicions.

He tells me that she is climbing into the cool, dark, albeit filthy spaces between the top of the foundation and the floors of the house. He thinks maybe she’s sick. Maybe she’s going in there to die.

I had a cat that did that when I was growing up. He was 18. After he went through his cranky old age stage of peeing on one’s pillow out of spite, he climbed into the dark, cool recesses of the linen closet by the water pipes to die. My brother had to climb in to pull him out, presumably to die a more humiliating public death.

I race home. This can not be how this story ends. Poor kitty. Poor kids. And perhaps worst of all, Lars will make this a laughable story that proves without question that I am the crappiest mother on the planet.