A few years ago, before moving into the apartment I now am about to break the lease on, I wanted a pet. At the time, I was working at an Irish pub (they have the best reubens, I'd say, EVER), trying to figure out things for my second summer at Bread Loaf, and falling in love. It was May.
Bread Loaf School of English. It's a graduate program where people from all over the world unite in one incredibly magical, naturally beautiful environment; raw, unbiased relationships are formed here, bonding experiences thrive on Route 7 from Middlebury into Burlington, cliff-jumping thrills heighten feelings of being alive, and sitting in Adirondack chairs provide a comfortably awkward seat for students to mountain gaze while their minds do gymnastics over Faulkner and Chaucer. I've been there four years, and am going back for my fifth and final summer next year (it is only a summer program, so it takes about 4-5 years) in order to graduate with a Master's degree in English Literature. I had this to look forward to for the second time in June 2010, but there was one problem: I had nowhere to live when I returned home in August. On top of it all, that April was an emotional rollercoaster, ranging from extremely rageful lows to hilltop highs that I rode, enamored.
I can't say why, but I was much more concerned with finding a furry companion for the apartment that I didn't yet have instead of finding an actual apartment to take care of it in. A co-boss of mine (another long post for another random day), upon hearing that I really wanted a cat to keep me company when I "moved into my apartment in August" said that her niece was moving to Florida, and that she wasn't taking her cat with her. She had, in fact, been looking for a nice home for him and hadn't had any luck. My boss wrote down her number on a bar napkin and told me to call her niece ASAP.
So I did.
They were leaving in a week, she said. I had to decide whether or not to take this cat, named Tommy, within the next two days so that she might have peace of mind. I said I would think about it. I also said that I would think about why on earth someone would name her cat Tommy, as if it were original or even a remotely cute name for a grown cat. I didn't say that out loud to her, but you can bet during our entire conversation I was judging her rationale. We hung up, she hoping I'd relieve her of dropping Tommy off at a shelter, me already knowing I would.
Since I still lived with my parents at the time--this was the year after I graduated college--I told my Mom the next day that I was going to pick up a cat. He would stay at her house, I said, until I got home from the summer and could move him into my apartment: again, the non-existent one. I let her know that I would pay for cat food. I told her that his name was Tommy, as if that made him more lovable or attractive an option. She didn't know it, but my mother had no option. Would she really just throw him out of the house while I was away at school? I knew better. Not too happy at first, my mother interrogated me with questions on how I would afford him, why would I expect her to take care of him while I was away, and what if they already moved to Florida by the time I came home?
That's right. At the same time, my Mom and stepdad were also looking to move to Florida (the irony is outrageous). My stepdad had already found a job, and my Mom was going to join him once they closed on the house. Needless to say, the housing market then and even now is a giant pile of garbage, and our house wasn't sold until November. I, obviously, knew that would happen--which is why I had no trouble pawning my new cat onto my mother until I moved out.
I left at about 6pm to go pick him up, from a stranger that I'd only heard about from a boss I didn't really like from a co-worker who said our boss had a niece that was looking to get rid of a cat. Unprepared, I wheeled up with nothing in my car-- no blanket, no box, no nothing--to help this Tommy fellow enjoy my company on the ride home. I knocked on the door. I met Tommy. We made small talk for a few minutes, the owner and I (my conversations with Tommy would come much later in our relationship). She gave me his bed, his feeders, and a leash.
What the hell. A leash? I almost threw it back at her, but decided if I actually wanted to keep the cat I should restrain myself from any display of violence in her presence. I took everything into my car, came back in, grabbed Tommy, and hit the road.
He moaned like a dying cow the entire way home. Clawing at my passenger window, jumping from front to back, straining his neck like he had just guzzled poison and was sucking his last breath. Shit. This was too much. I had forgotten how crazy cats get when you try to transport them places, and immediately regretted my decision. After the 20-minute drive home, I plopped him in the yard and said, "Here ya are. Your new home. Enjoy." He immediately hid in the cat house, located outside of our backdoor, kitty-corner to the flagpole in our front yard (yes, that's correct) that donned a John Deere flag which sometimes sailed high and mighty, other times drooped in the dead air. Granted, I worked a lot at the pub to finish May and the beginning of June, but I still probably only saw that cat four times in a month's span. Three out of those four times, he was in boxing matches with the king of the household, Dominik. All of these awkward male names for cats, I get it--but this one was legit. He was named after Dominik Hasek, the legendary Sabres goalie, by my brother when he was about 8.
As I said, completely legitimate.
I tried to let Tommy into the house a few times, and those three times he rip-roared with Dominik like two Boston meat-heads arguing over a parking spot at a Red Sox game. A punch upside one furry skull. A claw swat to the thick chest, a grunt and stagger back. Hair-raised on backs, the cats would have killed eachother had I not removed Tommy from the situation. "It's MY fucking house," Dominik screeched as I plopped Tommy outside.
I left for school around the middle of the third week in June. Blue eyes and I stayed together, and I was also able to find an apartment, thanks to the old man who frequented O'Lacy's that eventually became my neighbor. He heard rumors of my now-apartment-soon-to-be-old being up for grabs, and gave me the name and number of the guy who owned it. I called a few weeks into school, and was able to cut a deal. By August 1st, it was finalized--I had a place. So pumped I couldn't stand it, I thought about all the things I would be able to do now that I wasn't living at home. Watch TV when I wanted without being berated to do the dishes-- I could do them whenever the damn hell I wanted to now. Come home late without having to be quiet, because it was my domain, and I paid the bills. Buy my own groceries, be alone. Yes.
My lease was signed when I got home, sometime in the first week of August. Blue eyes and my mom had moved everything in before I got home, very graciously, I might add--and all I really had to do was unpack. And pick up my cat. Tommy.
I had almost forgotten about him, probably because sometime around mid-July my Mom, on one of our rare phone conversations while I was at school (there is no cellphone reception), told me that he disappeared. What in hell did that mean? Cats don't disappear, I said. That makes no sense. She told me she heard screaming and cat-crying about a week earlier and assumed that Dominik and Tommy got into a major fight--possibly one that caused fatal injury to my cat because Dominik was still around. She hadn't seen Tommy in days. When I confirmed with my landlord that I wanted the apartment on August 1st, I called my mom. She still hadn't seen him. Suspicious, though, was the way the cat food diminished in the feline dorm room in our yard. We suspected he roamed the countryside by day, and gorged on glutenized cat food during the wee hours of the night when Dominik was inside the house, in my brother's room, curled up at Mike's feet.
When I did arrive back in New York, my Mom confirmed a Tommy sighting--just like the Yeti of the Himalayas, he prowled our yard's edge with a watchful eye, waiting for a human to make direct contact. She was able to lure him to her with some promise of "treat" and the cunning, "kitty, kitty, kitty" that all cats apparently listen to. She pet him, he purred. She kept him in the house until two days later, I was unpacked and ready to receive him.
At first, he was a skiddish freak. He wouldn't let me touch him, let alone pet him. I'll freely admit that when I own animals, I like to cuddle them like children--this was not an option with Tommy. Much to my surprise, he began to come around after a few weeks; he would brush up against my leg, look up at me with his emerald eyes, asking for food, and even purr a little. By about a month in to my freedom I was able to pick him up, and he nuzzled my face, which now looking back seems odd to recount because he is incredibly loving and thinking back to a time when he was tentative seems unrealistic. He was the only animal in my apartment, unless you include me. This time no one yelled at him to get the fuck out. My apartment was his.
Because he was so used to the outdoors, I couldn't keep him inside all the time. I wouldn't have felt right about it, and my street is a fairly quiet side street so I didn't see it being an issue--and it hasn't been. He will lay on other people's porches, get into drunken brawls with other street hoodlums after having drank too much milk, and come running up to me from the corner of the street--7 houses down--when I call his name. He is a night watchman, keeping rodents away from my doorstep, scaring the evil cat up the street who I refer to as Lucifer away from my property, and always gets out of the way when I pull into my driveway. Tommy always comes home.
Now, Tommy and I are on the search for a new home, but unlike the first time we met, we will be doing it together. I've thought about how I would feel if I tried to leave him behind or give him away because I was moving, and I always stop thinking about it because it was never really an option. I've just gotten back from Bread Loaf after my fourth summer, and I was afraid, as I was last year, that he would have forgotten me. When I walked into my apartment for the first time after 7 weeks, he brushed up against my calf and meowed at me. His food bowl was empty, and he was hungry. Blue eyes had taken care of him for me while I was away.
I picked up Tommy and he hugged me--which is how I now refer to his nuzzles. Each paw will be on each one of my shoulders, and he will shove his sparsely-covered kitty chin into my nose, clouding my senses with loose cat hair and dander. I usually am a little annoyed when that happens, but this time I wasn't. Setting him down on my kitchen chair, I filled his measuring cup with food and filled his porcelain bowl marked with cat paws to the brim. I gave him fresh water, and stroked his tail as he began to eat. I visited my Dad, watched a little TV, read a little Steinbeck. At about 1am, I fell asleep in my own bed for the first time in weeks.
The next morning, I woke up to a hairy ass in my face. Because at this stage I was single, I knew it had to be Tommy. He often likes to lay the opposite of me, with his head and front paws stretched toward my toes and his hindlegs grazing my neck. Putting my hand gently on his head, he lazily got up and turned himself around. He plopped himself down right next to me, spine to my stomach, back of his head in-between my chest, toes pointed the same direction as mine. I draped my hand over him, and told him that no matter where I was going, he was coming with me.
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