by Patricia Fry
I sometimes believed that he broke things on purpose. After losing a couple of vases to his curiosity, having my favorite water glass pushed into the sink and broken, finding my toothbrush in the toilet—yes, it’s true—and, of course, the slaughter of my pet fish, Bubbles, I had learned how to Rags-proof my apartment. Unfortunately, the new décor wasn’t very interesting. The only decorative items left sitting out were a heavy glass bowl I’d inherited but didn’t like much, and a couple of family photographs in unbreakable frames, which I sometimes found lying facedown or on the floor.
At least Rags didn’t gnaw on electrical cords, eat chocolate, swallow ribbon, or chew up metallic bows like some cats I’d seen in the clinic. But I still had to take precautions to keep him, my belongings, and the rest of the neighborhood relatively safe.
That night, I definitely had heard something; in fact, it woke me from a sound sleep. You know how it is when you’re awakened from a deep slumber and all you want to do is go back to sleep—you’ll rationalize anything so you won’t have to get up. Oh, if that’s an intruder, he’ll probably just take the butterscotch brownies I made and be on his way. Or Yeah, I think Rags knocked something off the table, but it didn’t sound like it broke. I’ll deal with it in the morning.
It was one of those nights. I was dog tired and I did not want to get up; I wanted to go back to my dream state. So I convinced myself that what I was hearing that warm fall night was a coyote up in the hills or a cat fight in the distance. But when I couldn’t go back to sleep, I reluctantly got up to check it out. Maybe it was time to change the battery in the smoke detector. I made a mental note to buy batteries. Before I could slip into my robe, I heard a faint knock at the front door. Then someone called my name. “Savannah.”
I looked at the clock. Two thirty-seven.Who could that be at this hour? There’s one way to find out, I told myself as I edged toward the door. I used the peephole, then opened the door to my neighbor Esther. When I saw the look on her face, I suddenly felt overcome with dread. “What’s wrong?” I asked. “Has something happened?”
Esther hesitated, then said, “Well, I hate to tell you this, but…”
“What?” I asked, feeling a nagging sense of panic. “Is it Rags?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Actually, we think it is.”
“What happened? Where is he?”
Esther looked down at my feet and pointed. “Right there.”
When I saw Rags, I relaxed immensely, but then I was confused. I grabbed the cat and invited Esther in so I could close the door. Once she was inside, I noticed her looking around the room as if she were searching for something. Finally I heard it, and so did she.
“There,” she said, pointing. She rushed past me and Rags toward my thrift store Queen Anne chair, and picked up something from the seat cushion.
Confused as all get out, I turned on a light and was stunned to see her cradling a newborn puppy. “What?” I exclaimed. “How…? Where did that come from?”
Esther snuggled with the puppy while she explained. “Well, earlier this evening Millie graced us with three healthy Jack-A-Ranian puppies—you know, Jack Russell and Pomeranian. We left them in the sun porch, where we thought they’d be more comfortable in this heat.” She smiled down at the tiny pup and continued, “A little while ago Millie came into our bedroom crying. I finally got up to find out what was wrong and realized that one of her puppies was missing. When I saw that a screen was torn, I figured something had come in after the puppies. Of course, I feared the worst—a coyote, a raccoon, or a feral cat, maybe.” She looked down at the puppy and smiled. “When I couldn’t find this little girl anywhere, it occurred to me that maybe it was your crazy cat. He has been visiting more often since Millie became pregnant—it was as if he knew.”
“Oh my gosh, that’s a first,” I told her. I was absolutely stunned. Then a frightening thought occurred to me and I asked, “Is the puppy…?”
Esther smiled. “She looks just fine. Not a mark on her. No, I don’t think your cat meant to hurt her. I imagine he was just on his nightly rounds and he heard the puppies whimpering, so he decided to help Millie out with puppy duty.”
Feeling a little weak, I sat down on the sofa next to where Rags sat staring up at Esther and the pup. I didn’t know what to say. But I did express my gratitude for Esther’s gracious attitude about Rags. I mean, the criminal cat broke in and engaged in a kidnapping. Of course, I would be responsible for repairing or replacing the screen he damaged.
Even though Esther was generous in her handling of the ordeal, the incident had me a little concerned. I began going over some of the what ifs in my mind. I mean, cats have been known to kill the young of their own species, let alone those from other species. But Rags didn’t seem to have it in him to harm another creature. Sure, he caused Bubbles’s death, but possibly unintentionally. And he loves dancing after butterflies. But never did he bring me a lizard or a bird. And, from what I could tell when we were out walking, he had a pretty good rapport with most of the other pets. He even used to hang out with a squirrel in the park when I’d take him on a run. Oh, he didn’t run. He’d ride in the jogging stroller while I ran. Then I’d give him some free time in the park to wander around as far as the leash would allow. It was there that he met up with the squirrel. I think if I’d let him off the leash, he would have followed the little squirrel into the treetops.
Rags’s favorite animal friend in those days was Lulu, a dachshund who lived in the housing tract north of us. He’d pull to go up Lulu’s street when we were walking in that neighborhood and when we’d reach their backyard, Rags would sit and watch through the fence, waiting for Lulu to notice him. The wait wasn’t usually long. Within minutes, there came Lulu wriggling her way across the patio to greet Rags.
Once when we arrived at Lulu’s house, her owner was watering some plants around the pool. Patsy and I struck up a conversation and we hit it off. In fact, that day Rags and I were invited inside for refreshments. That’s when I learned another of Rags’s secrets.
It seems that Rags had saved the little dachshund from drowning one night. Patsy said it was the most surreal experience. She and her husband were sleeping when they heard something out on their patio. She realized it was a cat yowling. She said that cats often fought around there in the spring. She put a pillow over her head and tried to go back to sleep. When the sound became more frantic and seemed to be moving closer, she opened her eyes and was startled to see Rags in her bedroom, meowing up a storm.
Patsy had seen Rags before, but never inside her home. She quickly got out of bed to chase him back outside. When she reached the sliding door, which was open just enough for Lulu to get through, she saw Rags run out toward the pool. She said that the cat turned and meowed as if he wanted her to follow him, so she stepped out, flicked on the light and that’s when she saw Lulu. She had fallen into the pool and wasn’t able to pull herself to safety. Patsy choked up when she told me that she’s sure Lulu would have drowned from exhaustion if Rags hadn’t intervened.
Once Esther had left my apartment the night of the pup-napping, I mentally reviewed my first six months with Rags. I thought I’d probably seen it all with him. He’d earned the title of the klepto cat. He’d become a criminal suspect and a puppy-napper. He’d even saved a dog’s life. What more could this ordinary cat—this love-bug who adored human companionship—possibly do to surprise me? What, indeed? I was soon to realize that my roller-coaster ride with Rags was just beginning.
****
The following spring I learned from my mother that my favorite aunt had tripped and broken her foot. I knew that Aunt Maggie was alone in the large home she’d inherited when her husband died, so I decided to take Rags and drive up to Northern California to help her out. It seemed like a good time to leave town. I’d graduated from vet school. I’d sorta-kinda broken it off with Travis. I wasn’t entirely committed to my current job situation, and I certainly wasn’t ready to open my own veterinary practice. Why not ta
ke a breather and do something to help someone else?
While I looked forward to spending time with my aunt, I also had some reservations. Auntie is not your typical widow. For as long as I’ve known her, which is all of my life, she’s been feisty, adventuresome, and even a bit crusty at times. I just hoped I could keep up with her and that she didn’t lead me down a forbidden path. Yes, you read that right. Instead of explaining, let me just continue telling the story.
Like me, Auntie has always had a heart for animals, and like me, she’s especially fond of cats. When Rags and I arrived at her large farmhouse-style home, we met her current cat, a lovely part-Persian named Layla, who had been rescued as a kitten from a dangerous situation. Before Auntie broke her foot—under what turned out to be suspicious circumstances—she had been helping Max Sheridan at his cat shelter next door. Moving in to help Auntie was going to involve and include a lot of cats and Rags would be right there in the mix.
As it happened, Rags saved my life and Auntie’s that month. No, he didn’t alert us to a raging house fire. There were no noticeable heroics involved. It all boiled down to Rags’s fascination for other people’s things.
Unbeknownst to Auntie, a deranged relative of her deceased husband was out of jail and on a rampage to take the family home from her. Before I arrived, there had been threats, which Auntie chose not to tell me about. She did eventually reveal how she broke her foot, which she continued to claim was purely an accident. Yeah, she accidentally stumbled over a stepping stone that had been set askew very close to a deep hole in the ground that someone had booby-trapped. Thankfully, her gardener discovered the danger before anyone was seriously injured.
As for the threats, it’s Rags who brought them to my attention. Auntie had those darned lever door handles throughout her house, so even though she closed her bedroom door the first night we were there, Rags easily opened it and sneaked in to join her and Layla. Early the next morning, Auntie heard noises and woke up to what she thought was a wild animal foraging in one of her dresser drawers. It scared her out of her wits.
By the time I got to her room, she had quit screaming, but she wasn’t very happy with Rags. You see, she had no idea about his interesting characteristics and traits. I’d hoped to keep his criminal tendencies a secret. Who wants to entertain a thief in their home? But when my aunt began frantically looking for her reading glasses that morning and started to question her own sanity when she couldn’t find them, I had to fess up. Reluctantly I told her, “Besides being extremely curious and nosey, Rags is a klepto cat.”
Of course, she didn’t believe me until I found her watch in one of her moccasins and she discovered a tube of hand lotion under her bed covers—the cream oozing out through kitty-cat teeth holes. Yes, that used to be one of his favorite activities, especially when he’d been cooped up for too long. I don’t even want to tell you what I have to do in order to keep him away from my body and hand lotion. Do you know how difficult it is to clean that greasy stuff off furniture, carpeting, and clothes? Since taking Rags on, I’ve become a big-box customer. He’s attracted only to the small tubes, so I buy the super-size body wash, skin cream, and so forth.
Well, I was surprised that Auntie didn’t send Rags and me packing that very morning, especially when she found out he had invaded her privacy in a more personal way than just by rifling through her lingerie drawer. Yes, I wasn’t the only one trying to keep a secret. When I took Rags back to Auntie’s room a little later to look for her reading glasses, he dove into her dresser drawer again and began digging through her unmentionables. As I lifted him out, I saw something float to the floor. I soon discovered it was a threatening note.
I was shocked to learn that my aunt was being harassed. Who would possibly be issuing death threats to my fifty-seven-year-old aunt? I soon found out, however, that Auntie was more concerned about a suspected cat-burglar ring than those annoying threats to her life.
It seems that neighborhood cats were going missing and it was thought that someone was taking them. But who and why? Auntie, Max Sheridan, and others from the Hammond Cat Alliance, which Auntie had established, were frantically seeking clues to the missing cats’ whereabouts—a mystery that I would become intimately involved in.
Sometimes I wonder why I didn’t take Rags and run home when I learned that I would become part of an illegal surveillance team to find the missing cats. I might have turned tail if I’d known I’d be caught up in a dangerous cat-rescue operation and endure a bold and bloody attack on my aunt and me.
As I said, Auntie was so focused on the missing-cat situation that she barely acknowledged the fact that she could be in danger. What I began to see as a serious personal threat to her life, she considered simply an annoyance, until Joe Forster showed up at her house one evening. He came for a sinister purpose—to harm or kill her—and since I was there, he kidnapped both of us. That night, Rags became a hero, although I doubt it was intentional or something he thought through and planned.
Auntie and I were expecting Max Sheridan and Michael Ivey that evening. By then, we’d discovered where the missing cats were being taken and Max, who operated a cat shelter, and Michael, a local veterinarian, were part of the recovery team. They’d come by the house to trade cars with Aunt Maggie so they’d have more room to transport the cats that would be rescued that night.
By then, I had a major crush on Michael. We’d been spending quite a lot of time together, so when I heard a rap at the door, I opened it, eager to see him. But it wasn’t Michael or Max. To our horror, Joe Forster, Auntie’s late husband’s nephew, burst into the room and began attacking us. His plan was to take us to a remote ranch and probably kill us. As frightened as I was, I put up a serious struggle. My aunt was virtually helpless, being on crutches and all, so I felt I had to fight for both of us. At one point, I guess I knocked off Joe Forster’s baseball cap. Unbeknownst to us at the time, Rags evidently picked it up and ran off with it.
Later, when Max and Michael arrived and we didn’t respond to their knock, they stepped inside. They knew that something was wrong when they saw Auntie’s crutches lying on the floor next to a broken lamp. The two men were frantically searching for clues to our whereabouts, when Rags came out into the open carrying that baseball cap. With little else to go on, they stopped to examine the cap and discovered Joe Forster’s name inside.
Joe had been institutionalized for years—in a mental hospital and then in prison—so it wasn’t unusual for him to be wearing clothes marked with his name inside. Now, by this time Max and Michael knew who Joe Forster was. He’d become a suspect in the threats against my aunt as well as the catnapping. He was on the radar of the local sheriff’s department. The authorities knew that Joe had been living and working at the same ranch where we believed the cats had been taken, and animal control and the sheriff’s department planned a raid for later that night. When they learned of our possible abduction, they stepped up their plans and arrived in time to save us from certain death.
If I’d ever considered giving up on Rags, which was sometimes tempting, that incident convinced me of his worth. I mean, he was a hero in my eyes. Even Aunt Maggie, who wasn’t a big fan of my unruly cat, began looking at Rags in a different light. She still shudders when she thinks about what might have happened if Rags hadn’t brought Joe Forster’s cap to Max and Michael that evening. For weeks she had nothing but praise for Rags.
Of course, I told her about some of the other rescues he’d performed—like the time he saved Lulu the dachshund from drowning and when he befriended a homeless cat that definitely needed help. That was a life-and-death situation for a whole family of felines.
****
Rags and I had been together for about ten months in my Los Angeles apartment when he went missing…again. I didn’t take it too seriously when I couldn’t find him that morning; I’d become accustomed to his wandering ways. I also knew down deep that, by allowing him so much freedom, I was putting him at risk. Believe me, I thought about that a
lot. But what was I to do? Keeping him inside was practically impossible. Keeping him inside and happy or even content was absolutely impossible, even though I had added to my repertoire of techniques designed to tame some of Rags’s craziness. I still took him outside on the leash quite often. I set aside extra playtime each evening to help channel some of his energy. I bought him interactive toys to distract him and keep him busy. I used a pheromone spray to try calming him. I stopped short of using tranquilizers. I joked to Gwen that if I decided to use tranquilizers I wasn’t sure whether I should give them to him or take them myself.
No matter what I did, Rags, due to his over-the-top craving for adventure, left the apartment every chance he got. He always came back, but I often waited for him like a mother hen and called for him like some sort of hog caller. Our closest neighbors probably wanted Rags home even more than I did when they’d hear my kitty-kitty-kitty trill so frequently.
Not only that, but his fascination for freedom cost me more than just my peace of mind. It started to become expensive. This was not only because of the toys and climbing apparatus I bought trying to keep him happy at home, but I can’t tell you how many screens I replaced because of his extreme desire to roam. I know, I know, I could have bought an air conditioner and closed the windows. But I continued to live on the edge with this edgy cat that had a huge mind of his own.
This time, however, Rags did not escape from an open window. I’d had a few friends over the night before and Sarah’s fiancé, Stu, had left the door open when he stepped outside with an umbrella to walk Barb in with a platter of hors d’oeuvres. Yes, it was raining in LA that night. And Rags must have slipped out without his raincoat. Upon realizing he was gone, I left the door open for him. But he did not return. Later when I went to bed, I left a window and screen open. I woke up several times and looked for him. I called for him, but he didn’t respond. He still wasn’t home when I got up the next morning. By then the sun was out. All that was left of the overnight rain was a puddle here and there.
