by Theresa Weir
He focused on the man behind the counter. Not as hairy as Jerry. Not as sad. And he was handing out bowls of food. What could be better? Jerry suddenly dropped completely off Max’s radar. This new guy had food. Lots of food.
Food hadn’t even been on his list, and now Max could see the error of his novice, matchmaking ways. And Jerry-well, he’d felt uneasy about Jerry from the beginning, which was days ago in cat time. Food should have been a priority. If this man could feed all of these people, he could easily feed Max and Melody.
Chapter 3
Joe ladled soup into white bowls and handed them to the people filing past the counter. Over half were men, the rest women and children. The children got to him the most. Children and-he did a double take. Cat. Yes, that was a cat. A black-and-white cat with a black mustache, sitting like a statue just inside the door.
A regular named Jerry reached across the counter. “Hey, Joe. How’s it going?”
They shook hands, and when they broke away Joe was left with a folded piece of paper in his palm that he slipped into his pocket. He would read it once the noon shift was over.
Jerry looked over his shoulder at the cat. “I asked him if he was hungry, and he followed me here.”
“Cat’s gotta eat too,” the woman behind him said, nodding.
The low ceiling contained the clatter and voices, making it hard to sort out people from cutlery. A wall of confusing noise, but the cat didn’t seem to mind.
“He looks pretty harmless to me.” Joe spooned a piece of chicken into a bowl and set it aside to cool. “Hungry like everybody else.”
Not all of the people who ate at Gimme Shelter were homeless. Some were simply unable to afford a decent meal. The building slept fifty, and they were seeing more families and turning away more people all the time.
Once the lunch crowd had been fed, Joe scanned the room for the cat. He was still sitting near the door, staring at him with brilliant yellow eyes. Joe picked up the bowl containing the piece of chicken, and slowly approached. The animal didn’t run. “Hungry?” Continuing to move carefully, Joe put the bowl down a couple of feet away.
The animal stepped forward, sniffed the cooked meat, and began eating with gusto. Homeless? Maybe not, because he was wearing a collar. But in this economy some owners were turning their pets loose when they could no longer care for them.
The cat licked its paws and washed its face.
“What’s your story?” Joe reached out to gently pet the animal on the head. He seemed to like that, so Joe got a little bolder and scratched the cat behind the ear, then under his chin. “That’s quite a motor you’ve got.” Joe turned the metal ID tag toward the light so he could make out the engraving. “Max. So your name is Max. That’s a good cat name.”
Below the name was a phone number, along with an address. Joe pulled out his cell phone and keyed in the number only to get a recording stating that it was no longer in service.
Joe straightened and closed the back door so the cat wouldn’t make a run for it.
Jerry shuffled over. “Gonna keep my cat?”
“I’ll drive him to the address on his collar and see if his owners still live there,” Joe said. “Kinda doubt it since the phone number is no longer in service.”
“You could use a cat here. The kids would love it.”
“A lot of people are allergic to cats. A dog would be better. But I hate to see such a nice cat end up in the animal shelter.”
“I heard all the no-kill shelters are full.”
The cat circled back to the door, stood there a moment, then began scratching with both front paws, trying to get out.
“Yeah,” Joe said. “I heard that too.”
The cat seemed frantic now.
“Weird how a little bit of food can turn a tame cat into a wild one,” Jerry said.
Joe had no place to keep the cat, so he put it in the bathroom. Inside, with the door locked, Joe pulled out the small piece of paper Jerry had given him. A name. Just a name. He memorized it and flushed the paper down the toilet.
“Sorry, old boy. Can’t take you home until I get off work.” Joe exited the bathroom. Worried about leaving the cat in the dark, he slipped his hand inside, felt along the wall for the light switch, and turned it on before firmly closing the door.
Two hours later Joe ran to the pet store for cat food. While in the checkout lane, he plucked a bag of catnip from a clip and tossed it on the counter with the canned salmon purchase. He hoped Max would like his selections.
It wasn’t until early evening that Joe could get away from the shelter long enough to pack Max in his car and look up the address on the collar. He easily found the street and house-a tiny bungalow in an area of Saint Paul called Frogtown. Carrying the cat, Joe approached the residence fully expecting to find new tenants or owners in the home.
*
Melody was frantic.
She’d looked through the house twice, checking the closets and cupboards searching for Max. She’d gone over every corner of her tiny backyard. No Max. A few years ago she’d accidentally locked him in a closet for a full day, and she kept hoping that’s what had happened this time. But two more trips through the house failed to turn up even the faintest meow.
People used to say Melody led a charmed life. Once she’d even found the end of a rainbow. It was the oddest thing, because there was nothing there. Nothing. Just a field. She’d never told anybody about it, not anybody but Max. She told Max a lot of things she didn’t tell anyone else. He didn’t understand, but she loved that she could tell him anything and he seemed to listen.
The idea that Max might be gone for good was too much for Melody to contemplate. Suddenly she felt the loss of David all over again, and her head was a mixed-up mess, because somehow Max almost seemed like David. He’d been David’s cat, so that was understandable, and Melody suspected she’d clung to Max even more because of the connection to her old life, her happy life when it had been the three of them. David, cooking eggs and pancakes on a Sunday morning while Melody sat cross-legged on the floor, Max diving under the open newspaper, making them both laugh.
What should she do?
Search the neighborhood. Go door-to-door. Put up fliers. Yes. All of those things.
Oh, my God. Oh, my God.
A knock at the front door had her running to the porch. Through the screen she saw a man with wavy dark hair standing on the step, Max in his arms. Melody fumbled with the latch, hardly aware that she’d burst into tears. She plucked Max from the man’s arms and buried her face in Max’s fur. Then she held him up to get a good look at him. “Oh, Max! Are you okay? Are you hurt?”
“He’s fine,” the man said. “Does he do this often? Run off?”
“He disappeared once before. After-” She stopped. No need to tell a stranger about David’s murder. But after David’s death, Max vanished for three days. At first she thought he was afraid of all the people coming and going, but even after things slowed down he remained aloof and skittish. She never found out where he’d been those days, but she’d always figured he’d been hiding in the basement.
Right now Max had kind of a drugged look to his eyes.
“Did you give him catnip?” Melody asked.
“I thought it would be nice. Like offering a guest a glass of wine.”
Now she noticed that Max was heavy and limp.
“I also fed him. Chicken. And canned cat food.” The man’s voice faded, as if he wondered if he’d done the right thing. “I noticed he was fat, so I thought he must have had an owner fairly recently.”
The man was giving her that look. A look she was used to seeing. Yes, she was wearing the Pippi Longstocking costume she wore for story hour, but even when she was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, people sometimes gave her that look. A person had to be what a person had to be. And maybe she’d gotten odder since David’s death. Yes, it was true. She’d admitted that to herself more than once. But when someone died you realized the importance of being true to
yourself. Of being honest. The importance of being who you are. And if that meant wearing her Pippi costume home rather than changing before she left the library… well, that was fine. That was who she was. Not Pippi, but someone who wasn’t afraid to be seen in something a bit unusual.
“He’s never left before. He’s never left the backyard.”
She lifted the limp cat so she could look at his face, her hands under his armpits. “What’s going on, Max? First the peeing, now this. You aren’t acting yourself.” But really, he hadn’t acted himself since David’s death. “What kind of catnip did you give him?”
“I don’t know. I just grabbed a bag at the pet store. Does he get special catnip? Maybe you should send him out with a set of instructions so if someone finds him they’ll know what kind of catnip or caviar to give him.”
Melody envisioned a little clear tube that could attach to Max’s collar. Inside was a rolled piece of paper outlining his diet and recreational drug preference. She nodded. “Yes.”
“I was being sarcastic.”
“I know you were, but the idea has merit.”
The man in the doorway was looking at her in kind of a confused, woozy way-much the same expression Max had displayed earlier.
The cat grew tired of being held. He squirmed out of Melody’s arms, and his feet hit the floor with a solid thud. Then he ran through the living room and down to the basement. Seconds later Melody and her guest heard him digging in the litter box.
“I wondered about that,” the man said.
He was still standing in the doorway. Should she ask him in? She didn’t feel comfortable with that. But why wasn’t he leaving? Did he expect a reward? Yes! He’d fed Max and bought him catnip, and now that she looked closer, she could see that his jeans had been patched in a couple of places, and his shirt with its snap buttons was definitely vintage, maybe thrift shop. “Let me pay you something for your trouble.”
As soon as she spoke, she knew she’d made a mistake. His green eyes lost their softness, and she could almost see his mental retreat.
“I don’t want anything.”
He began backing away, ready to turn and leave.
“Wait!” She ran to the kitchen, opened a plastic container, and pulled out one of the cupcakes she’d baked yesterday for story time at the library. She ran back to the porch and handed him the cupcake, which he took with a baffled expression.
“Everybody loves cupcakes, right?”
“Ah, well, to be honest, I’m more of a beef jerky kind of guy.”
He held the pink cupcake between fingers and thumb. He turned it and eyed it with suspicion. “It has a cat face on it.”
“The cat is supposed to be Max, but I couldn’t get the color right. A little more blue than black. That’s a jelly bean for a nose.”
“And the whiskers?”
“Black licorice. The kids love them.”
“Max must be honored.”
“Oh, he is.”
They talked about next time. Kidding, of course. There would be no next time.
“I’ll have the right catnip.”
She laughed. “I’ll have beef jerky.”
He left with his cupcake, holding it in front of him as if it were something extremely foreign and questionable.
She realized she hadn’t gotten his name, but what did it matter?
Max made a thunderous return upstairs, skidding around corners, full of energy now that he’d visited the litter box. After entertaining Melody with a lot of crazy antics, he began to strut around the small house, going from room to room.
Melody picked him up and tried to cuddle. “What would I have done if you’d never come home?” she asked. The thought terrified her. “If he hadn’t found you? What were you thinking? Don’t ever go away again, do you hear me? Never, never!”
He wriggled out of her arms to once again roam the house, finally settling on the bedroom where he sat in the middle of the floor and yowled.
If she didn’t know better, she would swear he was looking for David.
“Max, here. I made cupcakes with your face on them.”
Cats weren’t supposed to be able to see their own image, but Melody often caught Max admiring his reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Now she bent at the waist to show him a cupcake, but even the image of himself in frosting and jelly beans failed to cheer him up. If he was still acting odd tomorrow, she’d take him to the vet. “Should I make you a cupcake out of cat food and catnip? That would be adorable, don’t you think?”
He ignored her, went straight to the front door, and scratched to get out.
It didn’t seem like he missed David. It seemed like he missed the stranger who’d brought him home.
*
That night, long after Max’s return, Melody’s thoughts kept going back to the stranger’s visit. With a start of surprise, she found herself recalling small details that she’d missed when he’d stood in the doorway. Almost like looking at a photograph or watching a video, picking up things you were too busy to notice during real time.
His voice.
Deep, but soft. Soothing.
His eyes. Kind, and when he smiled he’d had the most pleasant laugh lines at the corners. No beard, no mustache, but he’d needed to shave. Not the bad kind of needing to shave. The good kind.
How tall had he been? She hadn’t noticed that, so probably average. His sleeves had been folded up two turns to reveal nice forearms. Strong. Lean. But even as she struggled to remember, it wasn’t really the way he looked that captured her attention in recall, it was him. The feeling of who he was that intrigued her.
Replacing the lid on the cupcake container, she laughed softly to herself, thinking about how he’d held the treat, how foreign it had seemed to him. As she laughed, she felt Max brush up against her bare leg. He stepped on her fuzzy pink slippers, trying to get her attention.
“I’m mad at you.”
But she wasn’t. Not really.
“How could you run off like that? What were you thinking?” Was he lonely? Melody wondered. “Maybe I’ll start bringing you to work with me. How would you like that?”
He meowed.
“The kids would love you.”
He meowed again.
Chapter 4
The day after returning Max the cat to his cupcake-baking owner, Joe heard suspicious scratching. He opened the shelter door a crack, and Max the cat shot inside and immediately began rubbing against Joe’s leg.
The noon rush was over, and Jerry was the only other person left in the room. “Looks like you got a friend,” he said, hunched over his soup, arms on the table. “Are you sure you aren’t taking a shower in pheromones? That cat’s in love with you, dude.”
As soon as Jerry spoke the words, the cat calmed down and settled on his haunches.
It was odd, Joe had to admit.
“If I’d know he was going to turn into such a pain in the ass, I wouldn’t have invited him here,” Jerry said.
“That’s okay.” Joe searched for a piece of chicken and dropped it in a bowl just as he had the day before.
“Is the owner some kind of slacker who doesn’t take care of his pets?”
“Quite the opposite. I think Max is spoiled to the extreme. And the owner is a woman, not a guy.”
“Cat lady?”
“No. Well, maybe a cat lady in training.”
“Young?”
“Maybe late twenties.”
“Ah.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing. Just, ah. Be kinda tough to get involved with anybody right now, if you know what I mean.” With no audience or witnesses, Jerry had dropped the homeless alcoholic act and was the old Jerry that Joe had worked with for the past several years.
“Why not?”
“Your job.” Jerry looked around the empty room. “This job.”
Joe sighed and tested the temperature of the chicken with one finger. “You’re right.” The job took a toll on relati
onships.
“Wouldn’t be fair.”
“Wouldn’t be right.”
“So what are you going to do with the cat?”
“Take him back home, I guess.”
“What’s she like? The owner?”
Joe thought about her. He didn’t even know her name, and he had no idea of her real hair color. But he recalled her pale skin, her blue eyes. “She was dressed weird… Now that I think of it, she was dressed almost like some storybook character with red braids and fake freckles on her nose. And she had cat stuff all over the place.”
“Okay, that does not sound like somebody you should get mixed up with.”
“I’m not going to get mixed up with her. I wouldn’t have expected to see her again if this guy hadn’t come back.” He bent and placed the bowl on the floor. “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty.”
Jerry pointed his spoon at Joe. “You know who the cat lady sounds like?”
“She’s not a cat lady.”
“Pippi Longstocking.” At Joe’s blank look, he continued. “From the books. She’s this obnoxious brat who has no parents and does whatever she wants.”
Max swiped at Joe with one paw, and Joe jumped back. “Guess he didn’t like my generic cat call,” Joe said.
“Maybe you’re supposed to bow and say: ‘Dinner is served, your grace’.”
“Did Pippi Longstocking have a cat?” Joe asked.
“How the hell should I know? Wait. I think she did have a cat. No, a monkey. She had a monkey. And a horse.”
*
Melody answered the door to find the man from yesterday standing on her front step, Max in his arms. Relief washed over her, and she took the cat from him. “I just got home from work and found him gone again.”
“You might want to check for an escape tunnel.”
