by Gwen Cooper
How could I ask a stranger to live that way? How could I ask somebody to childproof toilets or tie closed sliding closet doors (which Homer was a whiz at prying open) without sounding like a nut?
And even if I could ask somebody to do those things, and I found somebody who was willing, could I trust somebody else? Anybody I lived with would have to be someone I knew was 100 percent trustworthy, someone who would never slip up. Where would I find such a person?
These were questions without good answers. To keep Homer would mean that I had to have a place of my own. But I could no more afford a place of my own—in anything except Miami’s worst neighborhoods—than I could grow Homer’s eyes back for him.
When I reached this point in my calculations, I started giving serious thought to Melissa’s request. (And it was a request, not an offer—because Melissa loved Homer and wanted to keep him almost as much as I did.) I’d like to say that I never so much as considered her proposition, that I made some grand pronouncement along the lines of Whither I goeth, this kitten shall go too.
But I did consider it.
I even told myself it might be better for Homer in the long run. One of the biggest challenges for a blind cat was getting to know the space he lived in. A sudden move to a new home would be a big jolt for him. He knew Melissa’s home intimately, and she was likely to stay there for a while.
It took him all of forty-eight hours to figure out his way around Melissa’s house, I told myself. If you don’t want to take him with you, that’s one thing—but don’t pretend it’s because you think he’d be traumatized by a new place.
I spent the next few days hoping for some kind of epiphany, for a crystalline moment of insight and clarity that would show me what, precisely, was the right thing to do.
It was a moment that never came. Instead, I found myself more aware of small things—of the way, for example, I was the only one who could tell when Homer was deeply asleep, as opposed to half awake, by the slight tension of the muscles in his face that would have controlled his eyelids. A sudden gust of air would also cause those muscles to contract, closing eyelids that weren’t there to protect the eyes he didn’t have.
I noticed how Homer was never content merely to lie next to me. If he wanted to sleep beside me, he would press his face against the top of the outside of my thigh, then turn his head slightly and slide all the way down to my knee, the rest of his body following behind so that, by the time he had settled into his sleeping position, he was wedged as tightly against me—with as many points of contact between us—as he could possibly achieve. If Homer was sleeping on his own, he would curl himself up into the tightest ball he could manage, his tail coiled around his nose and his front paws wrapped around his face. Melissa and I laughed at what looked like somebody who was determined not to allow even the slightest hint of light to disturb his slumber; Homer, of course, wouldn’t have been able to detect any light on his face.
But I knew it was because, no matter how reckless he was when he played, Homer always felt vulnerable in sleep. It was only when he was sleeping on or next to me that the tension went out of his sleeping posture, that he might lie on his side with his paws still curled beneath him but not hugged defensively around his body.
I had important decisions to make, but there is no logic in some things. Watching Homer sleep with his paws clutched protectively over what should have been his eyes, my heart would break. Too late, too late! I would think, with a degree of pity that seemed unwarranted when he was in one of his more boisterous waking moods. He trusted me, more than he trusted anybody else. Hadn’t I committed, not so long ago, to being strong enough to build my life around Homer’s goodness? Things would have to be far worse than they were for me to decide that either of us would be better off without the other.
So I was once again back to my impossible situation. I needed a place of my own, but I couldn’t afford it. I could afford to live with somebody else, but I couldn’t live with somebody else and also live with Homer. I couldn’t leave Homer because …
Because I simply couldn’t leave him.
And this is where the moment of epiphany did, finally, kick in.
If I couldn’t afford to support myself and Homer given my current career path, then I would simply have to find a more lucrative career. There were skills and interests I’d developed during my nonprofit stint that, surely, would prove valuable in the private sector. I wrote newsletters and press releases and coordinated networking events and volunteer projects and fund-raisers, and I wrangled television and newspaper reporters to cover all of these things. I managed budgets and served as the public face of my organization on many occasions, and I was outgoing and did a pretty good job of interacting with the public in general.
This sounded a lot like the jobs of the friends I had who worked in public relations and event marketing. Even the ones who were still young enough that they earned what was considered an entry-level salary topped my own salary by a good 50 percent.
But I also knew that people hadn’t simply walked into those jobs. They’d had marketing or communications majors in college (my own major had been creative writing), and they’d spent summers interning and months freelancing for the kinds of firms they eventually went to work for.
If starting over was what I needed to do, and if interning and taking freelance jobs was what it would take to make that happen, I was willing to do all those things. I was even willing to pick up side jobs bartending or waiting tables at night so that my days would be available to work cheap-to-free until I gained experience and found something permanent.
But that put me right back where I started—because doing all of that, even if I was willing, would put me no closer to being able to afford my own apartment in the short term. This was a plan that could pay off in a year or two, that could make Homer’s and my life more stable in the long run, but I needed a new home for us now. And that was when I had my second epiphany.
I called my parents.
It cost me something to make that phone call. It cost me a lot, actually. Moving back in with my parents was the break-glass-in-case-of-emergency scenario I hadn’t even wanted to consider. Nothing could have felt more like a regression in life. If there’s anything that says, I’m not really a grown-up and I can’t really take care of myself, it’s moving back in with your parents.
“Of course you can move back in,” my mother said. “And of course you can bring the cats.”
I knew this had cost her something, as well. Not only did my parents dislike cats on general principle, they also had two dogs who’d been with my family since I was in high school. Adjustments would have to be made by everybody to make this situation feasible—and by “everybody,” I didn’t just mean the cats and dogs.
“Are you sure this is okay?” I asked my mother. “I know you guys don’t really like cats.”
“We love you,” my mother replied, “and you love the cats.” Then she laughed and said, “Besides, if you think living with cats is the biggest sacrifice your father and I have made as parents, you don’t know what being a parent means.”
Maybe not. But I was starting to get an inkling.
8 • The Ballad of El Mocho
Bless my heart, how he gets honoured and makes friends whatever city or country he visits.
—HOMER, The Odyssey
EVEN WITHOUT THE CATS, MOVING BACK IN WITH MY PARENTS WOULD have been an enormous adjustment. Would they treat me like I was still in high school, questioning me every time I went out and inquiring about who I was meeting and when I’d be back? Would they attempt to exercise parental authority over things like the tidiness of my bedroom?
Adding the cats to the mix would make things even more complicated. I wanted to figure out practical ways to keep the cats out of my parents’ way, and to keep the cats and dogs separated from each other, while still allowing everybody as much liberty as possible. Throw in all the standard confusion involved in a move—boxes to be unpacked, closets and shelves t
o be stocked, items to be sorted through and placed in storage—and it was clear that, ideally, there would be a time buffer of a couple of weeks between the day I arrived back on my parents’ doorstep and the day the cats joined me.
So I decided to make my second difficult phone call in as many weeks. I called Jorge.
Jorge still lived in the home we’d shared when Scarlett and Vashti were adopted. The two of them knew the house, and they also knew Jorge. Homer didn’t know either, but Jorge was part of a large extended family that was, collectively, even crazier about animals than I was. He’d grown up with more cats, dogs, birds, gerbils, hamsters, and goldfish than anybody I’d met.
We had communicated a few times since the breakup, in that strained and awkward way you end up talking to your ex during the early weeks after you’re no longer together—when your argument is, Hey, we can still be friends. Such conversations had decreased as the months went by. I never ended one without a strong sense of remembering why it was we’d broken up in the first place. I was positive Jorge felt the same way.
Nevertheless, if somebody had asked me to name the one person I would have trusted with my cats if I were unable to take care of them, I would have named Jorge without hesitation.
Jorge was more than accommodating when I pitched the idea of having the three cats stay with him for two weeks while I got things set up at my parents’ house. “I’d love to see Scarlett and Vashti again,” he said. “And I’ll take good care of Homer.”
I gave Jorge the basic rundown of Homer dos and don’ts (“My advice to you: Don’t keep tuna in your house while he’s there”) and some new issues that had cropped up in the past few months. It turned out that moist cat food gave Homer tremendous gas—it was astounding that one small kitten could produce such huge, horrible smells—but Vashti had been through a recent bout of colitis and was temporarily off dry food, making feedings more complicated than they used to be. I promised to stock Jorge with everything he’d need to care for the cats, as well as some written instructions.
My only concern was how Homer would bear the separation. He hadn’t been apart from me for so much as twenty-four hours in the six months since I’d brought him home. The day I dropped the cats with Jorge, I pretended to leave something behind half a dozen times so I could run back and peek in on him before driving off. The last time I tried it, mumbling something about a lipstick I was positive had tumbled out of my purse, Jorge said in exasperation, “Go! I’ve been taking care of cats longer than you have. We’ll be fine.”
I waited two days before going over again to check on everybody, although I called Jorge nightly to ask how the cats were doing, particularly Homer. “He’s fine,” Jorge told me. “He’s having a great time here, actually.”
I soon discovered why. When I arrived at Jorge’s house for my first visit, the first thing I saw was one of Jorge’s friends with a palm high in the air, upon which Homer rested on his belly, all four legs dangling down. Jorge’s friend was spinning Homer around and around rapidly, making airplane noises as he spun.
“Jesus Christ!” I exclaimed. “Are you crazy? Put him down now!”
Jorge’s friend, looking both startled and shamefaced, hastily complied. Homer staggered, punch drunk, for a moment (as well he should), but after recovering his balance he stretched his front paws beseechingly up the side of Jorge’s friend’s leg. Again! Again!
“You see? He loves it!” Jorge’s friend insisted proudly. Then, affecting the mock-deep intonations of a wrestling announcer, he added, “For he is El Mocho, the cat without fear!”
I raised an eyebrow at Jorge. “El Mocho? Is this what we’re calling him now?”
Jorge grinned and shrugged. “Well, you know how these things take on a life of their own.”
Mocho was a Spanish word that meant maimed or referred to something that had been lopped off like a stump. To call Homer el mocho was, essentially, to call him “Stumpy” or “the maimed one.”
It doesn’t sound particularly flattering, but among Spanish speakers the giving of nicknames is tantamount to a declaration of love. Things that would sound insulting outright in English were tokens of deep affection when said in Spanish.
“He likes his new name,” Jorge’s friend chimed in. “Watch this. Ven aca, Mochito.” Homer’s ears pricked up and he trotted right over to Jorge’s friend, sitting on his haunches at full attention.
“Oh, Homer,” I said mournfully. “Have a little dignity.”
“He has nothing but dignity,” Jorge’s friend protested, his eyes alight with humor. “He is El Mocho. It is the code of El Mocho to meet all opponents with dignity and honor on the field of battle.”
Even I had to laugh at that one.
Homer adjusted to Jorge’s home with an enthusiasm I found almost unsettling. Jorge reported that, after the first day or so, Homer was able to find his way around without bumping into anything. And he absolutely adored Jorge’s friends, all of whom insisted on calling him El Mocho.
Homer had been used to living with a bunch of girls, none of whom—as it turned out—were willing to play as rough-and-tumble with him as he would have liked. Jorge and his friends were more than happy to chase Homer around the furniture in elaborate games of tag, which ended when Homer sprang out from under a bed or behind a table leg to attack their ankles. They tossed and spun him a good six feet in the air (I learned of this later, because after that first incident they were careful not to do it when I was around), or flipped him onto his back and wrestled him around. During one visit, I noticed that Homer, as soon as a couple of Jorge’s friends walked in, rolled immediately onto his back and pawed frantically at the air with one leg, in a posture that practically begged, C’mon … rough me up!
“He walks around the house at night crying,” Jorge told me after the first week. “He won’t sleep with me. He’ll only sleep near Scarlett. I think he misses you.”
I felt a twinge of guilt—although, I’m ashamed to admit, it was reassuring to receive some small sign that Homer missed me, at least a little.
“And where’s Scarlett sleeping?” I asked.
“Anywhere I’m not.” Jorge gave a rueful laugh. “You’re the only one she was ever friendly to.”
“One more week,” I said. “I promise.”
But the cats wouldn’t end up staying at Jorge’s house another week. On day nine, I got a call from him. “Somebody’s been peeing all over the house,” he said.
“Hey, I’ve told you for years that you shouldn’t let your friends drink all that light beer.”
“I’m serious, Gwen.”
I sighed. “All right, I’m sorry. Which one and where?”
“I haven’t caught anybody in the act, but whoever it is peed on the sofa, my laundry bag with all my clothes in it, and my new leather jacket.” He paused. “I think it’s Scarlett.”
“It’s not Scarlett,” I responded immediately. “It’s Vashti.”
“Has she done this before?” He sounded annoyed, and I could tell he was wondering why, with all the minutiae I’d prepped him with beforehand, I hadn’t bothered to mention this small problem.
“No, she hasn’t. But I’m sure it’s her.”
“If she hasn’t done it before, how can you be sure?”
“A mother knows,” I said wryly.
It was a simple process of elimination, really. I knew why Jorge thought it was Scarlett—because Scarlett, as I mentioned earlier, had a definite perception problem on account of her unfriendliness. Scarlett was so “mean” that, presumably, she was exactly the kind of cat who would pee with abandon all over somebody’s house out of pure malice.
But Scarlett, mean though she was (to other people), was fastidious about her litter box. There were minimum acceptable standards of cleanliness, specific brands of litter that had to be provided, and a modicum of privacy that she absolutely insisted upon. I couldn’t imagine her doing anything as plebeian as urinating out in the open like some common street cat.
As fo
r Homer, this was clearly a spite peeing—Homer didn’t even have a concept of spite.
That left Vashti. And it made sense, when I thought about it. Vashti had been the worst off of any of them when I’d taken her in. Homer and Scarlett had come to my home after spending days at the vet’s office, where they’d been treated and fed before being sent to their new family. Vashti had been found by a co-worker of my mother’s at the elementary school where she taught. They’d locked her in a toolshed to keep her from wandering off while my mother did the only thing she could think of to do for a kitten. She called me.
I’d gone down to my mother’s school on my lunch break, stopping at the pet store for a small carrier and some Similac, and brought Vashti back to my office. I’d honestly thought, that first day, that Vashti’s pink nose was black, so encrusted was it with dirt. Through the bald patches on her skin that the mange had left, I could feel her bones poking through, and her ears were bloody and swollen from ear mites. I’d kept Vashti warm on my lap throughout the afternoon, feeding her the Similac through a dropper, until I was able to get her to the vet’s office that evening. She’d come home to live with us the following morning.
In a way that was different from Scarlett and Homer, who’d come to me through other hands, I think Vashti truly believed I’d saved her life. It was Vashti who always gazed at me with undiluted hero-worship in her eyes. I hadn’t considered the difficulties she might face in being left at Jorge’s house, which was the first home she’d ever known. Insofar as I was her “mother,” Jorge was her “father.” We had adopted her together, and I knew he loved her.
Vashti loved him, too. But after one too many visits to Jorge’s house, when I’d ended up leaving without her, something must have clicked in Vashti’s mind. She must have thought she’d been taken back to Jorge’s and left there forever, that I was never going to live with her again.
