Stop Trying to Make Fetch Happen

by Gwen Cooper

  “MEEEEEEE!” Clayton was beneath my chair again. Dropping the mouse in front of me, he nudged it hopefully in my direction.

  “Just one more time—okay?” I turned from Clayton back to Laurence. “I’m so sorry. Please go on.”

  “‘I can’t believe I have to—’”

  “MEEEEEEE!” This time, Clayton had chosen to bypass sitting at my feet and waiting for me to notice him. He’d pulled himself up onto an empty chair, hopped from there onto the kitchen table, and dropped the mouse into the middle of my dinner plate.

  “Clayton!” I picked up the mouse, now covered in pasta sauce, and wiped it with my napkin. “Stop it already!” But of course, having cleaned the mouse off, I threw it across the kitchen for him to scamper after.

  “What’s with him?” Laurence asked, watching as Clayton did his baseball slide across the kitchen floor, caught the mouse up between his jaws, and brought it back over.

  “He taught himself to play fetch today.” Without even thinking about it, I reached down as I spoke to pick up and then toss the mouse. “Anyway, please finish the story.”

  “It-said-I-can’t-believe-I-have-to-sit-in-meetingstaking-abuse-from-a-cretin-who-probably-can’t-evenspell-cretin,” Laurence said in one long rush, trying to get the full sentence out before Clayton could interrupt again.

  “Yikes!” It was probably unclear to Laurence—because it was unclear even to me—whether I was reacting to the painful implications of that text or to the fact that Clayton was standing yet again on the kitchen table next to my plate. “Do you think it was really an accident, or do you think he was finally trying to break a bad pattern? Here you go,” I added as an aside to Clayton, and lobbed his mouse in the direction of the pantry.

  “Bad patterns can be tough to break.” Laurence looked at me and rolled his eyes pointedly.

  “Ain’t it the truth.” I sighed and shook my head sadly. And then I bent forward to pick up Clayton’s mouse, which he’d already retrieved, and threw it for him again.

  * * *

  The obvious question is, why did I capitulate so easily? When it was so very clear right from the start that Clayton’s new hobby, left unchecked, stood to play such a large and intrusive role in our day-to-day lives, why didn’t I try to stop it—or, at the very least, limit it?

  Hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20—but, in my own (partial) defense, I’ll say this: When Clayton taught himself to play fetch, it was far and away the smartest thing he’d ever done.

  We live in a 150-year-old row house in a leafy bedroom community just two train stops outside of Manhattan. Living in an old house has its charms (marble fireplaces! crown moldings!), but central air conditioning isn’t one of them. At the height of summer heat, we rely on a small window unit in our bedroom. In an effort to retain as much of the cold air as possible—while still giving the cats free access in and out—I’ll leave the bedroom door just ajar enough that it’s nearly closed but still easy for a cat to manage.

  Fanny has no problem with this—and why would she? When she wants to come in, she simply nudges the door with her nose until it swings wide enough to allow her to pass. When she wants to go out, she slips her paw into the two inches of space between the door and the floor and pulls it toward her until there’s a large-enough crack for her to fit through.

  I’ll admit that Fanny is particularly adept when it comes to doors. She’s figured out how to sit atop the railing of the third-floor balcony, which puts her right at the level of the knob on the upstairs bathroom door, and twist the doorknob with her front paws until it opens (something she does to startling effect if Laurence or I happen to be in there).

  Still, it’s hard to claim that pushing open an already slightly open door requires much in the way of special skills or intelligence—especially for a cat.

  And yet, for the first four years we lived in this house, Clayton couldn’t figure it out—despite having watched Fanny nose open the bedroom door when it was ajar a million times. Fanny didn’t have to watch anybody push on the door before she figured it out. Nevertheless, the mechanics of this process were beyond Clayton’s grasp. He’d sit outside that slightly open bedroom door, and cry and cry, until I got up to let him in.

  To reiterate: Clayton, a cat (creatures universally acknowledged for their cleverness, even by their detractors), could not figure out how to walk through an open door unassisted.

  I’d probably shred anyone who suggested in my hearing that Clayton isn’t as smart as other cats. Whenever Laurence says something to that effect—when he tells me, quoting an old Carol Burnett Show episode, that “Clayton’s got splinters in the windmills of his mind,” or, more succinctly, “Clayton’s a little doofus”—I deny it vehemently. “You’re just saying that because he’s so affectionate and outgoing,” I argue. “Only a cynic thinks that being friendly and trusting is the same as being unintelligent.”

  But even I—privately, in my deepest, innermost heart—sometimes have to acknowledge that maybe . . . just possibly . . . Clayton is . . . well . . . perhaps not quite as bright as he could be.

  Like many cats, Clayton likes to knock things off ledges or tables and watch them fall. Sometimes the thing he knocks over is, say, a drinking glass from the kitchen table, which then shatters on the ground. That’s an irritation, although arguably I have no one but myself to blame for leaving an unattended glass within reach. And, again, it’s something lots of cats do. But how often does a cat then proceed to walk around, blithely unconcerned, in the broken shards? Thank goodness that Clayton, docile as a stuffed animal, is patient enough to let me tend to his paws with tweezers and peroxide as I pull the glass splinters out.

  There’s an old truism that a cat might touch a hot stove once, but after that he’ll never touch any stove again. That truism doesn’t apply to Clayton. If I’m boiling a pot of water, I have to sit next to it and guard it the entire time, because Clayton—despite having singed his fur once or twice—will insist on walking on the stove whenever one of the burners is on, seemingly mesmerized by the pretty blue flame. I’ve considered the possibility that maybe Clayton doesn’t feel pain—that his nerve endings might not reach all the way to his skin, or something of that nature—but he yelps when the vet gives him a shot, or when I pull the glass from his feet, or when he gets close enough to a hot stove to burn himself. He just appears to forget immediately afterward. He doesn’t seem to learn.

  Most cats have two canine teeth. Clayton has one and a half. He lost the other half chewing the ear off a cat-shaped wooden footstool that I found at a flea market one day—and ended up having to put out with the trash that night. Clayton gets a high-quality moist food, daily Dental Greenies for healthy teeth (although it’s tough to see the point in vigilant dental care if Clayton’s just going to chew his own teeth off), and plenty of fresh potted cat grass and raw catnip—so it’s not as if he lacks for fiber in his diet. Still, he’ll insist on chewing on wood (I’ve seen him go after the very doorframes on occasion), on plastic, on the metal base of a slender desk lamp while it’s lit and hot to the touch. He’ll eat—or try to eat—fluff and dust that he finds on the ground, feathers that have shaken free of pillows, long pieces of string, serrated metal bottle caps, Popsicle sticks, bits of plastic shrink-wrap torn from newly opened DVDs, peanut shells, staples, paper clips, the cloth husks of toys he’s chewed to pieces, small thumbtacks I didn’t even know were there and that have spontaneously dislodged themselves from the undersides of furniture . . . I’ve become vigilant as a hawk in surveying the floors of our home, scouring the terrain for any random detritus that might find its way from the ground into Clayton’s mouth. Still, on a semi-regular basis, Laurence will rush to the top of the stairs upon hearing me yell, “No, Clayton! Drop it! DROP IT RIGHT NOW!” and find me wrestling with Clayton, my fingers down his throat, as I pull the latest hazard from his gullet before he can finish swallowing it.

  I’ve seen cats through late-stage cancer, chronic renal failure, liver disease, bli
ndness, diabetes, high blood pressure, hyperthyroidism, a heart murmur, colitis, sprained limbs, infected wounds, major and minor surgeries, and mysterious colds and fevers that took their appetites and required me to force-feed them through a syringe.

  I can honestly say that I’ve never had to work this hard to keep a cat alive.

  We have friends from Tennessee who visit us a few times a year—fellow animal lovers who live on a large hobby farm with ten rescue cats of their own. There are far more interesting things to do during a long weekend in New York than pass time at our house, hanging out with our cats. Still, they insist on spending a full day in our home whenever they travel north. Clearly, it’s because they adore Clayton, lovingly tolerant as he intrusively head-butts and nose-burrows his way into their armpits or wraps his whole body around their feet (Clayton being a foot fetishist as well as an armpit aficionado), enraptured by the exotic cornucopia of smells they bring with them. Sometimes, I suspect that Clayton is the real reason they head up this way as frequently as they do. And even they—perhaps after the third time that visit when Clayton has tried unsuccessfully to bring the heavy, well-secured andirons next to the fireplace crashing down onto his own head (WHY?! FOR WHAT POSSIBLE REASON?!!??!)—will eventually look at him with a kind of affectionate pity and murmur, “Bless his heart.” Which, for those not conversant in Southern-speak, is about as damning an accusation of unintelligence as a well-bred Southern lady will allow herself to express.

  These days, I fret constantly whenever Laurence and I go out—whether it’s for a few days or only a few hours—about what would happen if someone were to break into our home and the cats got out. Break-ins, of course, have always been a hypothetical possibility wherever I’ve lived—and, on one memorable occasion many years ago, my South Beach apartment actually was broken into. But I’ve never worried as much about what might happen to my cats if they got out—not even my blind cat, Homer (and I worried about him a lot)—as I do now about Clayton. He’s microchipped and, thanks to my cat books, I have a large-enough reach among cat rescuers online that he stands a better-than-average chance of being found and returned to me. Plus, knowing Clayton, he’d probably throw himself at the first human who walked by—and hopefully that human wouldn’t be inhumane enough to leave a desperately affectionate, three-legged cat to fend for himself. Still, my deepest fear is that Clayton couldn’t take care of himself for even a day if he suddenly ended up alone on the streets.

  Which is why, when Clayton taught himself—taught himself!—to play fetch, it wasn’t just that it was cute at first. Or even cute-but-also-maybe-sometimes-a-little-annoying. It was a revelation. It was a game changer. And he’d taught himself so quickly! Could even the cleverest cat have picked up the rudiments of fetch any faster than Clayton did?

  I felt relieved—and also more than a little vindicated. See! I wanted to shout to any and all naysayers. Clayton is smart! He’s VERY smart! I always knew it! I knew it all along.

  * * *

  Having accomplished this one feat of learning—teaching himself to play fetch—Clayton quickly followed it up by mastering an entire brand-new set of associated skills. There was no particular challenge in getting me to take on a round of fetch when I was already alert and paying attention to him. Clayton, however, soon became an expert at getting me to play fetch even when I was deadset against it, and at the least-convenient times.

  You can always tell which of Clayton’s toys is his favorite at any given moment, because the more Clayton loves something, the more gleefully he abuses it. A few years ago, someone sent us gifts for the cats—two versions of a toy rodent called Rosie the Rat, made from real fur. There was a black-furred Rosie and a tan-furred Rosie. Truthfully, I didn’t love that they were made from real fur, and was tempted to either toss them or donate them to our local cat shelter. But Clayton and Fanny went absolutely wild the second I pulled the Rosies from the envelope they’d been mailed in, which settled the matter; I couldn’t bear taking away anything that made them so happy.

  Clayton immediately appropriated Black Rosie as his own special property, while Fanny laid claim to Tan Rosie. But even if you’d never seen Clayton hopping around with Black Rosie in his mouth, you still would have known that she, and not Tan Rosie, was his. I would find Black Rosie drowning in the toilet, peeking forlornly from beneath a heap of leftover moist cat food in Clayton’s dish, or buried in the litter box. Just about every day, I had to boil a pot of water so I could disinfect her before returning her to Clayton’s custody. Over the course of a few weeks, Black Rosie dwindled down to a few tattered wisps of patchy black fuzz clinging to a cloth skeleton. Eventually, the sad day came when I had to give Black Rosie a mercy burial in the trash can. Whereas Tan Rosie (Fanny’s Rosie) is still, three years later, in showroom-new condition—even though Fanny “kills” her every day, and leaves her as a “gift” for Laurence and me every night.

  Once Clayton discovered fetch, it seemed as if the plastic rattling mouse, his new favorite toy, was fated to suffer the same abuse. It was only a couple of days later when I was forced to fish it out of the litter box—pulling it gingerly by its colorful tail feathers—before disposing of it in the trash as Clayton bounced around me in desperate circles, pleading for me to toss it across the room for him. I replaced it the next day (they only cost ninety-nine cents apiece at our local pet-supply store). But, still, once Clayton had seen me pick the toy out of his litter box—with a heartfelt “Ugh!” of disgust—and then throw it away rather than throwing it for him to fetch, it was like a lightbulb went on over his head. After that, I noticed how careful Clayton was to maintain his new little feathered mouse in immaculate condition. Not only did he refrain from burying or drowning it, I’ve actually seen him groom that mouse with his tongue until it’s spotless before carrying it over to lay at my feet. You can’t refuse to throw this one for me! he seems to be saying. This one’s clean as a whistle!

  In sales, they call this overcoming a client’s objections. In Clayton, I’ll call it nothing short of genius.

  As I mentioned, Fanny likes to leave little “gifts” for Laurence and me—one of her toys, if we’re lucky, or a palmetto bug or some other large bug that’s gotten into the house, if we’re not. She tends to leave them on our pillows, or sometimes on the bath mat directly in front of the shower, where we’re sure to see them as soon as we get out. That we notice her presents is very important to Fanny—she’ll cry anxiously until we find them and then pat her on the head, saying, “Thank you, Fanny!” (which is difficult to do with much sincerity when the gift in question is a giant headless cockroach).

  Clayton, in contrast, has never been one for gift giving. Lately, though, I find that wherever I go in the house, Clayton’s rattling toy mouse has already beaten me there. It’s on my pillow at bedtime and on the rug in front of the sink when I go to brush my teeth. It’s atop the closed lid of the laptop computer on my desk when I sit down to work, on the kitchen counter when I go downstairs to make my lunch, and has beaten me to my favorite sofa cushion when I’ve finished work for the day and am ready to relax with Laurence.

  The genius of this is that Clayton opts to place his mouse strategically where I’ll have no choice but to pick it up in order to get it out of my way. Once I’ve picked it up, I have to do something with it. Lobbing it across the room doesn’t require much more effort than just dropping it to the floor. So why wouldn’t I throw it? It would seem almost churlish not to—as Clayton’s wide, woebegone eyes are at pains to inform me: Are you really not going to throw it for me? Don’t you love me anymore?

  I thought for a while that throwing the mouse up or down the stairs might solve some of my problems—that maybe Clayton would exhaust himself with all that up-and-down running, or that he might even decide to just play with it on his own once I was no longer in his sight line. That was a grave tactical error on my part. Clayton now loves racing up and down the stairs after the mouse more than anything else. When he walks, he slow-hops along as if
he had a limp. When he trots, it’s with that hippity-hoppity/drunken-sailor gait that I love so much. But when Clayton tears up or down the stairs, he doesn’t just run—he flies. You’d never know, as he flashes past in a black blur, that he’s any different from a “normal” cat.

  Now Clayton wants me to throw the mouse up or down the stairs for him all the time. If I’m in bed, it’s not enough to simply hurl the mouse toward a far corner of the bedroom. I have to sit up in bed, lean forward, and curve my body around so that I can angle the toy through the bedroom door and down the stairs. Clayton, who once couldn’t figure out how to pass through a slightly open door, mastered that skill with ease once he was sufficiently motivated. I’ll hear his paw-steps coming up the stairs and know that within seconds the wedge of light from the hallway will grow as Clayton swings the bedroom door open wide—and then I’ll see Clayton himself, standing next to my side of the bed, the beloved toy mouse clutched between his teeth as its colorful feathers glow in the half-light against the blackness of his fur.

  Whether I’m awake or asleep makes no difference. If I’m there lying down, Clayton hauls himself onto the bed, walk-hops right onto my chest, and drops the mouse under my chin. I’ll fight to keep my eyes closed, thinking that if I can feign sleep convincingly enough, he might buy my act and relent.

  It never works. Eventually, Clayton will bring his nose directly level with mine and proclaim, “MEEEEEEE!”

  Roughly translated, this means, Oh, please. Even I can tell you’re faking.

  * * *

  All cats have their habits and routines, their little rituals that they perform so repetitively, and in so precisely identical a manner each time, that it seems to border on the compulsive. Some of these rituals become permanent; some are temporary but intense. And while there are some habits it’s nearly impossible to break a cat of, the truth is that I probably could have nipped Clayton’s fetch obsession in the bud if I’d really wanted to. If I’d said no often enough, he would have gotten the point eventually and left me alone. Even now, when it’s become such an integral part of his daily routine, if I could muster the willpower to be firm for a few days, I could probably cure him of his addiction—or at least tamp it down enough that I’d have more of a say as to the specific times and locations in which our game would take place.