The Cat Who Got Married

by Neil S. Plakcy

  I stood in the doorway surveying the horror in front of me. Pilar came dashing out of the bedroom, and she didn’t seem to understand or care that I was sick; she wanted to play. She batted her ball to me, but I knocked it away. I went into the kitchen, drank right out of the carton of orange juice, and then went into the bedroom.

  The scene there was just as bad as in the living room. A long trail of toilet paper stretched toward the bathroom, and the books and papers that had been on my bureau were on the floor. There were more clothes everywhere. I took off what I was wearing and dropped it on the pile, then crawled into bed.

  Pilar jumped up and tried to snuggle next to me. “Bad cat,” I said sleepily, pushing her away. It did no good. She curled up next to my stomach and we both fell asleep.

  In the morning I felt even worse. I called in sick, and my secretary said, “And don’t you dare come in until you get better. You’ll infect the whole hotel.”

  “Thanks for the sympathy.” For a while I wrapped myself in the quilt and watched TV in the living room, barely clearing a place for myself on the couch. Then I went back to bed.

  The door buzzer woke me around six-thirty. I stumbled to the intercom. “Who is it?”

  “It’s Lisa. I brought you a get-well package.”

  I looked around the room. It looked terrible. Then I shrugged and said, “Come on up.”

  She looked beautiful. Her blonde hair was piled up in a loose bun, and her cheeks were ruddy from the cold. The first thing she said was, “What happened? Did you get robbed?”

  “A cat burglar.” I looked around for Pilar, but she was hiding again. “The culprit is lying low at the moment.”

  “You look terrible. You go back to bed. I’m going to take care of things for you.”

  I started to protest, feebly, but she pushed me toward the bedroom. “I’ll call you when the chicken soup is ready.”

  I got into bed, and Pilar appeared out of the shadows of the room, and jumped up next to me. “You really know how to make me look bad,” I said to her.

  Abyssinians have very soft fur, almost like rabbit. Each hair has at least five different bands of color on it, shades of red and black and cream. Her fur felt smooth under my fingers. She began to purr. Then Lisa called, “Soup’s on,” from the kitchen, and Pilar shot away from me, toward the closet.

  The soup was delicious. Lisa had also brought aspirin, a heating pad, a hot water bottle, and three different kinds of cold medicines. “This is so nice of you,” I said. “I could just kiss you.”

  “Save it for when you’re better. That looks like a rotten cold, and I don’t want to catch it.” She stood up and started clearing the table. “Now you go back to bed, and I’ll clean up in here.”

  “You don’t have to. I can do it in the morning. I’m sure I’ll feel better by then.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Go.”

  I went back into the bedroom and got into bed. “Pilar,” I called. “Here, girl.”

  She didn’t answer. I wondered where she was. I heard Lisa start running water in the kitchen sink, and suddenly I knew. I jumped out of bed, but before I’d even made it to the bedroom door I heard Lisa. “Oh, no!” she said. “You cat!”

  Unlike most cats, Abyssinians love water. In Key West, where I had a tub shower with a curtain, Pilar often loved to come into the shower with me and frolic under the spray. Whenever I did the dishes, I had to shove her away from the countertop, because she liked to play in the sudsy water.

  When I got to the kitchen I saw Lisa trying to dry herself off with a hand towel. “Your cat jumped in the sink. She splashed water all over me.” There was a big place on her peacock blue blouse where the fabric had gone dark, and another big dark spot on her ivory colored skirt.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “This is a silk blouse,” she said.

  “I’ll pay for the cleaning. I’m so sorry. She’s not usually like this. She’s mad that I was at the hotel all weekend.”

  “Well, I wasn’t too crazy that you had to work either, just when I had a break, but at least I’m doing something constructive.”

  I didn’t have anything to say to that.

  “Go back to sleep,” she said finally. “But take your cat with you, please.”

  I knelt down to the floor. “Come here, Pilar.” She crouched under the sofa and stared at me. I was just too sick to get down on my hands and knees and drag her out.

  A few weeks after I brought Pilar home I discovered that she loved to fetch. It was an odd kind of revelation; fetching was something I’d always associated with dogs rather than with cats, but after reading up on her breed I’d discovered that Abyssinians generally did like playing catch.

  I tossed her ball back and forth between my hands for a moment or two, while Lisa dried her blouse and Pilar watched intently from her place under the sofa. I backed toward the hallway, tossing the ball back and forth, back and forth. When I finally reached the hall, I stopped. I turned my back to Pilar and then quickly threw her ball out into the living room.

  Just as I expected, she shot out from under the sofa and raced into the living room. She jumped up and caught the ball in her paws on one of its bounces, and turned around and brought it right back to me in her mouth. “Gotcha,” I said, grabbing hold of her. “We’ll be in the bedroom.”

  Pilar mewed as I carried her with me. She struggled to get away, but I wouldn’t let go. I closed the door behind us and got back into bed. Pilar sat by the door and mewed loudly, but I didn’t pay her any attention. Within a few minutes I was asleep.

  I didn’t hear Lisa leave, but sometime in the night I woke up and went to the bathroom. When I went back to bed I left the bedroom door open. The next morning when I awoke I sat up in bed. My body still ached, but my nose had stopped running and I could breathe easier.

  The bedroom was still a mess, but I felt like I might do some cleaning. Then I looked at the open door. “Oh, no,” I said. Wearily I got out of bed and walked out to the living room to see what further damage Pilar had done during the night.

  But the room was spotless, and Pilar was sleeping quietly in a patch of sun near the front window. “It’s a miracle. If I knew the patron saint of cats, I’d say a blessing.”

  I fixed breakfast, and called in to the office for my messages. I cleaned up the bedroom, watched TV, and reheated Lisa’s leftover chicken soup for lunch. Around three o’clock I got dressed. “I’m not going away for long this time,” I said to Pilar. “So don’t go crazy on me, OK?”

  Pilar sat up from her place on the dining room table and stretched. I put down my briefcase and picked up her ball. “Come on. Want to play catch?” I tossed the ball toward her.

  She must have thought I was going to lock her up again; she stayed on the table. I walked over to the ball and picked it up, then tossed it again, right at her. She couldn’t help herself; she jumped up in the air and caught it with her front paws. She landed back on the table, skidded a little, but stopped herself by scratching her claws into the finish.

  Pilar often jumps up to catch balls that are tossed to her, grabbing them with her extra toes, which she uses almost like thumbs. I’ve even seen her use them to pick up her dry food and dip it into her water. We played catch for a little while, until I felt that she’d forgiven me for locking her up the night before, and then I drove over to the hotel.

  I didn’t want to do too much. I looked over the mail and the phone messages and returned a few calls. By five o’clock I was ready to leave, but I stopped by Lisa’s office first. “She’s in the Franklin Ballroom,” her secretary said. “Big dinner tonight.”

  The Franklin was one of our smaller ballrooms, on the second floor of the hotel. It was nice for intimate dinner parties of say, fifty or so. That day it had been set up with round tables and a lectern at the back of the room, for a corporate dinner. Though the cloths were on the table, they hadn’t been set yet, and the folding chairs were still stacked at the side of the room.

  Lisa wa
s rearranging the flowers in the centerpiece on the table closest to the door. “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  “The client asked for carnations, and said no roses.” There was a pile of red carnations on her left, and a pile of red roses pulled out of the centerpiece on her right.

  “Can I help?”

  “There’s six more centerpieces to do. Grab some carnations.”

  While we worked, the set-up staff began putting out the chairs, and the waiters laid out the place settings and folded the napkins. I felt comfortable working with Lisa, and I decided I was settling into my job and the new hotel. The new city was going to take a little longer, for me and Pilar, but I thought we were well on our way.

  Lisa and I finished the flowers as the first of the guests arrived. “Thanks,” she said, as we walked down the hall toward the food and beverage office.

  “I’m the one who owes you some thanks. Big time. You didn’t have to clean my apartment for me.”

  “You didn’t look like you were in any shape to do it. You didn’t let the cat into the living room, did you?”

  “She got out in the middle of the night,” I said, and watched Lisa’s face light up in horror. “And she didn’t do a thing. I was really surprised.” I smiled. “Come on, get your coat and let me buy you a drink.”

  She shook her head and stopped as we reached the door of her office. “No, you’re still recuperating. You ought to get home. Do you still have some soup left?”

  “Absolutely. It was delicious, by the way.”

  “My mother’s recipe. You go home, have some soup and get a good night’s sleep. You can buy me that drink later on in the week.”

  I stopped at the grocery and picked up a few things, including a nice piece of fresh salmon for Pilar. When I got home, she was pacing in front of the window.

  One of the things I’ve always admired about her is her sleek, regal bearing. They say that Abyssinians were prized cats in the days of the Pharaohs, and you can see pictures of them in Egyptian paintings. Seeing her stalk back and forth like that I could easily believe Pilar was descended from queens.

  “See, I wasn’t away too long. Just like I promised.” I went into the kitchen and put down my groceries, and Pilar joined me there, jumping up on the counter. “You were a naughty cat yesterday. You shouldn’t have splashed Lisa’s blouse.”

  Pilar meowed and began to nose around the grocery bags. Like a true Abyssinian, she had to sniff everything I brought into the house and give it her personal stamp of approval.

  I put the groceries away and began to heat up the last of the chicken soup. Pilar stood on the counter and rubbed against my side. “What am I going to do about you?” I asked. She meowed and I rubbed her head. I decided I’d give her the salmon.

  By the weekend I was feeling better, though I was still getting chills intermittently. Lisa and I went to dinner and to the movies, and she came up to my apartment afterwards. “Don’t worry,” I said, as we walked in. “I’ll make sure Pilar stays in the bedroom.”

  Pilar was waiting by the front door, but as soon as she saw Lisa she skittered under the sofa. “She may warm up to you sometime. At least she’s behaving now.”

  “Maybe she’ll even like me one day,” Lisa said.

  I took her coat and we walked over to the sofa.

  “I’m not that bad a person.”

  “I’d agree with that. You just happen to be a person who doesn’t like cats.”

  We sat down on the sofa and Lisa stretched out. I pulled her shoes off, rested her feet in my lap, and started stroking them. “It’s not exactly true that I don’t like cats,” she said.

  “What do you mean? Usually you’re either a cat person, or not. I haven’t met many in-betweens.”

  “When I was a teenager, we had a Siamese. Her name was Nanki-Poo, from The Mikado.” I waited for her to go on. “She was an inside cat. The only times she ever went out was to the vet, in her carrier. One day someone left the front door open, and she got out.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “She didn’t know how to behave outside. She went chasing a bird, right into the street, and a car hit her.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “So I just don’t like to be around cats now. They remind me of Nanki-Poo.”

  “If anything happened to Pilar, I’d feel awful.” We were both quiet for a bit, and then I was surprised to see Pilar come crawling out from beneath the sofa. She sat up next to Lisa’s hand and gave a small purr.

  Lisa reached down to scratch behind her ears. Pilar mewed, and rolled over on her back. “I don’t believe it,” I said. “Talk about mood swings.”

  Lisa leaned down and rubbed Pilar’s stomach. Pilar purred contentedly. “Whose?” Lisa asked. “Pilar’s or mine?”

  “Both.”

  Pilar jumped up on the sofa between us, and Lisa and I rubbed her together for a minute or two. Then I stood up. “Let’s build a fire,” I said, “and the three of us can all warm up in front of it.”

  Sometimes I think Pilar understands what I’m saying, and sometimes I know she does. She jumped up and raced around the room a few times, landing by the fireplace, where she used her paws and her mouth to drag a piece of newspaper toward the fire. Lisa and I looked at each other and laughed. “Come on,” she said. “It’ll get going faster if the three of us work together.”

  She patted Pilar’s back, and my fickle cat curled up at her feet and purred contentedly. “I’ll get the logs,” I said.

  The Cat Who Got Married

  My girlfriend and I both had to work on Thanksgiving at the hotel, where Lisa is the banqueting manager and I’m in charge of marketing, but we had the chef put aside a feast of roast turkey, chestnut stuffing, sweet potatoes with marshmallow topping, cranberry sauce, and healthy slices of pumpkin pie for us, as well as a special platter of turkey just for my Abyssinian cat, Pilar.

  It was almost ten o’clock by the time we got home, and Pilar was mewing accusingly by her empty food dish. “Don’t worry, we didn’t forget you,” Lisa said, reaching down to pet her. “Ryan has something special just for you.”

  Lisa was a beautiful green-eyed blonde, a native of Atlanta, Georgia, who had been my guide to life up north. She had helped me buy warm clothes, showed me how to light a fire, and taught me how to drive on icy streets. While she laid our food out on the dining room table, I unwrapped the turkey and put it into the microwave.

  Pilar jumped up on the counter and I scratched behind her ears as we both counted down the seconds. She stared intently at the glass window of the microwave as the appetizing smell of the turkey wafted out.

  I often brought home leftovers from the hotel when I had to work late, and one of Pilar’s favorite games was to grab the tinfoil as I unwrapped the food and swat it with one of her six-toed paws. She liked to toy with her food, as if she had some distant genetic memory of catching mice and tormenting them before eating them.

  Since the turkey was long since past gobbling, I didn’t mind her play, but I was starving myself and just wanted to get her plate put together. “No, Pilar!” I said, as she lunged for a piece of meat.

  She stopped what she was doing and looked me in the eyes. She wore a hurt expression, and the look she gave me seemed to ask why I didn’t want to play with her. Between my job and my girlfriend, I suppose I had been spending less time with my red, gold and black Abyssinian than usual.

  I came to Philadelphia about a year ago, after transferring from Key West. My first winter was tough, getting accustomed to wool suits, snow boots, scarves and mittens, not to mention constant colds and sniffles. It had taken Pilar a while to get acclimated, too. At first she was always cold, running around the apartment and snuggling up close to me as soon as I came in.

  But spring was gorgeous, first the daffodils and the lilacs, then the apple trees blossoming and the newly plowed fields in the country slowly going green. Pilar loved to sit by the front window and watch a pair of robins that nested in a branch of the big mapl
e just outside. Every now and then she’d reach out and paw the glass, reminding herself that those delectable birds were just out of her reach.

  Lisa and I grew steadily closer over the year, sharing hot chocolate in front of the fireplace in my apartment, then ranging farther afield. We went to yard sales on the Main Line, Philadelphia’s ritzy suburbs. We drove up to New Hope, along the Delaware, and browsed through antique shops. We played tennis and spent a weekend at the Jersey shore, swimming and tanning.

  It was almost like being back in Key West. I changed the storm windows for screens, and Pilar lolled on the windowsill in the warm breezes, probably dreaming of the tropics.

  Pilar was a Hemingway cat, a Conch, as Key West natives are called. As the story goes, Ernest Hemingway shared his home on Whitehead Street with a tribe of six-toed cats, and their offspring are quite in demand. The woman who sold Pilar to me explained that to be a true Hemingway, a cat had to have at least one extra toe on each paw. She sold the cats for a base price, with a little extra for each extra toe.

  I was a Conch, too, like Pilar, but that summer convinced us both that we could live above the frost line. Even the fall was beautiful, the leaves on the maple outside our window turning crimson and gold in a breathtaking display unlike anything we’d ever seen in Key West. Then the cold weather set in again, dropping into the forties over Thanksgiving, and we sat down together late that night to share our own holiday meal.

  It took Lisa and Pilar a while to warm up to each other. At first I thought Lisa didn’t like cats, but eventually she confessed that she had once had a beloved Siamese who been run over by a car. She had stayed away from cats since then, avoiding her bad memories, but Pilar seemed to have cured her of her sorrow.

  After dinner we lounged contentedly on the couch, Lisa and I facing each other with our legs entwined. Pilar curled up possessively between us, resting half on Lisa’s legs and half on mine. “This is a nice apartment, but it’s kind of small,” Lisa said, scanning the living room. “Mine’s kind of small, too.”