Kitty Cornered: How Frannie and Five Other Incorrigible Cats Seized Control of Our House and Made It Their Home

by Bob Tarte

  But today the news about Moobie wasn’t so jolly. Dr. Hedley concurred with Dr. Ziaman’s diagnosis and told me that the red spot was a tumor, and that the tumor was probably malignant.

  “I suggest we remove it right way,” he said. After listening to her chest, he shook his head to free the stethoscope from his ears. I figured this was a technique he’d perfected when he needed both hands to subdue a wombat. “She does have a slight heart murmur, and that’s cause for some concern, but the surgery should go pretty quickly. We won’t have her under anesthesia any longer than we need to. And the good news is that even if the tumor is malignant, this is not a kind of cancer that typically spreads.”

  “It isn’t?” I asked, just to hear him repeat this encouraging tidbit.

  “No, it’s not. Once we’ve removed the tumor and the incision is allowed to heal, she should make a full recovery with no recurrence of the cancer.”

  I fully expected Moobie’s irregular heart to rhythmically fall in line during surgery. However, I suspected that her tongue would be less cooperative. “She does have a tendency to want to lick the spot.”

  “They become obsessed,” he said. “Even when there’s nothing there to lick, they’ll keep on licking anyway.” Right on cue, Moobie straightened up and started worrying the sore. “She’ll have to wear an Elizabethan collar.”

  “She won’t do well with that.”

  “She’ll hate it,” he said, deflating me by agreeing. “They get stuck when they’re trying to go places, they bump into things, and it makes it hard for them to eat. But you’d be surprised how quickly they get used to it.”

  “I guess someone’s going to get even more spoiled,” I told Moobie, who slunk back inside her pet carrier. She purred as I petted her. Even though the news had been worse than I had expected—the cancer, the need for surgery, the heart murmur, the collar—I still felt as if a burden had been lifted from my shoulders and placed on Dr. Hedley’s alongside the marmoset, python, toucan, and other zoo critters.

  MANY, MANY, MANY years ago, after discovering that Grand Rapids–area businesses weren’t fighting tooth and nail to harness the power of my newly acquired Master of Arts degree in English, I went on unemployment—moving to Lansing for a change in scenery. The job market wasn’t any better there. Or so I assumed without going to the bother of trying to find employment. I was too depressed. To fill the time, I slept in late, turned in early, and padded my afternoons with serial naps. At my lethargic peak I was probably in bed upwards of fifteen hours per day. Looking back, I couldn’t help but feel regretful. I’d had the time, the opportunity, and the mental wherewithal to sleep a full twenty-four hours a day, yet I hadn’t taken advantage of the situation.

  I’d struggled to catch up on my sleep ever since, and that passion for just lying around and doing absolutely nothing, preferably in a state of unconsciousness, was a trait I shared with cats. And the visit to the vet had somehow exhausted me. But Moobie, the grand dame of the snooze, was apparently too joyful about being back home to sleep.

  She sauntered up and down the headboard shelf heaped with books and magazines. Fortunately she knocked down no more than three issues of the New Yorker, two Perry Mason mysteries, and a hardcover reference book on mushrooms. It seemed petty to interrupt my nap just because these had fallen on my head. I was finally stirred to action when she poked her head behind the curtain, pulling it back wide enough to burn my eyelids with a dull winter glow. I clapped my hands to interrupt her. “There’s nothing out there for you.” Agreeing, she hopped back down onto the bed and initiated her usual routine of tapping my face fifty times with her paw before toppling into a heap at my side. She prepared to sleep and let me sleep. Or so it seemed.

  The licking started just as I began to drift off. I thought I might be able to ignore a rhythmic lapping by pretending I was hearing the distant ocean, but her licking rose alarmingly in volume, approximating the sandpapery smack of a cow scouring her calf with a six-pound tongue. I inserted my hand beneath her chin to deflect her from her target, and she applied her ministrations to my palm as if it were an extension of her body. Then, in order to lick her hind foot, she sat up and leaned backward against my cheek.

  I wanted to be angry with her—and for a flash I was. But as I made the bed, she rubbed against my leg, purring, folding herself in half, and staring at me with a beatific attitude. My petulance evaporated. How flat and how dry my life would be without her. How I’d miss her easy companionship if her surgery turned out badly. Then she raced me to the bathroom and I daydreamed about moving to a cat-free village on a lush rain-forest mountaintop.

  I FELT BETTER about my life with Moobie, Agnes, and Lucy after visiting Linda’s friend Jo Ann, who had talked me into setting up her new answering machine so that it actually answered calls. As I was squinting at a folded slip of tissue paper that masqueraded as the user’s manual, Jo Ann’s tabby, Tommy, sauntered into the dining room. He immediately began rubbing against my leg, leading me to wonder if Moobie had e-mailed Tommy about the sucker who was visiting.

  “See that popcorn?” Jo Ann pointed to kernels on the rug next to her TV-watching chair. “I have to make him popcorn every night, and if I don’t, he’ll come up on the chair and start doing this.” She tapped my arm with her fingers. “If I ignore him, he moves up to my shoulder, then he jumps on the back of the chair and starts to whack my face. He packs a wallop.”

  Jo Ann earned further punishment if Tommy’s food dish wasn’t filled completely to the brim or if his water bowl was contaminated by the very same kibbles that he himself would carry and deposit there. “He insists on bacon in the morning,” she said. “He sits at the table and eats it off a paper plate.”

  “He eats at the table?” Linda asked.

  She made a weary face. “I have to do it. He makes me. And anytime I leave, when I come back he’ll hide under the bed to show that he’s mad. And if he smells my hand and I’ve been petting another animal . . .” She shook her head as if the consequences were too terrible to contemplate.

  “Does Tommy take a nap with you?” I asked as we put on our coats.

  “Every afternoon whether I want to or not. And I have to lay a certain way just so he’ll be comfortable. Never mind if I’m comfortable or not.”

  It was clear that Jo Ann was even deeper under the claws of a cat than I was. It chilled me to think that I could share a similar fate. Only the fact that we didn’t eat bacon at our house stood between me and the abyss.

  LINDA AND I ushered in the morning of Moobie’s surgery sitting on the edge of the bed drinking a cup of coffee. The bed had just been made and Moobie had already claimed Linda’s pillow. Things already felt off: the songbird mug I usually drank from occupied the top rack of the dishwasher along with all my other preferred cups.

  “What kind of idiot designed the pet carrier?” I asked. Nervous about the surgery, I prattled on to fill the silence. “You can’t reach in to pull your cat out if the cat doesn’t want to come out. Theoretically you could remove the whole top, but that means loosening six thumbscrews. You have to open the grate and turn the carrier on end to shake the cat out. I hope I don’t have to do that with Moobie.”

  “What do our calendars say today?” Linda asked.

  I groaned. We used to have a page-a-day Audubon bird calendar that brightened up our mornings, but the publisher stopped publishing it. To replace it, Linda bought an Obscure Word and Phrase Origins Calendar that was as dull as a Dutchman’s breeches, then a This Day in History Calendar, which turned out to be uneventful. In disappointing succession came the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! and the Cartoons from the “New Yorker” calendars. The task of plowing through all four burdened my mornings with a weight that not even my songbird mug could have lightened. The anvil was heaviest when we had failed to read the entries for several days in a row and Linda felt obligated to catch up.

  As she grabbed the stack of calendars, I asked, “Didn’t you get a new flower catalog? Heirloom roses or
something?” We looked at that instead. I hoped to carry with me to Dr. Hedley’s office a mental image of incandescent red Mr. Lincoln blossoms instead of a two-headed calf.

  I said my good-byes to Moobie before dropping her off. Though I had boundless faith in Dr. Hedley, I knew that accidents could happen.

  “Keep that heart going for me,” I said. She rubbed her head against my hand as I reached into the carrier and tweaked one of her ears.

  Months dropped off our page-a-day calendars and continents drifted apart until Dr. Hedley phoned shortly after lunch with the news that the procedure had gone perfectly. “We can keep her overnight,” he said. “But if you’re anxious to have her back, you can pick her up after five. She’ll still be a little rocky from the anesthesia.”

  “It’s better for her to be home,” I said. “She’s not used to being away.”

  Since we had been bringing him all sorts of animals to treat over the years, Dr. Hedley assumed that a groggy cat wouldn’t cause us worry—and it didn’t. Panic was more like it once I had eased Moobie out of the carrier and tried setting her on her feet in the living room. When her front legs worked, her back legs didn’t, and when her back legs worked, her front half drooped like a washcloth. She seemed intent on dragging herself hither and yon, and yonder lay a grumpier than usual Lucy who growled at her approach. We stowed her in the bathroom beneath the shadow of her beloved spigot, and she soon fell back to sleep.

  She hadn’t been saddled with her Elizabethan collar yet. Dr. Hedley had shown me how to slip it on and off, but recommended that we wait to see how she acted first. With any luck, she would leave the incision alone and could recuperate cone-free.

  I had a brief respite from worry at dinner when Linda asked, “Do those smell okay to you?” as I was about to shovel green beans into my mouth.

  “Why wouldn’t they be okay?” I asked.

  “I had two containers of leftover vegetables in the refrigerators, and I thought I gave the oldest ones to the hens, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “You need to start using a marking pen,” I said. “You can write ‘Hens’ on the freshest leftovers and ‘Husband’ on the borderline stuff.”

  ANXIETY SHOOK ME awake at five thirty the next morning when I would have preferred a pair of paws thumping on the door. I flicked on the bathroom light. Moobie looked the same as she had the night before and didn’t lift her head to purr when I stroked her back. Rushing to the kitchen, I brought her an irresistible pick-me-up of shredded tuna, hoping it would play the role of smelling salts and get her on her feet. But she barely opened her eyes as I fluttered the saucer under her nose.

  After uncovering the birdcages and giving Bella the chance to amputate my ear while I diced up grapes, I made a second attempt to feed Moobie. She managed to stand up and stay up, but she turned away with a perfunctory sniff. Scooping up a dab on my finger, I followed her around the bathroom on hands and knees, keeping the tuna near her snout until I finally broke through her resistance and she licked my finger clean. I offered her a second dab, and moments later she attacked her plate.

  Two hours later, Linda phoned me at work with the welcome news that Moobie was acting like her old self. “She’s on my pillow again,” she said. “But she isn’t licking her leg. She might not even need that awful collar.”

  When I came home I found her snoozing on the couch, relaxed and untroubled by an impulse to molest her sore. It appeared that we had licked the tumor, and Moobie had licked licking it.

  MOOBIE WASN’T THE only cat in the house to have apparently turned over a new leaf.

  Lucy was trying, I thought. Apart from my nightly shampoo tête-à-têtes with Lucy, I hadn’t succeeded in drawing her into any normal catlike activities with me. She preferred maintaining an attitude of injured aloofness. Immediately after stepping out of the shower, I tried rubbing one of her dusty mousie toys in my hair and batting it around on the rug. “What’s that thing, honey?” I asked her. “Better get that nice-smelling mousie!” Ignoring the scented rodent, she lunged at my hand instead.

  Our only activity was when I assisted her in exiting the house. Loosening her bulk from her wooden throne, she would hop down to the floor and scuttle up to me with surprising nimbleness. The tiny “mew” that issued from her cavernous mouth always gave me the briefest moment of confusion wondering if a newborn kitten had slipped into the house. Then she would pierce me with her imperial dowager stare and trot to the door, assuming that I followed on her heels. I was only too happy to serve on these occasions, and Lucy enjoyed glowering at a natural tableau from the front sidewalk. Invigorated by the outdoors, she would meow loudly an hour later, insisting to be let back inside. And although she’d had the entire yard at her disposal—lovely gardens with fine black topsoil, ornamental bushes, earthy-smelling mulch—a visit to the royal litter box typically followed.

  Linda had never wasted a second trying to coddle her like I did. So I was stricken with envy later that day when Linda told me about their shared moment. While she was brushing the bunnies prior to putting them to bed, Lucy had scurried under the dining room table with a look of expectation taking the place of what Linda described as “her usual undertaker expression.” Responding to the onus placed on every cat owner to read a cat’s mind, Linda realized that Lucy wanted to be brushed.

  On the floor in front of the rabbit cages, Linda leaned over Lucy, brushing her carefully. “She licked my hand in appreciation,” Linda said. “I was touched at first. But when I didn’t brush her just the way she wanted me to, she gave my hand a little nip.”

  The next evening, I sneaked into the dining room to catch Lucy actually enjoying something. Flopping over on her side, she took a perfunctory bite at the brush but stretched her rear legs in an appreciative manner. To keep the fangs at bay, Linda praised Lucy as she brushed. “Don’t you look smooth and well-groomed,” she cooed. “You’re going to look pretty for the kitty calendar. Yes, you’re going to lead the kitty parade. You’ll look beautiful when you pull the cart full of mice.”

  In my presence, Linda’s flattery seemed to embarrass Lucy. She flashed me the accusatory look of a secret drinker caught in the act. She cut the grooming session short by raising her substantial bulk off the floor and barging past me.

  “I guess I spoiled it for her,” I said.

  “It wasn’t that. She wasn’t too sure about pulling the cart full of mice.”

  The mental image of Lucy in a kitty parade put me in such a good mood that even though I was overdue for my recurring dream about getting stalked by leopards, I had an undisturbed night’s sleep. Still cheery at breakfast, I chattered on about my childhood fear of encountering a garbage truck as I walked to kindergarten. “I think the noise scared me,” I told Linda. Before leaving for work, I bent down to scratch Moobie’s head.

  “Oh no,” Linda said. Moobie had created a new sore every bit as red as the first red spot.

  We wrestled with Moobie on top of the bathroom vanity to attach the Elizabethan collar. I laid down a towel in front of the sink thinking that the process would go more smoothly if we kept her from sliding across the countertop. But her churning feet launched the towel through the doorway. Clutching the gyrating cat, I tried saving Linda’s liquid-soap dispenser from a similar fate, but a kick sent it thudding to the floor. Despite her gaunt skin-and-bones frame, Moobie shrugged me off with impressive strength. “I can’t hold onto her,” I said. As I countered a series of seismic shocks that shot my toothbrush up my sleeve, Linda succeeded in slipping the cone over Moobie’s head and tying the drawstrings into a bow.

  “Got it!” she cried.

  As soon as I relaxed my grip, Moobie jerked her head and flung the collar against the wall and into the bathtub. Linda retrieved it as I dove forward and clamped the cat’s scrawny shoulders in the crook of my arm, and I somehow installed the collar again as Linda subdued her hindquarters. Despite the pinioning, Moobie stuck my stomach with her rear claws and then neatly stripped off the cone with her fr
ont paws. A referee materialized in the doorway to ring the bell that announced the start of round three. Summoning upper body strength honed by decades of cleaning houses, Linda held Moobie still this time while I replaced and cinched the cone. When we had finished, my hair was stuck to my forehead, my shirt was in disarray, and I had forgotten what a good mood felt like.

  I set Moobie down in the front hallway, and she quickly proceeded to beat the cone against the wall. I was shocked by how huge and clumsy it was. The translucent white collar completely hid her head unless you were looking at her from the front, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it must feel like to wear the thing. I carried her to the middle of the floor where she could oscillate and agitate in comparative safety, and she began to walk in circles. Regaining her equilibrium, she broke into a run, but the bottom lip of the cone caught in the carpet and nearly flipped her over.

  By trial and error, and with our guiding nudges, she eventually bumped her way into the closet for a nap. I sat with her for a while, telling her what a good, good girl she was. Then I shuffled off to work wearing an invisible cone of unease.

  I STUMBLED OVER simple tasks all morning as I worried about Moobie blundering through the house. Back home, I trotted into the dining room to find out why Bella was squawking and was alarmed by the lamp that had fallen underneath the table. But we didn’t have a lamp with a white shade and none that were decked out in fur and feet. Moobie had gotten her collar stuck inside the rungs of a chair that she normally would have scampered through.

  I freed her from the chair, and she made a beeline toward the living room. Her head bounced up and down as she walked. The cone dipped to scrape the linoleum, her neck lifted it up, and then the weight of the cone forced it earthward again in a series of movements reminiscent of a windup toy. The mechanical cat never made it through the doorway. The rim of the cone snagged on the metal strip separating the dining room floor from the faux-tile pattern in the hall. Still, she bulldozed forward until I picked her up and set her down on a square of sunlight on our bed.