Cat Daddy

by Jackson Galaxy

  When you are blessed enough to have a defining moment, you are doubly blessed if you have the presence to appreciate it as such. For me, however, no defining moment came without the vision of that old double-barrel shotgun loaded with fear and doubt. “This isn’t what it’s supposed to be like,” I thought. If I ever claim to walk a walk, I knew, then I had a fucking obligation to this. “Dammit!…” I hissed. It felt like a moment during a short, meaningless fling when it suddenly shifts; the kiss feels blissful and familiar, like you’ve done it millions of times before, maybe in another life… “don’t go there, don’t let it happen…” and against your best bachelor judgment, you separate slowly and lock eyes. And, goddammit, you are hopelessly in love. Defining moments are surely blissful, but, if you are stubborn enough, like me, to still believe that this life will unfold according to your plan, they are just as starkly terrifying.

  Regardless, the universe was gentle with me as it asked me to appreciate both the blessing and the feeling of being completely screwed. And I did. And I do all over again every time I tell the story of the forty-five kisses, or now as I sit here at 3:00 a.m. in a wholly different state of mind, fifteen years down a very bumpy road, writing about it. Those cats, wherever they may have wound up (those kittens are now seniors!), gave me a gift.

  Thank God, because, given what was about to happen, I was going to need it.

  Omni

  Presence

  Fostering is one of the most rewarding experiences there is,” Stephanie was saying to the hundred or so new volunteers assembled for our monthly orientation, when the shelter staff tried to excite volunteers about ways to get involved in shelter work and animal care. Stephanie was our foster care coordinator, and in the three years I’d been working at the shelter I’d come to love her because she cared about caring. She understood that a growing and energized core of foster parents was the cornerstone of our true goal, reducing euthanasia of adoptable animals. The rest, the politics, she let slide over her.

  At this point, however, the baton had been passed from coordinator to coordinator for over an hour; waiting for my turn to talk about community outreach, I was well into my smile-widely-while-your-eyes-glaze-over phase. In and out of focus, I took in the glaring whiteness of the room. I’m sure that was the only reason I was awake. It was positively institutional.

  “We wouldn’t urge you to foster if we didn’t put our money where our mouths were. Everybody on this staff has fostered.” I noticed a few random pencils in the ceiling, and the cartoon pleas for children to learn the classics (we rented space in the public library for these gatherings). “Bridgette, the shelter manager, has fostered; Sarah, our volunteer coordinator, whom you’ve all talked to, has fostered; Jackson, our outreach coordinator, has…”

  No no no no no no no no no!

  “Jackson has…”

  My eyes bugged out as I glared the ix-nay glare at her.

  “Um, Jackson, have you ever fostered?”

  I muttered under my breath, hoping she’d interpret it as, “Of course I’ve fostered, don’t you remember that litter of newborns and the month I didn’t sleep for more than an hour a night?”

  “Jackson, seriously, have you ever fostered?”

  My bald head turned radiantly purple-red.

  “Um… come to think of it, um, I guess, no, I have not.”

  “Well,” said Stephanie brightly, “we’ll take care of that, won’t we, Jackson?”

  “We… err… yes. We will. Yes,” I said, smiling through my teeth, feeling a single forced-out bead of sweat fall in my eye.

  I didn’t want to foster. I had no time, I had no room in my life for another animal. My commitment was to my plan, my band, my music, the destiny I had to fight for. Paying attention to something else would ruin my mojo.

  Or at least that’s what I told myself—while my inner brat was busy stamping his feet, flinging snot and wailing, “Don’t wanna! Don’t wanna!” I was face-to-face with the very nature of my self-centeredness.

  The barely concealed truth was that fostering an animal would destroy the ease with which I’d arranged my world. I was truly involved in my shelter work, but when I wasn’t there, my to-do list for the day involved getting loaded, going to band rehearsal, having a nightcap or six, and going to sleep. I had no deep responsibility to anybody but myself. I had cats, sure, but they were already part of my routine—in other words, they were easy. Bringing a foster animal into my life, on the other hand, would have meant actually expending energy on a living thing, not just routine energy but focused energy, and that was the last thing I wanted. I felt like I was doing just plenty between the hours of nine and five. And now I was exposed as the narcissistic bullshitter that I was.

  The problem with being a narcissistic bullshitter is that, when somebody calls you on your narcissistic bullshit in front of an audience, there’s nowhere for you to run. The positive side of this, however, is that, when none of your hiding places are available, you have a unique opportunity to change. So when Stephanie picked me up and plopped me naked right in the middle of moral nowhere, despite the pesky but predictable cameo from the fear/doubt shotgun, loosed from its cabinet and staring at me, I decided to take advantage of the moment and declare myself ready for the challenge.

  That challenge came a lot sooner than I thought it would.

  The next day, during a staff meeting before opening, through the slats of the blinds that Cheeks had bent to match his tubby shape so he could watch birds and children from a safe distance, I saw someone jump out of her car with one of our cardboard cat carriers, walk hurriedly to the front door, drop the carrier, and jog back, looking nervously over her shoulder like she’d just left a flaming bag of shit on the porch and rung the doorbell. I ran to the door and caught her as she was getting back in the car.

  “I can’t keep him,” she said. I opened my mouth to ask for information about the cat—any information at all—but this woman was obviously terrified that I was going to try to make her feel guilty (I wasn’t) or ask for money (I was); her defense tactic was to speak as quickly as possible and not let me get a word in edgewise. “I adopted him a year ago when he was a kitten, his name is Omni, he was hit by a car yesterday and the vet says his pelvis is badly broken, I can’t afford—”

  “But—”

  “—the bills, you know, I’m just a student, for chrissakes, and besides, he didn’t like being outside much, and I want him to be an outdoor cat, you know, I think cats should be—”

  “Why don’t you—”

  “—free to roam in the wild, don’t you think, well, not in the wild, I mean, but I just don’t think animals were meant to live indoors, and also we never really bonded, it’s been a year, he doesn’t—”

  “Okay, we can—”

  “—cuddle, he doesn’t play, I don’t think he likes me, and really? If you don’t like me, then I don’t like you, either, so I guess that’s it.” Then a pause that took us both off guard. “I don’t like him.”

  Strike three, game over.

  So an hour later, forms signed and the woman a thankfully distant memory, I’m driving the cat to our vet clinic across town, when at a stoplight I realize I have no idea what he looks like. I open up the top of the carrier. His head comes up slightly. He’s obviously not going anywhere. His pain is written all over him, despite his feline stoicism. I notice a gray spot on his nose and it’s so cute I can’t help laughing. I sense Omni’s suspicion immediately upon eye contact—cats, having a prey response heightened to a fine point, are practitioners of “trust but verify” diplomacy. I once heard a lifetime American ambassador being interviewed about negotiations with the Albanians after the fall of communism. They were so isolated for so many years, so independent of the West, that they had never needed to ask for inclusion in the world’s sandbox; they were arrogant, surly, suspect. He was constantly fighting his previous knowledge of their abhorrent record on human rights. But he said that his mission as a diplomat was to establish a line in
to a completely closed culture through the concept of empathy. Feel for the culture in a noncondescending but present way, feel for the life circumstances of the human sitting across the table from you, and then communication in the absence of linguistic and cultural familiarity can begin. Imagine yourself as the person across the table from you. This concept resonated deeply with me, and I had been using it as a character-building cornerstone. First and foremost, whether dealing with a feral or just a new arrival to the shelter, confused and disoriented, I am an ambassador. Later I will be your friend, but for now, I come from a world you don’t know or trust, but I carry a friendly message.

  I start with the slow blink, the Cat I Love You that allows him to perceive me without having to put up his guard. Imagine being the Albanian ambassador and I greet you with a respectful “Tungjatjeta,” in perfect southern Gheg dialect. Or how about that iconic scene in the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Imagine being the aliens, being greeted by that now-familiar five-note cadence. You might not trust, but you would be hard-pressed not to say, “I’m listening….”

  At some point the cars honking behind me let me know the light had turned green, but as I drove on I was still lost with this cat. This boy obviously hadn’t had much experience with faith, with having an advocate; I wanted to try to be that for him. I’d been playing around with some nonthreatening scent-introduction techniques and presented him with the earpiece of my glasses. This was a rational second step; not familiar enough for flesh-pressing, I give you a gift of my culture—my scent from a distance, a gilded Statue of Liberty paperweight. He reacted positively again, cheek marking my scent on the glasses, handing me back a Rozafa Castle snow globe.

  His diplomatic green light allowed permission for the final step: the actual handshake. Instinctually, I put my finger to what I thought of as the cat’s third eye—between the eyes and an inch or two up; touch and wait for him to push my finger back to his ears, completing the cycle, going from touch to pet—and I swear it was the first time I felt a cat sigh. He didn’t just sigh with his body, his mouth, and lungs. He sighed with his entire being, and I felt it. I’d used the slow blink, the eyeglasses, and the third-eye techniques separately, but it wasn’t until this moment, wondering how to introduce myself as a nonthreatening ambassador, that I thought to combine them in a sort of three-step cat diplomacy handshake that gave me a piece of understanding I’d never had before. Game over the second time in one day; I had my foster care beta tester, and he had crystallized a new method: the three-step handshake.

  That terrible name, though, had to go. I looked at him and thought, Omni? Really? Who would name you Omni? Just so disconnected from you. I’m sorry you had to hang with an idiot. He gave me a matter-of-fact gaze as if to say, Let me tell you—not a picnic. In that moment I realized he reminded me of an old friend, a brilliant composer who at most times seemed to regard the world with a mixture of bemusement and disgust. I pictured him scribbling a full symphony at my dining room table while listening to the Rolling Stones on his Walkman. In homage to Ben Weisser, I would rename this cat Benny. I began a daydream of life with Benny, the brilliant cat who I would teach to love “Exile on Main Street.” I would give his new adopters a copy of the record. They would think me a perfect clown. I wouldn’t care.

  That serene dream of smooth sailing on the foster parent sea lasted an entire half hour.

  “There’s serious damage to his pelvis,” said the vet, pointing at the X-rays she’d taken of Benny. “He’ll most likely have nerve damage, and his left rear leg shows no reflex response at all, which means we’ll probably have to amputate.”

  Meeting a New Cat? Try the Three-Step Handshake

  Use the slow-blink Cat I Love You technique discussed in the previous chapter to break the language barrier.

  Do you wear glasses? Take them off and present the cat with the tip of an earpiece. It’s not as threatening as your hand, and it is heavy with scent from the area just behind the ears that’s loaded with your signature smell. Let him sniff and hopefully rub a cheek on the earpiece. If you don’t wear glasses, try putting a pen or pencil behind your ear for a bit and then offer it to him.

  Take a finger, let him sniff it like he did the glasses or pen, and bring that finger toward the spot between and just above his eyes. Let him meet your finger with his head and push against it until you’ve made a fluid move from the bridge of his nose up to between the ears. It’s a mutual gesture, like a handshake or an embrace. There: you’re no longer strangers.

  “Um… okay,” I said in an overly matter-of-fact way. I just wanted to deflect any discussion of euthanasia to save his pain and our mounting expense. I provided him a serene touch, just a little something to ground him in comfort among the exploring and colder touches of the vet staff. “So what do I… do?” Deep breath. Please let us do something that doesn’t involve blue juice….

  “For now, just keep him in a big carrier in your apartment and give the pelvic bone time to heal. In six weeks bring him back and, barring an act of God, we’ll remove the leg.”

  “No rehab?” I asked. “Nothing?”

  “He needs to be pretty stationary. That is his rehab. He just needs to heal.”

  “No, but you don’t understand, I’m Cat Boy, I have this whole plan, and—”

  Doc Rachel smiled weakly. She was a great early advocate, teaching me much about the feline machine. She was used to my growing eccentricities. “That’s great, Cat Boy. He needs to be stationary and he needs time to heal.”

  Some cat advocate I was turning out to be. Get a cat to trust me, keep him in a box for a month and a half, and then cut his leg off.

  At least Benny’s health issues meant that this would be a pretty easy foster for my first case. If he was going to live in a carrier, I figured, that meant he’d be separated from the other cats in the house, which meant no messy introductions. And there would be just a bit of separation between me and him—enough to keep me from adopting him. Once again I had fallen victim to an idyllic daydream of my time with Benny—and we know where that leads (insert sound of face being slapped hard).

  My roommate Kate, the drummer in my band and one of my closest friends, who knew me as an emerging cat-obsessive, was smarter than I and wary of our new arrival. We already had some social issues to contend with—namely my seventeen-pound hunk of holy-terror-inspiring dominance named Rabbi, who chased Kate’s cats Samantha and Maggie so relentlessly that Kate finally had to build a fortress of couch cushions around her futon so that she could sleep without cat fights erupting in the middle of the night. Rabbi’s physical and emotional inverse was my other cat, Velouria, who was six pounds on her heaviest day. The two of them were the manifestation of feline yin and yang; ultimate predator and prey. Where Rabbi was fight—big but deceptive in his demanding stealth and speed, the cat equivalent of a rhino—she was flight—the ultimate victim-in-waiting, blindingly quick with an insane vertical jump, all in a tiny frame. (I’d thought for weeks after adopting her that she was a few-months’-old Maine Coon kitten; she turned out to be three years old.) She was Rabbi’s very favorite furry toy. She really, truly hated being Rabbi’s favorite toy. So I understood why Kate was worried. Rabbi, Samantha, Maggie, and Velouria made a volatile enough mix without adding a completely unknown element.

  The first month or so was surprisingly uneventful. Benny showed no interest in anybody or anything. In retrospect, I understand that his apathy was simply forcible adaptation to the size of his immediate surroundings. Plus, even with the copious medications flowing through his veins for that first few weeks, he was still in obvious discomfort standing, walking, and using his litter box. The other cats circled his carrier with regularity. It was like that movie Warriors, when the gang has to get from one end of New York to the other, coming across rival gangs along the way. All the other cats were taunting Benny: “Oh Warrior! Come out to play-ay!!”

  Even when Benny was finally allowed to come out to play-ay, a month into his stay with us
, his lingering physical issues made his first explorations tentative. But there was something else; a manner to him that I found curious and often kind of hilarious. He would walk into the living room, look around, and look at himself—literally take stock, his paws, his tail—and his bewilderment was palpable. It was as if Benny, bus driver and eternal bachelor, had hit his well-worn La-Z-Boy, tired from his ten-hour shift, eaten a Swanson’s Hungry-Man and fallen asleep, fork in hand, only to wake up curled in a donut bed next to a dying fern, his nose in his own ass. He walks out to the living room, trying to shake off a bad dream he’s already left behind, and freezes in realization: “…a cat? I’m a freaking cat?” The tail flicks of its own accord and he jumps. He tries, unsuccessfully, to navigate a world with four legs, paws, and claws. He takes a step, examines his new body. He looks around the room from a vantage point he’s never experienced before. He wants to get to a mirror pronto to see what the hell is going on, but the only one is above the bathroom sink. With his left rear leg still obviously causing a problem, there was no way he was going to jump from the floor to the sink just so he could witness the horror. He dragged the leg behind him and would often whip back in midstride and gnaw at it like it was an unwelcome visitor, grooming it obsessively like if he could just give it a bath it wouldn’t be so annoying. I can’t count how many times we would turn our heads for a moment and turn them back to find that his leg had gotten stuck between the crisscrosses of bamboo of the Pier 1 rattan Papasan chair that was de rigueur for everybody on a budget those days. Benny would cry out and we would pull him out, cringing and thinking, “Ouch—legs aren’t supposed to twist that way….”