I Choo-Choo-Choose You!

by Gwen Cooper

  “No!” I said to Scarlett the next time she leapt out at me from under the coffee table. Reaching down carefully to remove her, claw by claw, from around my ankle, I held out one of the neglected toy mice that had been gathering dust in the corners of our apartment these past three months. “Here,” I told her firmly, “is your appropriate toy.”

  Scarlett looked at the felt mouse in my hand with an air of disdain. Then, with all the offended dignity of a society matron in a state of high dudgeon, she turned her little rump to me and strode away, swishing her tail twice to emphasize her displeasure. This silent treatment lasted until Scarlett’s next surprise attack—which happened about fifteen minutes later.

  It was a pattern we repeated four or five times over the course of the night, always with the same results. The book advised that, if all else failed, the best way to break a cat of aggressive habits was simply to ignore her. When she wrapped herself around one of my ankles, I should detach her and then disregard her. I wasn’t to talk to her, pet her, try to engage her in play, or even so much as look at her. There was no worse punishment for a playful young kitten, the book assured me, than being denied interactive play time with her human.

  “HA!” I exclaimed when I read this. The next day, I dropped the book off at the Salvation Army donation bin.

  * * *

  I told myself that Scarlett was just independent—and, moreover, that being independent was a good thing. I was a little fuzzy as to why, exactly, independence was a desirable quality in a companion animal. (It wasn’t as if I were preparing Scarlett to pursue an equitable marriage or high-powered career someday.) Still, “independent” was one of those generically positive descriptors—like “attractive” or “has good taste”—that most people were pleased to have applied to themselves. Why wouldn’t I want it applied to my cat?

  I also told myself—and actually knew, deep down at the bottom of things—that it wasn’t Scarlett’s job in life to interact with me in any specific manner, or to make me feel a certain way about myself. Our relationship was based on what my job was—and it was my job to keep her healthy and safe, to love her no matter what her personality turned out to be, and to give her everything she needed to live a happy life on her own terms.

  But what if, I sometimes wondered, I simply wasn’t able to give her that happy life? What if Scarlett and I had been mismatched—what if the reason she hadn’t yet “chosen” me was because she’d been meant for somebody else, and I’d interfered somehow in her destiny? Maybe Scarlett’s true human soulmate—a person who could make her happier than I ever could—was still out there, forever to remain undiscovered.

  It would be a gross mischaracterization of our relationship to say that it was all bad, that I didn’t love her, or even that I wished I’d gotten another kitten instead. The truth was, I’d fallen irretrievably in love with this bossy, snooty, semi-sadistic little imp who—when she wasn’t tormenting me or demanding something from me—seemed otherwise uninterested in my existence.

  I didn’t love her just because she was mine (although that—as with any other parent, cat or otherwise—would have been enough to raise Scarlett above all other kittens in my eyes). I loved the little freckle of black fur, which I called “Scarlett’s beauty mark,” resting on the left side of her upper lip. I loved the way she cocked her head thoughtfully to one side before leaping at a paper ball. I loved the serious, evaluating expression she wore as she sniffed at some new variety of food I put before her when she outgrew her kitten food. I loved the little sway of her backside as she walked away from me in a huff.

  When she developed a large sore on her lower lip—the result of a feline herpes virus she’d inherited at birth from her mother, which would plague her on and off for the rest of her life—I fussed and fretted and dragged her to the vet (which didn’t exactly raise me in

  Scarlett’s esteem), and mixed the icky pink antibiotic formula the doctor prescribed with some water from a can of tuna, trying to make it more palatable. I’d give her some of the tuna itself afterward to get the yucky-medicine taste out of her mouth, as miserable over her obvious discomfort as if it were my own.

  Sometimes, watching Scarlett nap peacefully on a pillow in a patch of sunlight, surrounded by toys she didn’t seem to care about—representing a love she didn’t seem interested in—I thought about what might have become of her if she hadn’t been rescued or found a home. I often took my teenage volunteers to local animal shelters, and had spoken with their staffers enough to know the kinds of things that happened to very small kittens left to fend for themselves on the streets. That Scarlett had been saved against all the odds—that she now had the privilege of being indifferent, if she chose, to a human who provided her with food and shelter and love—seemed like a kind of miracle. My cat was daily proof, in my own home, of goodness in the world. How could I not have loved her?

  There are two sides to every story, and I’m sure that Scarlett would have had her own list of complaints about me if she’d been able to talk. She tries too hard, Scarlett might have said. She intrudes on the games I like to play by myself. I can’t even stretch out comfortably on my back without her trying to rub the white fur of my belly—as if I were a dog! She disappears for hours from the apartment every day, and then turns up again whenever she feels like it. And she expects me to cheer about it like it’s a big deal! She hogs the pillows on the bed. She’ll open a can of tuna and, sure, she’ll give me a little—but she still keeps most of it for herself.

  One night Jorge and I were watching a re-run of The Simpsons on TV. It was a Valentine’s Day episode, and Lisa Simpson had, as an act of pity, given a Valentine’s card to a slow-witted boy named Ralph, whom nobody else in the second-grade class had even acknowledged. “I choo-choo-choose you!” Ralph read ecstatically from Lisa’s card, which was decorated with a drawing of a smiley-faced train engine.

  Crazy as it sounds, I was envious of that slow-witted little boy. He’d been chosen, and I had not.

  * * *

  It had been May when we first adopted Scarlett, and it was November when my boss sent me to attend a three-day national conference for youth outreach programs like ours. Although the conference was being held in Miami, the downtown hotel where I’d be staying was far enough away to make it impractical for me to get home to feed Scarlett twice a day. Jorge traveled frequently for work and was scheduled to be away himself that entire week. We couldn’t find a pet-sitter willing to come all the way out to our neighborhood for what we could afford to pay, so Jorge’s parents offered to take Scarlett for a couple of nights.

  I arrived at their house early on the morning of the first day of the conference to get Scarlett and her gear—her litter box and extra litter, cans of food, her water and food bowls, her scratching post, her brush, her antibiotic medication in case her herpes flared up in my absence, and a few toys—set up in the guest bedroom. With its adjoining bathroom, Scarlett would have free run of a space nearly as large as our apartment. Keeping her separated from the other three cats—and especially from Targa—meant she would spend most of her time shut in by herself, except when Maggie could slip in for feedings and visits. Given how much Scarlett seemed to crave solitude, however, I didn’t think she’d mind a few days of extra alone time. She’d probably see it as a vacation.

  Scarlett sprang from her carrier as soon as I opened it. I’d spent half an hour that morning chasing her around the apartment to get her into it, and the fresh claw mark on my hand attested to just how reluctant to travel Scarlett had been. I tried to give her a conciliatory scratch behind the ears with that same hand now, but the decidedly cool manner in which Scarlett shook me off let me know that I hadn’t been forgiven. Exploring the room with her little black nose to the ground, she seemed reassured to find so many things with her own familiar scent on them.

  The window in Scarlett’s room overlooked the driveway, and as I headed out to my car I saw her sitting on the sill, watching me. I crept over and, with one finger, ligh
tly rubbed the glass over the bridge of Scarlett’s nose. “It’s only a few days,” I told her. “I’ll be back for you soon.”

  Scarlett opened her mouth wide in a mighty yawn, then hopped down from the windowsill and disappeared from sight.

  I thought about her in between conference sessions during those three days, and called Maggie both nights to see how Scarlett was doing. I’d be lying, though, if I said I worried about her much. Scarlett’s independence—her apparent indifference to me, specifically, and humanity in general—had become an accepted fact. There would be someone to feed her while I was gone, and to clean up after her, and she’d have her little paper balls and the stuffed worm—the only store-bought toy in which Scarlett had shown even the remotest interest—to play with. What more had she ever really needed?

  This assessment seemed borne out by Maggie’s reports when I called to check in. “I haven’t heard a peep out of her,” Maggie told me. “If I didn’t already know she was here, I’d never guess there was another cat in the house.” She added that Scarlett would retreat under the bed whenever Maggie entered the room, or else head for the bathroom where she could watch from an untouchable distance as Maggie put down food and cleaned out used litter.

  “Don’t take it personally,” I told her. “Scarlett doesn’t like people all that much.” I realized, as I said it, that I’d been secretly angry at Jorge for saying something not very different, not so very long ago.

  I’d dropped Scarlett off at Jorge’s parents’ house on a Wednesday morning, and it was around five o’clock on Friday afternoon when I arrived to pick her up. Jorge’s parents had their own architectural firm and often worked long hours, and the house was empty as I let myself in with the key Maggie had lent me. Jorge’s sister had been by earlier to release Targa into the backyard, and I poked my head out to say hi to her—and, of course, I stopped to give Pandy an affectionate hello as well.

  “Hey, Scarlettsita bonita!” (Spanish for “pretty little Scarlett”) I called cheerfully as I opened the door to the guest room. Scarlett leapt from the bed and ran over to where I stood, stopping a few inches away to sit on her haunches and look up into my face with bright-eyed anticipation. Scarlett had never once greeted me at the door like this—preferring, as always, to evacuate any room as I entered—although at the time I didn’t register how unusual her behavior was. My mind was too occupied trying to figure out the most efficient way to get Scarlett and all her things loaded into the car, and a route home that would avoid the worst of Friday rush-hour traffic. There was too much for me to carry out in one trip, so I decided to load Scarlett’s gear into the car’s trunk and backseat first, and then I’d return to the house to put Scarlett herself in her carrier and bring her out.

  I had just slammed the lid of the trunk shut over the litter box when I heard it. The wild howling of an animal in great distress rose—sudden and sharp—to cut like a band saw through the peaceful tweeting of birds and humming of insects in the glowing, late-afternoon air.

  Jorge’s parents lived at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, just beyond which lay a wooded copse. There were a few feral cats who lived among the trees who Maggie had arranged to have spayed and neutered some time back, and who she still continued to feed. They reminded me of Scarlett, with their tiger stripes and yellow-green eyes, and their persistent wariness of any human contact. Every so often they would emerge to sunbathe on the hot asphalt of the driveway, and I was always careful when I drove up to the house to make sure the coast was clear before pulling in.

  My first, awful thought now was that, despite my precautions, I might have run one of them over. My stomach rose into my throat as I knelt on hands and knees to look beneath my car. Thankfully, there was nothing there.

  Loud as they were, the howls had a curiously muffled sound. Maybe a stowaway had crept unnoticed into the trunk or backseat as I’d packed in Scarlett’s things? But a thorough check of both revealed nothing. I also examined the wheel wells of all four tires and popped the hood to see if a cat, or some other small animal, might have crawled in to doze on the warmth of the engine and gotten trapped.

  Nothing.

  The howls sounded close by, but I couldn’t find anything in or around my car to account for them. As I slammed the hood and doors shut, however, they escalated in both urgency and pitch. Thoroughly mystified, I stood in the middle of the driveway and turned in a slow circle, nerving myself to venture into the darkening woods for further investigation if I didn’t spot anything immediately obvious.

  The glare of the setting sun off the guest bedroom window, which had previously obscured my view inside, receded a little. And that’s when I saw her.

  Scarlett was on the windowsill. She stood high on her back legs, her front paws clawing desperately at the glass. She was looking directly at me; when our eyes met, she threw back her head and opened her mouth wide, yowling at the top of her lungs.

  “Scarlett!” I cried. “Scarlett, I’m coming!”

  For the second time, I felt my throat tighten and my stomach clench. I had no idea what was wrong with Scarlett—my only thought was that some unknown, terrible thing was happening to her. My hands shook, and I nearly dropped my keys as I fumbled with the lock to the front door of the house. I raced down the hall toward the guest room, nearly tripping over the purse I’d set down upon entering, and flung the bedroom door open.

  Scarlett broke off mid-yowl when I came in, and the abrupt silence was as piercing as her cries had been. She leapt from the windowsill to land at my feet, whirling and dipping in frantic figure eights in front of me. At the head of each loop, she paused to rub furiously against my ankles from her cheek to her hip before resuming her spins once again.

  I saw no blood, no swelling, no limping or hobbling, nothing to indicate any kind of injury or illness. I hadn’t seen any sign of the other three cats when I came into the house, and I guessed they’d gone into deep hiding when the howling started. At any rate, they hadn’t gotten into Scarlett’s room to attack or upset her. Targa remained securely in the yard; I’d caught a glimpse of her sitting at attention just outside the glass door that led out back, looking anxiously into the house as a low whine rose in her throat. Clearly, Scarlett’s cries had disturbed her, too.

  “Hey,” I said, gently. “Hey, Scarlett.” I crouched down and reached out to her. I wanted to pet her, to try to calm her with the touch of my hand. But I hesitated. When had the touch of my hand ever meant anything to Scarlett?

  To my surprise, Scarlett half-rose on her hind legs so that her head met my hand in midair. I tentatively scratched along the side of her neck and lower jaw, and she turned to press her whole face into my palm.

  I lowered my body further until I sat cross-legged on the floor, facing Scarlett with my back against the bedroom door I’d closed behind me. She sat down on her haunches facing me, and as I continued to scratch gently along her neck and jaw, her eyelids drooped, and the low, rumbling sound of her purr rose to fill the room.

  It was the first time Scarlett had ever purred when I touched her.

  “Did you think I was leaving without you?” I asked softly. And I realized, as I said it, that that was exactly what Scarlett had thought. She’d seen me walk out with all her things, and then she’d heard the slam of the car door, and she’d assumed that the next sound she would hear was the car engine as I drove away and left her behind.

  My fingers paused in their scratching, and I cupped Scarlett’s face in my hand. She regarded me solemnly with her luminous, inscrutable yellow-green eyes.

  I leaned forward slightly, to make my own eyes level with hers. “I will never leave you,” I told her. “Not ever. You and I are stuck with each other. Okay?”

  I didn’t expect a reply, of course, and I didn’t get one. Instead, Scarlett stretched out her front legs and her neck, until her belly rested on the floor and her chin rested on my ankle. Then she closed her eyes. The vibrations of her purr soon gave way to the steadier rhythms of her breath as she fell asle
ep.

  The room grew dim in the gathering dusk, and I reached up to flip the wall light switch that would turn on the bedside lamp. The fur of Scarlett’s neck was soft on my ankle, and I lowered my arm to stroke her back.

  I waited for my legs to stiffen, to feel my arm growing tired or the weight of Scarlett’s head becoming uncomfortable on my ankle. But that never happened. The warmth and drowsiness of Scarlett’s sleeping body seemed to seep into my own, and all I felt was a sense of balm. Balm and ease. The feeling that a tiny, twinging knot, which I’d lived with long enough to have stopped noticing it, had finally begun to loosen.

  “Good Scarlett,” I murmured. “Good, good girl.”

  We sat together like that, in the amber circle of lamplight, for a long time.

  * * *

  Things changed between us after that, although not dramatically, and not right away. Scarlett most certainly did not become a lap cat. She didn’t start running over whenever I called her. There was never a moment when Jorge looked at the two of us together and said, Look how affectionate Scarlett’s become! You’re a miracle worker!

  In May of the following year, when Scarlett was a year old, we adopted another kitten—a tiny white fluff-ball only five weeks old, who’d been found wandering the streets of Little Haiti alone, near where my mother taught elementary school. My mother called me in tears over this half-starved, mite-ridden creature, who she couldn’t bring home with her but couldn’t bear to leave. So the kitten came to live with us, and I named her Vashti. Vashti was an affectionate cuddle-bug right from the start—and while Scarlett was initially a reluctant big sister, it wasn’t long before Vashti’s gentle sweetness won her over. Having a kitten to boss around put an end, once and for all, to Scarlett’s game of “let’s trip Mom and make her fall down!”