I’d been dreaming about the cats again. Not as they were from my childhood, young and spry, or even older and sort-of-spry. But ancient. Emaciated. Twenty-five to thirty years old the three of them would have been, yet somehow alive, as if they’d held on long enough to see me in my sleep. I looked up the significance in dream dictionaries, and the only clear meaning had to do with creativity. That I was filling with it, yearned to express it, but the shape had not yet formed, the “baby” had not finished growing fingers and toes and a tiny, beating heart. I then looked forward to these nighttime visitations, although my soul ached for what was left of these kitties, fur matted and eyes cloudy, skin stretched tight across their thinning ribs, their throaty, voiceless meows.
Then the calico appeared on our back deck.
At the time, I’d been living in my future mother-in-law’s house with the man I eventually married. Because of his allergies, I could no longer have feline companions. Yet they still found me. I’d visit someone’s home and even cats who hid from strangers would rub their faces on my legs or hop into my lap. I’d go for walks and a neighbor’s cat would follow.
The calico stood at the porch slider, yowling to be let in, one paw on the glass.
She looked young and scared and had no collar. That first day, I figured she had been out wandering and would soon return to her family. But she was back a second day, and a third. I longed to bring her inside, give her some food and water, but I couldn’t risk giving my future husband an asthma attack. So I went to her, brought some bits of chicken or whatever I could find in the fridge, washed my hands and changed my clothing when I came inside.
I couldn’t find the owner. None of our neighbors knew of any people in the development whose cat had just had kittens, or of any missing pets. Eventually, we figured that someone must have dumped her. The nights were growing colder and we lived in the woods, so I feared that before long, she’d either die of exposure or become a fox’s midnight snack. I asked everyone I knew if they could take in a stray.
Not even a nibble.
Finally I did it: I put her in a cardboard box, cushioned with an old blanket. I slipped the box into my car, and drove her to the SPCA. She had fleas and worms, but cleaned up, someone would take her. I hoped. At that time in its history, our local shelter didn’t have much room and would euthanize animals that weren’t adopted quickly enough.
I phoned the shelter every day; every day the patient woman who answered told me that yes, she was fine and no, nobody had claimed her yet. Then I stopped calling. To hear that my friend’s luck had run out would have been too much to bear.
I want to believe she’d been adopted, that some nice family, with children who didn’t pull tails, fell in love with her and took her home.
I still have the cat dreams; I hear the tortured hack of our big orange tabby with the war-torn ear. Half blind, he bats at me with a weak paw, sensing somehow that he knows me but not remembering the connection. Or maybe it was his attempt at comfort, trying to tell me that one day the trio of elderly cats in the night would be joined by a fourth, a calico, who would tell me the next story was waiting.
