One met me in the street, as if she’d been waiting like an old debt. No collar, no tags. I opened a can of tuna. She ate, smacking and purring, and then slid out the door like a liquid shadow.
Afterward, I lay in bed and listened to the wails and shrieks of cats, fighting or mating. I should know the difference; my grandmother once owned 35 cats. She welcomed every stray that showed up, and kept her cat lodge a secret from the outside world. People might not understand, she said.
Her husband, Carl, would not have understood, nor would he have tolerated the dirt, the smell or the cost of food. Carl, though, had left her for a woman he met at the power plant. My grandmother’s sadness lasted the rest of her life. “How could he do me this way?” she asked me. Growing up with her in the Midwest, I had no answers. I tried to disappear among the cats.
When the meter man rang our bell, we fell silent in mid-sentence. Nobody moved. We could not allow him into the basement. He would discover the sea of cats and report us to the health department. He might notice the penny in the fuse box, too—a fire hazard, but it worked when money was low. Never use a penny , warned the manuals. Only the correct fuse can protect against overload.
The meter man gave up knocking and looped a rectangle of paper over the doorknob, like one of those “Do Not Disturb” signs in hotels. My grandmother read the meter herself. With a pencil she made marks on the tiny clocks and hung the paper out again.
The other day I noticed that the small California house I’m renting looks almost exactly like hers, white with green trim. How could I not have picked up on this before? " I choose the rooms that I live in with care ," as the Leonard Cohen lyrics say. “The windows are small and the walls are bare.” Maybe the similarity needed time to register consciously.
Care, of course, is what the half-wild black cat I befriended a few weeks ago needs. She keeps licking an open sore on her side, maybe an old fight injury. She won’t leave it alone. I want to do something for her, but I don’t know if I should go as far as medical attention, and I doubt Sore Side could be coaxed into my car. I’ve considered putting a collar on her, with a note. “Dear owner, if you exist: please take your cat to the vet. Please do so despite the likelihood she will get fitted with one of those humiliating plastic cones. She must quit licking her sores.” But the note might annoy her owner, who’d lock the cat indoors. I might not see her again.
My lease doesn’t allow pets. I could ask the landlord to reconsider, and offer him a bigger deposit. Money can make a lot of things right. Fuses, for example. “One day, if that penny melts, this house will burn down,” my grandmother said.
Rather than alert the landlord, I could quietly keep Sore Side. I have moral grounds. She’s been neglected; she needs a real home. One cat would be easier to hide than 35.
By now, we share a routine. When I get home, I stand in the street and jingle my keys. After a while, Sore Side detaches herself from the darkness and saunters to me. She squeaks a hoarse meow. Under my hand, her warm, dry fur crackles and sparks. We hurry inside.
The lure doesn’t always work immediately. Sometimes I stand jingling my keys to no avail, like a Salvation Army Santa when everything is closed.
One night, I couldn’t find Sore Side at all. I felt almost desperate then, unable to sleep. It was a small matter, but one that I felt could enlarge, widen and spread in me like fire from a fuse box. Then I realized who else I missed, and the absence of both of them became a fact I didn’t want to accept. I refused to accept it, even as, for the last time, I turned out the lights.
Osborne lives in Mill Valley, Calif.
