Dewey's Nine Lives (13 page)

But as soon as Bill arrived home and called, “Spooky! Spooky!” the cat dropped his voles and came bounding. Sometimes, he was in the backyard. Sometimes, he was ten houses away. Bill would yell, “Spooky!” and see him jump in the distance. Wait a few seconds, and there he was, bounding over a fence. Bill never quite knew what Spooky was doing out there on his own, but he always loved the sight of him hurtling those fences. He would come sliding into Bill’s feet, often unable to stop and smashing into him headfirst, and they would spend a day curled up together inside, Bill unwinding from the emotions of five days of devotion to a dying person, and Spooky recovering from his five days alone with Zippo.

But nature is fickle: Sometimes, you’re the cat; sometimes, you’re the vole. One night in Granite Falls, Bill was throwing out the garbage when he heard several coyotes yelping at each other nearby. He saw movement, a coyote’s tail in the shadows, and then he saw Spooky. The cat was suspended in the air, sort of dancing on the noses of four coyotes as they snapped their jaws at him. Bill grabbed his ax, yelled, “Spooky!” as loud as he could, and started sprinting toward the fight. Spooky kept dancing, pushing off their faces and leaping out of reach, but just as help arrived, a coyote clamped his jaws firmly around Spooky’s face and started to drag him away. Bill lifted his ax and yelled, and the coyote dropped his meal and ran into the forest. Spooky sprang up and ran the other way, into the house. When Bill got inside, Spooky was curled on his favorite pillow in a pool of blood. Bill rushed him to the vet. He had a deep gash and a broken jaw, but after a few weeks of a liquid diet, he recovered completely. Despite the coyote’s bite, Spooky still had a lust for life and that gorgeous Egyptian face.

In Darrington, Washington, a shambling lumber town north-east of Seattle on the edge of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest, it was a bear. Bill’s house that year was right on the Sauk River, and every day, the bear would amble through the yard to the river, catch a salmon, sit down near the bank, and eat it. And every day, Spooky would sneak through the bear’s legs, snatch a piece of salmon, and keep running. The bear would take a lazy swipe with his paw but with little conviction. Spooky was always long gone. Then one day, as Bill watched out the kitchen window, the bear caught the fish. Spooky slipped between his legs to steal a bite. The bear took a lazy swing with his paw. But this time the piece of salmon Spooky grabbed was still stuck to the bone. It jerked him to a stop and spun him around. The bear’s paw caught him flush in the side and flung him thirty feet through the air, over some bushes and into the neighbor’s yard.

Bill was crushed. He thought,
That’s it. Spooky’s done. Once that bear leaves, I’m gonna have to go over there and find his body
.

Two minutes later, Spooky came trotting in through the hole in the screen door. He had three broken ribs and a big gash on his side, but he still had that piece of salmon hanging out of the side of his mouth.

That was Spooky. He was a fiercely loyal friend. But he was also the kind of cat that would stalk a squirrel down the branch of a forty-foot tree and risk his life again and again to steal fish from a bear. And he was tough. There seemed to be no wound—self-inflicted or otherwise—that could keep him down. Spooky might try anything—ride a goose, put a snake in the bed, taunt a bear—but Bill could rest assured about one thing: He would always come back.

Until one day, he didn’t.

It was the 1990s. The economy was in a funk. After eight years, Bill had given up his job caring for the terminally ill. The emotional toll of saying good-bye to so many people had worn him down. So he went back to his old work as a mechanic, first in the airline industry and then, after another round of layoffs, for a boat hull manufacturer. One Friday, the owner came into the factory and said, “Business is bad. Really bad. As of Monday, everyone with a beard is fired.” Absurd. But also serious. The owner hated beards, and in Washington, you apparently can get fired if the boss doesn’t like the way you part your hair.

Bill went home and struggled all weekend with his decision. He had been badly wounded in Vietnam. He spent three months in the hospital with an injury he still won’t talk about. When the bandages finally came off, he looked in the mirror and saw a full beard. He didn’t want anything more to do with the army, and the army didn’t want anything more to do with him, but Bill Bezanson loved that beard. For more than twenty years, he had never shaved it off. Not once. And, he decided, he wouldn’t start now. Not for a boat braising job. On Monday morning, he was fired. Over his beard! Everyone who had shaved was laid off within the month anyway.

A few nights later, Bill started talking with the bartender at the local Elks club, explaining his situation, and she offered him her house for a few months. She was leaving for the summer and needed someone to feed her goats. Two days later, Bill, Spooky, and Zippo moved into a nice new home in northwestern Washington. Two days after that, the woman was back. She’d gotten into a fight with the man she was going to visit; she wasn’t going away for the summer after all; Bill and his cats had to scram.

That wasn’t easy, unfortunately, for an unemployed metal fabricator in the middle of a recession. Bill couldn’t rent an apartment without a steady paycheck or money in the bank, and his personal housing crisis dragged on and on. For two weeks, Bill hunted for a job while the woman got madder and madder. Finally, he found work as a caretaker for the very ill. It was a good job in a bad economy, and quite a relief. The first thing Bill did when he arrived home from his first day on the job was to call out, “Spooky! Spooky!” He wanted to celebrate.

No Spooky.

No Spooky for dinner.

And no Spooky at bedtime, either.

Bill knew something was wrong. He searched the neighborhood. No sign of Spooky. The woman said the coyotes must have gotten him. Bill didn’t think so. He knew what death felt like, and he didn’t have the feeling. He just didn’t believe Spooky was gone. He figured Spooky must have been accidently locked in a garage or a work shed, and that when he broke free, he’d come home. At dusk, Bill would stand on the porch and listen for Spooky. Every night, he thought he heard Spooky’s distant meow. Zippo was out all the time looking for Spooky in his own way, so it could have been Zippo’s meow being carried on the wind. But Bill didn’t think so. He’d wake up in the middle of the night and swear he heard Spooky. He became convinced Spooky had fallen in an old well or been trapped in a hole, and he searched through the backyards and the forest looking for him. Bill had walked out on so much else in his life. He would never walk out on Spooky.

But the days passed, and there was still no Spooky. The woman wanted Bill and Zippo out. She was convinced the coyotes had gotten Spooky; she didn’t care about that lousy old cat anyway; she just wanted her house back. Bill fought her every day. There was no way he was leaving without Spooky. No way.

Three weeks later, he and Zippo were still there. The woman was standing in the doorway, screaming at him to leave. Bill refused. Again. Not without Spooky, he told her. Not while Spooky might still be alive. The woman turned in a rage, looked into the backyard, and turned stone white. She had to grab the door frame to keep from falling over. There, coming across the yard, was Spooky. He was very skinny, and very dirty, but he was alive.

Bill clutched him in his arms. “Spooky. Spooky,” he said, burying his face in Spooky’s fur. “I knew you’d come home.”

They left that night: Bill, Spooky, and chubby-tubby Zippo. Bill didn’t even have a place to go. He just took his cats, his few possessions, and left. He and the cats slept in his car until the first paycheck came through.

A year later, he struck up a conversation with a stranger in a bar. After a few drinks, the man said, “Oh, wait a minute, you’re that guy. You lived with my mom. She took your cat to the dump, man, and threw him out with her trash. She almost died when that cat came back.”

The dump was twenty miles away. Twenty miles! It took three weeks of walking, but Spooky came back. He had survived a strike from an owl. He had outfoxed four coyotes and withstood a swipe from a bear. He had been thrown out with the trash and found his way home. He was a survivor in every sense of the word.

 

 

Eventually, though, there comes a point when we can’t come back. Zippo reached it first, in June 2001, at the age of eighteen. He had gone into the animal hospital for routine surgery to remove a tumor. Bill called later that morning, all smiles, and asked how Zippo was. The veterinarian, Dr. Call, had been Zippo and Spooky’s veterinarian since they first moved to Washington fifteen years before. One morning soon after moving there, Bill had seen a dog hit by a car. He ran into the road, scooped up the dog, and drove it to the nearest vet. The dog was biting itself and screaming; it was in tremendous pain. When Bill reach for him, the dog reared back and bit him on the neck and shoulder. On the examination table, it thrashed and screamed. It was frantic with terror. Dr. Call walked in, touched the dog gently with his bare hand, and it calmed right down.

Bill was so impressed, he brought Spooky to see Dr. Call the next day. Spooky loved him immediately. And Dr. Call loved Spooky. He later nursed him through the coyote attack and the bear attack. He shook his head in amazement when he heard about the owl. He always called Spooky his miracle cat.

But now Dr. Call was sniffling into the telephone, trying to keep his voice from cracking. Zippo, he told Bill, had a reaction to the anesthesia. He had died in the middle of surgery. Big, sweet Zippo. Just the day before, he had seemed so full of life. Now he was gone. Bill was in shock. Spooky was devastated.

Spooky’s own health had been in decline for several years. He was almost twenty-one years old, and the feline AIDS was finally getting a grip on him. He had trouble keeping food in his stomach, and he was prone to terrible, body-shaking fevers. Now, without Zippo, he was lethargic and morose. He missed his buddy, his lazy best friend. When Bill came home from work every day, the first thing he did was close all the cabinet doors. Spooky opened them during the day, looking for Zippo.

Bill adopted another cat: a black kitten just like Zippo. He wanted Spooky to have a companion, but Spooky would have nothing do with the new cat. Spooky had never hated anyone or anything in his life (even those poor voles—that was just his hunter nature getting the best of him), but he did not want that little kitten around.

His fevers grew worse. Most days, he couldn’t keep food down. His body was failing on him, and he was sick at heart. In August, Bill took Spooky to Dr. Call, who told him Spooky was dying. There wasn’t anything he could do. Spooky had only a few days to live. And it was going to be a painful, difficult death.

Spooky was a survivor, a fighter, an adventurer and a lap sitter, a loyal friend and a constant companion for almost twenty-one years. He was the one who was there, by his side, when Bill needed him. He was the constant in Bill’s life. For years, he was his only true connection. He was his security, his lifeline on all those nights when the dreams were bad or the fear crept in. He always came back when Bill called him. And even at the end, he didn’t want to go. When most cats receive their final shot, they lie down and pass peacefully away. Spooky lunged when the needle touched his skin. He meowed and tried desperately to pull away. Then he turned, looked Bill in the eyes, and roared like a lion. Like he was fighting. Like he wasn’t ready to go. Like Bill had made a terrible mistake.

That scream was a hammer blow to Bill Bezanson’s heart. It haunted him. Dr. Call swore Bill had done the right thing, that Spooky had less than a week to live and that he was suffering terrible pain. But that scream ate him up inside. Spooky had wanted to live! Even in pain, even though he knew he was dying, he wanted to live.

A few weeks later, on September 11, 2001, the towers crumbled. Bill Bezanson looked up from his line job at Boeing and wondered if more planes were coming, if the helicopters were all shot down, if he was finally left behind. He missed Zippo. He missed Spooky. He missed the connection. He had lost the security of their presence. He felt, this time, that he was truly alone.

Then he received a letter with no return address. (He found out later it had been sent by Dr. Call’s office.) When he heard about Dewey’s death seven years later, he sent me a copy. “I know how you can mourn for a cat,” he wrote, “because I have done it myself.” He thought the note might help me because it had helped him. This is what it said: