Dewey's Nine Lives (28 page)

After his mother died, Marshmallow changed. I don’t know if he was depressed or lonely, but I know that’s when he started talking to me. You might find this strange, but I always talked to my cat. I told him about my day, about school, about my toys and my parents arguing, you know, kid stuff. Marshmallow listened, but Marshmallow never talked back. Not until his mother died. Then he started jumping onto my window ledge and talking to me.

Meow
,
meow
, Marshmallow would say to attract my attention.

“Hi, Mawshmawow, how are you?” I’d say, putting down my homework.

Meow
.

“Yeah, I’m good, too.”

Meow, meow
.

“I’ve been at school. What have you been doing?”

Meow. Meow, meow
.

“Yeah, I got my math homework done.”

Meow
.

“Yeah, I found my socks.”

Meow meow meow
.

“No, I have my shoes. They still don’t fit.”

Sometimes, I’d sneak Marshmallow, who Mom never allowed into the house, into my bedroom. My Pigpen tendencies spread to my personal space as well as to my Sears dresses, and my room was . . . well, a pigpen. I mean, you couldn’t see the floor. Marshmallow hated walking on that layer of filth, but he loved climbing on top of me. The problem was crossing my lavender bedspread. That bedspread drove Marshmallow bonkers, because his claws would jab through it with each step. Watching Marshmallow walk across my lavender bedspread was like watching someone cross a pool of freshly chewed bubble gum. Every step, the bedspread stuck to his claws and he had to pull away with an exaggerated pop. Even when he reached me, Marshmallow never stayed long. After ten minutes, he always headed back through the bedspread minefield, meowing to be free. We were both more comfortable down in the “forest” with the worms and the beetles than inside my messy room.

By the third summer, Marshmallow was in his prime. Remember that fragile, timid cat, the poofy runt who tumbled in slow motion—on purpose!—down that scary, three-foot-high board? Well, forget it, because he wasn’t like that anymore. Marshmallow was a big old man cat. We’d still go out on our walks in the forest, and I’d show him the beetles and butterflies I found in the yard, but he also had his own sport. Every few days, Marshmallow dragged himself onto the step outside our front door and meowed until I came out. There, at his feet, would be a mangled squirrel. Or bird. Or baby rabbit. But I knew Marshmallow didn’t mean anything by it. He was just a cat, honing his survival skills. So it didn’t bother me. It was in his nature, you know?

Our neighbor, a duck hunter, wasn’t as tolerant. He approached me and Marshmallow one day, in full hunting regalia, shotgun on his arm, and pointed to a nest in his yard. “If your cat ever kills those cardinals,” he said, “I’m going to shoot it, because those are beautiful birds.”

This was the same man who hung a bird feeder on the edge of our yard, on the lowest branch of a tree, right next to a spot where Marshmallow could hide. I mean, it was practically a baited trap. It was a slaughterhouse over there.

So I put my hands on my hips, stuck out my dirty snot-covered lip, and said, “If you kill ducks, I’m gonna shoot you, because dose are beautiful bodes.” What could the poor man do against the righteous indignation of a dirt-encrusted, Elmer Fudd-sounding, cat-adoring fifth-grade girl? He just stared at us, the mangy kid and her mangy cat, and then walked away, shaking his head.

About a week later, Marshmallow killed a duck. He caught it on the golf course, snapped its neck, and laid it on our front step like a chef presenting his prize soufflé. I didn’t mind. I had such a blind spot for Marshmallow, I would have let him get away with . . . well, with murder. Of a duck.

My Barbie-loving older sister wasn’t as understanding. “Oh my god,” she yelled when she saw the carcass. “There’s a dead duck at the front door! Oh my god, there’s blood on the fence! Dad. Dad! Dad!! DAD!!! There’s a dead . . . duck . . . at . . . the . . . door!”

Needless to say, high-fashion, beautiful, girly-girl sister didn’t understand mangy, murdering Marshmallow’s unique charm. Like my mom, she wasn’t an animal lover, and she preferred dressing up to hunting worms and playing in the leaves. But I have to give her credit: She wasn’t a fan of my cat, but she more than tolerated him. She even appreciated him at times. She saw our connection, and although she didn’t want or need that herself, she was happy for me. She knew Marshmallow was my best friend.

“Hey, Kristie,” she’d say. “Your cat is at the window again. I can hear him meowing. Are you sure he’s not hungry?”

It wasn’t until the seventh grade that the fighting started. And I mean serious fighting. Every day, Kellie and I would scream at each other as loud as we could, with all the windows open so the neighbors could hear. We would literally beat each other with curling irons and hair dryers. We’d have scorch marks on our foreheads and bruises on our arms. Afterward, we’d stand side by side at the mirror, trying to fix ourselves, and she’d say out the side of her mouth, “You’re so ugly.”

“No, you’re so ugly,” I’d say. Having gotten over my speech problem, I could spit every letter at her. “You’re the ugly one. Not me.”

“No I’m not. And you know it.”

Meow
, Marshmallow would say, scratching at the screen to be let into my bedroom. It’s been twenty-five years, but I still get emotional when I see that old screen in my childhood room. That screen, with Marshmallow’s claw marks still visible, is a memorial to my youth.

Meow. Me-owww
.

“I know, she’s an idiot.”

“You’re right. I look fine.”

Mee-ow
, Marshmallow would say, crawling onto my lap. I don’t know if your cat does this, but every time he purred, Marshmallow kneaded with his claws, like he was nursing. It was painful, but it also felt good.

“I know, you’re right, nobody deserved to be spoken to that way.”

“I know, Marshmallow. I hear it, too. They should just get divorced and get it over with.”

I suppose it seems odd, talking to my cat that way. No, confiding in my cat that way. Needing my cat that way. Finding comfort in his meows. But Marshmallow was my primary defender, you know? He told me I looked good. He agreed when I said everything was fine.

Even if I was the tallest girl in the sixth grade.

Even if, in seventh grade, a group of older girls stole the new jeans I was so proud of out of my locker. Along with my underwear. And my shoes.

Even if, every time they passed me in the hall, those same girls slammed me against the wall and told me not to even look at some boy they liked. Until my older sister cornered them in the mall, that is, and told them whatever pain they caused me, she would give them double in high school.

She may have beaten me with a curling iron. She may have yelled and cursed me. But my big sister loved me. Even I knew that, even at the time. Those fights were our way of dealing with our fears and frustrations. They were our way of talking about the fact that all Mom seemed to do was yell, and all Dad seemed to do was drink. Starting at ten or eleven years old, I often stayed up past midnight, doing my homework on the living room sofa and waiting for my father to come home drunk. My mother handled it with anger. I was the caregiver. Kellie . . . she took it out on her little sister. But she was there for me, too. Not like Marshmallow, of course. But she was there.

“You really think that cat talks to you, don’t you?” my dad asked me once.

“He does, Dad,” I said. “I can hear the way he meows. He talks to me.”

Even when we didn’t talk, Marshmallow comforted me. On the nights I was waiting up for my dad, I would watch through the window as Marshmallow sauntered across the front yard and disappeared into the trees across the road. An hour or so later, I’d hear a bump against the glass and there he’d be, sitting on the windowsill. When I was lifeguarding at the swimming pool down the road, I’d watch him hunt field mice in the long weeds of the fish hatchery for hours on end. (Yes, we lived in a neighborhood with a golf course, swimming pool, and fish hatchery—but it was perfectly normal and middle class, I swear.) When I broke my leg playing basketball, he’d sharpen his claws on my cast. There were shredded pieces of plaster hanging off in every direction by the time Marshmallow strolled away. How could I feel sorry for myself after that?

He wasn’t needy. He never followed me to school anymore, or raced after me when I drove down the street. We never rolled in the leaves or hunted worms either, but whenever I lathered up with tanning oil and sunbathed in the yard, Marshmallow was at my side. And whenever I tried to give myself a pedicure while sunbathing, he was there to sniff my hot-pink toes and shed hair in my wet polish, making the task impossible. More and more, though, he was content to be a spectator in my life. We still talked, mostly about sports (at which I excelled) and boys (at which I also excelled but didn’t know it), but he always let me take the lead. He had his own life, out there in the weeds, and I had mine. But when I needed him, Marshmallow was there. My father moved out, then moved back in, then moved out again. In frustration, I took to punishing myself every day with a long run. When I came home, Marshmallow was always waiting for me on the front step. He never let me down.

He also inspected every boy I dated. Every single one. I laugh now because, to me, Marshmallow was and always will be the most beautiful cat in the world. From an outside perspective, though, he was overweight and arthritic. He had a cyst on his face—it looked sort of like a giant blister—that give him an aura of decay and disease. His poofy yellow-white hair, never particularly attractive, was patchy and matted. And I mean really matted. That cat had big, grubby clumps all over his body. Imagine sticking twenty separate pieces of bubble gum on an extra-furry cat. Then twisting the hairs in the gum. Then waiting two weeks for them to get good and dirty. That’s what Marshmallow looked like during my high school years. We shaved him every spring, a trauma that made him look like a wounded rat and sent him flying into the garage rafters to hide for days. But Minnesota in the winter was too cold for a shaved cat, so he was always fat, hairy, and clumpy by the time the leaves fell and the homecoming dance arrived. He might have been, even I will admit, the ugliest cat in Worthington, Minnesota.

And every time a boy came for a date, the first thing I did was pick up Marshmallow, kiss him on the nose (right next to that cyst), shove him into my date’s face, and say, “This is my cat, Marshmallow. Isn’t he the cutest?”

Meee-owwwww
, Marshmallow would drone, his breath reeking of contempt and cat food.

The boy would look at my overweight, nicotine-stain-looking, tangle-hair-not-licking, lopsided, lethargic, cyst-on-the-face cat and just . . . stare. Every single one of them must have thought:
What is this? Some kind of test?

And it was. Sort of. If a boy didn’t like my cat, I didn’t want to date him.

Or that’s what I told myself. I actually ended up dating a boy for two and a half years who did not like my cat. His father was a community leader. My father was a drinker. He was a good-looking charmer. I was the anorexic younger sister of the prettiest girl in school. And I mean rail thin, serious intervention, intensive-therapy anorexic, the kind that pounded her frustrations and insecurities out with long runs and refused to eat more than a mouthful or two. On the outside, I was happy. I loved to laugh (still do). I was gregarious and athletic. I moved easily between social groups and counted almost everyone in the school as a friend. I was the homecoming queen, for goodness’ sake! Who is happier in high school than the homecoming queen?

But on the inside, I was tearing myself apart. Anorexia made me feel like it was the first day of school every day. Do you know that feeling when you can’t sleep, when you are too busy analyzing everything that might happen the next day? When you are obsessed with the need to look exactly right, with the feeling that everyone can read your thoughts and is watching your every move? The sweaty palms. The heart palpitations. The horrible moment when you feel yourself falling on the ice or skidding into a car accident. That moment was my life twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There was no calm, no resolve, just fear. Always. Fear that someone might see that I was not perfect, that I made mistakes.

Everybody thought my boyfriend was perfect. They said he was good for someone like me. You know, someone with a . . . food problem. My mom loved him. My dad loved him. My sister loved him. They were scared for me, I can see that now. They thought I might die from my disorder. They thought he was saving my life. When I tried to break up with him the first time, even my PE teacher pulled me aside and told me I had to stay with him. For my own good.

My boyfriend knew I had to stay with him, too. “You’ll never find anyone as good as me.” That was his favorite thing to say to me.

I don’t think he meant any harm. He was just a kid, dealing with his own problems. But by then, I had summoned the strength to put myself into therapy. My mother scoffed. She thought I was weak, or at least that’s what I thought at the time, when my disease kept telling me everyone thought I was a loser. I found out later she never scoffed; she was proud of me. My father? He lost his job and had to cancel my health insurance because, he said, the treatments were too expensive. Thankfully, my godmother in Texas cashed in her profit sharing from American Airlines; her retirement money paid for my care. And that care told me I didn’t need a boyfriend who said a girl like me should be thankful for a guy like him.

But how does an insecure, anorexic girl cut loose a guy like that? With the help of her cat, of course. Because for two and a half years, I kept telling myself:
He doesn’t like Marshmallow. He’s not the one. He doesn’t like Marshmallow
. Every time he said, “Don’t pet that stupid cat. We’re going out to eat, in public, and you’ll have cat hair on your sweater,” it hardened my resolve a little bit more. I mean, I’d been petting Marshmallow since I was in the second grade. I never noticed it, but I must have had cat hair on my clothes every day for ten years. I had been, since second grade, a walking ball of Marshmallow. I was covered in him. He was part of who I was. If a boy didn’t like Marshmallow’s hair on my sweater, I told myself, then he didn’t like me. Finally breaking up with my high school boyfriend
because of cat hair
was the last, most important act of my childhood.