The Cat
The cat that dragged my heart through the bushes. I hate my cat. No, I love my cat. No, I hate my cat. No, I love my cat. No, I hate my cat. No that’s not true I really do love him. But there’s this nagging on the verge of dislike brewing in my being these days. He pulled a real doozy this time. He left five days ago. Out the back door, scampered across the yard and dove paws first into the bushes. Gone. Now he’s done this before, he’s run outside for a couple of hours but he's always come humbly back (well, as humble as a cat can be, like, there was no tail between the legs or anything like that, just muddy paws). I noticed something different this time in his great escape, his gait, a determination, a little desire to break some rules (I know this well), to wreak some kind of shall I say revenge? You know, cause I saved him from an early death, nursed him back to health, fed him, gave him a home, loved him up, that horrible kind of unforgivable behavior.

Anyway, he didn’t come home that night or the next or the next - on the fourth day of his M.I.A.-ing Rue and I made a "Missing" poster. We traversed the neighborhood, knocked on doors, stopped kids on bikes - met people we’d never have met otherwise, it was kind of fun...but two hours of hunting, calling, cooing, urging - no, no Theodore and no one had seen him. We went home, dejected, showered, called out the window one last time - the kids left the window, they’d given up. I closed the door and started cleaning the kitchen. That’s when I heard it, a faint high-pitched trembling little mew. I turned toward the glass-paned door and there he was, Mr. Little Black and White. Looking all cool and like he’d been out in the world and through some intense stuff and please open the door now or I’ll go away again kind of look. He was skinnier than when he left and covered with soot. Obviously he hadn’t eaten at anyone else’s cat bowl. That fact made me strangely happy. I let him in the door and this is what really got me, he acted as if nothing at all had transpired over the past four days. As a matter of fact he mewed and cooed and pranced his little paws up my leg as if to say, "I love you so much more than you love me now feed me." Then he dive-bombed my legs with head butts and purred so loudly he almost drowned out the dishwasher. There’s only one other creature on the planet I know that could obliterate the reality of being so completely selfish, disappearing for four days without a word, worry his family sick and then show up out of nowhere smiling, purring, showering love on all as if nothing had ever happened. Yes, that would be the human male creature. What did I do then? I fed him.