It Was the Purrfect Relationship
/The Boston Herald
The promise was made when the old woman was sick and it was repeated as she grew sicker. "Don't worry about your cat. I'll take care of him," the younger woman told her.
And the promise was kept. The cat was fed and let out and brought in and stroked, and if not exactly loved, definitely liked a lot.
When the old woman was hospitalized, the younger one visited Dusty every day. One time the cat lived alone for nearly two months, but he didn't howl or cry or knock things off furniture. He was patient. He seemed to understand that someday the gentle woman who talked to him in a soft voice and fed him scallops from her plate and clapped three times when she wanted him to come would return home and he'd be able to climb up on her lap and be happy again.
The woman was already old when she got the cat. She was 75 and settled, and liked things just so. And he was a kitten and wild and into everything, into her sewing basket and her knitting, into jumping up on the counters, where he wasn't allowed, and up on the kitchen table next to her plate, where he most definitely wasn't allowed.
"You get down from there this minute!" she would say in a tone that startled Dusty, that always made him freeze, as if he were a child playing "One, Two, Three, Red Light" instead of a kitten caught where he wasn't supposed to be.
She would pick him up then, and set him down on the floor not with a thump, but not with affection, either. She was stern when she had to be. "That's where you belong," she would say, and the little gray thing would look up at her, and then turn away, tail high, fur raised, and slowly trot out of the room as if what she said didn't matter at all.
But it did. Right from the beginning Dusty wanted to be in the woman's good graces, because then she would clap her hands and he would come running. And he would jump in her lap and she would pat his head and scratch his ears and chin, and she would whisper, "That's a good boy. That's my Dusty," and he would lean back and purr.
Dusty, the kitten, grew into a happy, contented, but odd sort of cat. Alone with the woman, he became like her. If he were a man he would speak with an accent and wear a cravat and drive a car that was highly polished, and he would never put milk in his tea and never drink tea from a mug.
He developed an attitude. And a routine. He ate. He slept. He ambled around the back yard for a while. He slept. He stretched. And then he ate some more.
Every night when the woman cooked dinner he curled up on an empty kitchen chair and watched her, and he kept her company as she ate, and when she went to bed, he went to bed, too, most times at her feet, sometimes in the crook of her arm.
For 12 years this went on, Dusty's routine interrupted only intermittently, only when the woman was sick.
The last time she went to the hospital, she didn't come home. And Dusty knew. He cried - a funny little cat cry - when the younger woman stopped by to feed him. He cried as she washed his dish and filled it with cat food. He even cried as he ate.
The younger woman sat in the older woman's chair and clapped three times but Dusty didn't come running. When she held him on her lap, he seemed to like it there because his cries became soft meows, but she couldn't keep him there.
She always had to leave, and though she said, "I'll be back, Dusty," he cried as he followed her to the door.
She wished she could take him to her house but she couldn't because of a dog and an allergic husband. So when a stranger said she would take him, a kind woman with two cats and a big heart, the younger woman was relieved.
But Dusty didn't adjust. He didn't get along with the other cats. He didn't like that this new woman went to work every day and left him. So he cried even more, until the new woman gave up and brought him home.
Only Dusty has no home, anymore. He's 12. He's set in his ways. He's sad and cranky and confused and lonely. What he needs is what he once had. A soft voice, a tender touch, someone to love him and someone to love.
