Cat Calls

      My husband, a career fire fighter for over 30 years, is a no nonsense and extremely funny man.  He is cynical and can be cranky. If he thinks you are being willfully stupid, lazy, or God forbid mean to animals you are likely to be on the receiving end of biting, embarrassing commentary that other people will find very funny. Probably at your expense. People have said he can look scary, but I never see that.

      He’s hard-working and has held side jobs for as long as I’ve known him.  He’s good with power tools.  He carried a 250-lb Thomas the Tank Engine train table up two flights – on his back – even though the lightning bolt graphics on the box clearly warned that lifting required two people. Although he can’t apparently tell when the floors need cleaning, he is professor-smart about history, Spartan philosophy, geography, and weather patterns.  (“Look, daddy,” echoed my son, age four, “A high pressure system is moving in from the south. Rain’s coming.”)

      His commitment to our family is unshakeable. Over decades married, we have fought and irritated and hated each other.  Sometimes for days. In early years of marriage, we once listed creative ways we’d thought about injuring the other: I imagined stabbing him with a fork in the thigh while he slept. He envisioned giving me a hat with antlers during hunting season and sending me on a picnic.  His image was more lethal and permanent, but mine had a gory element we still think makes us even-steven. In spite of marital rages and child-rearing frustrations, B never fails to make me laugh, and more importantly has never failed to show up with practical solutions when I needed him.

      When my second son was born prematurely, after weeks of being in and out of the hospital and getting the news that my mom was dying, a blanket of post-partum depression slipped over me. Being depressed is hard work; I couldn’t eat or sleep and was filled with guilt that this weakness was going to ruin my children. Sam was so small and nursed every two hours; I was exhausted. B worried about how to help such an unhappy wife.  He married me, he has said, because he knew we would build a completely different family life than the one he had growing up with a broke, drug-addicted mother who kept forgetting him.

      He brought home ice cream sundaes and sunflowers. He took the boys to give me breaks. He made me laugh when not much else could by asking me; “Hey, do you remember our old pattern, where I’m crazy and you’re comforting? How long ‘til we get back to that?  We’re stronger operating from our strengths, I think we both know I do crazy better.” And like has been true of so much over the past 25 years, we got through that time, in no small part due to him.

      At the center of the story of this very strong and matter-of-fact man, and this marriage, too, are cats. My husband’s compulsion around cats showed itself very early. Two days before our wedding I received the first of what would be many cat calls:

      “Baby. The sweetest kitten –  abandoned in the woods. He’s starving. He’ll die if someone doesn’t do something. I want to bring him home.”  Pierre, a Maine Coon tabby hybrid, can be found napping in our couple photos, before the kids, when it was just the two of us.

      “Baby.  This cutie-pie cat won’t leave the fire station.  I don’t know why.  I think she’s abandoned.  She’s starving.”

      “Are you feeding her wet food?”

      “Yes, because she’s starving.”

      “Is it possible she won’t leave because you keep feeding her?”

      Silence. “She’s starving.  She needs a home.  A mom like you.”

      Ginger, an orange fluffy princess, endured batman capes and airplane rides and is often squirming out of the arms of at least one small boy in our family photos.

      “Baby.  This cat has been at the training ground for days. Somebody left her here.”

      “Honey.  I’m at work and the boys are in school. We couldn’t bring her home even if I wanted another cat which I don’t.  Anyway – by the time the training day is over, you won’t even be able to find her.”

      “Actually, it turns out my dad was coming over this way anyway.  She’s been hanging around my truck all day. I think I’ll be able to find her.”

      “By hanging around, do you mean you put her in the truck cab?  And fed her?”

      “Maybe.  When you see her, you are going to love her.  She’s really friendly.” Belle fattened up in a few weeks, and is a very sweet and faithful family cat.  She keeps us company now that one boy has left for college and the other is a rising high school senior.

      Over time we developed marital cat agreements; no more than four cats will live here at one time and B won’t go into Pet Smart unaccompanied.

      Scooter was rescued from a Hopewell dump, a really fat and doofus friendly cat.  One night, he stroked out in the kitchen and died in my husband’s arms. B was adamant that Scooter needed to be buried immediately.  In less than 15 minutes from the time my husband held Scooter convulsing in our kitchen, B had pulled a shovel out of the shed, chopped through six inches of frozen garden dirt, and Scooter lay in a shallow, mounded grave.

      My husband washed his hands, sat down in the living room, and teared up.  He said, “I should not have done that. I couldn’t stand to see him like that and wanted this to be done. But he was a such good boy.  He deserved better than a shallow grave in the middle of the night because I feel like shit.”

      B’s life-long commitment to rescuing stray cats can seem perplexing. He looks like a dog-guy for one thing. It’s been expensive, and a point of contention for us. He knows full-well that all over the world every day cats are dying, abandoned and suffering (and people and other animals, too). And that he’s not making much of a dent bringing (up to four) stray cats into our home.

      But it makes perfect sense to me. B can’t stop saving kitties because that’s the saving he can reliably do. Firefighters who stay sane have to come to terms with how different their day-to-day work is from Backdraft. Running from a blazing home to safely return a small child nestled against smoky turn-out gear to a weeping mom is so much less common than reviving day after day (year after year), the same poor overdosing souls. It’s non-cinematic to walk past family members whose eyes never leave the TV as they gesture, “He’s in the back,” so my husband can treat their dying grandpa. He’s carried many beaten and bloody women past crying children, “Don’t take my mommy!” What are those toddlers even doing up at 3 am, fully clothed with TV blasting, surrounded by empty cheeto bags? It was days before my husband settled down after he cut down a teenager who hung himself in the closet. The boy’s mother was wild with grief.  “Emily,” he said to me over and over the next morning, “that kid was built just like our Will. My heart stopped when I saw him hanging there. He looked just like Will.”

      I understand exactly why B rescues cats. They are, for the most part, possible to save. Their stories may be complex and sad and full of disappointments and human and social failings. For all we know, these cats started with less cat opportunity and problematic cat parenting or choices that didn’t work out just like people.  B can do nothing about all things. With cats, B will never have to think how they got to their sad state; he’ll just save them. One by one. Up to four at a time.  He’ll bring them home and we’ll get them vet care, and hand-feed them turkey slices.  They’ll nap a lot.

      Because I know this about B, I went outside in the dark night, and dug Scooter back up. We wrapped him in a towel, and I looked up some nice St. Francis of Assisi prayers about the sweet innocence of animals, which we read over a proper burial the next day.  All four of us stood around the grave of one sweet kitty who was rescued by the man who always turns to our family with practical solutions.  And will keep serving fractured human souls who can’t be rescued.