Theresa Weir - The Girl with the Cat Tattoo

She lifted the limp cat so she could look at his face, her hands under his armpits. “What’s going on, Max? First the peeing, now this. You aren’t acting yourself.” But really, he hadn’t acted himself since David’s death. “What kind of catnip did you give him?”

“I don’t know. I just grabbed a bag at the pet store. Does he get special catnip? Maybe you should send him out with a set of instructions so if someone finds him they’ll know what kind of catnip or caviar to give him.”

Melody envisioned a little clear tube that could attach to Max’s collar. Inside was a rolled piece of paper outlining his diet and recreational drug preference. She nodded. “Yes.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“I know you were, but the idea has merit.”

The man in the doorway was looking at her in kind of a confused, woozy way-much the same expression Max had displayed earlier.

The cat grew tired of being held. He squirmed out of Melody’s arms, and his feet hit the floor with a solid thud. Then he ran through the living room and down to the basement. Seconds later Melody and her guest heard him digging in the litter box.

“I wondered about that,” the man said.

He was still standing in the doorway. Should she ask him in? She didn’t feel comfortable with that. But why wasn’t he leaving? Did he expect a reward? Yes! He’d fed Max and bought him catnip, and now that she looked closer, she could see that his jeans had been patched in a couple of places, and his shirt with its snap buttons was definitely vintage, maybe thrift shop. “Let me pay you something for your trouble.”

As soon as she spoke, she knew she’d made a mistake. His green eyes lost their softness, and she could almost see his mental retreat.

“I don’t want anything.”

He began backing away, ready to turn and leave.

“Wait!” She ran to the kitchen, opened a plastic container, and pulled out one of the cupcakes she’d baked yesterday for story time at the library. She ran back to the porch and handed him the cupcake, which he took with a baffled expression.

“Everybody loves cupcakes, right?”

“Ah, well, to be honest, I’m more of a beef jerky kind of guy.”

He held the pink cupcake between fingers and thumb. He turned it and eyed it with suspicion. “It has a cat face on it.”

“The cat is supposed to be Max, but I couldn’t get the color right. A little more blue than black. That’s a jelly bean for a nose.”

“And the whiskers?”

“Black licorice. The kids love them.”

“Max must be honored.”

“Oh, he is.”

They talked about next time. Kidding, of course. There would be no next time.

“I’ll have the right catnip.”

She laughed. “I’ll have beef jerky.”

He left with his cupcake, holding it in front of him as if it were something extremely foreign and questionable.

She realized she hadn’t gotten his name, but what did it matter?

Max made a thunderous return upstairs, skidding around corners, full of energy now that he’d visited the litter box. After entertaining Melody with a lot of crazy antics, he began to strut around the small house, going from room to room.

Melody picked him up and tried to cuddle. “What would I have done if you’d never come home?” she asked. The thought terrified her. “If he hadn’t found you? What were you thinking? Don’t ever go away again, do you hear me? Never, never!”

He wriggled out of her arms to once again roam the house, finally settling on the bedroom where he sat in the middle of the floor and yowled.

If she didn’t know better, she would swear he was looking for David.

“Max, here. I made cupcakes with your face on them.”

Cats weren’t supposed to be able to see their own image, but Melody often caught Max admiring his reflection in the mirror above the dresser. Now she bent at the waist to show him a cupcake, but even the image of himself in frosting and jelly beans failed to cheer him up. If he was still acting odd tomorrow, she’d take him to the vet. “Should I make you a cupcake out of cat food and catnip? That would be adorable, don’t you think?”

He ignored her, went straight to the front door, and scratched to get out.

It didn’t seem like he missed David. It seemed like he missed the stranger who’d brought him home.

*

That night, long after Max’s return, Melody’s thoughts kept going back to the stranger’s visit. With a start of surprise, she found herself recalling small details that she’d missed when he’d stood in the doorway. Almost like looking at a photograph or watching a video, picking up things you were too busy to notice during real time.

His voice.

Deep, but soft. Soothing.

His eyes. Kind, and when he smiled he’d had the most pleasant laugh lines at the corners. No beard, no mustache, but he’d needed to shave. Not the bad kind of needing to shave. The good kind.

How tall had he been? She hadn’t noticed that, so probably average. His sleeves had been folded up two turns to reveal nice forearms. Strong. Lean. But even as she struggled to remember, it wasn’t really the way he looked that captured her attention in recall, it was him. The feeling of who he was that intrigued her.

Replacing the lid on the cupcake container, she laughed softly to herself, thinking about how he’d held the treat, how foreign it had seemed to him. As she laughed, she felt Max brush up against her bare leg. He stepped on her fuzzy pink slippers, trying to get her attention.

“I’m mad at you.”

But she wasn’t. Not really.

“How could you run off like that? What were you thinking?” Was he lonely? Melody wondered. “Maybe I’ll start bringing you to work with me. How would you like that?”

He meowed.

“The kids would love you.”

He meowed again.

The day after returning Max the cat to his cupcake-baking owner, Joe heard suspicious scratching. He opened the shelter door a crack, and Max the cat shot inside and immediately began rubbing against Joe’s leg.

The noon rush was over, and Jerry was the only other person left in the room. “Looks like you got a friend,” he said, hunched over his soup, arms on the table. “Are you sure you aren’t taking a shower in pheromones? That cat’s in love with you, dude.”

As soon as Jerry spoke the words, the cat calmed down and settled on his haunches.

It was odd, Joe had to admit.

“If I’d know he was going to turn into such a pain in the ass, I wouldn’t have invited him here,” Jerry said.

“That’s okay.” Joe searched for a piece of chicken and dropped it in a bowl just as he had the day before.

“Is the owner some kind of slacker who doesn’t take care of his pets?”

“Quite the opposite. I think Max is spoiled to the extreme. And the owner is a woman, not a guy.”

“Cat lady?”

“No. Well, maybe a cat lady in training.”

“Young?”

“Maybe late twenties.”

“Ah.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. Just, ah. Be kinda tough to get involved with anybody right now, if you know what I mean.” With no audience or witnesses, Jerry had dropped the homeless alcoholic act and was the old Jerry that Joe had worked with for the past several years.

“Why not?”

“Your job.” Jerry looked around the empty room. “This job.”

Joe sighed and tested the temperature of the chicken with one finger. “You’re right.” The job took a toll on relationships.

“Wouldn’t be fair.”

“Wouldn’t be right.”

“So what are you going to do with the cat?”

“Take him back home, I guess.”

“What’s she like? The owner?”

Joe thought about her. He didn’t even know her name, and he had no idea of her real hair color. But he recalled her pale skin, her blue eyes. “She was dressed weird… Now that I think of it, she was dressed almost like some storybook character with red braids and fake freckles on her nose. And she had cat stuff all over the place.”

“Okay, that does not sound like somebody you should get mixed up with.”

“I’m not going to get mixed up with her. I wouldn’t have expected to see her again if this guy hadn’t come back.” He bent and placed the bowl on the floor. “Here, kitty-kitty-kitty.”

Jerry pointed his spoon at Joe. “You know who the cat lady sounds like?”

“She’s not a cat lady.”

“Pippi Longstocking.” At Joe’s blank look, he continued. “From the books. She’s this obnoxious brat who has no parents and does whatever she wants.”

Max swiped at Joe with one paw, and Joe jumped back. “Guess he didn’t like my generic cat call,” Joe said.

“Maybe you’re supposed to bow and say: ‘Dinner is served, your grace’.”

“Did Pippi Longstocking have a cat?” Joe asked.

“How the hell should I know? Wait. I think she did have a cat. No, a monkey. She had a monkey. And a horse.”

*

Melody answered the door to find the man from yesterday standing on her front step, Max in his arms. Relief washed over her, and she took the cat from him. “I just got home from work and found him gone again.”

“You might want to check for an escape tunnel.”

“Did you eat the cupcake?”

“Er…”

“That’s okay.”

“Not that I didn’t want to.” He followed her inside. “It was just such a work of art that I hated to destroy it.”

“I’ll bet you threw it away.”

“It’s in a place of honor. Really.”

“Where?”

“The dashboard of my car, but soon, very soon, it will be in my house on a bookshelf.”

“You do know it won’t keep.”

“If the weather stays dry, maybe it’ll dehydrate and harden.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Where do you work?”

“Library.”

“They let you dress like that at a library?”

Today she was wearing her Alice in Wonderland costume. “I’m a children’s librarian.”

“Ah, okay. That makes sense. Kind of.”

“It’s for story hour.”

He looked relieved. “But all kidding aside, how is Max escaping?”

“Tiny doggy door. I’m going to have to seal it. I hate to do that, because he loves his outside time.” It pained her to think of depriving him of such happiness, but it had to be done.

Max jumped to the floor.

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Joe.”

“I’m Melody.”

He nodded as if to say the name suited her, while Max rubbed against Joe’s legs, purring madly. Did he miss male companionship?

“Do you like football?” she asked.

Joe looked up in surprise. “Yeah, you?”

“No, but Max… Well, I think Max likes football. Do you drink beer?”

“Not a lot. I mean, I’m not an alcoholic, if that’s what you’re asking.” He was eying her with perplexity now. A little afraid.

“I think Max likes beer. Not drinking beer, but sitting on a person’s lap when he drinks beer.”

“Okay.” More perplexity. “Do you have any beer?”

“I don’t know. I’ll check.” She ran to the kitchen, dress and apron swirling. Yes, a couple of bottles in the back of the refrigerator. “It says I should have drunk these a year and a half ago!” she shouted, then turned to find the man right behind her.

“Doesn’t really matter, since this is just a test.” He slipped the bottle from her grasp. She dug an opener shaped like a cat from the silverware drawer, and handed it to Joe. He popped the top and headed back to the living room, planting himself in the corner of the couch. He put his feet on the footstool and took a timid sip of the stale beer. Max silently jumped on his lap and curled up.

Melody watched as Joe petted Max in a way Max didn’t like to be petted. But Max didn’t seem to mind. In fact, he seemed to like it. “Good grief. I don’t even know what to say. I really think Max is looking for male companionship.”

“No males around here?”

“Not for a while.”

“I see,” he said in a way that meant he understood she was no longer in a relationship. She didn’t like to tell people about David, especially strangers. It always made it seem that she was looking for sympathy, or it caused a long, awkward silence, followed by escape. “My husband died.” She waited for the awkward stuff. “Max was actually his cat.”

“I’m sorry.” Joe scratched Max behind the ear, and Max pushed into his hand and purred even louder. “I don’t know anything about cats, but he does seem to have formed an odd attachment to me.”

That hurt.

“But hey, I’ll bet it’s because I fed him chicken.”

She liked the way Joe didn’t ignore her dark revelation but commented, sympathized, and moved on. “I didn’t even know he ate chicken.”

Max didn’t even seem like her cat anymore. One minute he was peeing on a stranger’s clothes, the next he was snuggled up to somebody he’d never seen before yesterday. Did Max need a kitty shrink?