It is after dark, and I’m waiting for Martin to return. He’s out jogging, his nightly ritual, though he’s been gone longer than usual. I’m seated cross-legged on the couch checking email on my laptop and, behind me, I hear the rain against the glass. I glance up to my left and see the top of the Space Needle glowing through a low-hanging cloud. An expensive view, but I’m an expensive lawyer. When I moved to Seattle a year ago, recruited by a law firm impressed with my track record litigating software patents, I made sure that I found an apartment with this view. 

When I was growing up in Indianapolis, my father, an office furniture salesman, would bring me pens from the cities he visited. Floaty pens. A San Francisco panorama with a trolley car that rolled back and forth. The Space Needle with an elevator that went up and down. I spent hours on the floor of my room, slowly twirling the Space Needle, making the elevator rise and fall, imaging myself in it. It became my lucky pen, the one I used for my diary, then exams, then my college application. The pen that got me out of Indianapolis.  

Now, I watch from my living room one of these elevators ascending without my assistance. I think about how far I’ve traveled, first the job in New York, then DC, San Francisco, and now here, a circumnavigate career. Each stop at a better firm, a higher salary. I wonder if this will be my final stop, or if this Space Needle is just a lighthouse I will pass on my way to somewhere else. 

I glance up when Martin enters the apartment, dripping on the carpet. He’s out of breath and clutching what looks like a soaked-through scarf.

“What took you so long?” I ask. Then the scarf opens its yellow eyes and looks at me. 

I follow Martin into the bathroom. He swaddles the cat on his lap in a towel I bought him as a birthday gift from Restoration Hardware. The cat is black with patches of white on its paws and patches of pink on its back and belly where fur used to be. Its left ear torn in two, partially healed over. No collar.

“Where did you find it?” I ask.

“It’s a she,” he says. “I found her on Queen Anne, by those stairs.”

“She could be feral.”

“If she was, she wouldn’t have let me carry her home.” Martin is tenderly drying her legs. The cat looks up at him with patient eyes. 

“She needs food,” he says. “Do you mind popping downstairs to the market?” 

“I could, but…” I hear my voice trail off. He looks up at me. “Martin, shouldn’t we just take her to the shelter?”

Martin stares at me the way a litigious client looks when I suggest arbitration. 

* * *

The next evening I come home to a cat reborn. The fur, combed out and shiny, covers much of the bare skin. She struts through our living room, tail erect, as if she has always lived here. 

Martin is seated on the floor as she circles him. “Isn’t she beautiful?” he asks.

I nod and watch the cat climb onto his lap, his arms surrounding her. I hover over the two of them like a mother figure. I feel my stomach clench.

“You realize that we’re going to have to pay a pet deposit,” I tell him. “Assuming this is long term.”

“We’ll pay it,” he says.

“What if she’s been chipped?” I ask. “She could be somebody’s cat.”

“I’m naming her Dido,” he says, then places his lips on her forehead and whispers something. I feel the urge to lean in. Instead, I retreat two steps to the kitchen and begin heating up some food. 

“Can you hear her purring?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say, though I hear only the microwave.

* * *

Martin is an instructor of ancient literature at the University of Washington. In his late thirties and still deep in student loans, he seems resigned to his fate. There is a novel somewhere on his computer that he claims is near completion, but I’m not optimistic. 

We have a relationship one might call modern. No marriage certificate. No kids. And, until recently, no pets. Living in a luxury high-rise in Belltown, with me covering the bills while he chips away at his liabilities. Martin carries his end in other ways. He is bookishly attractive in his black-rimmed glasses and untucked oxford shirts. He keeps the fridge stocked. He takes to the chores with a passion I find curious yet endearing. 

He gives me the room I need, not just in time and space. In San Francisco, I dated VCs who put on a show of independence but rarely ever spent a moment alone. Always in meetings, texting like teenage girls, biking every Saturday morning in spandex pelotons. Men raised by helicopter moms, offended if you aren’t there to praise their Mandarin, favorite a Tweet, offer up a hug. 

I was never much of a hugger. I have no problem with sex, but sex is transactional, temporary, and comes to a definite conclusion. Hugs are open-ended, which means someone must be the first to let go. Usually me.  

The fact that Martin and I have lasted a year is as close to happily ever after as I know. On my darker days I wonder if he’s in it for the money. But not once has he ever asked me to pay off his loans, and I interpret this as love.

* * *

A month later, I’m still trying, really trying, to coexist with our new roommate, one that leaves trails of litter across the carpet and sheds tufts of black fur that stick to my clothing like stains.

Martin speaks to her like she is a child. The way his voice rises makes my spine crawl, cooing silly nonsense about her being such a good girl, such a good little girl. 

At nights, when Martin is out jogging, she waits for him by the door. I could open a can of salmon and she wouldn’t look in my direction. After Martin returns, she follows him from room to room then waits patiently for him to settle on the couch, offering up his lap. 

I am now relegated to the other side of the couch as we watch TV. I first tried sitting close to Martin, but she growled at me, the same noise she made when the vet inserted the thermometer up her ass.

This used to be our ritual. My head on Martin’s lap, Martin’s hands massaging my hair. I would hold the remote control, and Martin would signal by touch the show he prefers. One tap for YES, two taps for NO. And a tender lap around my ear to signal the volume. 

Tonight, I try leaning over, to at least share this precious real estate. But as my head touches Martin’s right knee she hisses.

 “Fucking feline.” I straighten.

“You frightened her.”

“I frightened her? She’s the one with the claws, Martin.”

“She’s still traumatized,” he says. “Give it time.”

Dido stares at me with satisfied eyes and begins purring so loudly I have to turn up the volume.

* * *

“This cat is ruining my relationship,” I tell Jeremy, my paralegal and only close girlfriend. “I’m beginning to think this would be simpler if Martin was having an affair.”

“He is having an affair,” he says.

“What do you mean?”

Jeremy shakes his head. “The name he chose. Dido is the other woman.”

Martin now volunteers at the animal shelter in Ballard. He began going Thursday and Friday afternoons while I was at work. 

“Isn’t one rescued cat enough?” I ask when he tells me he has decided to volunteer on weekends too.

“There is so much need out there,” he says. 

“There is need everywhere,” I tell him. “You can’t rescue them all. What about your book?”

“I’m taking a break,” he says. “These cats. Just spending a few hours a day with them makes all the difference in their lives. You should join me.”

I tag along one Saturday. He leads me into the cat room, low-ceilinged with stainless steel cages along the walls, stacked three high, each containing expectant, pleading eyes. Some cats meow while others stare in silence. I feel like we are starring in some performance piece in the round. 

Martin puts me to work cleaning litter boxes and refilling water dishes. I yell out when one cat bites me as I’m reaching in for his dish.

Martin looks at my finger, blood beginning to bubble up through two pinpricks. “You’ll be fine.”

“Shouldn’t we tell someone?”

“If you say anything, Tom-Tom will be put back in quarantine.”

“Maybe he should be.”

Martin’s eyes narrow. “You stick a cat in quarantine and they’ll be alone for ten days. You have no idea what’s that like.”

 “I have some idea,” I say. “What it’s like to be sequestered.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Jesus, Martin, it’s a sunny Saturday afternoon, which is about as rare as a lunar eclipse in this city, and we’re in here shoveling litter.”

“I didn’t force you to come.”

“No. Of course not. But how else am I going to get your attention these days? Crawl into one of these cages?”

Martin shakes his head and turns back to Tom-Tom. An overweight vet tech enters wearing pink scrubs. She smiles at Martin and passes between us. He follows her into the next room.

I turn the other way, leave the shelter, and go for a long run along the waterfront. I can’t pretend to love these creatures, and I know Martin thinks I’m abnormal. This shelter visit another failed audition for a role I never wanted in the first place. Dido brought a part of him to life I didn’t know existed, a maternal quality. I would think it lovely if I had such a quality lurking within me. If I had, like him, been raised with little animals scurrying around the house.

The only animals in my house were three gerbils, given to my older brother and kept in the basement in a cracked aquarium. I named them Ariel, Cally, and Samantha, and I visited every morning and every day after school—until my brother, out of brotherly spite, moved them into his room and locked the door. I was so jealous of him for having little creatures to call his own that I pretended from then on that they didn’t exist. 

Perhaps if I had been properly raised with pets, I’d be different now, the way children soak up second languages. Either there was something I did not soak up, or it was never there to begin with. 

* * *

I text Martin from the office, inviting him to a romantic dinner. I suggest the new Italian place on Pike, but when he replies with an offer to cook, I feel as if I’ve won a summary judgment. 

We’ve endured two months of silent cohabitation, me working late during the week and Martin absent on weekends. Tonight will be different. 

I sneak out of work and arrive home to the smell of sautéed garlic. Martin is busy at the stove. I kiss him on the neck and pour a glass of wine.

I sit at the table and look out over the city, feeling a sense of relaxation I have not felt in months. Martin used to say that cooking calmed him, gave him a sense of accomplishment absent from the rest of his day. What calmed me was my participation—chopping vegetables, washing a dish or two. But these dinners ended when Dido arrived—baked brie and risotto replaced by rescued cats. 

Martin brings the plates and sits across from me. I raise a wine glass and wait for Martin to reciprocate, but he’s staring off at a corner of the room. 

“What’s wrong?” I ask. My eyes follow his, since I assume this has something to do with the cat. “Is it Dido?”

“No,” he says, then stands and stares at the ceiling like some petulant child, and I realize I’m going to have to squeeze it out of him. Men. The closer you get to the truth, the more tightly they cling to it.

“Martin, what’s the matter?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

“Patent law is hard to explain.”

“I’ve met someone,” he says. “At the shelter.”

“Someone?”

“Tami. A vet tech.”

“Stop. Back up.” My mind reboots into lawyer. “You’re having an affair?”

“I’m sorry.”

“With Tami.”

“She lives in Snohomish. I’ve decided to move in with her.”

I’m trying to picture this woman. Pink scrubs.

“You mean the fat girl?” I ask.

“I knew you’d say that.” He walks to the closet and removes his luggage, already packed. Then he removes a cat carrier and opens the gate.

I want to slap the bastard. I want to push him off our seventeenth-floor balcony onto Western Avenue. 

He scoops up Dido.

“No,” I say.

“Excuse me?”

“No fucking way. Put the cat down.”

‘But you hate her.”

“I hate you.”

“I can’t just leave her here with you.”

“You can pick her up tomorrow,” I am standing. I grab the carrier away and throw it across the room. “Put her down, or help me God I’m going to start screaming.”

But I already am screaming. The cat has sprung from Martin’s arms and run under the television console, and he couldn’t get her out from under it even if I’d given him the chance. Martin fumbles with closing the door behind him. I lock the door and take a deep breath. 

I pick up the phone and instruct the front desk to change the lock. 

* * *

I’m on a conference call the following afternoon when my office door swings open. Martin’s face is burning. 

“How dare you,” he says.  “You don’t even like Dido.”

“You have no idea how I feel—just as I clearly had no idea what was going on in your twisted mind. I paid the cat fee, security deposit, food, vet bills. I have more legal right to that feline than you do.”

“I’ll take you to court.”

“Please. I’m the best lawyer you know. And I’m opposing counsel.”

I watch the words sink in. Martin exhales. His shoulders slump. He sits. He’s wearing a shirt I don’t recognize.

“Do you want me to beg? I will.”

“If you really loved Dido, you wouldn’t have left her.”

“I left you,” he says.

“In the eyes of the law, you left us both.”

Martin stands. “I’m going to get her back,” he says.

“Be my guest. I’m always up for a challenge.”

Later that night, I finish the leftovers of Martin’s meal with Dido perched at the far end of the table, back to me, staring at the door. 

“Sorry kiddo,” I tell her. “It’s just you and me now.”

* * *

Martin had identified six meows. 

The feed me meow. 

The good morning meow. 

The calling for other cats meow. 

The where have you been all day meow. 

The about to use the litter meow. 

The looking at seagulls meow. 

I never could tell them apart, but I’m quite certain that Dido is now using the full repertoire, all night long, every night. 

She sits at the foot of my bed and wails. The first night, I tried locking her out of the room, but she just stood outside the door and turned up the volume. Then clawed at the door. Then figured out how to open the door. 

I began using earplugs. That only spurred the little miscreant to position herself next to my head. 

One night, at three in the morning, nerves spent, I remove the carrier from the closet and I wave it at her. 

“You think I wouldn’t fucking do it?” 

She sits at the foot of my bed, expectantly. She knows I am bluffing. That or she is hoping for a way out.

I return the carrier to the closet and bury my head under a pillow. A few minutes later she is seated on my nightstand filling the room with one of six meows.

* * *

Jeremy hands me a coffee as I yawn into a fist. “Cat?”

“It’s like having an infant that won’t sleep the night.”

“And you still refuse to get rid of her?”

I wave him out of my office. Of all people, I know the value of a contract, and now I have nothing but this furry bargaining chip. 

“My friend Eddie has this little terror of a tabby,” says Jeremy later that day, during a break in a deposition. “Peed on their carpets. Clawed everything in sight. Then he hired Ron, and a week later—problem solved.”

“Ron?”

“They call him the cat whisperer.”

“Have you met this whisperer?”

Jeremy shakes his head.

“What did this person do? Give the cat pills?”

“Eddie says Ron just talked to the cat, played with him. Like therapy.”

“I refuse to hire a cat shrink.”

“He saved their marriage.”

“It’s too late for that.”

“Plus, Eddie says he’s got an amazing ass. I’ve been dying to see it.”  

Martin took a major standard of living hit when he left me. Now he is living on the east side of Seattle in some generic apartment complex with a shitty walk score and a woman who can barely support herself. I remember her from the shelter. In her scrubs like some nurse. The way she passed between us in the cat room. If only I had spent more than one afternoon there, maybe I would have seen it coming. 

The next evening, I am sitting in my car in front of Martin’s apartment. The information Jeremy can unearth when I promise him a half day.

I watch Martin emerge from the apartment, alone, dressed for his run, right on schedule. He looks up at the mist, raises a hood, and starts. I follow in my car. 

He’s wearing the same jacket as the day I met him. It was raining then too, and I had beaten the movers by eighteen hours and was irritated to have so much empty time. I wandered the streets until I found a small park overlooking the sound. Tourists, umbrellas, selfies. I watched a ferry headed toward Bainbridge and wished I was on that boat because at least I’d be headed somewhere. 

I felt self-conscious so I took out my phone and pretended to be busy. I opened a dating app. My fingers scrolled through all the available men in my vicinity. The faces were new, but so much else felt sadly similar. Men who loved to travel, try new restaurants. Men who sailed, summited Rainier, hiked the PCT. Men who had children. Men who wanted children. Men who loved children.

I heard his voice, looked up. He was asking directions to the Sculpture Park, and I didn’t see him clearly at first because there were tears in my eyes.

He had just moved to Seattle and was looking for an apartment, living out of a hostel. And he laughed when I told him I did have an apartment but would probably be more comfortable in a hostel.

I treated him to a trip up the Space Needle. From there, I pointed out what I thought was my apartment, and I invited him to stay. For a week or two until he found a place of his own. 

I have stopped at a light, and I watch Martin getting away. I picture myself the star of a David Lynch film, the camera tight on my face, tense music. Do I accelerate and cut the runner off and yell at him in the middle of the street? Or do I accelerate and swerve into him? 

I turn the car around and park across the street from his apartment and close my eyes. And for a moment I am back at my own apartment, listening to the rain against the glass, waiting for Martin to return from his jog.

When he returns, pacing back and forth, his head steaming, glasses fogged, I lower the car window. This is my plan. I will call out to him and he will join me in the car and I will apologize. I will ask, beg, for him to return to me. 

But I am too late. The door closes behind him, and I watch shadows moving against the curtains. I get out of the car.

Then I notice the curtains moving, parting. A cat has slipped between the curtain and the window—gray with a white chest—and it studies me. All this time, I thought there was only Dido. 

I get back in my car.

Later that night, I am coming out of a dream when I hear breathing next to my face. I can see Martin’s face, the short nose and stubbled double chin and they way he stares at me. Those eyes dark and reflective, and I can see myself in them. He is talking, and I can’t hear him over the noise. I ask him to speak up but the noise is so loud, a scream.

I am the one screaming, Dido’s claw hooked into my left nostril. 

I grab at her collar and squeeze until she disengages. I toss her out of the bed and hear books falling. By the time I get the light on, the cat is limping across the living room floor, tail dragging. By the looks of the damage I had hurled her into my tower of unread books. The next morning, a Band-Aid on my nose,I tell Jeremy to make the call.

* * *

I answer the door. Jeremy is standing there, dressed for a date. 

“Is he here yet?”

I shake my head.

“Mind if I wait with you?”

“Sure, whatever.”

Jeremy looks around. “Where is the little Beelzebub?”

“Staring out the window. She took a crap on my pillow yesterday while I was at work. I believe that’s what they call passive aggressive.”

“That’s not passive aggressive,” he says. “That’s aggressive aggressive.”

I open a bottle of wine and pour out two glasses. The front desk calls to let me know Ron has arrived. 

“He’s on his way up,” I say, and Jeremy rushes into the bathroom to check his hair.

When I open the door, I see a man in jeans and flannel shirt carrying what looks like an old metal toolbox. He says nothing.

“Are you Ron?”

“I am.” He walks past me. 

Jeremy extends a hand. “I’m Jeremy. The person you spoke with. I was hoping I could watch. The session.”

“I work alone with my clients.”

“Clients?” I ask. 

“Where is she?” he asks. I point her out, now crouched on the back of my leather chair, watching us.

“What’s her name?”

 “Dido,” I say. “And, for the record, I didn’t give her that name. You think she blames me?”

Jeremy giggles, but Ron says nothing. He kneels down and opens his toolbox, which I realize is an old fly-fishing tackle box. He removes several pieces of bamboo and assembles them into a sort of fishing rod.

“Going fishing?” Jeremy asks.

“In a manner of speaking,” he says as he strings a small fake mouse, colored purple, to the end of the rod. Dido slowly approaches, tail in the air, and follows him into the bedroom.

“You think he needs an assistant?” Jeremy asks.

“If this doesn’t work out, you’ll be available.”

Jeremy follows me out onto the balcony, and we watch a container ship making its slow escape from the harbor. 

“You need to take a cruise,” Jeremy says. “Get your mind off things.”

“Too many people.”

“Must be weird to be alone again.”

“I’m not alone. That’s the problem.”

Ron emerges from the room. Dido follows a few steps behind, her tail curling upward like smoke. 

“So?” I ask.

“Dido is full of rage.”

“No shit.”

“I’ll need two more sessions.”

We watch him return his toy to the toolbox. I try rolling my eyes at Jeremy, but he is too focused on the man’s backside. And I must admit the man is built like a lumberjack. He starts for the door.

“Wait,” I say. “Is that it?”

He gives me a blank look. “For now.”

“What all did you do with her in there?”

“We played.”

“You played. And how much do I owe you for this playtime?”

“Two-fifty.” 

“That wasn’t even an hour.”

“I explained everything to your assistant.”

“I’m sure you did. I just assumed I was paying for more than cat R&R. I mean, for this kind of money I’d expect more out of this cat than a better mood. Like the ability to open her can of food. Do her own litter.”

“Speaking of that, it needs cleaning,” he says. “I’ll see you Monday.”

The door slams shut before I can respond.

“Can you believe that? The nerve of that man.”

“He is so hot,” Jeremy says. “I have to get a cat.”

* * *

I am seated cross-legged on the couch, laptop balanced on top. I feel movement and look over to see Dido sitting on Martin’s cushion. 

This is a first. Dido has never shared the couch with me. Could this be progress?

I tentatively reach over to pet her. I try to do it the way Martin did, not from in front of her face but from behind, gentle. My hand rests on her head, and I find myself smiling. I feel I have passed a test, made some sort of breakthrough, and I suddenly want to thank her for suffering me all these weeks, for letting me in. And for the first time I can imagine a life together. A peaceful coexistence, which was all Martin and I enjoyed anyway. Why can’t I enjoy this? Must my life consist only of adversarial relationships? 

I feel before I see that her head has swung around, her jaw landing on my wrist. 

I don’t push her away. I let her teeth pierce the skin, going deeper. I welcome the pain. Even pain is a currency. A point of negotiation. The absence of accustomed pain is in itself a form of pain. I watch the blood trickle down my arm. I think of the slipcover, the cleaning deposit on the carpet.

I am no match for her, and I yank my hand back. She jumps to the floor. I’m shaking.

“Martin left you too, sweetheart. It’s time you got on with your life.”

* * *

Truth is, I could have had the front desk give Ron a key to my apartment. He could do his business and be gone before I got home from work. 

On his second visit, I ask Ron to let me sit in on the session. 

He looks at me for a moment like I’m just another one of his cats. His eyes are blue, and he has a habit of massaging his neck when thinking, exposing firm biceps, which he is doing now. “I will call you in when I’m ready,” he says.

I go into the bedroom and wait. I can hear them out in the living room. Sounds of a cat galloping from room to room. 

“We’re ready for you,” he says.

I sit on the couch and watch the way he plays with her, how focused she is. A ballerina on hind legs, paws extending, twirling. It occurs to me that Ron is nothing like Martin. With Dido, Martin sought out purrs and intimacy. Ron seeks only to work the cat out, dispensing trivial doses of attention, minimal eye contact. As if he is working with a hardened convict.

“How do you do it?” I ask.

“There are no secrets—no secret language, if that’s what you’re getting at. Cats were here before humans. I think at some level they all know that. If you look into a cat’s eyes, really look, you’ll see it. Something you won’t see in a dog’s eyes.”

”What?”

“Resentment,” he says. “Which is the highest form of intelligence.”

“Everything is claws with her.”

“She hasn’t learned how to use soft paws,” he says. “She’s like you.”

“Me?”

“You’re a lawyer,” he says. 

“I don’t get paid to be gentle.”

He hands the toy to me. “You try.”

I jingle it in front of her. She is motionless.

“See. Nothing.”

“Not in front of her face like that. You make it too easy. You have to give her a challenge. Keep it out of reach. Slow it down.”

I do as instructed but Dido is now staring in the opposite direction. 

“She hates me.”

“Appears the feeling is mutual.”

“I don’t hate her,” I say. “I just don’t like cats all that much. My ex was the cat lover.”

“Why didn’t he take her?”

“It’s complicated.”

“You’re using her for ransom?”

“I’m the one with all the money.“

“How long has he been gone?”

“Six weeks.”

Ron rubs his neck again. “He’s not coming back for Dido.”

“How would you know? Martin is not a cat.” 

“He’s a man, and I know a thing or two about that species as well.”

I feel a tug on my hand and I look down to see Dido playing with the toy. 

“I wasn’t even doing anything.”

“You let it drop behind your shoe. She couldn’t see it, she couldn’t hear it, so she had to have it. Silence means more to a cat than noise,” he says. “Cats are minimalists.”

Ron kneels down and opens his toolbox. He reaches up for the toy.

“I’m not done yet,” I say.

“I have to go.” He grabs the toy and I tug on it playfully, until I nearly coax a smile out of him. 

“How about a drink?” I ask, standing by the door, blocking it. He looks at me, and I think he is considering it, but then he opens the door. Before I know it, I have grabbed the belt loop of his jeans and pulled him to me.

 “What are you doing?” he asks.

I say nothing, and now I have my right hand on his right butt cheek, holding tight, feeling it flex as he tries to turn. And I’m now one with him. My other hand on his other side, grabbing just as firmly. And my mouth on his evasive mouth until I hear the door fall closed again. 

Later, in the dark, we lie naked on the couch. He is staring at the Space Needle.

“What did you do before this?” I ask.

“Fisherman.”

“Not exactly a lateral move.”

“I woke up one morning and realized that I was on the wrong side of life.”

“What do you mean?”

“There is a right side and a wrong side. Those who kill for living are on the wrong side.”

“Somebody has to do it.”

“No,” he says. “Nobody has to do it.”

“So I take it you given up on seafood.”

“All animals.”

“Oh, I see. You’re one of them.”

“Them?”

“You know. People who try to make the rest of us feel guilty about eating meat.”

“I don’t have to try,” he says. 

He pulls away. I hear him getting dressed.

“I didn’t mean anything by that.” I sit up and turn on a light. Dido is high on the bookcase, looking down on us with knowing eyes. 

 

* * *

Ron doesn’t show the following Monday. Nor does he return my calls. 

“Typical male,” Jeremy says. 

Walking home, late, I check email. An invoice for $500 with one line item: Feline behavior sessions. Payable Net 30.

The cat has torn a linen couch pillow to shreds. She sits on the kitchen counter with a fuck-you look.

I park the cat carrier on the dining room table. 

Dido climbs on top of the bookcase. I reach up for her and grab a hind leg. She slashes me but I hold on. She is biting me now. 

Some people are cat people. Some are dog people. But what if you’re none of the above? What if you are unfit to care for any pet? 

Even gerbils.

My brother quickly lost interest in his gerbils, which stands to reason because our parents had already lost interest in us. Three weeks without food. That’s all it takes to turn childhood pets into cannibals. 

I, following the smell, was the one who found Ariel, alone and skeletal. I watched her die, surrounded with lettuce and sunflower seeds, my feeble attempt at rehabilitation. When my father returned from Dallas, he yelled at my mother, who yelled at my brother, who yelled at me. If I were a lawyer then, I would have sued them all for negligence and abuse. But I was only ten years old. The best I could do was convince my father to let me bury Ariel in the backyard. 

The Space Needle is blurry, and at first I think it is raining. My body trembles when I feel her, the fur, curling up on my lap.  The purring begins and grows louder, like an ocean. 

* * *

I place the carrier on the front porch. I kneel to look at her one more time. Her eyes are black, unblinking. I don’t dare poke a finger through the gate. 

Martin answers the door. When he sees the carrier he studies my face for sign of a practical joke. 

“She missed you,” I say.

He kneels at the carrier, and she meows at him. When he stands, Dido in his arms, I see tears in his eyes. 

“Which one of her meows was that?” I ask.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Must be new.”

The cat is purring now, and they are both staring at me with satisfied eyes. 

* * *

A month later, driving through the city at night, I see a dead animal off to the side of the road. Raccoon? Possum? I tell myself to stop asking such questions. The animal is dead. But these are the questions I now ask. Since Dido. Since Martin trained my eyes to see them. Sniffing around dumpsters. The far corners of parking lots. Emerging from under mufflers. Tails low. Collarless. Were they always there? Or was I always so blind?

I turn towards Ballard.

Tom-Tom is still there, along with the god-awful name the shelter gave him. I vow to change it.

Back at home, I open the door to the carrier and watch him take his first tentative steps, as if he is walking on the moon. Which my apartment must feel like after two months of living in that shelter. I am lying on the floor, at eye level, as he sniffs at the clawed-up couch.

“You’re an only cat,” I assure him. “But I have to be honest with you. I’m not a very good cat person. Still learning to use soft paws.”

He tilts his head and rubs against my forehead.

“But you are a good little boy,” I say. “Such a good little boy.” 

END