The cats: Part II

"This just all seems . . . suspicious," said Officer Snow in a barky tone ground to perfection to be used for eliciting confessions.

For weeks, I fretted over the ninety-degree heat and how it swells in a home with shuttered windows. I worried that the bank would come and claim their prize. I feared I would not be able to keep this man in collusion with me on taking care with the cats--I had to be nice to him. And most of all, I imagined that "animal lover" would one day let them all out herself, setting them "free" in her twisted logic. She still had a key to the house and came back every few days to sprinkle kibble and offer them fresh water from a dirty bowl. I urged the man to change the locks. He did. The count down had begun.

Contacting a recent reacquainted friend who happens to be a vet, she offered kind words and a single phone number. Start there, she encouraged. And of the six or so numbers that initial call solicited, I made a connection with the first number I dialed, fourth on the list. I went by gut and it seemingly paid off.

This was a conduit to a grassroots group of cat rescuers. A chain of every day people fostering abandoned cats, strays and owner give-ups. She began by letting me know there was really no more room for any cats anywhere. I expressed my disgust at this couple, their lack of responsibility, of compassion. "Assholes," she spat. I agreed.

"I normally don't do this and if you tell any one, I will deny it up and down," she said. She began threading the fabric of our plot. I was to take the cats to the XXX police department, tell them I found the cats in a box in a mall parking lot. Geography was key to whom would take them in, I learned. The police would do an intake and begin the chain of events that would lead the cats and kittens to a series of foster homes. Lead them to safety.

On July 4, we pulled up to the house once again, equipped with my large dog carrier and several boxes punctured with holes. I was confidant this would be an in-and-out operation. I planned on being back home in an hour, hour and a half max.

I could smell the cloud of ammonia from the driveway this time, while I was still in the car. My eyes watered upon entry. I heard nails scatter on linoleum, heard small thumps from all corners as the cats bunkered down in hiding spots.


What the night lovingly hid, the daylight harshly told the truth.

The innocent gray/silver/black kittens were easy to coax. They melted under my touch. Four. I saw what I assumed their mother atop a urine-stained mattress lain on the front room floor. The kittens scampered about her as her round amber eyes grew rounder and bigger in suspicion, her ebony coat eliciting a pet. A fat orange tabby came out to look. Other cats disappeared as I turned my attention their way.

I called a creamy cougar-esque cat to me and plunked her (or him) in the carrier. I grabbed the tabby by the scruff and urged him in, too. One pluckish kitten curious, got placed inside. Then the ebony mother got too close to the man and he grabbed her, not by the scruff, but somewhere else causing her to twist, caterwaul--scream out a guttural ancestral sound. Once the other cats heard the mournful cry, they went down under.


It would take hours before the mission ended.

Two of the kittens played hide-and-seek in the entertainment center that had one door hanging askew like a fallen tooth. When I went behind there, I found feces stacked up some two feet high. Cats despise filth and will refuse to go in a dirty litter box. They'll find another place.

Another cat ran into a side bedroom. Apparently, the owner thought that leaving a window open was the right thing to do. The cats jumped in and out of the room with the aplomb of seasoned acrobats. Seemingly hundreds of flies flew in tornado spirals in the center of the room. It was like something out of The Amityville Horror. The stench of baked feces filled the room.

Baby blue walls told me this was one of the boy's bedrooms. So did piles of discarded urine-soaked sports shirts, shorts and PJ's, random action figures akimbo on the floor which could hardly be seen, a dismantled Game Cube. The closet reflected three-feet high piles of . . . a discarded life: comic books; gym shorts; crayons; an original Disney sketch yellowed by urine.

A note in loving script taped to the door read:
Nicky, please wake up Cody at 7 (be nice!)
Have a muffin and yogurt for breakfast.
Love you.

I cried. I cried for the cats lovingly collected like Precious Moments figurines. I teared for the boys who called this filthy war zone home. I wept for the adults even. How could they think this normal on any level?

As much as I would like to say that I spent hours gingerly placing all the cats in the carriers so they would feel safe, I can't. He began chasing the cats who fought and howled and I receded to a place of paralysis and could only assist as he got one after another into the boxes.

I cannot describe to you the horror of pressing my face to the filthy floor looking amidst debris for the cats. Nor the hopelessness when I discovered that some of the cats dug out holes in the couches and had buried themselves. I am ashamed I felt so defeated.

Further, she had lied. There were not seven cats; I counted eight. And as we left as the daylight hours dissipated, and "oh my God" sprang forth from my lips. I turned and saw yet another orange tabby. After another half hour of hide-and-seek, I told him we had to go-that we could return for one cat.

Except I turned again and atop one scratched up bureau sat a gorgeous long-haired chestnut brown cat looking regal and austere. The bureau was taller than either of us. He asked me to attempt to get the cat; I looked at his bloodied, scratched up arms and the paralysis rose.

So he reached up but the cat eluded him, moving back and forth. Not to be undermined, he grabbed at the lower half of the body and the cat fought valiantly using all its strength to hang on to the corners of the bureau. It sounded like he was killing the cat and my speech was lost. I could only look -- but couldn't move. He shook the cat loose, forced him to release his grip; I ran to get the carrier. . . but he fumbled and the cat escaped.

We had to leave; I would come back for the other two. For now, I felt good in knowing that most of them were out and headed for good health, new homes and a better life.

But it wasn't quite over. Yet.

Part III tomorrow.














































©L'uragana

The cats: Part I

Ring. Ring. Ring. An unknown number across the screen. "This is Officer Snow from the XXX Police Department." Being as guilt-ridden as I am for no real reasons, these words paralyzed me from the inside out in an instant.

A few weeks ago I, through an unusual set of circumstances, learned that a finalized contentious divorce coupled with an impending home foreclosure left seven house cats lingering in a home no longer occupied by humans and in deplorable living conditions.

Two-foot high grass and the muted cloak of dusk gave the house a wild look, like it belonged on the prairie, on first inspection. By the time we got in the house, darkness masked the full horror. It looked as if the former inhabitants were awaken in the middle of the night by secret police who threw all the contents of their lives amid the rooms while scouring each inch for some priceless item and then forced the residents to leave.

Layers of school papers lay in haphazard stacks like carpet. Family framed photos shattered in half by lightening bolts littered the counters. Drawers pulled open like hungry mouths. Unknown objects threatened to harm at each turn, unidentifiable in the dark. Cat feces smeared on the floor, the walls, the lower cabinets.

Since not enough litter boxes had been provided by the "animal lover" and former owner, those there were spilling feces like cut-open guts. The litter boxes clearly hadn't been emptied in months and months. And months.

Older cat urine transformed to ammonia and fresh cat urine sprayed on walls, clothes piles, furniture and the floor saturated the house, my hair, my clothes. These innocent animals smelled as if they had been bathed in urine. Each pet of their fur resurrecting the stench.

The cats slinked from crevices, corners and other hiding spots in the shell of a home warming up to my female voice, my light step. They melted under my touch, begging for a rub of the head, scratch of the lower back. The isolation of these creatures skulking like a shadow among us.

I erupted into halting tears; my breathing coming in short gasps.

The man I was with the ex-husband clearly was no fan of cats and transferred his feelings of anger of his former wife onto the animals. I begged he continue feeding and giving them water until I could find a place for them. I went to the faucet and filled dirty bowls and poured cheap cat kibble left in the cupboard into other equally filthy dishes.

After weeks of back-and-forth, the animal loving ex-wife said her ex-husband should just leave the cats there. That they were fine. Despite the obvious, she also ignored the facts that the longer these cats (and kittens) remained alone in this indoor colony the greater the risk they revert to their instincts and become wild, i.e., unadoptable.

She also alleged spewed the foolish thought that the bank would not take possession of the home--my biggest fear--even though the mortgage hadn't been paid for a year and a half. I suffered nightmares that a cleaning crew hired by the bank would be dispatched to the home and upon seeing the cats would scare them out onto the street.

I had to be in action. I only hoped it was the right thing.

Part II tomorrow.




©L'uragana

Of love and life

I've resigned myself to the fact that I will live alone. Forever.

I'm too old and too committed to freedom, paid too big a price for it, to share my house, my bed, my life with someone full-time. I've attempted this dating thing that boggles my mind and breaks my spirit (at times) with it's unrelenting new rules and ever-changing mores.

I had one guy disappointed when he found out I wasn't in any stage of menopause (the birth control factor). I have been chased by men in their early thirties who feel that dating within my own range only leaves me open to a pitiful pool of men needing kegs of Red Bull and frequent doses of Viagra to keep up.

I've been pursued by much older men who still think that acquiring a hot, young chick is the cat's meow even though at 45, I'm not hot, nor young nor even a chick anymore.

Broken-down men hobbled by bad divorces, bankruptcies, foreclosures and rising child support payments living back home with mom seem to think I might find them a tasty catch.

Worst still, I still gravitate toward the one person whom I think knows me best of all, the man who fell in love with my words before ever thinking of bedding me, the man who raises my nettle and my spirits all in one conversation.

The man who makes me think, while reminding me I think way too much. He's let me rail against him as substitute for the world. He had slices in his soul hiding bits of my shame that he alone knows. The man who makes me be a better person because when he is in my orbit, everything realigns and suspends somehow how it should.

But even this, I question.

For when he did commit to me fully, I ran like the most skittish of fawns into the deep woods and only when he retreated did I find the courage to exit the brush. I sometimes think if he came to me now and laid his heart for me to take, that I would once again run like Artemis sure that he was in a million ways wrong for me.

But to me, he feels like home. The world never looks safer than from the vantage point of peering just over his broad shoulders.

But I am a daughter of hope. It has scarred me and healed me. I am a late bloomer too. And I am cuttingly aware that if we had coupled years ago when new love blazes, it would have ended in an inferno charring us both. I know this. But I know that things have changed, evolved. The inferno just lit embers. I don't know that he knows this.

I am done convincing him.

Timing is everything and things come to me when they will. I know this. I just don't know if this will make it's way toward me. It seems I'm destined to have a trail of failed relationships behind me.

I question why I love and whom I love for my definition is skewed, faulty. It seems in this arena, I cannot see like others. It is cloudy, no matter how much I wish for clarity and clean the glass.


©L'uragana

In the summertime

This summer's not shaping up to be the laid-back, pool-lounging relaxing respite I planned. Counted on.

The weather's been uncooperative. May rains spilled over to June and trickled into July. We had one work week of 90-degree humid blankets that left me cranky and house-bound.

My son's foray into a summer sports camp didn't work out because I felt their militaristic attitude toward being physical (and the philosophy behind it) unsafe and unreasonable. My boy took their flier and blocked out the word "sports" and replaced it with blocky letters transforming the name to "Boot Camp" before slipping it under a refrigerator magnet as comedic fodder for house guests.

After the encouragement of one parent of Jake's friend, I signed him up for baseball one wintry day dreaming of emerald ball fields and steamy hot dogs after the game. He assured me as asst. coach, he would work with Jake and even be able to take him to practices and games if I got caught in bad traffic--which I often do.

Although his intentions noble, he got another job that has prevented him from getting there in time, let alone picking up my kid. In fact, I've taken his kid to more games/practices--a reversal of our plan--then he has been able to provide. And after this abysmal baseball run, I've given up the dream that my son will finally unleash his inner athlete and smack that ball high above as onlookers gape, mouths wide open.

Missed games due to the monsoon season in Chicagoland resulted in games stretched out in mid-July and practices bunched up on top of each other to make up lost time. This means I've been a wreck at work always trying to get out early to be able to make the 40-mile hike back home to cart him to the ball field--on time.

Because of the time commitment (coupled with the torrential rains) we've been unable to enjoy lazy days and evenings at the town pool--one of our most beloved summer rituals.

Last summer was idyllic. Through a beam of luck, I got him enrolled in a free program at a summer camp right by work. The structured program offered daily a bit of books, some hands-on projects, daily walks to the playground, an occasional field trip and a reward of a movie during the hottest of late afternoons. The counselors were kids in early college with education as a field of study; the classes racially diverse. He spoke of his new friends, Omar, D'Shawn and Diego. They even provided lunch!

I didn't need to worry about making it home before a minute after 6 o' clock struck. He was so close to the office, I sometimes popped in during lunch. The completion of the summer program closed with a wonderful cheesy version of"Johnny Appleseed" play that all the children participated in.

Nearly every night, we'd head over to the town pool and spend the remaining two hours of it's availability splashing and lounging as the natural light diminished.

It was an unfettered summer. It was a summer I will lovingly cherish. I need more of those.

©L'uragana

A thought

"I was so afraid of everything. . . that eventually, I feared nothing."

Roderick Toombs

©L'uragana