AUG 2024 - What it Takes

​Before he was my cat, he’d been hanging around Exit 7 of the New Jersey Turnpike for weeks. No one knew anything about him. A woman picked him up, gave him a cuddle, then went into the restaurant. When she left the restaurant and walked toward her car, the cat leapt on to her shoulder. She gave him another cuddle and put him down. When she opened the car door and sat down, he jumped in and settled on her lap. A cat lover, she took him to her vet. He was a pedigreed Bombay, emaciated, mangled, neutered, with no front claws, but otherwise healthy. When she took him home, he attacked her two cats mercilessly. She put him in the basement where he howled for two weeks. Desperate to find him a home, she called everyone she knew. I was at the bottom of the list, having met her only once at a practitioner’s office where we’d exchanged contact information.

When she called to ask if I’d like to have a beautiful cat, I told her, “I’m not about to take a cat I’ve never met.” I hadn’t even thought about adopting a cat.

“I’ll be right over,” she said. She brought the cat, a litter box and tools, food, food dishes, and a brush. Within 15 minutes the cat, who I later named Funus Pushkin Bernhardt, otherwise known as Funi, had eaten, pooped, and was sleeping against my legs.

“He’s home,” she grinned, and left before I could change my mind.

13 years later I bought a house soon after I saw it and prepared to move to Santa Fe. After eating a poisoned mouse a few years before, Funi, who had always been healthy, became a “throw up cat.” I came to learn which cleaning products were most effective after too much experience dealing with his messes. I had to leave the house while the packers packed and the movers moved, so a friend invited me and my cat to stay at their house. They had fine furniture and lovely rugs. I bought extra cleaning supplies hoping there would be no permanent stains. Amazingly enough, he didn’t throw up.

A friend offered to drive the 2,000 miles to Santa Fe with me. The back seat of the small SUV was taken up by my cat’s litter box, food tray, and carry case, which he sat on top of, looking out, when he wasn’t snuggled in the lap of whoever wasn’t driving, not that he didn’t try to nestle in the driver’s lap. I smuggled him into motels, unwilling to pay the extra fee for animals, carrying my cleaning equipment along with my luggage. Territorial as he was, he was an equal opportunity lover, spending half the night with me, half with my friend. He didn’t throw up.

Given the heat, I smuggled him in his carry case into restaurants and air conditioning. He didn’t throw up.

We arrived in Santa Fe, and for three days, while awaiting the furniture’s arrival, we stayed with a couple who used to live in Delaware. For three days I worried about their rugs and pottery and sculptures. Funi thought it great fun to push anything that looked interesting to him, running away if he heard a crash. Fortunately, nothing broke. I gave my friend a lot of cleaning materials when I left to go to the new house to unpack and put things away. For the whole time he was at the couple’s house he didn’t throw up.

When I finally emptied all the boxes, created order from the chaos, and stashed whatever I didn’t want to keep in the garage, I brought Funi to the house. Immediately, he threw up in every room, used the litter box, then fell asleep on my lap. He was home.

What does it mean to be home?

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August 2024 Monthly Stories