Chapter 5 Unexpected Purrings
Unexpected Purrings
ISAAC WAS sitting at his desk, grading papers and listening to Green Day—and reflecting woefully that “Holiday” was a great song, and nobody seemed to have learned anything in the twenty or so years since its release.
Roxy had come in and was using his TA’s desk to do the same thing, while both of them hummed along, enjoying the breeze and the sunshine coming in from the open door.
Next week the temperature was going to be in the nineties or hundreds, but this week, it was topping out at eighty-five, and before three o’clock, life was downright pleasant.
And that’s what they were doing when a half-grown orange tomcat wandered in, sat down about three feet from Isaac’s left shoe, and meowed imperiously for his attention.
Isaac stared. “Well, hello,” he said.
“Meow.”
“Can I, uhm, help you with something?”
“Meow?”
“Are you hungry?” Because lunch was coming, and Isaac had a tuna sandwich sitting in the cooler in his drawer, and he’d been thinking about reasons not to eat it.
The cat cocked his head, so Isaac reached into his drawer for the sandwich.
Which was when Roxy glanced up. “No… wait, Isaac, you don’t really want to—”
Isaac pulled off a little piece of sandwich, and the cat took it delicately from his fingers.
“Feed the cat,” Roxy finished, grimacing.
He stared at her. “Why?”
“Because, you idiot, that’s how the cat distribution system works! The cat sees you, you feed it, and you are obligated to the thing for life.”
Isaac paused, the next piece of tuna sandwich on his fingertips, and the cat stood up on its hind legs and relieved him of the burden.
Isaac stared down at the thing, who was licking his whiskers with a fastidious pink tongue, although he appeared a little bit dusty and travel-worn.
“Really?” he asked the cat. “Do you have some sort of nefarious agenda to become my cat?”
The cat reached up, claws sheathed, and started to pull at his fingers for more sandwich, which Isaac quickly gave.
“I guess so,” he said, surprised, before looking back at Roxy. “Uhm….”
Roxy was already packing up her stuff. “I’ll be back,” she said resignedly. “With some pet supplies, a box, and some takeout so you eat. Don’t worry, Isaac. I’ve got three kids, two cats, and a Labrador retriever. I know how this works.”
And she was gone before he could feed his new cat another piece of sandwich.
BY THE time Roxy got back, loaded down with a crate and flea treatment and a week’s worth of food, Isaac had a feeling for this cat.
Handsome, vain, unflappable, Euclid (as Isaac was calling him now) seemed to have an innate “chill factor” that had apparently garnered him more than one tuna fish sandwich.
But that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to leap into Isaac’s lap to petition for more.
Isaac got a good look at him while he was there, saw some battering around his ears, a few scars under the fur of his face, and felt a certain boniness under his dusty fur, all of which indicated tuna sandwiches might be few and far between.
He was also—quite obviously—intact, and Isaac knew enough about that aspect of cats to know that condition needed to be nipped in the bud—or nipped under the butt, as it were.
To that end, he was balancing the cat on his lap and his cell phone in his ear as he called the vet near his house to see if they could book an appointment for a new rescue for—as the receptionist called it—a bath and snip.
They had an opening that very day after school. He could pick the animal up at seven.
He thought regretfully about his knitting time with Luca. It had only been two days out of the week, but Luca had promised to be by that evening to get help on a tricky part of the scarf.
But then he held out his finger, and Euclid rubbed his whiskers against it and purred, and then did it again.
“Sure,” he said into the phone. “I can be there at three thirty.”
The receptionist signed off, and Isaac gazed helplessly at Roxy. “Are you sure this is how the cat distribution system works?” he asked.
“I dare you to contradict me,” she told him. “Now give me the cat, go wash your hands, and eat this teriyaki bowl before the bell rings. You owe me a lunch hour, so you know.”
The cat had an entire fan club before fifth period was seated, and Isaac was relieved that, once the lid of the crate had been taken off and a cat bed—laced with some catnip—had been installed, Euclid was content to sit there and be stoned for his people.
So maybe more kids stared at the cat than heard his instructions—fact was, this close to summer vacation, having an excuse to keep them quiet during seatwork was the real miracle, and he was calling it a win.
For sixth period, Marcelle strode into the classroom, gave the cat a double take, and then laughed low in his throat like he’d just gotten laid on the drama room couch and nobody had caught him.
(At least Isaac knew that was how he had spent his lunches in high school, and he had it on good authority from the beleaguered drama teacher that a blacklight would make the couch look like a Jackson Pollack painting, and she didn’t even want to know.)
“What’s so funny?” Isaac asked warily.
“Well, for one thing, I see the cat distribution system is still working,” Marcelle told him. “And for another, that department head lady who thinks she’s hot shit—”
“Ms. Lamphere?” Isaac clarified.
“Yeah. Anyway, she was getting all loud in the quad during lunch about some disease-ridden animal running around and how she was going to ask the custodian to make sure he ended up in the shelter.”
Isaac stared in horror at his cat, appearing self-satisfied and still very stoned after eating a tuna sandwich, having a little bit of water from Isaac’s bottle, and enjoying the drugged cat bed very much.
“Euclid?” he asked in a small voice, and Marcelle patted his shoulder.
“Don’t worry, Mr. B—you got him a box and everything. She can’t take him away from you.”
Except she could. This was blatant defiance of Paula Lamphere and her adherence to all things school-related.
Isaac rubbed Euclid’s whiskers again and thought about dumping him outside or calling the humane society or any of the things that Todd would have insisted he do rather than bring the creature into their home.
Which was where Isaac had been really excited about Euclid ending up!
“Maybe,” he said, with a worried glance at Marcelle, “we should move his crate into the corner by my desk so, you know, if somebody comes in, they can’t see him.”
Marcelle nodded sagely. “That’s a good idea. And how about if I put the lid on it, since he seems so….” Marcelle stared at the cat and then grinned at Isaac. “Stoned, Mr. B. Did you give your cat a gummi?”
Isaac snorted. “No, I did not,” he retorted and then lowered his voice. “But the bed is laced with catnip.”
Marcelle laughed throatily and then moved to hide the cat while Isaac got everybody else started on their seatwork.
Twenty minutes later, everybody was quiet and working—although part of that was that Isaac had promised to let one or two people go visit the cat when they were done with their seatwork.
He was, as he had been last week, bemused.
It was one of those moments—as the week before had been—that proved to him that students could be very, very good people, and that all of the hard work and frustration was worth it, because helping very good people was what being human was all about.
Then Marcelle’s crush (yes, Marcelle had been crushing on Domingo, everybody knew it but Marcelle and Domingo, but Isaac didn’t gossip) gave an urgent stage whisper.
“You guys! It’s Ms. Lamphere!”
“Oh shit!” Marcelle burst out, and if he hadn’t been suddenly terrified for poor Euclid, still snoozing in his box, Isaac would have mourned the days when he’d hoped his students would actually fear him enough to not swear. “Mr. B! Go talk to her. I’ll sit at your desk and pretend to… to….”
“Be my TA,” Isaac said and handed him a stack of papers with an ever-present felt-tipped pen. “Put a smiley face on these if there’s any work on them.”
“Hee, hee, hee….”
Which meant Marcelle had just cracked the code of how Isaac managed to grade 150 sheets of seatwork every day, but whatever. It said in the teacher bylaws that seatwork was practice.
So when Paula burst through the door, Isaac was walking amiably up and down rows of silent students pretending to do seatwork.
“Isaac,” she demanded imperiously, and he strolled up to her, as innocent as a lamb.
“Yes, Paula,” he replied, knowing it bothered her that he called her by her first name in front of the students. Yes, she’d done the same thing to him, but that’s what made her the Wicked Witch of the Math Department.
“Keep your eyes out for a… a cat that’s been wandering around here. If you see him, let me know. I’ve got the humane society on speed dial, and they can take him to the nearest shelter.”
Isaac nodded sagely. “How… humane,” he said, wondering if his tone of voice gave away his disgust.
“Don’t give me that shit, Isaac,” she said. “It’s unsanitary to have an animal roaming around campus, and you know it.”
Isaac snorted. “Anybody who’s walked into a high school classroom at the beginning of summer knows that a cat is the least of their problems,” he said.
Poor kids. They didn’t ask for sudden onset BO, but that was what happened with adolescence, and that was God’s honest truth.
“Paula, has it occurred to you that we all have better things to do than harass poor felines because they had the misfortune to wander around a high school? I mean, think about their view alone. All those feet. That’s got to be a treat. ”
Paula stared at him in horror, but Marcelle and a few other students made suspicious noises, and there were a few sniffs, snorts, and coughs scattered around the room.
“Isaac, it could have fleas!”
“So could you,” he replied shortly. “But I give you the benefit of the doubt.”