Chapter 11 #2
“What? How did it get down there?” I say as I head over to her.
“Hey, James,” Darius says. “It’s just appeared. Do you want to come and collect it?”
“We’re on our way,” I say as I turn to Sadie. “I think we have our answer.”
She glances around. “Yes, but how did it get out?”
“We’re going to have to investigate that after we’ve rescued it from the lobby,” I say.
“Like a couple of sleuths.” She grins.
We’re riding down in the elevator with the cat carrier when she turns to me and says, “You know we can’t keep calling it the cat.”
“There was no name on the paperwork, I checked. Do we really have to give it a name? It’s going back to the shelter tomorrow.”
Her teeth sink into her rosy bottom lip. “Now you’ve told me it’s been shut in a cage for months on end, I don’t know if I can send him or her back.”
Goddamn Des and his crazy-ass ideas. “I think I hate Des.”
She blinks at me wide-eyed. “Oh no! Don’t keep it just because I said …”
“Oh, don’t worry, Sadie. I feel the same way about the stupid cat.” I glower up at the steel roof of the elevator. “Fucking hell, we can’t return it to purgatory, can we?”
She laughs again, and when I glance at her warm, smiling face, something inside me lifts as I start laughing, too. “We’re just as bad as each other, aren’t we?”
She nods through her giggles. I stare at the panel for a couple of seconds.
Perhaps we both need the cat. She has a bruise on her face, and I’m not in the best frame of mind.
An animal would be … well … something. Something for us to focus on.
I’ve certainly not worried about work or thought about Jane since I came home, have I?
We had a dog for most of my childhood and teens in my mom and dad’s warm rambling old house in Philly.
When Soldier died, we were all so devastated that we couldn’t face getting another one.
Sometimes I can still feel his wet nose pushing into my hand when I’m down or tired.
I curl my fingers into my palm. When I was upset, I would bury my face in his fur and breathe him in.
Even when arthritis stopped him from moving so much, he would stagger to his feet, his tail a slow, swooping wag, and limp his way across the living-room floor to where I was sitting on the couch.
“If you’d been locked in a cage for two months, maybe you’d take any chance of escaping you could get,” Sadie mutters.
“I can see that, to be honest.”
“We need a litter tray and cat food,” she adds.
I glance at my watch: 8 p.m. But this is New York. There’ll be a 24-hour pet store within five blocks. But when I take my phone out and search, we’re not in luck. All the local stores are shut. I find one I can go to in the morning that’s one street over, but that’s it.
“Since we’re downstairs, let’s go to the bodega. We’ll put the cat in the carrier first, leave him or her with Darius, and head out,” I say, and Sadie nods.
But when we reach the lobby, the cat is very dusty and disgruntled and has squashed itself into a corner behind a chair. Every time we approach it, it flattens its ears and hisses, lashing out, claws unsheathed.
“Vicious little fiend, isn’t it?” Darius says.
“It’s just scared,” Sadie says supportively, and another smile creeps across my face.
“Maybe we should buy the food and some treats before we try to coax it into the carrier,” I say.
Darius guffaws and says, “Well, she ain’t going anywhere, brother. She’s been glued to that corner ever since she appeared five minutes ago.”
We peer around the chair at her. “She’s so dusty, James,” Sadie says. “She must have been in some ducting somewhere.”
“Come on, let’s go get the cat food.”
Once we’re heading off down the street, Sadie says, “So, names? Do we think it’s a boy or a girl?”
I like this more talkative version of Sadie. I snort. “I am not examining a cat’s private parts and comparing them to some pictures on the internet.”
She laughs. “That does sound terrible. We could give him or her a name that could be male or female.”
“Excellent idea. Gender neutral. Dare I suggest Ripley?” I look at her sideways.
“Alien. That feels strangely appropriate, if a little ... off-putting, maybe? I have a feeling we could end up arguing over sci-fi and fantasy names all night. And debating which ones are truly gender neutral.”
“Oh! I can think of so many great sci-fi names. Hans Solo, Darth Vader …”
“Frodo.”
“Okay, yeah. We are going to argue about that. Food isn’t gendered, is it? How about Sausage?”
She snorts. “We cannot call a cat Des gave us Sausage. We would never hear the end of it.”
A husky laugh bursts out of me. “Too true.”
We’ve arrived at the bodega, so I open the door, grab a basket, and start down an aisle. It doesn’t take us long to find what we need, and Sadie grabs a bag of litter.
Once we’re outside again, she says, “I can’t imagine that cat being called something like Snuggles.”
“Yeah. I can’t even envisage calling a pet something like that. I wouldn’t be able to look it in the eye.”
She grins. “We should call it Des.”
“In revenge for him signing me up to this, you mean?”
“More like it would be funny, like he still was living in the apartment. His ghost lives on through the cat he gifted you.”
I really like how she thinks. “Hey, he gave the cat to both of us.”
“I thought you said he signed you up?”
I smirk at her. “My name was on the delivery note, but he actually said both you and me when I talked to him. I’m leaning toward Karen. I think this cat might have those vibes. She’s already being difficult,” I add.
“The cat is difficult, so it’s female?” She stares at me, her luminous eyes bright and a bit ... annoyed? Interesting.
I hold my palms in surrender. “Maybe I’m being more influenced by my ex-girlfriend than I realized.” As my gaze roams over her hair, it occurs to me that the phrase ex-girlfriend slipped out so easily. I didn’t even flinch.
“What happens if it’s male?”
“Mr. Karen?” I suggest.
She claps her hands. “I love the idea of having a cat named Mr. Karen.”
“Mr. K.”
“In Python plotting, black is ‘k.’” Her whole face is alive as she smiles.
“That’s very nerdy of you, Sadie, but I think that seals the deal.”
“Black suits his personality, don’t you think?”
“Or hers.” I wink at her, and she rolls her lips together as she looks away like she’s trying not to laugh. Something stutters in my chest.
When my eyes swing from her face, we’re right outside our building, and Darius raises a hand in salute as we head through the door.
Sadie rifles around in the bag from the store and pulls out the cat treats, going down on her haunches and holding one out.
The cat’s eyes are slits as it glowers at her.
But when she tosses it on the floor in front of it, its nose twitches, and it wolfs it down, watching us out of the corner of its eyes.
She lays a trail that ends with a treat in the carrier, and the cat devours them all, chewing on the last one as we shut the door on it.
Sadie gives it two more through the wire mesh for good measure.
“We’re going to have to comb the apartment from top to bottom for how she escaped,” I say.
“She,” she tuts as I pick up the carrier and we head into the elevator.
Once we’re upstairs, we leave the cat locked up while we move the furniture and search.
It yowls nonstop, and I tell it to make up its mind because it was only too happy to stay in the carrier when I left it this morning.
After about twenty minutes, we find a vent tucked under a chest of drawers with no cover on it.
“Jesus, how long did she wander around the ducting in this building? If she hadn’t managed to get down to the lobby, we might never have found her,” I say.
“I’m wondering how she got down six stories,” Sadie says.
“Christ knows. I hope she’s okay.” We both study the cat carrier.
“Apart from being mentally deranged, you mean?” Sadie adds, and I laugh.
After I talk to Darius, he manages to come up with a spare vent cover from the basement.
Des has a toolbox tucked in the hall closet, which I’m frankly amazed to find because he really isn’t the kind of guy who’d ever use one.
I screw the cover in place as Sadie turns one of Des’s plastic serving trays into a makeshift litter box.
But when we open the door of the carrier, the cat just stares at us mutinously, then starts washing its back leg.
I can’t say it out loud, but this cat reminds me of Jane—she was always digging her heels in about something.
Sadie finds a small towel and manages to slot it in beside the cat, and it curls up and goes to sleep.
Later that night, I wake with a start as the covers move by my feet. When I peer down, a dark silhouette is illuminated by the streetlight seeping around the blinds. The cat is on the edge of the bed as far away from me as possible.
“Whatever,” I mutter. “Just don’t fucking wake me up again. I’m very tired and I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment. I don’t need another problem to add to the list.”
She stands one paw up, eyes fixed on me, and I close my eyes and turn on my side, pulling the sheet under my chin.
When I peek at her again over my shoulder, she’s curled up at the bottom of the mattress.
I don’t know why, but I’ve already decided she’s female in my mind, and a smile curls over my lips at Sadie’s outrage over my having assigned the cat’s gender based on how difficult it is.
Something about the way the cat’s sought me out makes warmth curl through me.
I’ve had the best evening I’ve had in weeks, possibly months.
It doesn’t feel like it right now, but maybe one day I’ll be able to see past all this.
I’d love there to be some more positive future for me out there, quietly waiting.