Chapter 5
Benji
Iwoke up to a kitten on my face. By the taste of fur I was unable to spit from my lips, it wasn’t Princess Consuela. My princess was in her carrier on the floor beside the bed, where she had spent the night producing a low, vibrating hum of naked protest.
This was a different creature entirely.
It was small and fuzzy, with fur of bright orange and white, enormous blue eyes, and a purr that was wildly disproportionate to its body mass, as though someone had installed a diesel engine inside a tennis ball.
There was another one on my chest, a tabby, slightly larger. The little shit was kneading my sternum with its razor-like claws in a rhythm that was either affectionate or an attempt to tenderize me before consumption.
A third was inside my shoe. I could see a tiny gray head poking out of my left sneaker, blinking at me with the calm satisfaction of an animal that had found its home and was not interested in discussing alternatives.
The fourth was on the pillow beside my head. It was asleep and curled into a cinnamon roll of fur with its nose tucked under its tail.
The fifth was nowhere to be seen.
Which probably should have worried me.
I sat up slowly, dislodging the chest kitten and scanning the room for number five.
The foster room was small and functional with little more than a twin bed, a nightstand, and a bookshelf stacked with veterinary texts and what appeared to be a very organized collection of animal care supplies.
Shortcake the beagle was in her crate in the corner, awake and watching me with the drowsy, post-surgical patience of a dog who had been through worse than any stranger in her room.
There was no fifth kitten.
I got out of bed, wearing the boxers and T-shirt I’d slept in, and did a visual sweep. Under the bed, I found nothing. Behind the bookshelf, still nothing. Inside the closet (which was partially occupied by a tower of neatly stacked pet food bags), nada.
Then I heard it.
A tiny, triumphant mew came from somewhere near the door.
I looked up.
The fifth kitten, a calico with more personality than structural integrity, perched on top of the door.
Not near the top.
On top.
He or she balanced on the one-inch-wide edge of the open door like a tiny, very fluffy tightrope walker, staring down at me with an expression that said, “I have conquered this summit and I am now your god. Worship me at your leisure.”
“How the hell—”
The kitten mewed again. It was the mew of a creature who had no intention of explaining its methods.
“The bathroom door was latched,” I said to myself and the kitten and the universe. “I specifically remember latching it because Peter told me to latch it, and I was trying to follow the rules on my very first night.”
I opened the bathroom door to investigate.
The latch was intact.
The door had been closed.
But the bathroom window, which opened onto a narrow ventilation shaft, was cracked about two inches, and there was a kitten-sized gap between the window frame and the screen that had clearly been exploited as an escape route.
These kittens had a system.
They’d been breaking out of this bathroom long before I arrived, and the infrastructure of their escape was more sophisticated than anything I’d achieved in my own life.
“Sneaky little shits,” I muttered.
I gathered the kittens one by one, a process that took fifteen minutes and involved me crawling under the bed for the gray one who had retreated deep into the toe of my shoe, coaxing the calico off the top of the door with a piece of string I found on the nightstand, and accepting that the orange-and-white one on my face was simply going to live there now, and I needed to make peace with that.
I deposited all five back in the bathroom, double-checked the window, latched the door, and stood in the hallway breathing like I’d just run a sprint.
It was 6:45 a.m.
From the kitchen, I heard the quiet sounds of someone already awake: the clink of a mug, the rustle of a newspaper, the soft thump of a three-legged dog resettling on the floor.
I padded into the kitchen to find Peter’s morning routine, already underway, proceeding with the calm precision of a man whose day had not begun with a kitten on his face and another one inside his shoe.
Peter stood at the island, exactly where I would learn he always was at this hour.
He held a mug of steaming coffee with a newspaper spread before him.
His glasses had slid halfway down his nose, making him look like some batty professor whose reading glasses never remained in place.
He was wearing a different faded T-shirt today, this one from what appeared to be a veterinary conference in Portland, and his hair was doing its usual thing, which was defying both gravity and intention simultaneously.
Hiro lay at his feet, Potato slept on the couch, and General Tso lorded over everything from the top of the refrigerator.
Peter glanced up when I entered.
His eyes moved to my hair (post-sleep, fully vertical), to my shirt (inside out, which I had not noticed until this exact moment), then to the faint scratch on my forearm where the calico had expressed displeasure during her retrieval from the door.
“Kittens got out,” he said. It was not a question.
“The kittens got out.”
“The window.”
“The window.”
He nodded, as if this were a known variable in an ongoing experiment. “They figured that out about two weeks ago. I’ve been meanin’ to fix the screen.”
“You could have mentioned that last night.”
“Figured you’d find out on your own.” He flipped a page of his newspaper. “Part of the experience.”
I stared at him. “Was that a joke?”
“I don’t joke before seven.” He took a sip of coffee. “There’s coffee in the pot. Mugs are above the sink. Don’t use the blue one.”
“What’s wrong with the blue one?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it. It’s mine.”
I poured coffee into a mug that was not blue and leaned against the counter.
The kitchen was fully visible now in a way it hadn’t been last night. The whiteboard on the fridge was the centerpiece. Up close it was even more impressive than I’d remembered.
It was color-coded, but not casually color-coded as though someone had grabbed whatever marker was handy.
The board was meticulously color-coded, with a legend in the bottom corner that explained the system, as though the creator might someday forget which color belonged to which task.
Green was for feeding times, blue for medications, red for veterinary appointments, and purple for behavioral notes.
Each animal had its own row. The handwriting was small and precise and beautiful in the way that deeply organized things can be beautiful if you’re the kind of person who appreciates systems, which I was not, but I could recognize it was a quality that existed in other people.
It was a little like a gay man recognizing that a woman was beautiful.
We saw the beauty, we appreciated it, and we respected the work that went in maintaining it.
We just didn’t want to lick it.
Beneath the whiteboard, stuck to the fridge with a magnet shaped like the state of Texas, was a Post-it note. It was addressed to me.
Feeding schedule is vital. Hiro eats at 7 and 6.
Potato eats at 7:30 and 6:30 (wet food only, his teeth are gone).
General Tso eats when he decides to eat and not a moment before.
Kittens get formula at 7, 12, and 6. Shortcake gets her meds with breakfast. If you’re going to be here during feeding times, you can help. If not, stay out of the way.
— P
I read it twice, then pulled a pen from the cup on the counter (Peter had a cup of pens on the counter, organized by type and color, because of course he did) and wrote on a fresh Post-it from the pad beside the fridge.
Good morning to you, too. I would love to help with feeding. Please note that Princess Consuela eats at 8 and 6 sharp and will begin screaming fifteen minutes beforehand to remind everyone of this. Consider this your warning.
— B
I stuck it below Peter’s note.
Peter looked at the fridge, read my note, then looked at me.
“She starts screamin’ fifteen minutes before she eats?”
“Every day.”
“And this has been happenin’ across the hall from me for ten months.”
“In my defense, I didn’t know you could hear it.”
“I could hear it,” he said, his words more groan than statement.
“Well, now you’ll get to hear it in surround sound.”
His jaw shifted. It might have been a clench, or it might have been the beginning of something his mouth decided not to finish.
“I’m goin’ to the clinic,” he said, standing and folding his newspaper with the careful, crease-preserving attention of a man who had strong opinions about newspaper handling. “I’ll be back around six. Kitten formula’s in the fridge if you’re here at noon. Instructions are on the whiteboard.”
“I’ll be at work by then, but I can do the morning feeding before I leave.”
He paused at the doorway, turning back. “You know how to bottle-feed kittens?”
“I’ve watched approximately two hundred TikToks about it.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“Probably not, but I’m a fast learner, and I have very steady hands.” I held up my hands to demonstrate. They were, unfortunately, still shaking slightly from the caffeine-on-empty-stomach situation, and the scratch from the calico was more visible than I’d realized.
Peter looked at my shaking, scratched-up hands with the expression of a man recalculating his expectations.
“There’s a tutorial binder on the shelf in the foster room,” he said. “Bottle feeding is on page twelve. Read it before you touch the kittens.”
“You have a tutorial binder?”
“Page twelve.”
The door clicked behind him, a sound that was somehow both quiet and emphatic, the door-closing equivalent of a period at the end of a sentence.