The Cat Who Signed Read online

The Cat Who Signed

  Sandra McDonald

  Copyright 2011 by Sandra McDonald

 

  This story originally appeared in the magazine Icarus.

  This book may be victim of typo elves. If you spot any errors, please let me know at www.sandramcdonald.com and I will correct the error as well as send you a replacement e-copy. Thank you! Elves are lovely creatures but somewhat troublesome.

  Table of Contents

  Start of story

  About Sandra McDonald

  Connect with Sandra McDonald

  Praise for Sandra's work

  The Cat Who Signed

  by Sandra McDonald

  I've never liked cats, but somehow I always end up dating guys who love them. One ex-boyfriend would obsess over a web site that showed kittens doing "cute" things like curling up in bathroom sinks or snuggling into dresser drawers. As if we need fur clogging the drain or clinging to our sweaters. Another ex-boyfriend spent hours and hours making up grammatically incorrect captions for pictures of cats in improbable poses, such as hanging off curtains: "I can haz rescue plz?" He could amuse herself all night long. This is how the internet ruins relationships, if you ask me.

  When my friend Gary emailed me to cat-sit for his cousin in Brooklyn, I said no thanks.

  "A week of free lodging in NYC, Dylan!" he wrote. "A million museums, two million stores, and three million cute boys! "

  A week in Brooklyn in late summer seemed like a nice escape from Columbus, Ohio, where I made a meager living writing books for middle school libraries. Need a biography of Angela Merkel or Tupac Shakur? I'm your guy. And it's true that I love museums. Gary's friend Molly lived a short walk away from the Brooklyn Museum of Art and it was easy to ride the subway into Manhattan. She didn't mind that I was a guy, as long as I tried not to bring any guests home and if I did, that I laundered the sheets before I left. Which was a pretty funny - - that she assumed (1) I could muster any kind of social life in just seven days and (2) that I could persuade a guy to sleep with me in that same short timeframe. Maybe gay guys in New York hook up every night like fireflies, but in Ohio it had been months since I'd seen even a glimmer of light.

  Not that I didn't have some fantasies, of course. Someone handsome, smart and funny who understands American Sign Language. Too much to ask?

  Molly sent pictures of her apartment and of her eight-year old brown tabby. He looked like every other brown tabby cat in the world, and wore the same expression every cat wore in photos: bored indifference.

  "He's a little high maintenance," Molly wrote. "He meows a lot. So you're perfect!"

  Perfect because I'm deaf.

  Which is how I ended up on a plane to New York City, cat sitting a high-maintenance cat named Milord, and this is my story. But it's not cute and it's not heart-warming. There are no funny captions.

  #

  Molly met me at the JFK Jet Blue terminal. She was exactly five feet tall, with glossy brown hair and brown eyes, and she was wearing a pink tie-dye sundress over hot pink flip-flops. In between working as a psychiatric nurse and packing for her trip to London she must have been cramming ASL, because first she waved hi and then she tried to sign something that might have been, "How was your trip?"

  Not that I didn't appreciate the effort, but it was easier to show her my phone screen: "Thx 4 meeting me nice to c u."

  We took a tram and then got on the subway. I was glad she met me because otherwise I would have spent hours trying to figure out the ticket machines. We spent the thirty-minute ride to her neighborhood exchanging notes on our phones. She had a quick smile, but also tired circles under her eyes. I think mostly she was relieved I didn't look like a serial killer. That was her job-- working with the criminally insane on Wards Island.

  "They're not half-bad people," she wrote to me. "But if I didn't get away on vacation once in awhile, they'd be locking me up right beside them."

  Her neighborhood didn't look quaint and tree-lined, as I'd imagined. It looked more like a set from a 1970's blaxploitation film. She said it was "poised for gentrification," which was cityspeak for "Don't walk alone at night." Her apartment more or less matched the photos she'd sent - used furniture dressed up with quilts, a bay window overlooking a narrow street, and a kitchen smaller than my bedroom closet. Milord was curled up on armchair when we came in. I didn't approach him but I smiled and wagged my fingers. He yawned, arched his back, and stared at Molly.

  She said something to him which might have been, "Yes, Dylan is going to take care of you and love you and you will get along just wonderful and you are my baby," but reading lips isn't easy and the cat wasn't going to fall for it anyway.

  Molly ordered Thai for dinner and had it delivered. Over our Pad Na and Gai Kua she presented me with a neatly typed list of the cat's quirks and expectations and schedule:

  1. Afternoon dinner is at 4 o'clock. One-half of the Gourmet Platter Feast cans (the gold label) in the cupboard. Please put the plate on the dinner table, not on the floor, because he doesn't like it on the floor. Put the other half in the refrigerator.

  2. Evening dinner is at 7 pm. Give him the other half of the canned food. Please microwave for twenty-five seconds first. You can put this one on the floor, but not near the litter box.

  3. He gets a treat at 10 pm. The treats are in a blue foil bag on top of the refrigerator. Give him just five of them. He will want more, but they give him gas.

  The numbered list had seventeen more items on it, covering food, water, grooming and cat litter. My eyes glazed over. My idea of cat care is that you put out some dry food in a bowl and empty the litter when it starts to smell. Anything more, and people are just inventing trouble for themselves. I was worried that Molly might make me initial each point but she simply left it on the tiny dining room table. Another copy was pinned to the front of the 1980's era yellow refrigerator. Another copy was posted on the bathroom mirror.

  There was a separate list for apartment maintenance issues, and an emergency contact list with all of her travel information on it. The cat list was obviously the most important list in the universe, however.

  I slept that first night on the sofa. The only air conditioner was in Molly's bedroom but she kept her door open and the flow was enough to keep the place comfortable. The bathroom light blinked on a few times during the night. I rolled away from it and settled back into my silent slumber. Molly wheeled her luggage out the door near dawn. By the time I really woke up, it was nine thirty.

  Milord was sitting erect on the sofa arm right above my head. His mouth was moving and I assumed he was meowing.

  "Yes, good morning," I signed.

  According to the list, it was time for his breakfast: fresh, rare roast beef, which I'd have to stock up on again midweek because he didn't like it more than three days old. Molly's note said, "Please chop the roast beef into tiny slivers because his mouth is small." His mouth looked big enough to me. I dumped some roast beef on a plate and put the plate on the floor. By the time I got out of the shower he'd finished it all and was licking his paws by the bay window.

  We're going to get along just fine, I thought to myself.

  She'd said the Brooklyn Museum of Art was only fifteen minutes away, but that was only if you sprinted through neighborhoods that Al Pacino patrolled in Serpico. The museum was a magnificent old building with a modern glass façade. Enormous, beautiful, and mostly empty. I had several galleries all to myself. The traditional exhibits included African Art and Greek pottery, but there was also a display of Victorian mannequins in lewd poses and an installation of feminist dinner plates. I was halfway around the setup before I realized every plate was painted to emulate a vulva. I don't see those much, you know.

  One other visitor, an
elderly woman with a blue pill hat, realized the connection around the same time I did. Her mouth formed some words to me, and her eyebrows arched.

  I wanted to sign, "We sure don't paint vulvas back in Columbus," but instead I pretended to be busy reading my museum guide.

  Lunch in the café set me back my entire food budget for the day. After that I went next door to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens. Very pretty, very serene. No vulvas. I didn't get back to Molly's apartment until five o'clock or so. Milord met me at the door, mouth opening and closing with more presumed meows, but I dumped a full can on his plate on the table and he got busy.

  I expected Molly to text me half a dozen times once she landed, but no messages showed up by the time I went to bed. My strategic mistake was leaving the bedroom door open, which I discovered when Milord landed on my chest at four in the morning.

  Sleepily I pushed him aside, but he climbed right back up on me and pawed at my face. Which is when I remembered more from the list:

  14. He will need half a can of Fancy Feline Special Gourmet (the green label) at 4 a.m. The vet says it's important to keep his blood sugar steady. He needs you to watch him while he eats it because he'll get lonely otherwise, so please stay awake until he finishes.

  15. If he only finishes part of the food, you can go back to bed for about twenty minutes, but then he will meow until you come watch him eat the rest of it.

  16. Please give him the rest of the can no later than 7 a.m. (microwave for twenty seconds).

  I got the cat food (the green label, or maybe the gold label – I was too tired to really care), dumped the whole thing on a plate on the floor, and went back to bed. With the bedroom door firmly closed. Let him meow. The walls were thick, and the neighbors weren't likely to complain.

  Sometimes there are advantages to being deaf.

  #

  Day 2: I emerged from the bedroom to find Milord sitting in the bay window, wagging his tail at a German Shepherd on the sidewalk outside. It was almost cute, the way they looked like they were communicating. Milord's food plate was empty and there was a fresh dollop of cat poop in the middle of the kitchen floor.

  "Not nice," I signed.

  He gave me a disdainful look. But this was a war he was going to lose, because what's a little poop if I get a whole night's sleep? The trouble with cat people is that they cater and spoil the little beasts. You have to be firm. Set limits.

  "No roast beef for you this morning," I told him, and left the apartment convinced that I was doing both Milord and Molly a favor by breaking him of bad habits.

  I won't tell you where the poop was when I got back from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

  #

  After I found the fresh sheets and blankets for the bed, and after Milord had his 4 p.m. feeding (although it was now 7), I texted Gary: "Cat h8s me."

  He responded ten minutes later, asking me what I did to it.

  "Nothing!" I insisted.

  "Be nice 2 him. I told M u could b trusted."

  I fed him extra, went to bed with the door closed, and woke at four a.m. to a thin strip of light shining through the gap between the door and the hardwood floor. As I watched, it blinked off. Then blinked on again. Then blinked off.

  Out in the hall, Milord was perched on a side table and pawing the light switch. He looked triumphant when I stumbled out in my boxer shorts. But his triumph didn't last. Molly kept duct tape in the cutlery drawer. It was no trouble at all to tape the switch down. Problem solved.

  It took him about an hour to claw the tape off. So then I unscrewed the light bulb.

  Humans really are smarter than cats.

  #

  Of all the things on sale in the Met gift store, sleeping masks were not among them. Which was a shame. They could make them with Monet prints or Picasso patterns. I didn't think Milord would get the light bulb back in – he was a cat, not a magician – but better safe than sorry.

  I was back at The Met for a second day because my first day had been overwhelming and exhausting. After navigating the subway into Manhattan and then taking a bus uptown, I'd walked into a building more jammed than Superbowl stadium. There are over two million pieces in the permanent collection and the daily ratio of visitors to objects was at least three to one. Maybe the museum staff could take half of the crowd and bus them over to Brooklyn, where they could ponder vulva dinner plates.

  If there was a place to sit in stillness and simply observe the works, I didn't find it. The closest I came was getting lost in the furniture department. You'd think that case after case of wooden furniture would get boring, and you'd be right. But it was a nice change from the crush of bodies in the European collection and the insane amount of schoolchildren swarming around medieval weaponry. There were several cafes but standing in line would mean missing the one and only ASL lecture for the day, over in the African paintings gallery.

  The lecturer was a gray-haired black man who kept his eyes on his notes. The interpreter was a woman with very short hair in a man's suit. Fourteen of us were in the audience, with some high school students and an old couple, but there were no obviously single guys looking for love. The lecture was "Animist Art from Ethiopia" and it was pretty dry, but on the hot, crowded trip back to Brooklyn, I thought about spirits in inanimate objects to keep myself amused. The train's spirit would be powerful and enraged, hurling itself through tunnels of bedrock. The spirits of ubiquitous iPods and smartphones would be quicksilver sprites, dashing to and from the internet with shimmering wings.

  At one platform half the crowd got unhappy looks on their faces and emptied out with lots of conversation. I noticed, but wasn't sure what was happening. Once the train started moving again, we began skipping stations. The train had switched from a local to an express. Which meant we raced right past my stop in Brooklyn and I ended up six stations down the line, where I had to reverse, wait twenty minutes for another train, and then backtrack. But that train stalled for several minutes, then limped into the next station, and then everyone got off and headed for the street level.

  I didn't see any Metro employees to ask for guidance. Nothing as convenient as a flashing sign or printed notice presented itself. Up on the street, people were waiting for something. Buses? I showed questions on my phone to a nice-looking middle aged woman, someone I judged likely to be most helpful.

  She looked at her phone and then shook her head. Didn't speak English, I guessed.

  By the time I figured out the right bus, elbowed my way onto it, got off at more or less the right stop, and trudged five blocks through the streets of Assault on Precinct 13, it was totally dark out, I was weak from hunger and thirst, and my bladder was ready to explode. Milord was in his bay window when I let myself in. It almost looked like he'd been conversing with a nesting pigeon on the ledge. He hissed at me and didn’t look at all mollified when I emptied a gold can into a bowl.

  "Leave me alone," I signed. "I've had a terrible day."

  Some leftover Pad Ga restored some of my strength. Then I found the cat's latest presents on top of the clothes in my open suitcase.

  I was mad enough that I considered violence. White-hot, blinding consideration of bodily harm. Instead of kicking him (because I'm not the kind of guy, honest), I cornered him in the living room and let loose with several threats about locking him in the bathroom all week, taking him to the pound for euthanasia, or kicking him out to the curb.

  Not that I would have done any of it. Probably. I mean, I'm not a crazy or mean or vindictive. But I was exhausted and footsore and still hungry, and all the clothes I'd packed for this trip smelled like cat shit and piss.

  Through my entire tirade, Milord eyed me flatly with the patience cats have had since they made the ancient Egyptians their servants.

  Then he sat back on his haunches, lifted his front paws in the air, and started signing his own message.

  #

  In college I had a roommate who, after a few beers at parties, would insist he knew ASL. He'd fling hi
s arms open, waggle his fingers, and act like an ass. He did it to make girls giggle. They giggled a lot. I would just nod and smile and escape at the first opportunity. He was a business major. Last I heard, he manages a Hannaford supermarket in Brunswick, Maine.

  The cat in front of me couldn't exactly fling his front legs open. He didn't have fingers to spread or elbows to flex. He did touch his jaw with both paws, and his tail curved and uncurved, and his ears flexed forward and backward, but none of it made sense in American Sign Language.

  Of course it didn't. Cats don't sign.

  I went into the bedroom and closed the door. But it was too early to go to sleep, so I logged on my laptop and looked for messages from Molly. Surely she was over her jet lag by now and would want to know about her baby. Nothing in my inbox, though.

  A cat paw slid under the door gap and waved around.

  I opened the door. Milord retreated a few steps, blinked at me, and then started signing again.

  In Los Angeles, they've been building welfare high-rises next to congested freeways. I once read a report that said the builders know there's a link between asthmatic kids and the brake dust of millions of cars a day, but no in charge cares very much. I considered the possibility that something in the subway had similarly affected my brain. Tiny atoms of burnt metal causing hallucinations. Or maybe the cat just had fleas. Maybe epilepsy.