Of Death and Cats

   “So there are many different reasons why Maisie’s like this.”

   Dr. Nomura had this irritating habit of starting to speak as though she was already in mid-conversation with someone. Unfortunately, that someone wasn’t him. He had become accustomed to the usual happy greetings people hand out like bad breath and chewing gum, even if they’re mostly insincere. He compared this to greasing gears in his mind, except it applied to social interaction at large. Even though it’s fake, at least people speak to him. Dr. Nomura’s annoying habit reminded him suddenly of those quiet mornings with his mother. He’d normally catch her in her rose-colored robe staring outside the window over the sink with a coffee, and without even condescending to look his way, she’d say, “Good morning, Moron.”

   As long as his mom referred to him as a proper noun, he was fine with that. At least he was acknowledged in some way. He preferred to be, “The Moron,” in capital letters, as opposed to the less personal indefinite article, “a moron.” Why she said this ritual every morning to him since the sixth grade was unclear to him. But she didn’t mean it, he thought. Not really.

   “You ought to get a spine whenever you get around to it,” she’d continue. “Your father never did, you know.” She snorted at the very mention of his father, her former husband. She’d take a couple of sips of coffee and then say something like, “Clean the kitchen. At least do something useful instead of breathing in my oxygen.” She’d say this or suggest some other chore to start the day. He took her harshness as a kind of love that cared for his cleanliness.

   Unlike his mother, however, Dr. Nomura didn’t call him a moron, but she wasn’t given to pleasantries either. She was all business despite the reassuring smile and her constant bobblehead nods.

   He waited a while for her to elaborate, perhaps tell him something specific. In the meantime, he wandered his eyes around the room. He approved of the glossy wood paneled walls that lined the sides of the patient examining room. He suspected the wood was a thin veneer that would bubble up and curl if he decided to dump a bit of water over it, but he understood this was something to give patients a sense of homeliness, something to look at instead of the long rectangular metal slab at the center of the room. Anything that took your attention away from that antiseptic, cold table would be a welcomed diversion.

   Standing remarkably still, Dr. Nomura folded her hands delicately in front of her stomach, her thumbs tucked neatly behind one smallish hand while the other laid carefully on top like a folded piece of origami. She smiled at him pleasantly — reassuringly he supposed — and continued nodding her head. She spoke in an elevated pitch, which might have been her natural tone of voice, but he couldn’t escape the feeling he was speaking to a child.

   “Therefore, it’s probably an inflammation of some kind. Uh-hum. I’ve got to eat more blueberries.”

   She wasn’t much one for sequiturs either. She smiled her reassuring smile again; it was wide across her face, but there wasn’t much of an upward curve. She should learn about how to graph parabolas.

   “W-what kind of inflammation, Doc? L-L-Like the kind you get from the flu?”

   He hated stuttering, but he never overcame the affliction, especially when he worried over something. Some had gas after downing a burrito; he stuttered when he worried. If he had to pick one over the other, he’d rather stutter.

   “Maybe. When did you notice her, ah-hum, condition?”

   Dr. Nomura floated over to the corner sink in her white robe and snapped on some white gloves. When she returned, she padded and poked and generally molested Maisie. Maisie, for her part, just took it. Of course she did. Maisie was a cat. And she was in a coma.

   “It happened this afternoon. I was watching tv, wh-when she told me she wanted a ham-hamburger. I told her I-I-I was busy, but—”

   “You said she, um, told you she wanted a hamburger?” And Dr. Nomura drew out that word, “told” like a stretched limousine, as in, “toooollllldddddd?”

   “Y-y-yes, of course. Maisie speaks to me all the time. It’s not people-speak, obviously. C-cats can’t speak Eng-English.”

   “Ah-hum. Did you give Maisie a hamburger?”

   “Th-that’s the thing, Doc. When I told her, ‘N-no you can’t have a burger right now,’ she threw a fit. Screaming c-cat stuff. I can’t tell you wh-what she said because she sounded mad. Then she rolled her eyes and fell down. Sh-she’s been like that ever since.”

   She peered at him through her rimless glasses, skeptical, and reassessed her estimation of him, who she took to be entirely pedestrian just a few moments earlier.

   “Uh-hum. Interesting.”

   He stood there next to the metal examining table, next to Maisie, tapping the examining table, not knowing how to proceed. The sound of his fingernails clicking on metal discomfortingly echoed off the wood-paneled walls. He withdrew his hand and shoved both of them into his jeans, afraid to touch anything. He couldn’t look at Maisie nor look at Dr. Nomura in the eye. He fidgeted again.

   “Y-you really think it’s an inflammation of some kind, Dr. N-Nomura? Don’t worry baby, I’m sorry, it’s going to be all right; I know we were talking about you as though you weren’t in the room; I didn’t mean to be rude—”

   “Uh-hum. Yes, some diets cause high inflammation or she may be genetically prone to it. A hard body trauma, like falling down, could also inflame spinal tissues that could… You should’ve walked your cat,” Dr. Nomura said. She removed the gloves from her small moisturized hands and lightly hovered them inside the pockets of her white lab coat. She smiled her flat emoji smile.

   “W-What? No, I couldn’t’ve, really, I can’t. Who-who walks their cats? Maisie, you never asked to go for a walk, did you? Cats are noble predatory creatures, Doc. They live lives with a g-great deal of a-a-autonomy. You-you demean a cat when you-you leash them. Maisie, would never con-consent to a leash.”

   “Honestly, Henry, does this cat belong to you? There’s no chip, or, uh-hum, or any record of your cat. Dog owners walk their dogs, don’t they?” Dr. Nomura casually glanced at the medical clipboard on the table. HENRY A. BEECH, the name said. That was quite a name. Henry A. Beech was the kind of name that had a kick-me sign stapled to the birth certificate. Children can be quite cruel, yes, quite cruel, she thought. Behind her no rimmed glasses, she secretly hated children and was thankful her parents never forced her into marriage.

   “Of course she-she belongs to me. She came to me and walked in-into my house. She is not a dog. She is my friend.”

   Lying on her side motionless beside Dr. Nomura’s clipboard was Maisie, Henry A. Beech’s solid gray cat. Aside from the slow rise and fall of cat’s midsection, there was no other indication to suggest the feline was even alive. There were pupillary constrictions when she blasted her penlight at the cat’s eyes earlier, but they didn’t attempt to avoid the light, nor did they register her presence at all. For all effects and purposes, unofficially, Maisie the cat was a goner. The reasons didn’t matter. It’s not as though Henry is going to pay for an autopsy of a cat.    

   She bent slightly over the medical clipboard and jotted a few quick notes. The next patient two doors down was probably pacing back and forth by now. Let’s wrap this up.

   Henry heaved a deep sigh.

   “Isn’t there an-an-anything we can do, Doc?”   

   She adjusted her glasses carefully before saying, “Run a few, uh-hum, tests to see if her condition is caused by inflammation or a spinal injury caused by a slipped disc, but—”

   “Are you saying she’s dead? Can-can she recover?”

   Dr. Nomura sighed. “No, she isn’t dead. She’s paralyzed and in a kitty coma.” Now as gently and as softly as you can say it, she reminded herself, “But sadly I don’t think Maisie will recover. We have chocolate chip cookies and macadamia nut cookies at the front desk. Your choice. Mrs. Tilla will be in a few minutes to go over the treatment options with you.”

   Henry A. Beech, the friend and owner of a lovely nine-pound catatonic gray cat named Maisie, suddenly found the vet’s voice ingratiating, like the proverbial nails on a chalkboard.

   “What do you think I sh-should do?”

   “I recommend the chocolate chip cookies. They’re homemade and delicious, uh-hum.” And with that Dr. Nomura scooped up Maisie’s medical clipboard, smiled widely, nodded and closed the door behind herself.

   His hands balled into fists inside his jeans. But he isn’t going to say something mean, is he? He didn’t want to be responsible, no, he didn’t want to be the person who killed his friend. Why couldn’t Dr. Nomura tell him what to do? Why was he so angry, suddenly? He didn’t know. Maybe he thought he was just frustrated and sad and afraid of living life alone. Like his chicken-shit dad, sitting at a computer all day doing the work of three people and getting paid a quarter less because he just couldn’t tell people, “no”. His dad who lived off of Tremont Avenue in a studio apartment with his goldfish, Eddie. His dad who never grew a spine.

   As long as Maisie was there with him he wasn’t alone.

   His mom was wrong. He wasn’t like his dad at all.

   Dammit, he is not his dad!

   In the stillness of the room following the swooping aftermath of Dr. Nomura’s exit, he felt like he should say something. He shifted slightly in his work boots, and lightly scratched behind Maisie’s ears just the way she liked it. A couple of seconds later, it must have been his imagination when he heard Maisie radiate out a purr. Maybe this was similar to what amputees say, that they can feel their itching legs even though they don’t even have legs. They call it ghost limbs. Maybe Maisie was purring, even though she’s barely breathing. Maybe it’s a ghost purr!

   For the first time in quite a long time, incredibly, Henry made a decision.

   “Hey Maisie, I know you can hear m-me. You’re the best girl a guy c-can have.” He wiped away a loose incipient tear from his face, and said, “I’ll be damned if I’m go-going to let Dr. Nomura kill you. I’m not sure she’s even a doctor, to tell you the truth. Can vet’s be doctors? I’m taking you out of here.”

   He bent down and gingerly wrapped Maisie, the cat, into his arms. Her dead weight was a lot harder to gather up but he managed to carefully place her inside her cat kennel.

   Just as he latched the door to the kennel, Mrs. Tilla came in armed with a chocolate chip cookie and with explicitly detailed plans to kill his cat. She was a rotundly woman who tried to squeeze into her nurse’s uniform as though they were skinny jeans. Like Dr. Nomura, she smiled and nodded like a deranged pez dispenser, but instead of candy, she was dispensing advertisements of painless deaths.

   “Mr. Beech? Did you want to— ”

   “I know what you guys do. You kill animals for no good reason. I’ve decided. I’m taking Maisie away from all you sick people. And I’ll take that cookie. Thank you.”

   He didn’t intend to be mean.

   “Mr. Beech, be reasonable—”

   “I am fucking reasonable.” Whoa, was he sure he wanted to be this cozy with profanity? “I’m taking my girl home, and I’m not my fucking dad!”

That’s right, thought. He’s not his dad. He’s his fucking son, Henry Amos Fucking Beech!

   Henry snatched the cookie from Mrs. Tilla’s hand and walked out of the door with Maisie’s kennel clutched to his chest, as though he was a football running back bulldozing his way toward the end zone. He didn’t see the startled, concerned looks pet owners gave him as he stormed out of the veterinary office. He certainly didn’t see Dr. Nomura’s quizzical look as she poked her head into the hallway from an adjoining room. What’s that racket? she thought. That almost sounded like Mr. Beech. She barely caught sight of him as he shoulder-checked his way out of the lobby door.

   A few minutes later, Henry was in his old Toyota Camry. He slammed the driver’s side car door a couple of times because he wanted to. It wasn’t until later that night when he realized he didn’t stutter once while he shouted at Mrs. Tilla. He didn’t think Mrs. Tilla was evil, really. But he wasn’t letting her shoot a death needle in her arm either.

   “I’m not going to let those people kill you, baby. As soon as we get home, I’m going to let you have a burger. No buns, protein, style just how you like it.”

   Maisie, now lying completely on her side inside the kennel in the passenger seat, was unmoved.

   It was nearly dark outside the car. The sun slid between the palm trees across the street half an hour earlier and now it dipped far behind the row of houses out of view, but the ember glow of the dying day still kept the sky ablaze in deep oranges and darkening blues. The lamps would kick on in a few minutes, etching out isolated pools of light inside the gathering dark. Henry didn’t like going out at night, and he most definitely didn’t like being outside with his ailing Maisie.

   Had Henry peered close enough through the metal grate of her kennel, he would have seen Maisie’s mouth hanging slightly open, her tongue inadvertently licking the beige plastic kennel floor. Who knew how many times Maisie slid back and forth on that slick plastic surface before she settled in her current position? Once? Three times? Perhaps enough times for her tongue to lick the plastic clean?

   It was completely dark outside when they arrived at In-and-Out.

   “Hello, welcome to In-and-Out. What can I get for you today?” A young dark-haired woman, fresh out of adolescence, dressed in a white and red uniform smiled kindly at him. Unlike Mrs. Nomura, at least she smiled correctly.

   She must have studied graphing parabolas.

   Like all fast food joints, the smell of fried foods suspended in the air like a thick morning mist that refused to leave. The smell gushed into his car as soon as he hand-cranked down his driver’s window; he swallowed great gulps of that greasy air as if it was life itself.

   He gave her his order, and after some reflection, added a vanilla shake to the list. As he cranked the window handle back up, she asked:

   “Ohmygod, is that a cat?”

   She was suddenly close to him, too close. Her face bent toward him, gaining in size, until he could see how she caked on the makeup earlier that day perhaps in an effort to disguise the small clusters of zit-bumps along her cheeks and temples. Her eyes peered into the car, and, to Henry, they were unexpectedly large and piercing.

   “Yes, that’s my Maisie. We just came back from the vet.”

   She squinted and leaned in closer, close enough for him to smell her soapy deodorant, which mixed strangely well with the smell of fried beef patties and french fries.

   She paused.

   “Is it dead?”

   “What? No. Of course not. She’s still breathing. She’s just resting.”

   Miss In-and-Out gave him a curious, skeptical look. Her hand unthinkingly resting on the top of the window. In this moment, more than anything he’d ever wanted in the world, he wanted the drive thru line to move forward.

   “I’ve never seen a cat lie down on its side with its tongue hanging out. Not like that.”

   He didn’t say anything. Instead, curious, he leaned down low over the center console and peered through the metal grate. Was she sticking out her tongue? he thought. He saw Maisie on her side. There was her tongue waxing the kennel floor. But was she breathing? he thought desperately.

   The smell of soap and burgers were overpowering now, intoxicating and nauseating at the same time. He could practically feel a film of grease developing on his skin, like cheap makeup, or like ice core sheets in the Antarctic.

   “Maybe you should go back to the vet. Maybe she needed—”

   Still looking at his Maisie, he saw her nose crinkle. Crinkle? As if she was sniffing something. Was this a ghost sniff, or was this real?

   There was more sniffing and presently one of her eyes pried opened. Her tongue retracted into her mouth, and soon she stared contentedly at him smacking her mouth.

   The burger, he thought. The damn cat wanted a burger! 

   “Maisie!” he cried. “You crazy cat!”

   He rushed to open the metal grate and scooped her into his arms while Miss In-and-Out Burger stood on the other side of window smiling, but also impatient for him to move the takeout line along.

   He hugged his gray cat and listened to her purr. She had put him through several shades of hell for a damn hamburger. But, of course, she didn’t plan for him to go through all that stress and anxiety just to get a burger. She’s just a cat.

   She didn’t mean put him through hell, he thought.

   Not really.