All It'll Be

My mom took me along to choose a kitten from among many kittens, and among this many kittens was a well-mannered, healthy young man in a tortoise-shell suit; a clear winner. I didn't choose that one on account of my being what my mom called "contrary". I instead chose an ugly little lady who - we were warned - had temporary digestive issues. When we got her home and called her Mugsy she #2'd all over the house and fled from us, hiding under the bed in my little brother's room for most of the first few days. To bond we bought stuffed things and string things and balls with bells. These toys collected dust in a corner of the living room as she instead chose to play by sneak-attacking our bare hands and feet with tiny claws and fangs. For armor we plundered our closets and came up with leather gloves and snow mittens. These were shredded useless within a week. Dad bought us all heavy duty gardening gloves which held up quite well against assault. One Sunday, as Mom had the front door cracked, hollering at her best girlfriend Vickie and her labrador Bella, our little one snuck by her, streaked madly across the lawn and that was the last we saw her.   I can't say why for certain, and neither could my folks, but I think she ran away because she couldn't hurt us anymore. After that I used my Mugsy gloves for picking up pine cones fallen in the yard. And after that I used those gloves for work in our two-row garden out back. Which, there wasn’t much to do back there but pick out dollar weed and straighten the soil into neat edges and guess at which invader had been nibbling at which of the plants. I told Mom that I knew squirrels were getting into the garden. She tried to assure me they have no interest in anything in that garden but though I’d never seen one troubling a plant of ours, I found squirrels suspicious and I believed what I believed.  My mom let me select one flower, fruit or veggie from her seed catalog once a year, and that year I picked "Blue Boy Bachelor's Button". The catalog told me it would sprout in seven to fourteen short days, which was the crucial selling point for me. Each planting season’s rite – worry and wait. On the eighth day of undisturbed soil I despaired, for not once had my annual seeds become anything but seeds. The ninth morning I moped out our back door toward our quaint garden whereupon sat a white and orange tabby cat with its tail tucked into a hole in the ground; just where my Blue Boy Bachelor's Button was supposed to bloom. As I squatted beside her, she rubbed her face against my knee a few times and smiled deep into the backs of my eyes. I had said "please, please, please, let me, let me get what I want..." and - here. A Blue Boy she ain’t, but a blessing among myriad blessings; the grand design at play through the failed years! 

One night my new love was basking gently by the fire as her fur warmed. She sneezed cutely and my mom and I smiled to each other. She sneezed again with a great jerk of the head, stunning herself. She sneezed again – abruptly and quite loudly; each of us started as if a heavy door had been slammed shut. Then this cat sneezed explosively a fourth time into the fireplace which scattered the room with ash and cinders. Mom swaddled my infant brother in his burp-stained yellow blanket and bursting through the back door, laid him oblivious on the porch’s loveseat. Frozen and aghast, I stared as my dad was unskilled with the extinguisher, frantically blasting the sofa and carpet. I watched teary-eyed on the screened-in porch as Mom lugged my tabby by the nape of her neck across the back yard and into the woods, hastening back toward the house empty-handed and without regret. As we cleaned up inside, I heard cracking limbs and I felt thuds of toppled trunks. Rushing gusts recalling the great summer storms of the 90's. I heard sirens. My dad ordered us to huddle in the downstairs bathroom for it was the only room with no windows. We held a brief and decisive family meeting. Brave Father commandeered the truck. Mom sat shotgun with my brother swaddled giggling and drooling in her arms. I occupied the jump seat behind Dad, which was always my spot, thrillingly serving now as my Official Post. A three-foot tall green metal tank laid in the bed. We bounced along a familiar access road a mile, a mile and a half - through my inch-cracked window, I hollered "There!".  My dad evacuated, disappearing into the dust cloud raised by the dually’s sudden halt. I heard the truck's back shocks screak as he jumped up in the bed and opened the valve on the tank.  One of my big black pine cone bags hissed as it plumped with helium. With a festival-sized black balloon straying behind him, Dad army-crawled a hundred yards across the leaves and bark on his stealth mission to deweaponize my beloved yet violently allergic tabby cat. The gales blew his long hair straight flat back and his rosy jowls flubbered as he drew near his target. He wrangled the feline into something like a rear naked choke, holding its back to his belly as he tied the helium-filled garbage bag to her long and handsome tail. With the greatest of all her sneezes, achooing a crater in the dry forest floor, she propelled herself above the loblollies, above the grey geese, carried lovingly by our family’s crafty zeppelin to a place easier on her sinuses, that's what I prayed for. My mom the next week took me along to choose a houseplant from among many houseplants and she held up a houseplant and she said to me, "This is a houseplant and that's all it'll be."