Chester

The soft trill of the bell above the door echoes through the shelter, and my whole body stiffens. It’s 10:00AM on a Wednesday, which means that Mrs. Melbourne is here for her routine visit. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I can be sure of her melodramatic presence, with her cloud of emotional theatrics trailing behind her. 

It’s not that she is a particularly bad person, or that she is cruel to the cats under my care here at my rescue, Feline Feelin’ Fine. But it is difficult to entertain any other adoptions while she carries on in the background, gravitating to one cantankerous old cat and pouring out her heart and tears while the other cats and customers awkwardly pretend not to notice. It’s always the same, gushing lines:

“Oh, you’re such a sweet boy, keep eating and get strong!”

“A bad heart doesn’t mean a bad soul, now does it?”

“You’re just as good as everyone else. Never forget that!”

“You remind me so much of my Chester.”

Mrs. Melbourne is oblivious to the writhing of the old cat in her lap, who truly wants little to do with her, only tolerating her visits in order to obtain the coveted treats hidden within her purse. He growls and hisses, sometimes even swatting at her hand as she lovingly tries to stroke his head. 

I monitor these visits closely, not because I am worried for Mrs. Melbourne, but because the cat who has the misfortune of being the target of her heat-seeking love missiles also has a heart condition, and cannot tolerate too much excitement. This is what makes him grumpy, and I have resigned myself to the fact that he is largely unadoptable. But what I cannot come to grips with is the thought of Mrs. Melbourne in my shelter 3 times each week, wailing and carrying on over him until the day he finally dies. 

Today is no different, and I walk into the main visiting room to see her smothering the poor, frazzled creature in her bosom, burying her face in his back fur. Muffled cries of a surprised and disgusted animal emanate from her chest, which only serves to strengthen her grip. 

“Mrs. Melbourne, I know you love this cat, but he is a bit fragile. Maybe you could let him breathe for a moment?”

She looks up at me, blinking away the reality to which she had temporarily escaped, only now noticing my presence. 

“Now, now, he has a heart condition, but he still deserves love! I cannot let him be without love.”

I sigh. We have been through this same conversation loop so many times, that I almost say her lines for her. I would make a great understudy for the play, “Mrs. Melbourne Visits the Cat Shelter…Again.” 

“Oh, would you look at the time? 10:30 already. Isn’t this about the time that you need to go?”

She looks at the clock on the wall, then at her watch, as if she distrusts time itself as being accurate. 

“I suppose you’re right.” She sighs and puts the cat down. He immediately makes a beeline for the nearest hiding place he can find. 

“I’ll be back again in a couple of days!” She turns to me. “He reminds me so much of my Chester.”

I smile and nod, as I do every time she says this. Secretly, I wonder what about this awful cat reminds her of her deceased pet, Chester, and why she would ever want to relive that experience. I love cats, but some of them are jerks, and this old boy makes it his business to be as hateful as possible.

A weight lifts as she walks out the door and out of my hair for another 48 hours, and I can return to managing my business. I go to clean the visiting area, spray bottle in one hand and disinfecting wipes in the other, when Mrs. Melbourne bounds through the door once more, her face lost in her smile. 

“I get an extra 30 minutes today! They are running behind,” she says as she breezes past me in search of her furry target. She spots him hiding in the safety of a scratching post tree cubby, his tail sticking out and betraying him. She plunges her hands into the cubby and wrenches him from his sanity, sending him into a tornado of spit, hissing, and howls. Desperately she clings to him by his tail as he spins, clawing at the air.

“MRS. MELBOURNE! PUT. HIM. DOWN.” I am surprised by the volume of my own voice, and so is Mrs. Melbourne and the cat, who stops spinning long enough to stare at me with eyes as wide as his captor’s. Slowly, she lowers him to the floor and lets go of his tail, allowing him to sputter-step away, falling over himself in his hurried desire to retreat.

She lowers her head, ashamed and aware of herself. “I…I’m sorry. It’s just that I had an extra 30 minutes today, and I thought…”

“Honestly, Mrs. Melbourne, that cat doesn’t want much to do with you for the time you are here already, let alone an extra dose of visitation. I know that you are aware that he has a heart condition, and can’t be upset like that.”

Tears well up in her eyes, and she stands like a scolded child in the middle of the room, shifting from foot to foot. Even though I feel I am right, I also begin to feel a bit guilty. She is an old woman, after all, and I know she means no harm, even if she is a pain.

“Mrs. Melbourne, why do you come here every week, so regularly, to visit a cat who hates everyone? And if you like him so well, despite that, why not adopt him?”

Tears flow down the wrinkles on her face, and she turns to look out the window, sniffling as she speaks. “My husband has dialysis 3 times per week. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. He has an allergy to cat dander, so I can’t adopt one, and he needs 24-hour company to monitor his medical needs, so I can’t leave the house except when I take him to dialysis. I have enough time on those days to come here, go back home to shower, tend to a few errands, then pick him up again.”

I begin to feel more like the bad guy in this situation, but my pride pushes me to continue the interrogation. “That still doesn’t fully answer my question. Why this cat?”

Mrs. Melbourne turns to me and smiles a weak, nostalgic smile. “Because of Chester.”

“Oh, yes, your cat that passed away.”

“Oh no, Chester wasn’t a cat,” she says, chuckling lightly. “He was my son.”

Now it is clear that I am, indeed, the jerk, and I feel like crawling into the hole alongside my feline counterpart. 

“Chester was disabled, he was born that way, and never lived a completely normal life. He had a developmental delay, and his mind only processed at the level of a 6 year-old. He also had a serious heart condition, and he required my constant attention.”

Mrs. Melbourne walks over to the seating area and lowers herself into a chair, suddenly aware of her own fatigue. I notice the deep lines in her hands, the age spots dotting her skin, and the silver hairs shadowing the gaunt shape of her face. She has always appeared old, but now she looks ancient-of-days, like a weathered Aztec temple.

“Chester was also a bit of a grump, and who could blame him? He never felt well, and so very often he would feel defeated by all that life had handed him. But he was my reason for living, my driving force. I put all of my energy into bringing him every joy that I could, encouraging him to be more than what other people saw in him. I would always tell him the same things to bring a smile to his face:

“Oh, you’re such a sweet boy, keep eating and get strong!”

“A bad heart doesn’t mean a bad soul, now does it?”

“You’re just as good as everyone else. Never forget that!”

“You will always be my perfect Chester.”

She pauses for a moment, willingly lost in a pleasant memory of who she once was. It is now my turn to feel shame. My cheeks rouge under the heat of my humiliation, as I realize how belittling and calloused I have been toward someone who is deeply grieving in the best way she can manage.

She looks up at me, her eyes forming into watery crescents as the pain of her past catches up with her. “Chester passed away a couple of years ago, and while my husband needs me for safety reasons, he doesn’t need me to encourage him, or hold his hand, or make the world seem brighter. He doesn’t want those things from me. When I happened into your shelter one day and saw that cat, and saw that he had a heart condition, I thought that maybe I had found a way to be useful again.”

Unable to hold them back any longer, I feel the familiar warmth of tears spilling over my cheeks, cooling them from their embarrassment. I am so grateful that Mrs. Melbourne came back, so that I can fully see the amazing spirit that she is. I feel lucky to have her grace my presence, and even luckier that she chooses my rescue every week. 

A sudden spark, a flash of remembrance jolts through my brain. A Facebook message from earlier in the day, sent by another, overwhelmed shelter…

“Mrs. Melbourne, do you have a few more moments to spare? I need to make a phone call, but you and I have more to discuss.”

She nods. I make my phone call, then sit down with her and listen to more stories of Chester, his courage, and her grace. Several minutes go by, when the bell above the door rings once again. A woman from another local shelter has arrived, with a cat carrier in hand. I reach out for the carrier, and present it to Mrs. Melbourne.

“This is Petie. He is a cat from the county shelter a few minutes down the road. They can’t provide what he needs, because he also has a heart condition, which is why they reached out to me earlier today.”

Mrs. Melbourne smiles politely, but is obviously confused. “I am not sure what this has to do with me, although I am sure he is a lovely cat.”

I open the carrier and reach for Petie. “Well, for one thing, Petie is a very sweet and loving cat,” I say. “And for another…”

Mrs. Melbourne gasps and looks at me with the delight of a child at Christmas as I pull the cat out for her to see. She understands now, nodding her head in response to me asking her to adopt Petie, before I have the chance to form the words, and reaches for the purring companion.

“He’s hairless!”