Midnight Musings: Adopted by a cat

The tortoiseshell tabby kitten appeared next door a couple of years ago. We were new to the Island, living in the apartment above Star’s Café, and we noticed a ghost of a cat lurking around Sweet Tomato’s deck. She had beautiful markings, black, orange and brown swirled together with a vest of white fur and delicate white-glove paws.

She looked hungry and too thin so we started leaving food for her. On constant alert, she’d take one bite, look around, take another and if we tried to approach her, she fled.

Gradually we moved the food up the stairs leading to our apartment. One time, we startled her and she ran up the stairs, onto the railing, jumped up and across the roof and down a tree. Like a flash, there and then gone.

She grew bold enough to eat on our deck; she was small, about four or five months old and alone. We never saw any family.

Winter was coming and my son decided to try to lure her into the house. When the storm door was closed, there was a gap between the bottom of the door and the wooden door jamb and he’d slide a piece of cheese into the slot. She’d reach in the opening with her paw and pull the food out, gobbling it down. The door must have offered a measure of security she could live with.

One day he left the door open with the food just inside. It took her awhile to build up her courage but one night she stepped inside the house and approached the bowl as if on tiptoes.

We were sitting in the living room, pretending not to watch. “Look,” he whispered. “She’s in the house.”

After that, she’d come in the house, eat and leave. She was ours but not really, belonging more to herself than any human.

During the winter, we moved to the apartment next door above  Wish Rock gallery and were worried that she wouldn’t find us. It took her about an hour to realize where we’d gone. The new apartment didn’t have outside steps so she’d climb the tree next to the house, walk across the peaked roof and come in through the bathroom window — just like the Beatles song. We’d look around, notice her there and just as quickly she was gone.

That cold winter, we had to leave the bathroom window open because she seemed to feel safer if she had a quick escape. When snow fell, she’d pick her way over the white roof, shaking her paws free of the cold stuff, jump onto the big radiator and then to the floor. If she was inside and the window was closed, she’d wait anxiously for someone to open it, pause at its threshold, look in every direction and then exit.

We were the only people she wasn’t afraid of. She’d run under the bed if anyone came to visit and when a friend came to fix the storm door, she streaked into the woods and didn’t return until hours later.

Just before spring, she got pregnant. This small cat would lay in the middle of the living room floor, her belly swelled with golf ball-sized heads. We wondered where she’d have her babies; she was still half-feral and most comfortable outdoors. She wasn’t allowed to sleep in our bedroom but one night, she made her way in and lay down at the foot of the bed. Restless, she kept moving around, waking me, and finally she jumped down and crawled underneath the bed, and in the middle of the night, gave birth to three kittens.

We peeked under the bed the next morning. She reclined, serene as a cat madonna, nursing her tiny, hairless babies. For a cat who didn’t have a mother for long, she knew how to be a good one. She kept them clean and didn’t mind when all three sucked off her small body.

She’d leave her nest under the bed long enough to eat and go outside, then crawl back under.

Early in the summer, we moved to a house a couple of blocks away. She would follow us on our walks like a dog and one day, she stretched out in a stranger’s driveway and wouldn’t get up. We called, trying to coax her but she ignored us. We left her there, thinking she’d make her way home. She didn’t. Our half- feral cat had gone back to the dark side. We put up signs, we asked our neighbors. No one had seen her. We were afraid she’d gotten hit by a car. Where Grand and Chase avenues meet is one of the busiest intersections on the Island, with all of the cars climbing the hill from the North Ferry.

Summer turned into fall, the weather grew colder and still she didn’t come home. On the night the time changed, and darkness fell early with the chill of oncoming winter, my son and I decided to meet my husband after work and walk home. As we reached the gallery we used to live above, we all stopped talking at once, thinking we’d heard something. “That sounded like our cat,” my son said. We called to her. Finally she came out from underneath the bushes. She seemed to recognize us but she’d gone wild, used to fleeing at the sight of a human.

My son lay on his stomach on the sidewalk, reaching out to her. Gradually, she crept towards him, allowing him to pet her. She wouldn’t let him pick her up so we walked home with her, threading between our legs, scenting us.

Sometimes we all need a little help to find our way home.

The Prodigal Cat drank cat milk and ate as much food as we poured into her bowl. Who knew what she’d been eating in the four months she’d been gone? Small animals, garbage. Enough to survive. We wished that she’d worn a miniature camera around her neck so we could see her travels. She never said where she’d been.

She hasn’t run away since. Though we live in a house with both front and back stairs, she prefers to climb the huge cherry tree that hangs over our deck to wait at the back door. When she’s able to sneak into the bedroom, she disappears into the curtains, invisible except for her purring.

She’ll never truly be a house cat — she still prefers the outdoors — but she seems content to live with us. Love, with an eye on the open door.