The Second Cat Megapack. George Zebrowski
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under the skin, with no empty places under the skin and fur. He just didn’t have front claws. His hind ones were there, needing trimming in fact, but the front paws were free of crescent-shaped nails. Holding the cat’s paws dose to her bifocals, Arlene saw that there weren’t even any holes where the claws could come out.
Letting go of Silky’s feet, Arlene said, “Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me. I won’t let that mean old doctor make fun of you, call you a freak. She’d probably call you a mutant, or worse.”
But as she sat on the lowered lid in the bathroom, listening to her other pets mill around in the hallway beyond the closed bathroom door, Arlene hugged Silky close as she wondered, What else might be wrong with him…inside?
* * * *
Once Silky was free of the roundworms the doctor found in his stool sample, and Arlene was satisfied that he carried no fleas, she let him have the run of her small home. Initially there was a lot of hissing, barking, pissing, and scratching, but within a week Silky had settled in beautifully. Within two weeks the older cats were fighting over whose turn it was to wash his cavernous ears, while the dogs took turns chasing an old wiffle ball around the floor with him.
Silky learned to wait with the others for breakfast, while Arlene combed the streets and alleys, looking for cans and whatever else was there waiting to be found, taken home, and utilized. Once she even found a rubber jingle ball (along with a couple of almost perfect Ekco pizza pans). And July turned into August, which turned into September (which felt like October; Arlene blamed all those space shuttles NASA sent up to foul up the jet stream and ozone layer), and Silky was now one of the family…albeit a slightly lonely member of the family.
The dogs were all over seven years old, and tired quickly, while the next-youngest cat was Guy-Pie, at five years old. At first he had been Silky’s “best buddy,” but then Arlene noticed how Guy-Pie had trouble swallowing, and even more trouble breathing. Respiratory infection, she told herself, and tried to take his temperature, but the tortoise-shell cat bucked and kicked like a bronco horse when she tried to do that, so she gave him amoxicillin drops that looked like watered-down Pepto-Bismal and smelled like cherries. (She always kept a bottle of dry amoxicillin powder on hand.)
Guy-Pie took the amoxi without complaint, but he didn’t get any better. Putting her ear to his ribcage, Arlene heard a strange hooting and whistling, and said to herself, Pneumonia…or perhaps pyothorax. They’re always fighting over some little thing, nipping ears and tails…maybe someone bit Guy-Pie in the chest and I didn’t notice. Guy-Pie has never been a complainer.…
It wasn’t pneumonia, and it wasn’t pyothorax. The cat’s temperature was normal, but his X-ray wasn’t. The other veterinarian, Dr. Mertz, was as gentle with Arlene as if the old woman was his own mother.
“It’s a tumor in his upper chest. It’s pressing against his heart and thorax. I don’t think he’s in pain, but I can give him cortisone pills for the duration. Now there’s a slight, and I do mean very slight chance that it might be an abscess, although I can’t find any healed scars on his chest wall. I have this medication, clindamycin hydrochloride—”
Guy-Pie fought this clear, bitter-smelling new medicine, but he didn’t cry or complain after Arlene squirted it down his throat twice a day. Once, he did jerk his head, and a drop of the liquid touched Arlene’s lips. It was vile, the way paint thinner or ammonia probably tasted. Making herself lick her bitter lips clean, Arlene cried, “Oh, Guy-Pie, I’m so sorry…but I have to give it the old college try, don’t I? Don’t we?” and hugged the trim dark cat with the little upturned nose and big frightened green eyes close to her flannel shirt. And as she cried into Guy-Pie’s smooth tan stippled black coat, Silky watched her from where he sat on the counter, small eyes solemn.
And for a month, then two, Guy-Pie ate, still lost weight, kept on taking his pale orange pills, yet never complained, while Arlene forsook her daily Dumpster dives, telling herself that the recycling truck only came every other week anyhow, and that she didn’t need to gather as many cans.
The older cats and dogs took turns sleeping next to Guy-Pie; washing his head and ears, purring for him when he could no longer purr for himself. The tumor grew; his chest swelled in either direction. Silky tried to wash his friend into activity, until he realized what was up (or so Arlene let herself believe) and merely slept next to his cobby-bodied friend, waiting.
And when Guy-Pie ate no longer, even after Arlene rubbed the soft smelly food on his ever-paler gums, she wrapped him in a blanket which she held against one shoulder, while she carried the old black gym bag she’d found near the middle school in her free hand.
She couldn’t bear to let people see her carrying a dead cat through town on the way home.
* * * *
November wind, sharp and silvery pure as a freshly honed blade, whistled through the little gaps where Arlene’s scarf and thin gray hair met. She was walking along the curved spur of tracks near the depot, past the place where Dean Avenue curved out in the opposite direction to the west, scanning the rusted tracks for the right stones. Guy-Pie was a good cat, a beautiful cat. He deserved the finest stones to cover the flattened round of disturbed earth in the backyard. Her pea-coat pockets were heavy and hung low with the rocks she’d already found. Grays, pink-grays, and jagged bits studded with shimmers of mica. (The shine of those stones reminded Arlene of the liquid green light in the back of Guy-Pie’s eyes, just before the injection—)
Not worried that a train would run over her (the Soo Line had been sold years before, and the buying company cut out the Ewerton runs), Arlene followed the gentle curve to the west, walking stiff-legged down the middle of the boards, her feet moving in a strange gait as her feet sought out each nearest plank. Tracks aren’t made for walking, a calm part of her mind thought, as an old image came back to her. Guy-Pie as a kitten, dignified even in his hunger and footsore condition, as he stood on her front porch. Such a pretty kitten, not long and scrawny like most adolescent cats, but perfectly formed and solemn. And how the other kitties had taken to him, with none of that nose-out-of-joint tomfoolery.
(“—he’s had five good years, Mrs. Campbell, that’s the most anyone could’ve done for him. And remember, he had a recessed testicle when you found him, and if that had remained inside him, he would’ve been dead in a year from cancer. You gave him years he wouldn’t have had. And he was good to your other cats, and that new kitten of yours too—”)
And he’d even sat quiet while she plucked off all the fleas that survived his shampoo. Guy-Pie was the best kitty she’d ever had, until Silky came along, at least. And while Silky wasn’t like Guy-Pie, not in a lot of ways, he was good in his own way.
It had almost done her in when she brought Guy-Pie home, and placed him on the floor, then dragged the other animals over to see him. She had read once that that was important, making sure that the other animals in a household knew that one of their friends was gone. The dogs howled and took off after seeing him, and most of the cats did likewise, except for Silky. He had reached out one white paw to touch Guy-Pie’s flank, and when his friend didn’t respond, Silky let his head hang down but didn’t leave Guy-Pie’s side.
Pausing to dry her leaking eyes (it’s the wind, cuts like a razor it does), Arlene realized that she’d walked well past Dean Avenue, all the way up to the depot. The old rust and cream painted building was abandoned now, with the warped boards showing through fine-grained and silvery in the pale sunlight. On the side facing her were all the old wrought-iron benches bolted to the concrete platform, and above the benches was a multicolored flutter of paper; all sizes, shapes, and shades, attached with thumbtacks, tape, and staples.
After the Soo buyout, people began to treat the old depot like the world’s largest message board, putting up layer after layer of paper which grew rust-runneled after a good rain. Shoving her chapped hands into her already full pockets, Arlene stepped across the rusted rail and made her way toward the gravel and stone studded dead grass which lay between the rails and the depot.
Some of the posters were weeks, months old, and wind-worn, while others (written on lined notebook