A Cat Named Disaster

Someone left the lid off the sandbox again.

The Artful Dodger has at least two younger sisters, but he might have ten for all I know because they never stand still enough to be counted. They all cut through between my house and the haunted one to get to the school bus stop in the mornings, and I don’t mind. They love the garden and are convinced I’m some kind of farmer, and I’m glad to foster their interest in agriculture. But they come to play when nobody’s home sometimes, like Peter Rabbit visiting the McGregors’ place. The other day I woke up to find the last of the nearly ripe tomatoes missing. And when the Artful Dodger hides in Adrienne’s old sandbox for a prank, he always forgets to put the lid on.

When the lid stays off the sandbox all night, the neighborhood strays use it as a cat box. There were fresh, noxious presents waiting for me to scoop out, for the third time in a week.

I met the responsible cat later that day, when Jimmy’s Boy came to help in the garden. Jimmy had to go to the store and his wife wasn’t in, so I asked the boy to come put the garden to bed with me until they got back. I gave him the job of jumping up and down on old cardboard boxes to flatten them, while I shoveled black compost into the wheelbarrow. Back and forth I went, pouring the fluffy black compost over the tired gray soil. Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust ; in sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life. 

A tiny gray kitten, with white gloves and a white mask, padded his way into the garden from the alley. Before I could shoo him off, he delicately squatted over the sand.

It was Jimmy’s boy who scooped him up and snuggled him while I shouted at him not to touch a stray.

“It’s the Artful Dodger’s cat,” said Jimmy’s boy.

I remembered that the Artful Dodger and his sisters had been feeding a stray kitten, whom they called Sparkles but whom Jimmy’s boy called “Disaster Cat Astroy Astroy.” The cat named Disaster went limp like a dish rag instead of fighting as he was lifted up right in the middle of his business. He purred in Jimmy’s Boy’s arms, until Jimmy’s boy set him down under the lilac bush.

Jimmy’s boy and I chatted about what we’d plant to overwinter and what we’d try to plant next summer. The boy made his father buy me a bare-root grape vine he saw on clearance in the garden section of the grocery store; it’s still sitting in my living room while I try to figure out where to trellis grapes. I badly want some blackberry canes for the brick planter where nothing grows well. I have grand plans for a pollinator patch near that rose bush that I bought last May. And if the landlord’s handyman ever gets here to cut those trees, we’ll have plenty of room for a front planter as well.

If I won a small cash prize, I’d have enough to buy this house and paint the wood paneling to make it nice. I would love to do that. Houses around here regularly sell for only five figures because nobody wants to live in Northern Appalachia, except me.

If I won the Powerball, I’d buy this house. I’d buy the haunted house and bulldoze it to the ground, and put in a little orchard. Maybe I’d also buy the house of the cross neighbors on the other side of the haunted house, the ones with the Blue Lives Matter flag, who glare at me when I walk by. I’d give them a fair price for it. Other than that, the neighbors on this block are friendly and I hope they never move.  With a triple lot, I’d have room for an orchard AND a little koi pond, with a small flock of runner ducks. Duck eggs are delicious to eat and to bake with. I borrowed a hen for a few weeks last year, but she is back with her proper owners now. I want a flock of ducks.

Right now I’ve got a guinea pig, a teenager, and a flock of feral Appalachian children who leave the sandbox open, and it isn’t a bad life.

Jimmy’s boy smashed the boxes. I got a third of the garden nicely bedded down for next year: a layer of compost on top of the soil, and then flat cardboard weighed down with a brick on top of the compost. I’ll finish the rest once the Autumn beans have quite finished. At this rate, we won’t have a frost until after Halloween anyway. And then he came inside for a peanut butter sandwich, and we played with Adrienne’s old craft supplies.

The next day, the Artful Dodger and his sisters were walking with their mother to the market just as I got home. One of them was crying and another was teasing her for crying. The toddler, whom I hadn’t met yet, walked up to me and gave me a hug just to get acquainted, and the older girl laughed at her as well. I had just gotten back from reading stories to children at an outreach downtown, and I had my bag of suckers I used for bribes, still half full. I was going to offer the crying girl a sucker, but she’d already cheered up before I found them in my purse.

That night, after dark, I went out for a little shopping. Before I could get in my car, Disaster Cat came padding up the sidewalk and ran figure eights between my feet. He curled around one ankle and then the other. He mewed in a friendly way. He started to walk forward and then back to see if I’d follow. And then he laid down on one side, expectant.

I remembered that time I needed rabies shots in the middle of a pandemic, because I petted a stray cat that I thought was one of Jimmy’s. A ghost of a grief that used to be much stronger appeared. In August of 2020 when I went to the emergency room, I hadn’t yet been diagnosed with poly-cystic ovary syndrome. I was convinced that this particular late period was a genuine pregnancy that just hadn’t shown up on a test yet. The hospital test crushed my hope, and I cried for a long time. Now I have no hope at all. Adrienne is my firstborn and my last.

All I wanted was to be a mother of a great big household of children. And that will never happen.

I bent over and stroked Disaster Cat’s belly.

He batted my wrist with his paws– but playfully, with the claws in. I stroked again, and he batted again, meowing, having a good time.

When I got back with my bags, he was still there– sitting up perfectly still like a gargoyle on my front step.

I picked him up and snuggled him as Jimmy’s boy had done. We stayed on the porch for a long time, watching the stars come out.

In the morning, as I left to take Adrienne to school, Disaster Cat was asleep on my porch, curled up inside the spare tire Jimmy dug out of the car. And then one of those little girls was on the porch. She didn’t say anything; she merely stopped to give her cat a goodbye hug, before hurrying down the block to catch the bus.

Sometimes God gives you what you longed for, in a different way than you thought.

Mary Pezzulo is the author of Meditations on the Way of the Cross, The Sorrows and Joys of Mary, and Stumbling into Grace: How We Meet God in Tiny Works of Mercy.