You enter into a certain amount of madness when you marry a person with cats.
Nora Ephron
I was on a hillside whipped by wind, soaked in dew, beyond disgusted, all because of that wretched cat. I'd only opened the door for a moment. I'd been groggy with motel sleep, eight hundred miles from our last night's bed, so I wasn't thinking clearly.
I had been in the rented box of a room, and I needed something real to look at for a few moments. But when I opened the door there was nothing but sky and highway―gray on gray with scrub bush in-between.
I closed the door just as Lisa was coming turbaned out of the bathroom.
This was the big trip, her return to Winnipeg from Montreal where she had what she repeatedly called "the best year of my life."
My mail and phone campaign had coaxed her to return. Now, packing hopes, memories and her smoky tortoiseshell cat into my station wagon, we were heading back west together. She had been reluctant to leave, dawdling for sips of café au lait, strolling down the boulevard of St. Denis to sigh au revoir and kiss her friends on both cheeks as they eyed me with deepest suspicion.
It was a little later that we discovered the cat was missing from the motel room. "I only opened the door for thirty seconds," I pleaded.
"That's all it takes," she snapped.
That's all it took to feel like a complete failure. Eternal vigilance, the price of loving a woman with a cat.
Moreover, it was no ordinary cat. Not when it had been raised by Lisa, the social worker. Its every response had been scrutinized. A nap in the pantry was a sulk, a scratch on the hand was a plea for attention, a walk out the window onto the second-story ledge was a suicide attempt and cause for Lisa to cancel our date.
"I should have seen it coming," she'd said. "Chloe's been alone too much."
And how would Lisa analyze this blunder during our very act of moving together? A cat's jealous rejection? A dark flaw in my character? This could affect our future together. I had to find that cat.
We called out in cat sounds along the bushes. I prodded the underbrush. It opened into a jungly ravine. Where would I go if I were a cat?
"She's gone!" Lisa cried into the wind. "I just know she's gone! I loved her so much!"
If only I had a reputation for being reliable―for locking doors and mailing letters, finding my car in a parking lot―but I didn't.
Ashamed, I stared into bush and vines thinking how Chloe was really just a vulnerable creature, frightened of the car, anxious in the cage. She just wanted some peace. I could empathize. A quiet rabbit hole, soft leaves. She could sleep for days. And so could I.
But we were late. We had to meet the movers. We had family waiting and friends taking time off work to help. We had jobs.
I crashed into the ravine. Never mind the branches and nettles. Scratches were good. Blood could draw sympathy.
Could that cat really want to linger in this wilderness? She was a consumer cat, supermarket-wise in the ways of Kat Chow and Miss Mew. What did she know about hunting mice and sparrows?
Then I stumbled through the tangles and discovered another world. It was a housing development―streets with names like Buttercup Bay and Peony Drive and children on skateboards staring at my muddied clothes.
"Hi, kids." They looked suspicious. "I lost my cat." They stayed frozen. "I'll give you fifty bucks to find her."
Sudden acceptance. "Wow! Was it black?"
"She's smoky tortoiseshell grey. She has a hot-pink collar with toy sunglasses attached."
"I saw her!" hollered one of them. "She was right here. I knew I should have grabbed her!" The boy was furious with himself. Never again would he let a cat get away. He'd pack his garage with them for years to come. The kids scrambled into full alert.
I found Lisa and told her Chloe was spotted up the hill from the motel. She suddenly came to life. "That tramp!" she said. "What's she doing way up there?" Where there is anger, there is hope. Where there is hope, there is action. We put up reward posters, knocked on doors, phoned the local vet and police. As the day wore on, we left a reward if she was found later, hired someone to drive her to the airport, arranged plane fare and a flight cage.
We finally ate. The fast-food franchise overlooked the development. We watched children on skateboards and bikes cruising the lanes below. Some were checking shrubs, trampling a flowerbed. It was comforting.
We were both pretty quiet. Lisa finally spoke, "She was a good cat."
"Lisa, it's not over."
"She can live here okay. As long as she finds someone to care about her."
"I wish we could find her," I said. "I'd give more than money."
Lisa lowered her eyes. "I've been bargaining in my head. ‘Give me back Chloe and I'll be better to my mother. I'll do volunteer work.'" And then she added, looking straight at me, "And I'll stop blaming you."
My secret thought welled up. "I've been making all this into a test. Lose the cat, lose Lisa. Find the cat, keep Lisa. I'm almost ready to give up everything―the move, the house, whatever. I guess I can't handle tests."
Lisa cupped her hand as if she were speaking to me through a microphone. "This is not a test. I repeat. This is not a test." We smiled to each other. "I'm not coming back for you," she said. "I'm coming back for us."
Dusk was settling in. The hills were gray―smoky, tortoiseshell gray. Chloe was nowhere, but it felt as if she were everywhere.
We were already packed so it didn't take long to clear the motel room. I only had to call the radio stations and leave an announcement about Chloe. Lisa took out the last bag.
That was when Chloe appeared. She simply walked out from under the bed, blinking in the light. She had been asleep inside the box spring all that time. It seems there was an opening we couldn't see. Lisa shrieked. The cat fled back into the mattress but we pulled her out. Then we left in a run.
As we pulled out of the motel driveway, we saw a pack of kids heading up the hill towards us. They probably had cats with them. At least two or three. We didn't stop to check. We already had everything we needed.