Curiosity Killed The Cat

I'm busy as shit this summer. Hardly any time for the beach between two jobs and nine credits, but I'm making it work. I think to myself, hey, it's not so bad, you've got a pool. People love pools, you could make the pool work for you. If you close your eyes and make Jamie splash around a lot, it might even sound like the ocean. Kind of. So, no sooner do I think of this sweet solution and head to my parents, sunnies in tote and one piece ready (cause that's how I roll), I'm practically skipping into the backyard due to utter excitement, and what do I find? NOTHING. Just a big vast patch of dirt, fully equipped with tiny turds sprinkled about.. I ask my mother, "WHERE THE FUCK IS THE POOL?" "Oh, you mean Ellie's litter box. It's coming in 7 to 10 business days, about 11 business days ago." Damn it.

Flash forward about 20 fucking business days later and like a beacon a light in a dark and dreary summer from hell I see an unfamiliar truck in the driveway it can only mean one thing: Pool boys, aw hell yeah. Things are looking up again. Sexy, sweaty twenty somethings hauling ass, installing my summer oasis! Three of em'! All for the oggling! "Danielle, close your jaw, bugs are flying in" warned my father. "Uh, right.. erm, will do." I began to fantasize about all the summer fun I'd soon be having now that the pool was here. I pictured barbeques with my friends, sunbathing with an iced tea blasting a cool and popular song sure to make the less fortunate neighbors jealous. I'd see them peering over the fence, pretending to water their plants, oozing with envy as I splished about on my floatie. I was going to be living the high life.

But installation took longer than expected. Pool boys don't work like they used to and ours cut out a little early that night. They left the summer wonderland a few inches full and bounced, thinking "ah, we'll fill it tomorrow." Can you see where this is going yet? Are you cringing? Should I continue? Well, some time in the night little Ellie climbed into her "giant litter box" thinking it was empty. You've heard that cats don't like water right? It's because they can't fucking swim. It's not called the kitty paddle, is it? No, no it is not. She used up all her nine lives, one by one, fighting like hell to get out and drowned. To be fair she wasn't very bright, I once watched her jump from the fence to the deck only to miss, smack her head and tank it. Some cats don't always land on their feet. I loved her dearly regardless. Ready for the silver lining, or should I say, lack there of fucking lining? She tore it to shit. The new pool, "my summer oasis", is leaking rapidly. Not that we call it that anymore, now we just call it "the stigma." Yep, so now I have a dead cat and a broken pool. Things are good over here.

It's my own fault really for leaving her with my parents in the first place. See, they aren't cat people. They have a dog, Jerry, he has hobbit feet and a square back. He looks most like my mother. It is no secret that he is their favorite, sometimes I hear my mother in the kitchen talking to him: "Jerry, you are my favorite, no one understands me, have a piece of cheese." Do I ever get a piece of cheese for listening to her bitch about work for 45 minutes? No. Do I ever get a piece of cheese for growing my toe hair out to an offensive length? No. I'm just as cute as Jerry, I smell just as foul as Jerry, but still, she loves him more. And he totally gloats about it, just fucking wallows in the glory of being the favorite. He likes to lay right at her feet at the dinner table, and he likes to sleep in her room, and he likes to sit near my parents when we watch TV and he's been doing it for years.

 Please note my mother's reflection staring lovingly at him.

The only logical thing to do when someone doesn't love you is to abandon them and find someone who will. Fucking, cut your losses and move on. Don't dwell about the cheese. I knew I would never be a part of Jerry and my mother's lives, I needed something to call my own. The first time I asked for a cat was in elementary school. His name was Midnight. I don't remember much about him other than the fact that he gave my mother Ringworm, and I was forced to bring him to the pound shortly after we brought him home.  When we arrived, my mother whispered something to the attendee which prompted her to bring us into the back room where there was one lonely sleeping cat. He didn't move. He didn't look at us, or want to play and his cage read "bad with children." We brought him home. I would find out years later that it was not Midnight who gave my mother Ringworm, nor cats or kittens at all, but rather the flea and tick medication she slathers Jerry in ritually. I try to not hold a grudge.

Nala stayed with us for years, he was 22 years old when my mother murdered him. Starvation and abandonment was the method. She once tried to leave him on the side of the road, but he found his way back. The final time, she posted signs on the doors to our home: "no cats allowed, dogs only." He liked no one and pissed on everything to remind us. His appearance teetered between mangy and walking corpse, patches of his fur would fall off in clumps. He was missing a portion of his left ear. His claws stopped retracting sometime after the millennium, so he often stuck to whatever he was walking across. He had a perpetual stream of snot pouring from his nose at all times; if he wiped it on me, I called it cuddling. His purr sounded a lot like a broken lawn mower or someone with emphysema trying to laugh. He was my best friend.

My sister learned quickly that Jerry was not the "family pet" he was supposed to be. She too, asked for obscure replacements. A tropical fish collection one year, hamsters another. We both settled on Figgs. A sister kitten to our neighbor's cat Domino. Figgs was the perfect cat, she cuddled. She used the litter box. It's easy to be the perfect cat when you're comparing yourself to Nala, who she got along with swimmingly, by the way. But sure enough, I went on vacation and as soon as I came home, what do you think? Gone. "Thunder storm, we tried to get her in, oh I'm so sorry, nothing we could do, no more Figgs." Another one down the tube.

After this tragedy, I figured I better just stick to Nala, who was essentially Rasputin and would probably let every one of his limbs rot off before actually dying. Amazing stamina to withstand my parents pet killing ability, though my mother got the best of him too in the end. It was only when the lock out was in effect that I snuck Ellie into the house, where I kept her hidden for a week. I let Jamie in on the new member to our tribe, and we snickered as Jerry scratched at the door trying to get in. Of course, as my mother's right hand man he ratted us out with his incessant crying. "Cat's out of the bag?" I said, trying to be cute, as Jerry huffed and puffed behind my mother who's face was turning several shades of purple. But it was too late, she was ours.

When she died this week, it was my teary eyed mother who broke the news to me. She said "I even liked her" which I knew all along, and not because she was "keeping Jerry young" and "he's just so lonely now." But because I can sometimes hear her in the kitchen "Ellie, want a piece of cheese?"