For those in the know the cats became unofficial mascots of the school, and several times Nellie brought them to my room and just outside of it to play. One kitten in particular, whom Nellie was calling Treyvon in a show of poor political correctness, stood out to me. He was all grey, and quiet, but with wide blue eyes. I liked him, and I started wondering whether our home was in need of a cat. There had been rats in our shed, it's true, but the rats weren't really what was on my mind when I started playing with the kitten. Instead, I was smitten with his personality, with his seeming timidness, with his inquisitiveness, and I thought about how lonely our dog Finn often seemed to be when I came home from a long day at school.
I hatched a plan.
Clementine has never been a big fan of cats, having grown up with a mean calico who never seemed to like her. But I knew that Treyvon was different. I began suggesting that we take him a couple of weeks before school ended, as Nellie was searching for homes for the kittens, but it wasn't until I brought him to Clem's office with a bow around his neck that she started to think about keeping him.
We renamed him Watson, and for the first couple of days we kept him secluded in our guest bedroom--a problem for our guests with allergies, perhaps, but we read that keeping pets apart and letting them get used to each others' smells was the best way to get them to know each other. We would walk in, shut the door behind us, and play with this little grey kitten who soon stopped being quiet and reserved and started being crazy and fun, pouncing after strings and generally doing cute kitten-y things. Nellie had socialized him well, and he was not skittish, but bold and curious.
Soon Finn could wait no longer. He pushed his way into the room one day and began nosing this little grey ball of fur. He chased him under the bed, then on top of the bed, then stole his food and chewed up his toys. We worried he was being too rough, but our fears were ridiculous. The two were fast friends, and as Watson began to develop more and more kitten energy Finn finally found the playmate he'd been waiting for. They would wrestle together, Finn mouthing Watson's head and tummy, Watson pouncing at his feet, his tail, his head. More than once he dive-bombed him and landed on top of Finn's back, as though he were Ahab trying to land the White Whale.
Watson became an indispensable part of our family. He was catlike in all the usual ways--dominating the house, doing what he felt like when he felt like it--but he was also social in a way I haven't often seen in a cat. He didn't run away from people when they came over, he ran to them. He never hid under the bed, though he often went and slept on our pillows. He loved to go outside and play in the yard, and soon he was roaming the neighborhood with the best of them. I think he knew he was the smartest one around--and he clearly was smarter than the dog--and so Clementine and I decided he probably talked like Bane from The Dark Knight Rises. Every time he looked at me after knocking my contact case off the counter, I could hear Tom Hardy's voice in my head: "Do you feel in charge?"
He loved shiny things, and stuffed toys, and bells, and though that may describe every cat ever there is a special connection to watching your cat play and frolic and run through the house. He was fascinated by water, and every night when I turned on the sink to brush my teeth he would come stand on the edge of the sink, batting at the running water with his paws, putting his head under the stream to drink from the water pooling above the drain. He hated getting submerged in water--which I did early on at Clementine's insistence that he smelled bad and needed a bath--but he loved to see moving water. He even sat on the edge of the tub each morning and watched Clementine take a shower.
I admit, I feel like he had a special connection with me. When we got him it was the summertime, so I was home all day, and I became the human he knew best. In some ways I think he thought I was his mother. He would nestle on my stomach or along my arms and put his head in my hand, suckling on the skin between my thumb and forefinger (though admittedly, he also suckled blankets, so perhaps I was not as special as I felt). As he grew he became insistent that I give him attention. When I got out a book he would jump into my lap and then onto the book, obliterating my reading so that he could get more pets in. At night he would push on the book with his head until I moved it, and when we eventually stopped putting him in his own room at night, he decided he liked to sleep on my neck. He loved all of us, of course, but I think Finn, Clem, and I all secretly thought he liked us best.
Last Monday Watson was hit by a car and killed--I think on impact, since he was still lying in the road when Amelia found him. I try not to blame myself for letting him roam the neighborhood--which he loved--or for not making him come inside that morning when I left for work (I saw him sitting in the neighbor's lawn). I tell myself it was an accident, that he's grey and the road was grey and the dawn light was grey. I tell myself that we gave him seven months of a happy life that he never would have had if he hadn't been found on a boat that morning. And all those things are true. And none of those things make me miss him any less. None of those things make me feel any better when I walk Finn and he looks behind the bushes in front of our house for Watson, since that's where he would wait for us in the mornings. None of those things make me wish I hadn't gotten annoyed when Watson had attacked my feet in the mornings, since I know he was just looking to play. None of those things make the house feel any less empty now that he is gone.
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