Pet Disasters (5 page)

“Hey, Cat!” Mason tried again, louder this time.

No response.

He tried poking her, not hard enough to hurt her, just hard enough to make her decide to sleep somewhere else.

She made one sort of squawking sound. Then she started purring again.

“Cat, I need you to get off my lap so that I can go to the bathroom.”

Could he just stand up and dump her onto the floor? That seemed rude. Besides, it might make her scratch. Or bite. Or do whatever cats did when they were annoyed.

Mason’s father had come home with Cat yesterday, the same day Brody’s picture had fallen into the creek and Mason had decided to hate Dunk forever. All evening, Cat had hidden under the couch in the family room, coming out to eat and use the litter box only when everyone else in the house was asleep. Mason was pretty sure his parents weren’t going to expect him to have anything to do with the litter box. He had taken one quick look at it, sitting in a corner of the mudroom by the kitchen door: a plastic box filled with grainy gray stuff, where Cat would poop and pee; then someone would take a plastic scooper and scoop out the poop and wet clumps of pee-soaked
grainy gray stuff and throw them away. It sounded to Mason like a good job for one of his parents.

Mason had let himself hope that Cat was going to be as agreeably unexciting as Goldfish.

Then, this afternoon, Cat had emerged from under the couch and started meowing around Mason’s legs, whapping at his bare shins with her waving tail.

And now she was sleeping on Mason’s lap.

Mason had told Brody all about Cat, but Brody hadn’t seen Cat yet because when he had been over yesterday evening, Cat had still been in her secret hiding place. Right now Brody was at home with his sisters, Cammie and Cara. Mason should get up and call Brody and tell him to come over. But Mason couldn’t get up to call Brody
or
turn on the TV
or
go to the bathroom, because Cat refused to budge and Mason didn’t know how to make her budge.

It was going to be a long afternoon.

Half an hour later, Mason’s legs were both asleep and he had to go to the bathroom so much that he could hardly stand it.

Luckily, at that moment Brody came in through the back door. He and Mason went in and out of each
other’s houses without bothering to knock.

“Hi, Mason,” Brody began. Then he stopped at the sight of Cat on Mason’s lap. “Oh!”

Brody went down on his knees next to the couch, stroking Cat’s fur from her head down her back, reaching around to scratch the fur under her chin. “Can I hold her? Please?”

Mason nodded with relief. Brody scooped Cat up into his skinny arms and sat down on the couch. How did Brody know things like how to put a bandanna on a hamster or pick up a cat? At first Cat struggled to get away, but then she settled down onto Brody’s lap, as contented as she had been on Mason’s.

After he got back from the bathroom, Mason plunked himself down next to Brody and Cat on the couch, remote in hand, and turned on the TV. Usually he watched cartoons, but sometimes he watched cooking shows to prepare himself for whatever repulsive meal his mother might be planning to make next. He also liked the show about how different kinds of candy and cookies were manufactured, though he hadn’t yet managed to catch the episode about Fig Newtons.

His legs were finally starting to have feeling in them again.

“She’s so soft!” Brody said as he continued to pet her and she continued to purr, loudly enough that Mason could hear her even over the volume of the TV.

Cat stretched out one paw against Brody’s chest, as if she were petting him, too.

“She’s purring!” Brody said, as if he had never heard a cat purr before. Maybe he hadn’t. Until two hours ago, Mason hadn’t ever heard a cat purr, either. “She likes me!”

Then Brody sneezed.

A commercial came on, so Mason changed the channel to another station that had cartoons.

Brody sneezed again.

Mason looked over at Brody. Brody’s eyes were red and watery, as if he had been crying, but he hadn’t been crying. Even Brody wouldn’t get so emotional just at the sight and sound of a purring cat.

“I think I’m getting a cold,” Brody said.

Brody sneezed four times in a row.

“I’d better go home so you and Cat don’t get it.” Brody sniffed sadly. “I don’t want Cat to get sick when she’s just getting used to her new home.”

“But …” Mason looked at Cat. Brody couldn’t get up to leave if Cat was asleep on his lap.

Gently Brody picked Cat up and set her on the couch cushion. He scratched her one last time under the chin, and she stretched out her white paw again. How
did
Brody know how to do things?

“Oh!” Brody said, gazing down at Cat. “Look at how cute she is! Look at her paw!”

Mason looked at Cat’s paw. He supposed it was cute, if Brody said it was.

“I hope you feel better,” Mason told Brody. He hoped it for Brody’s sake, of course, but also for his. He didn’t want to have any purring cats on his lap again anytime soon.

“Me too,” Brody said. “We’re doing pottery in art camp tomorrow, remember? I don’t want to miss pottery! And I have to be able to come over and play with Cat. Mason, I really think she likes me. I mean, not as much as she likes you, of course, because she’s your cat. But I don’t think she would have stretched out her paw to me like that if she didn’t really like me, do you?”

Brody sneezed three more times as he walked toward the door.

Before Cat could take up residence on his lap again, Mason hurried off to the kitchen to see if he could find himself a snack. He made sure to take a nice long time finding it. It wouldn’t take very long to locate the bag of Fig Newtons and pour himself a glass of milk. But to prolong the snack, today he might be adventurous. He might spread a saltine with peanut butter. He might squirt a Ritz cracker with some cheese spread from a can.

The next morning, Brody came over to Mason’s house to pick him up so they could walk together to art camp. Brody’s cold was completely gone, and his eyes looked clear and normal again.

But now Mason’s eyes felt heavy. Cat had insisted on sleeping on his bed all night long, which was a hundred times more disturbing than having a hamster running on a wheel right next to your head. Mason liked to sleep with one leg straight and one leg bent. It turned out that Cat thought the perfect place to sleep was in the crook of Mason’s bent leg. As soon as she settled there, he had an overwhelming desire to turn
over and sleep with the
other
leg straight and the
other
leg bent, but there she lay, purring her motorboat purr.

Then at four a.m., she started meowing in hopes that he would get up and give her food. Finally, at four-thirty, he gave in. But he couldn’t fall back asleep after that. Every time he was almost asleep, a long cat tail would brush against his face, as if Cat were deciding whether she might like to plunk herself down to sleep right on his head.

It hadn’t been what Mason would call a restful night.

At art camp on Thursday, they were beginning work on clay pots or bowls made of clay “snakes” rolled out and then coiled together. Then the pots would be glazed and fired in a kiln.

“I’m going to make a bowl for Cat,” Brody said. “As a welcome-to-your-new-home present.”

“She already has a bowl,” Mason said. “Two bowls. One for food and one for water.”

“Well, now she’ll have three!”

Mason couldn’t think of anything better to make, so he decided to make a bowl for Cat, too. If she was going to have three bowls, she might as well have four. Maybe if they were all filled with food all the time, she wouldn’t wake him up at four a.m. to be fed.

Dunk was making a bowl for Wolf—a very large bowl. Wolf must be a very large dog. A very large biting dog.

“So you have a cat now,” Dunk said to Mason.

What of it?
Mason wanted to say, but he just nodded and rolled out another clay snake.

“My dog can eat up your cat,” Dunk said.

To change the subject, Mason looked over at Nora’s bowl. “Who is your bowl for?” he asked. “Do you have a pet?”

“I have lots of pets, but they don’t eat out of bowls. So my bowl is to put paper clips in.”

“What do they eat out of?” Brody asked. “What kind of pets are they?”

Nora smiled. “Ants.”

“Ants?” Brody asked.

“I have an ant farm,” Nora explained. “It’s in a glass terrarium. A whole colony of ants. I do experiments with them, seeing how they react to heat and cold, or light and darkness, things like that.”

“Wow,” said Mason politely. He hoped that if Cat didn’t work out, his father wouldn’t come home with an ant farm for him next.

“My dog can eat up your ants, too,” Dunk told Nora.

“Have you ever heard of fire ants?” Nora asked Dunk pleasantly. “When they sting you, it feels like you’re on fire.”

Mason noticed that Nora hadn’t said that her ants were fire ants. She had just asked Dunk a simple question. But he scowled and turned away.

When Dunk left the table to go to the bathroom, Nora asked Mason and Brody, “Would you like to come over sometime and see my ant farm?”

Brody shot Mason an excited grin. Mason knew Brody was thinking,
How could anybody not want to see an ant farm?
Mason was thinking,
How could anybody want to see an art farm?

Besides, Mason didn’t like to go to other people’s
houses. He didn’t even like to go to Brody’s house, which had so much noise and commotion and clutter and confusion, compared to the peaceful, quiet home of the Dixons. Mason’s mother’s afghans and pillows were bright and colorful, but they didn’t get up and
do
anything, unlike Brody’s sisters, who were always trying out new dance steps or talking loudly on their cell phones to their friends.

He couldn’t imagine going to Nora’s house. He barely knew Nora. They would look at her ant farm, which would take about two minutes, and then what? Look at her books about hamsters?

“Maybe some other time,” Mason said. “There’s some stuff I have to do today. Brody, I just got Cat. I can’t just go off and leave her, can I?”

Brody looked ashamed for having forgotten how lonely Cat would be without them. Then his face brightened.

“You could come see Cat,” he told Nora.

Mason gave Brody a horrified stare. He couldn’t imagine Nora coming to his house any more than he could imagine himself going to Nora’s house. He couldn’t imagine his house with a girl in it.

Nora gave Mason a quizzical look; she seemed to read his reaction better than Brody did.

“I can’t come today,” she said.

Mason felt his chest expand with relief.

“But maybe sometime,” Nora said.

Maybe some other time far, far away.

The cat bowls wouldn’t be done for a few more days, because they had to harden before they could be glazed and fired.

“I can’t wait until Cat sees them!” Brody said as the boys walked home from camp together to Mason’s house.

It had rained the night before. Their few Hamster posters that hadn’t blown away were unreadable, the letters blurred and runny. Mason tried not to look at them.

“She’s going to be the happiest cat in the whole world!” Brody said.

As if eager about her present, Cat came running to the front door to meet them.

“Hi, Cat,” Mason said awkwardly. He still wasn’t sure how to make conversation with an animal. And,
really, what was the point? Humans and animals didn’t even speak the same language.

Brody grabbed Cat up for a big hug and cuddled her against his chest, burying his face in her fur.

“Cat, we’re making you a present in art camp! You’ll never guess what it is!”

Then Brody sneezed.

And sneezed.

And sneezed again.

Mason’s mother came into the room. “Brody, I heard you sneezing. Are you allergic to cats?”

“No!” Brody said. “I just have a cold. Well, I had one when I was here yesterday, but then I went home and it went away, and now I guess it’s back again.…” His voice trailed off.

“Oh, Brody,” Mason’s mother said.

“Oh, Cat,” Brody said, hugging her more tightly.