The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook (17 page)

Then: “EE-OW! EE-OWEY!”

I don't have to tell anybody anything, because here's Zook, doing it for me. Zook, singing the blues with Dylan.

Dylan stops his playing. Zook stops singing. Dylan strums a few chords, like a soft, low growl. “Ee-ow! Ee-owey!” sings Zook, softly and growly, too. Dylan's long nails pluck a loud
whine; his left hand whizzes up and down the neck of the guitar. “EE-OW! EE-OWEY!” howls Zook, not missing a beat.

Dylan lays down his guitar, and Zook is quiet, too. But the music and Zook's song are still humming in my ears. Now Zook's rubbing up against Dylan's leg as if he owns him, and all of us are quiet, staring at that cat. Dylan leans over and scoops up Zook.

“Another thing about Mud,” Dylan says softly. He holds one of Zook's paws in his big Michelangelo hand. “He had twenty-six toes, Phin told me. That's very, very rare. Most cats have only eighteen.”

Dylan picks up each of Zook's paws, one after the other. We are all silently counting, even though everyone, except Dylan, already knows the total.

“It's him,” whispers my mother. “I've told you how Oona and Fred found Zook.” But she tells the story again about that sunny Saturday, about finding our cat, Phin's cat, stretched out in a pot of geraniums. Then she reaches for Dylan's hand and she kisses Dylan's fingers, one by one.

“Oh, my, oh, my,” says Gramma Dee.

Maria and Mario are shouting something in another
language, which I'm guessing means WOW in either Italian or Spanish.

So there you go. It's like when you're lying on the floor doing a jigsaw puzzle and there are only a couple of pieces left and you know where they belong, easy. You snap them into their places, all the curvy parts and the angles and the corners fitting together exactly the way they should. Snap. Snap. Snap.

Except this is a real-life jigsaw puzzle, with all the missing pieces in place. Life isn't usually like that, but today it is.

“THAT IS SO ROMANTIC!” yells Riya when I tell her on the phone. “You found Zook, and because of that your Gramma Dee met my
didu
, and because of that your mother met Uncle Dylan, and now Zook has found more loved ones. A happy ending! It's
karma
!”

“I guess,” I say.

I don't understand
karma
very well. Riya says nobody except incredibly wise people do, but it's something about past lives and present lives and future lives and how they are connected somehow, and how nothing in our lives happens accidentally. It's very complicated and there are big books written about it.

The truth is, it was all because of my yellow whopper, not
karma
. And that sure spoils the happy ending, like a big splotch of mustard on a clean cloth napkin.

Because I didn't find Zook.

I stole him.

ylan is teaching us a few things. He and Freddy have a little rosemary garden growing in one of the big blue alley pots. And Dylan's teaching me and Freddy how to give Zook his fluids. We sit in our hospital chair with Zook between us. Freddy grabs the fur of Zook's neck and holds it tightly. Dylan guides my hand as I jab the needle in. I do it gently but firmly, just like Dylan tells me to, and Zook doesn't even flinch. Freddy announces he's going to be a doctor or a nurse or a vet when he grows up; maybe he'll be all three. My mother and Dylan grin at each other because Freddy sounds so cute when he says that. But honestly, I was thinking the same thing myself. Those jobs are possibilities for both of us.

We unhook Zook from his needle and my mom takes him into her arms. We all stand around, stroking Zook's damp fur. “Oh, Zook,” says my mom, bending her head to nuzzle the top of his head. “Do you think he minds if we call him Zook instead of Mud?”

“Of course he doesn't mind!” says Fred. “That's his name now. Mud's the name from another story.”

My mother looks up. “Another story?”

“I've been teaching Freddy how to read by telling him cat stories,” I say quickly. “I'm using rebuses.”

“Rebuses!” says my mom. “I'd forgotten about those. That's how Oona's father taught her to read,” she explains to Dylan.

“I'll be right back,” Freddy says. He runs into our bedroom and returns with some paper and his crayon box. “
I'm
going to tell this story. I'm going to make some rebuses, too.”

Freddy sits on the floor with the paper and crayons in front of him. He pulls his left ear, his story ear, and begins.

“Well, a cat landed SPLAT, and when he got up again, he still had all those toes and that diamond, but now he had brown fur.

“‘EE-OWEY! Where am I?' he meowed.

“He was lying on his back, so he looked down at his belly
and there was some white fur in the shape of California, and some black hair where our city, Oakland, is. ‘Oh, Oakland. Cool,' said that cat. ‘I've always wanted to go there.'

“So he wandered and he wandered, but too bad, the pound man found him and put him in a cage at the city pound, which made that cat so sad. But then one day a lonely old man came to adopt him and that man's name was …”

Now Freddy stops to carefully draw a fish with a triangle on one side. He writes “
RW IN
” and points to that triangle.

“Fin,” I say. (Some other time I'll tell Freddy that the sound of the letter
F
can sometimes be written
PH
.)

“Good,” says Freddy.

“The man's name was Fin. So Fin named that cat Mud because Mud had brown fur, and also he liked to roll around in the mud in Fin's nice backyard. Mud ate fruits and vegetables from the yard and got very, very fat. Fin fed Mud lots of fiddle-i-fee under his tree, and Fin and Mud were happy together. But one day, Fin had to move because his house was falling apart and he needed a new one. He didn't get a chance to put Mud's name and new address on a name tag. Too bad! Because one day Mud jumped out the window just for fun. Cats like to do that. But too bad! Mud
was lost because it was a new street and he forgot where he lived.

“So Mud wandered and he wandered and he got skinnier and skinnier. Mud ate hard rolls and bones from garbage cans and that broke some of his teeth. He got into a fight with a wild dog who took a bite out of his ear. And one terrible day …”

Fred pauses dramatically. He looks at me and Mom and Dylan, and his eyes get big, and a whole bunch of caps roll out of his mouth: “A GREAT BIG HORRIBLE MEAN TERRIBLE VERY SCARY …”

Fred draws a large blue head with green googly eyes and sticking-up black hair and a mouth with yellow jagged teeth, breathing red jaggedy fire. We all stare at it.

“Hmmm …” says my mother. “Nothing comes to mind.”

“A monster?” Dylan asks.

“Yes!” says Fred. “And monster doesn't rhyme with anything.” Then Fred writes BB underneath the monster head.

“Oh, BB-gun monster,” I say.

“Of course,” Freddy says.

And I'm thinking Freddy's got that exactly right. We'll never, ever know who that monster was, but that's the best
name in the world for someone who shoots at cats. Worse than an ordinary villain, in my humble opinion.

Fred continues his story.

“‘EE-OW! EE-OWEY! You got me!' meowed Mud. That BB-gun pellet hurt a lot. And he wandered and he wandered some more and went into an alley with garbage pails, where he found some other cats for friends and some leftover pizza, and he felt a little better. Right next to the back of the pizza place was a beautiful, beautiful part of the alley, with big blue pots with lavender and geraniums in them. And there were plenty of fat mice and all the water he needed, dripping from a hose. Now he had everything except people friends to take care of him. And one day he remembered that the diamond on his empty name tag was magic! So he wished upon it! He wished he could see Prince Fredericko and Princess Oonella again, old friends from way, way back. He found something better, because one day, one happy lucky, lucky, lucky day, he found …”

Fred draws a rectangle with lots of windows and wheels and a big RW underneath.

“A Recreation Wehicle?” I ask.

“Don't be silly,” says Fred. He taps the rectangle a couple of times. “Rhymes with?”

“This is hard,” says Dylan.

“Can you give us a hint?” asks my mom.

Fred slowly writes B-U-S, sounding out the letters. Then he puts a big X over the B and shouts, “US, of course!”

“Wow,” says my mom. “Great. You have an excellent teacher.”

“Prince Fredericko and Princess Oonella! Very imaginative. Good stuff, kid,” Dylan says.

Fred looks so proud of his story, I don't even take credit for the prince and the princess part.

Let's say you're doing that jigsaw puzzle and some pieces are missing. Maybe those missing pieces were thrown out with the trash by mistake, or maybe they're in a shadowy corner under your bed that the broom can't reach. It doesn't really matter. You can imagine their shape and color in your mind. After a while, you don't even notice the holes anymore, because what you are imagining feels so right. Fred's just told the pieces of Zook's story I myself should have imagined all along.

All of a sudden, I feel a big, yellow-whoppery lump growing in my belly.

hin has been on all our minds.

Well, my mind's been aware of him, but also my belly, because of that big, sour, yellow-whoppery lump inside of it.

We show Dylan Zook's diamond. He holds the pendant in the palm of his hand and rubs the diamond with his thumb.

“Phin wrote me that he'd bought a tag for Mud sporting a diamond. He thought it made Mud look pretty cool, all ready for his new digs. I wish Phin had remembered to put his new info on it. Or maybe he didn't know it yet. But Phin shouldn't have removed the old tag so soon.”

But it wasn't Phin who removed the old tag! It was me it was me it was me it was me it was me it was me.

I am afraid to open my mouth in case a giant cartoon bubble floats out with those guilty words swimming around inside of it.

Then Dylan says, “I'd like to arrange a reunion between Zook and Phin, if that's OK. And, of course, I want you all to meet one another, too.”