The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook (20 page)

“No!” I say. I stand up, too.

“I told you, Oona. Wait here,” my mother repeats.

“Terri, let her go in with you,” Dylan says. “It will be OK.”

“Dylan!” says my mom sharply.

“She'll be fine,” says Dylan quietly. “Believe me.”

I look at him and feel so grateful. “I'm going in,” I say. “You can't stop me.”

“Do you want me to go in, too?” Dylan asks.

My mom and Dylan are staring at each other. It seems as if a thousand seconds go by.

“No, don't,” says my mother. “And I really don't know how long we'll be. Maybe Oona and I will want to be alone afterward.”

“OK,” says Dylan. “I won't wait for you.”

I'm thinking now would be a good time for one of them to sing
Baby, please don't go
, but of course nobody feels much like singing.

Then everything happens very quickly.

My mother and I are in one of the examining rooms, our arms around each other, waiting. Soon Howard Fiske, DVM, and Dog/God come in, except today Dog/God is wearing a turquoise sweatshirt under a white coat. Her sweatshirt says P
ETS
R
OCK
.

“You've met Isabel? Isabel's a veterinarian intern at Good Samaritan,” says Howard Fiske, DVM.

My mom and I nod. My mom's still crying, and you know
what? So is Isabel. She's holding Zook in her arms, still wrapped in my Raiders sweatshirt. Zook is lying quietly, but his eyes are wide open and scared. A line of tubing is taped to one of his front legs, and I know it's for whatever they're going to give him to put him down.

“First, we're going to inject Zook with a sedative, so he'll feel very relaxed,” Isabel says.

“I'd like to hold him,” I say, and she carefully places him in my arms.

Isabel pulls a tissue from her pocket to wipe her nose, and I'm thinking she better get a hold of herself if she's going to be a vet. I myself am not crying. I am glad to be calm and mature for Zook and my mother. I suddenly feel Zook relax in my arms as they inject the sedative. I touch my lips to his cool, smooth ear with its brown tufts of hair sticking out.

“Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye,” I whisper. Then I look right into Zook's eyes. He stares back at me. I can tell he feels brave and peaceful.

Howard Fiske, DVM, and Isabel are busy beside me, preparing the final injection. My mother puts her arm around me while they inject Zook once again.

Suddenly, Zook is very still.

“He's gone,” Isabel says. She closes Zook's eyes. I lay him down on the examining table.

“We'll leave you alone with him,” Howard Fiske, DVM, says. “Take as long as you like.”

It wasn't like putting Zook “down,” I'm thinking. It was like sending Zook up and away. Up and away and out of that tired old body filled with pain, which smells so familiar when I kiss it one last time. It smells like our house and my sweatshirt, and because of that, a little bit like my dad.

We go back to the waiting room. Dylan has gone. My mom signs some papers and Evelyn gives her Zook's collar and tags, which my mom puts into her purse.

“You'll receive Zook's ashes very soon,” Evelyn says. “Then you can bury them. My own sweetie-pies are in my backyard garden.”

I turn to my mom and we smile sadly at each other. A smile can have a whole conversation behind it—ever notice? And sometimes sad smiles are sadder than no smiles at all. We don't tell Evelyn that there's no backyard garden, just a balcony with a cactus plant and a grill on it, that our alley is sort of our backyard garden, that Dylan has a beautiful garden but I just sent him away with a big black whopper, and it looks
like he and my mom had a big fight about something I don't totally understand. And anyway, it's only ashes. Our smiles say all that.

My mom cries a bit as we walk to Antoine's Bistro for lunch. I pat her shoulder. I've never eaten in a bistro before, which turns out to be a regular restaurant, actually. I order a hamburger and french fries and I request some vinegar on the side, for dipping my fries. You can tell it's a fancy establishment because the waiter doesn't say “VINEGAR?” like a lot of waiters do in other restaurants. My mother orders fish. She has a glass of wine and I have orange juice, but my juice is in a wine goblet, like hers. I feel mature, like I'm on a date or something, except, of course, I'm with my mom.

We go over to Gramma Dee's to get Fred. She'd left work early to pick him up at preschool.

“I didn't tell him,” Gramma Dee whispers.

That night Fred and I are in our pj's, and Fred's on the floor making towers with his LEGOs. LEGOs are very relaxing things. Everything fits and clicks together so nicely. I sit down on the floor and help him.

My mom's on my bed, fiddling with a button on her blouse. She takes a deep breath and says, “I have to tell you something sad, Freddy. Zook died today.”

Freddy's constructing a very tall tower. One more LEGO and it'll fall down. He looks up at me, frowning. I nod my head. “Oh,” he says. Then he adds that last LEGO, and sure enough, the tower topples over. And Fred starts stacking it all up again.

“Fred, did you understand what I've just told you?” asks my mother.

“Of course I did! I'm not a baby,” Fred says. “But Zook's coming back. When do you think that will be?”

My mother looks startled. She slides off the bed onto the floor. “What do you mean, honey? I just told you, Zook has died.”

“Yes, but not really, right, Oona? Oona told me cats have nine lives. Other people said the same thing. Zook's only lived five of them, and he has four more lives to go.” Fred holds up all his fingers, hiding the thumb on his right hand. He wriggles the fingers and thumb on his left hand, as he calls out the names for Zook's five lives. “Miraculo! Jewel! Beau! Mud! Zook!” Then he wriggles the four fingers of his right hand. “See? Four more to go. So when's he coming back?”

“Why did you tell him that, Oona?” my mother asks.

I examine the yellow daisy pattern on my pajama bottoms. I can't look at her. I am so ashamed of my whoppers. “I
wanted to make Freddy feel better. So I told him some stories about Zook's other lives. And, yes, I did promise that Zook had four more left.” I glance at my brother. “Freddy, I'm so sorry. Actually, cats have only one life to live.”

Fred still has his hands up. He slowly puts them down. “Only one?” he asks.

“Only one,” I say. “We all do. You're a big boy now. You can read. And now you know this very deep, mature, important thing about all living things.”

And right then is when I put my head on my mother's shoulder and bawl like a baby. It has been such a hard, hard day.

I cry for Zook.

I cry for my father.

I cry for all those extra lives nobody gets to live.

I try to stop crying, being the older sister and all that. I don't want to scare my brother. So I think about Kiran's deep, mature idea about death making us appreciate the wonderful things about life. All those happy, happy happy-ending times. That helps a little. After a while, I start feeling empty inside. All those icy black stones have melted and turned into the fluids pouring out of me.

Except there's one stone left. A big yellow one. So I tell my
mother how I threw away Zook's old name tag when he used to be called Mud, and how I spied on Dylan when he used to be the Villain. I tell her that I'd apologized to Phin that day at the Home, and that Phin gave me some advice: to tell her the truth. I keep my face on my mother's shoulder. I don't want to see the angry look on her face, or what would be even worse, the sad one.

But my mother lifts my head from her shoulder, and she's smiling. With her eyes, too, except there are tears in them. “You mean you kept those secrets inside you all this time? That must have been so hard, my darling.”

“It was,” I say. I look over at Fred, who's just sitting there, staring down at his LEGOs.

My mother puts one arm around each of us. “The thing is,” she says, “I think the Great Rebus-Maker and Whopper-Teller would have told all the same whoppers.”

“Really?” I say.

“Oh, yes,” says my mother. “There's so much of him in both of you. And that sure helps me get through the night to greet the day. Lives continue on in lots and lots of ways.”

veryone has been very understanding these past few weeks. Mr. Fry sent a beautiful scalloped, gold-trimmed sympathy card through snail mail.

Riya composed a poem and e-mailed it to me the other day.

It doesn't matter whether the owner or the pet is the boss;
When your pet dies, it's still a great loss.

Kiran wrote,
My sincerest condolenses. R.I.P., ZOOK!

I've also received e-mails and notes and cards from kids in my class who have suffered the loss of a pet. Even from Rowdies.

Heard what happened. I thought I would never stop thinking about my beagle, Phil, every single minute,
wrote Leo.
But I feel better now.
He put the note on my desk at school.

Zook's ashes were delivered by UPS. We had to sign for them. They came in a plastic bag stuffed into a pretty tin can with dogs and cats painted all over it. We keep the tin can on our bookshelf until we can decide what to do with the ashes. Nobody can agree.

Gramma Dee suggested burying them in Soma's yard, but Zook was our pet, not Soma's. Fred wants to leave them in the box on the shelf. I agree. I do like looking at it from time to time. It's only a box of ashes, but it gets me thinking good thoughts, although it's hard to imagine Zook resting in peace in that box.

“How about we go to the beach today and scatter Zook's ashes over the waves?” my mother asks.

“That doesn't make sense,” I say. “Zook hated getting wet.”

My mom laughs. “That doesn't make sense, either,” she says. “Anyway, it's such a lovely Saturday. We should do something outdoors.”

My mother is ironing and folding her fancy napkins. She puts them in the special kitchen drawer with the fancy
tablecloths and coasters and other things we hardly use. We're back to paper napkins again. Dylan hasn't come around for dinner in a while, or even to take my mom out for coffee.

“Cloth napkins are much better for the environment, by the way,” I tell her.

“Who's to say? Washing them uses too much water. And I've tried, but I just can't get all the stains out,” my mother says.

They're not big stains, just enough to tell whose napkin is whose. My stains are raspberry juice and a splotch of mustard. Mom's is a wine stain and a squiggle of gravy. Dylan's is spaghetti sauce, and Fred's is practically everything. I ask my mom if the napkins remind her of Dylan and that's why she's not using them anymore.

“Oh, I don't know,” she says. She smiles a big cheery smile. “It's all for the best, really. We decided everything happened much too fast! And Dylan's going on another long bike trip soon.” My mother keeps that big smile on her face like news announcers on TV sometimes do, even when they're reporting murders and car accidents.

“But you were right,” my mother continues. “Dylan should never have made that promise about Zook getting well.”

“Zook had some really good days with us because of those fluids,” I say. What I don't say is, if it was all for the best, how come everyone seemed happier when Dylan was around?

“Anyway, Dylan said we all needed lots more time to heal,” says my mother. With her foot, she pushes the drawer of napkins closed, and then she turns toward the kitchen window. “Look at this glorious day! Why don't the three of us have lunch in the park? Or go for a bike ride? Oona, come on, shut down the computer! I'll go find Fred.”

I turn back to the computer.
Thank you for your kind words, Amanda,
I write.
And sorry for the loss of your hamster, Scratchy.

My mother comes back into the kitchen. “I can't find Fred anywhere,” she says.