Where the f*ck is my cat?

“How can so many indoor cats disappear?” I directed the question to my carnival prize goldfish while I crawled on the floor to look under the sofa and chairs.  That goldfish had lived far longer than I had expected, considering he never ate the flakes of food I sprinkled into his bowl.

A sea of cat toys, feathers and rattles hid beneath the loveseat, but not a cat.  My landlord was strict and forbade dogs, but allowed a cat so I jumped at the opportunity to get one soon after I moved in.  I went to the homeless pet shelter and browsed through sad eyes until one pulled at my heart and sucked me right in.

Tuffy had been the first one.  He was scruffy and missing a small chunk off of one ear. His crate tag said he was five years old and was found behind a Walmart eating French fries.  Something about that spoke to me, like he was my spirit animal.  I took him home and stopped at McDonalds on the way home; we split an order of fries.

I removed the clumps from his fur and, with some hard work, I got him to smell more like a cat and less like a dumpster. He seemed grateful for my affections and would snuggle with my feet at every available opportunity even if I was sitting on the toilet.

One day I came home from work, excited to see Tuffy after a tedious and trying day, but he was nowhere to be found.  I searched the apartment and found no open windows or doors.  I knocked on the door of every other tenant in the building.  No one had seen him.  He had vanished and I was heartbroken.  I spent the next week posting up fliers and talking to people in the neighborhood hoping someone would have seen him.  I spent the following weeks by the phone without any word from a fellow cat loving Samaritan.

A few more weeks had gone by before a friend had called me to inform me that she had found a litter of stray kittens and I was welcome to one.  She was well aware of my heartbreak with Tuffy and was happy to quell my sorrows with a fresh furry face. So, I brought home Bambino, or Bambi for short.

Bambi was a wild little monster. He ran around the apartment at all hours of the night, and most of the day, although most cats are supposed to sleep for eighteen hours a day.  Not Bambi.  He would open and hide in the cabinets, rush into the fridge every time I opened it, and found a fierce enemy in every one of my shoes.  He meowed like a rabid tiger at the ceiling fan and would curl up under the white throw pillows as if to camouflage himself from his prey.  His prey was most commonly the vacuum cord or my cellphone charger.  When he wasn’t acting like a tiny feline assassin or chasing his own tail until he ran into a wall, he would climb onto the window sill and stare at the goldfish until he fell asleep.

Bambi was hilarious although many cat owners would have found his antics rather taxing.  He kept me in good spirits and that’s important for a girl living alone in a big city.  The day Bambi went missing was just as confusing as Tuffy’s disappearance.  No doors or windows had been open or tampered with.  Nothing was out of the ordinary.  A small vase that had sat next to the fish bowl had fallen from the shelf and had broken on the floor.  Besides a few pieces of broken glass, nothing was out-of-place.  Again, my heart sank and I got to work making fliers for Bambino and praying for his safe return home. No one ever called about him. After a couple of months, I was sure he was gone as well.

Then came Clinger. When we first met, I found Clinger in a tree.  Cliché, but true.  As I took out my trash one morning I rounded the corner from the dumpster to find a large dog barking at a terrified little cat hanging from the branch of the cherry tree which hung over the parking lot of the building.  I shooed the dog away climbed up a low branch to reach the shaking little feline.

She was wet and shivering and I could feel all of her ribs.  I snuggled her close to my chest and brought her inside.  She hung onto my shirt and looked around my apartment with wide eyes, as if she had never been indoors before.  I gave her a few chunks of cooked chicken I had left over and she began to relax.

Her ribs began to vanish beneath a healthy layer of fat, but it still took her weeks to venture from my side.  She would shy away from every door that was opened, particularly my front door.  She was terrified of running water, and she seemed very skeptical of the goldfish.

The scent of Sunday eggs and bacon filled my apartment, and Clinger had been laying at the base of the refrigerator baking herself in a direct ray of sunlight.  I turned the radio up to eleven and danced around the kitchen while she napped in the blissful warmth. I took my time to make my breakfast.  I plated my beautiful over-easy eggs and bacon and took them to the table but Clinger didn’t follow.

I finished the last of my bacon and looked around for Clinger.  I switched the music off and noticed she wasn’t at my side or by the fridge anymore.  I put my plate in the sink and called for her.  I called and called her name, looking under every piece of furniture and in every room.  She had vanished, it seemed.

I crawled on the floor to check under the sofa and loveseat.  I checked beneath the TV stand, and stood puzzled in front of the bookcase.  My eyes followed the shelves down from the middle to spot a tuft of fur on the baseboard beside the bookcase.  I knelt to pick it up and saw a shadow move.  I hadn’t expected there to be enough room for a cat to squeeze behind the heavy wood shelving but there she was.  Clinger tucked behind the wood backing, shivering and wide-eyed.  There were drops of blood along the baseboard so I jumped to my feet to pull the shelves away from the wall and help her.  As I stood I noticed some books had blood spots on the bindings, and fur was falling from the middle shelf.

I inched closer to the middle shelf. The goldfish swam in circles in his bowl chewing on something that was not goldfish food flakes.  I moved in closer still.  It was fur.

The goldfish had taken a bite out of little Clinger and now swam with joy around his bowl consuming his catch.  I pulled the bookcase from the wall and scooped up the traumatized Clinger.  She shook in my arms.  I wrapped her in a blanket and stared down the carnivorous goldfish.

For a moment I wanted to flush him, then I imagined having a beast like that living in the sewers beneath the city.  That was even more terrifying than having him live in my apartment.  I nestled Clinger into her cat carrier and fastened the door latch, then grabbed a Ziploc and dumped the fish into the bag.  I would let the veterinarian deal with that little demon after they tended to Clinger.