The Box

It was late on Friday. My secretary walked into my office with a box wrapped up like it was for Christmas, except Christmas was two months away. “What’s this?”

“Revenge”, she said.

“For what?’’

“For plenty. Because you deserve something nice. Just open it before you leave”, then she handed me the box.

It was unstable, wobbly, like whatever inside wasn’t packed very well. I handed it back. “Thank you, I guess. Could you put it on the chair by the door?”

She turned away with the box, “Sure, but do not, I repeat do not forget it and don’t forget to open it before you go home.”

“No problem, good night”, I gave her the thumbs up. She waved and left.

About ten minutes passed and I was wrapping up the paperwork for the day when the box moved. Noticeably moved. What the...?

I got up and went to it. It moved again. She gave me something alive. Revenge? What was she up to? I cautiously moved the box side to side to side. The contents slid left and right. Whatever it was didn’t make a noise. I resisted the urge to shake it and instead opened it.

It was a cat. A tiny cat. A kitten. A grey kitten and it just sat in the box looking at me. A cat? But she knows I’m not a cat person. I’m allergic, not that I had anything against cats or “cat people”. I just avoided cats because of the extreme allergy. I immediately began thinking of what to do with the cat. I made phone calls. No one wanted a free cat. Unreal.

Finally, the cat made a noise like a weak, unsure type of mew. It then occurred to me that the animal shelter would take it. The cat probably wanted food. I finished the paperwork in five minutes, washed up and went to get the box. The cat mewed again and then it wouldn’t stop. I found the phone number for the shelter and called. An answering machine picked up and gave the hours they were open and closed. Too late. I’d have to take the cat home.

Knowing nothing about cat food I stopped and bought a couple cans of soft food. My wife thought the cat was cute enough and fixed up a decent place for it to sleep, outside. Maybe it would leave over night. But it didn’t. The cat was walking around on the deck the next morning and the food dish was empty. I realized the cat was staying.

We eventually named him Venge, short for Revenge. He wandered off a time or two but mainly stayed around the backyard. He was always underfoot because he wanted to be around people, especially me. I probably didn’t pick him up more than twice, I was just too allergic to him. But I got where I liked having him around even when he was underfoot, or climbing on my back while working on the sprinklers or bringing dead mice to the back doorstep.

He didn’t stay around long. A few years later he ate his food and I watched him climb over the back fence. He never came back. He was healthy so I always figured one of the nearby neighbor kids claimed him and made him an indoor cat. He probably got to live out his life in luxury and only went outside when he wanted to. Score. What cat wouldn’t want that?

After a few months, a typical looking orange cat showed up on the front porch. It looked scared and hungry so I gave it a can of food which it didn’t eat. Late for work, I left it there expecting it to be gone by the time I got home. I called my wife and told her about it. She told me if I’d given it food we were probably the owners of another cat. When I got home many hours later, the orange cat was indeed still there and the food was gone.

The orange cat stayed with us for over a decade. He lived outside the whole time. He couldn’t even be enticed to come into the house. His kingdom was the back yard, and the front yard, and the foothills beyond the fence. We bought him a pet igloo, the nicest, most insulated one money could buy. For two years I never saw him in it. But after that he was in and out of it all the time. He was a great cat and I’m not a cat person.

I thought one time, if it were not for the early Christmas gift my secretary gave me many years previously, we’d have probably not kept the orange cat that we really enjoyed and was part of our extended family because I wouldn’t have had the compassion to feed him. I would have shooed him away and expected someone else to deal with him. Wasn’t a cat person.

We are on our fourth cat now since we Revenge. All outside cats. Our kids have essentially grown up having a cat around. It’s normal. But before that gift, I would have never voluntarily agreed to own a cat. We’d have missed out on some of our four legged friends bringing mice to the back doorstep.