‘Actually, no; my husband’s allergic. I had a cat when I was a child.’
Ruth was small, sharp, and quick. Her face was heart-shaped and her eyes were dark. She seemed to me like a silent movie starlet who had become careless with her looks. She must have been in her seventies then, and her clothes often sported safety pins; her shoes were always on the verge of splitting from the soles, and there were usually stains on her sleeves. She always had a cup of coffee in hand. She drank it almost white, more milk than coffee. Ruth had an educated voice. If I closed my eyes while she was talking I could swear I was listening to NPR.
‘What days can you come in?’
‘Any day. I’m a housewife.’
Did I imagine it, or did Ruth wince when I called myself a housewife?
‘Well, you can work as many hours as you want. We’re chronically short of volunteers.’
‘What will I be doing?’
‘Feeding, scooping out litter pans, running the cats to the vet if you drive. Show them to people, try to find them homes.’ Ruth smiled. ‘And of course there’s the socializing, playing with them and petting them, that’s the fun part.’
I smiled back, and perhaps it was then that we began to be friends.
* * *
I never have had many friends, and I didn’t have siblings either. I was so quiet as a girl that other children tended to forget I was there. I liked to lie on my bed and read, or play odd little games with dolls, or watch TV. I had a best friend in high school, but then her family moved to Maryland. In college my few friends seemed to melt away when I started dating Jim. So I was a little intoxicated by Ruth.
It wasn’t what she said so much as how she was. She was confident, but she listened. She was compelling. Oh, I’m afraid I’m not doing such a good job of conjuring her up for you. She was like an older sister to me, a clever sister; it was as though we somehow shared a past which there was no need to speak of, about which too much had already been said, even though we’d never talked about it at all.
Ruth had a preternatural ability to divine the desires of the cats, and to command them. They flocked to her and deferred to her. They loved her, and so did I.
Ruth could feed liquid medicines to cats from a spoon. She would hold it out to a sick old cat and coo, ‘Drink up, sweetie.’ The cat would make a face and lap the nasty stuff up, like a child. Once we had an orange tom named Lump who was dying of kidney failure. He hung on and on; finally the staff decided it was time to put him down. I was getting ready to drive him to the vet when Ruth came in. She sat down next to the panting cat and whispered in his ear. Lump dragged himself onto her lap, closed his eyes, and died.
‘What did you say to him?’ I asked.
Ruth shook her head. ‘It’s private,’ was all she said.
My own relationship with the cats was more difficult. I was a little frightened of them. I tried not to let Ruth see this, but of course she knew. If a cat hissed at me I froze. When two cats fought I could only stand helplessly by; Ruth would snap her fingers and the combatants would slink apart apologetically. The other volunteers sprayed them with squirt guns.
I slowly developed a rapport with certain cats. My favorites were Lucky, an earless, balding thing who loved to sit in my lap for hours; Madge, a tortoiseshell who bit everyone but me; and Elvis, a fat blond cat who followed me everywhere and enjoyed chewing on my wristwatch band. I loved the kittens, but everyone loves kittens. They never stayed around long enough to be memorable.
Ruth and I would sit in the lunch room and play cards, each with a cat on our laps and more curled around our ankles. We played simple games like Hearts and Crazy Eights. Ruth never told me anything about her life outside the shelter, and I didn’t talk about Jim or real estate or our house. One Monday morning I came to work with a black eye.
‘What happened?’ Ruth asked.
‘I walked into a door.’ This was the truth; I had gotten up in the middle of the night, thirsty and sleep-fuddled, and had collided with one of the recently relocated doors in my search for the bathroom. I could see that Ruth was drawing her own conclusions.
‘No, really. I do that a lot.’
Ruth now looked extremely skeptical. ‘You don’t do it here.’
‘Yes, well, my husband isn’t remodeling the Happy Cat Home. He has an insatiable urge to make closets where no closets were before.’ That was all we said about it. I admit that I felt a little glamorous. Without doing a thing Jim had incurred Ruth’s dislike. No one else at the shelter asked me about the black eye, and I imagined Ruth telling them my closet story, which was not even a story but actually true. That night Jim came home with steaks. I put one on my eye for a while to please him, and then we ate them.
* * *
Things went along this way for a few years. Cats came and went; the young pretty ones tended to go, and the old broken ones tended to stay. I got more relaxed and skillful with them; I could give the diabetic cats insulin and clip claws without getting scratched. Jim continued to put our house through startling transformations, and finally installed a bathroom right off the master bedroom. Ruth and I went to the movies now and then, but mostly we spent our time at the shelter, wrangling cats and playing cards.
Then Ruth died.
I don’t know how it happened. One Wednesday in July, she didn’t show up for her shift at the shelter. No one answered her phone. Jim and I were on vacation in Nova Scotia, so I heard about it the following Monday from Ellie, the director of the shelter. They had gotten worried; after all, Ruth was old, though she didn’t complain about her health. They’d called the emergency number on her volunteer application, but it was disconnected. It had been hot all week, in the upper nineties. They went to Ruth’s house and rang the bell. No answer. I had never been to Ruth’s house. Ellie said it was a small brick ranch-style place. She went around and looked in all the windows, which were open. No sign of Ruth. The police couldn’t find her either. ‘Maybe she went on vacation, and just forgot to tell you, Ma’m,’ the officer suggested.
Ruth never came back. There was no body, no funeral, no grave.
I worried, and felt spurned. I couldn’t imagine Ruth leaving without saying goodbye. Something terrible must have happened to her. But no one knew anything. Jim suggested that she might have amnesia, but he liked to listen to Radio Mystery Theater and I knew that sort of thing only happened in melodramas.
At the end of the summer, I got a registered letter at the shelter. I remember holding it in my hand, the weight of it, the pause before opening it, my puzzlement as to who might send me a letter at work. It was from a downtown law firm, and it informed me that Ruth had died and left me her house and its contents.
I’m ashamed to say that my first response was relief: Ruth hadn’t abandoned me, she had only died.
That evening Jim came into the kitchen as I was making dinner and said, ‘How was your day?’ I opened my mouth to tell him about Ruth, about her house … and I said, ‘Just a day. How about you?’
* * *
Ruth’s house was on Pratt, near Ridge Avenue; it was a ten-minute walk from the Happy Cat Home. Jim would have called it a tear-down. The house was small and sat far back on a double lot. It was a single-story brick house, neat and plain, built in the sixties. Elm trees that had somehow eluded Dutch Elm Disease loomed over it. A sprinkler sat unused in the middle of a beige lawn.
I let myself in the front door.
The house itself was silent; a shimmer of cicada singing came in the open windows along with a warm breeze. I stood in the entryway and felt like an intruder. This was Ruth’s house. Ruth was a very private person. Standing there looking at her couch, her dinette set, her desk, I felt reluctant. But she gave it to you. She wanted you to be here. The thought came into my head as though someone was urging me to accept hospitality. Come in, come in. I set my purse on an armchair and began to wander slowly through the rooms.
Ruth must have furnished her house in the 1970s. All the furniture was teak, or cove
red in nubby off-white fabric. There were batik throw pillows and a beanbag chair. Her dishes were heavy stoneware, the carpeting was brown shag. Everything was somewhat worn.
I opened one of the desk drawers. It was empty. There were circles on the windowsills where plants had been. There was nothing in the kitchen cabinets but curling shelf-paper; nothing in the bathroom except an extra roll of toilet paper. In the bedroom closet I found two dresses that had belonged to Ruth. I leaned in and smelled them. They smelled like the Happy Cat Home.
But what about Ruth’s cats? There was no cat hair anywhere. No furniture had been clawed, there was no evidence of a litter box. And yet I remembered Ruth sharing stories of her cats’ antics. Perhaps whoever had taken the plants and rest of it had taken the cats, too. What were their names? I couldn’t remember.
I sat down on Ruth’s bed. The curtains moved in the breeze. I felt watched. ‘Thank you,’ I said to Ruth, in case she could hear me. Then I felt silly. I got my purse, locked up the house and left.
* * *
I didn’t go back for a week. There was no reason to go. I worked my shifts at the shelter, but without Ruth it seemed dull and sad. I sat down one day to eat by myself in the shelter’s squalid lunch room, and suddenly it occurred to me that I could eat at Ruth’s house; it was so close. I gathered my food and left.
A bus was letting children off on the corner as I walked toward the house. They stared at me and whispered to each other as I let myself in.
The house was exactly the same. I sat at the dining room table and ate my yogurt and my tuna fish sandwich. When I was done I folded up the zip lock bags and put them in my purse. It seemed wrong to leave any trash behind, even in the garbage can.
I stood in the kitchen looking out at the backyard. There was a small patio with a few old lawn chairs randomly placed, a planter full of dirt. Then I sat on Ruth’s bed. I took off my shoes and lay down on top of the bedspread, experimentally. The bed was very soft.
I didn’t mean to sleep. Even as I was falling asleep I thought, no, I must get back to work, but I knew I was sleeping already. It was the kind of sleep that is like dropping into a hole. Then I was half-awake, and had a curious sensation: there was a weight on the bed, leaning against me, and as I moved in my waking the weight went to the edge of the bed and fell off. It landed with a thud on the floor.
I sat up and looked at the floor, but there was nothing there. I looked at my watch. Only half an hour had gone by. I put on my shoes and went back to the shelter.
* * *
I came back the next day. I decided to turn on the sprinkler, and watched it fling water in a circle as I ate lunch. When I walked into the bedroom there was a dead sparrow on the bed, neatly centered on the pillow I had used the day before. And somehow I understood.
That evening Jim and I were eating dinner out on our deck. Jim had recently purchased an elaborate gas grill, so we were eating ribs and grilled vegetables. I knew that I would be the one who got to scrub the burnt barbeque sauce off the new grill when dinner was over.
‘Jim?’
‘Mmm?’ He had his mouth full.
‘I’m going to Boise tomorrow.’ Boise was where my mother lived. ‘I’ll be back in a week or so.’
‘Hmm. Everything okay?’
‘Sure; but it’s been a while.’
‘Well, give her my love.’
‘Okay.’
That was the last conversation we had. After twenty-one years of marriage there’s not a lot to say.
I left the next morning. I didn’t bring many things: a suitcase full of clothing, a few books. I had a checking account Jim didn’t know about. I’d been saving my clothing allowance for a long time, not for any particular reason, just to have some money of my own. I took all the evidence of that with me.
I bought some groceries. I bought bath towels and dish soap and a small radio. I drove to Ruth’s house, now my house, and put the car in the garage. Now I was invisible. No one knew where I was.
* * *
The first few days were uneventful. I often had the feeling that something was moving at the edge of my vision, a slight blur, a dark shape. I read my books and ate chocolate. I listened to All Things Considered and took long baths.
On the third night I woke up suddenly. A large cat was sitting on the bed, looking at me. Its eyes reflected pale green. I offered my hand to it. It considered this for a moment, then flicked its tail and jumped off the bed. There was a slight thump as it landed, and then silence. I looked all over the room, but didn’t find it.
The next day I put a dish of cat food on the kitchen floor. I watched it for a while; nothing happened. A few hours later I checked again and the food was gone.
The days began to blur together. Purring sounds in my ear. Aluminum foil balls rolling of their own volition across the floor. Invisible cat feet making soft dents in the bedspread. I woke up close to dawn and saw cats swarming around the bedroom, colorless in the half-light, an uncountable number of them. I was afraid then.
A few days later I was vacuuming the living room when I noticed something dark on the white wall. I got down on my knees to look at it. It was writing, small and cramped. It said: You could probably levitate if you wanted to. The thing that frightened me and thrilled me was that the words were so low to the ground—just above the baseboard.
I stood up. The house seemed expectant. I didn’t know if I wanted to levitate. I had never thought about it. I went outside and stood on the patio. After a while I went back inside. Curtains were moving slightly in the breeze; otherwise the house was still. There was a feeling of disappointment, but I did not know if it was mine or someone else’s.
* * *
I had been living in the house for two weeks. It was early evening. I was curled up on the couch, reading the newspaper. It was October, and chilly. I had closed all the windows and turned on the heat. I was content.
I had begun to distinguish between aloneness and loneliness. In Ruth’s house I was alone; the phantom cats and NPR were company enough. But I wasn’t lonely, and I realized only by this how lonely I had been before.
Now I had the familiar sense of being watched. I put down the newspaper. There was a white cat sitting in the armchair. It was very thin, with green eyes and a rather haughty manner. We stared at each other. It seemed to be considering me, judging me.
‘Well, come on, then,’ it said. It rose, stretched, jumped to the floor and stood looking at me expectantly. When I didn’t get up instantly it turned its back and marched off toward the bedroom. I hesitated, then followed it.
The closet stood open. I had hung a few dresses and skirts next to Ruth’s; these had been pushed aside and the back of the closet was now another doorway. I couldn’t think how I had failed to notice this door. The white cat stalked through it and I followed.
There were stairs, which led down. The house was built on a concrete slab; these stairs had no business being here. There was hardly any light and I felt my way with my hands touching the walls and my feet seeking each step before advancing. The walls and the steps seemed to be made of earth. Sound was deadened. I had no idea if the white cat was still with me. I went down and down … finally there were no more stairs. I was in a hallway which led to a door. The white cat sat in front of the door with its tail twitching.
‘There you are. You’re very slow.’ It nudged open the door and disappeared through it. I followed.
The room was big and low-ceilinged. It smelled of earth and unbathed flesh, meat, baby powder, damp wood, old sweaters. The room was full of things, in no order at all, and cats were everywhere. The cats were playing, napping, eating, yawning, fighting, and they were doing all this in the midst of shoes, hats, dresses, books, dead plants, papers, a typewriter, a few small lamps with chewed cords, underwear, knickknacks, a footstool, a child’s rocking chair, suitcases, combs, a toothbrush … all of the things which had been missing from Ruth’s house were here. Some of the cats wore pieces of costume jewelry I remembered s
eeing on Ruth.
They all ignored me, or pretended to ignore me. The white cat was nowhere to be seen, and I wondered why I’d been brought down here. The disorder was oppressive. I felt large; at first I thought I was the only thing in the room over two feet tall.
‘Hello, Beatrice.’ Her voice came from a dark corner. I took a step forward and stopped. Where was she?
Ruth was sitting in a metal folding chair, the kind people take to parades. She was wrapped in a blanket. All I could see of her was her face. Ruth looked tired, but otherwise not too different from when I’d seen her last.
‘Ruth! I was so worried about you! What are you doing down here? Are you okay?’ I was so relieved to see her, and so confused. I edged a little closer.
Ruth chuckled. It was such a familiar sound—it evoked all those games of Crazy Eights in the Happy Cat House lunchroom. ‘Well, darling, I don’t think I would exactly describe myself as ‘okay’; I’m dead, after all, so ‘okay’ is a little beside the point, don’t you think?’
‘But—?’ I remembered that I had no idea how she’d died.
‘It wasn’t that big of a deal. I slipped and cracked my head in the bathtub. It was very tidy.’ Ruth’s voice was kind, but I could tell she thought I was focusing on the wrong thing. Barking up the wrong tree, would have been her way of putting it.
‘Yes, but Ruth—no one could find you. We checked, we looked for you, but you had just … vanished.’ I knew I sounded a little petulant, I couldn’t help it.
Ruth smiled, as though she was proud of how she’d mystified us all. ‘That’s right. They couldn’t find me, because the cats ate me.’
‘Ate you?’
‘Yep. Every little bit of me. It’s such a cliché, isn’t it? But they didn’t do it for the usual reasons. They weren’t hungry, they weren’t locked in the house. They did it to bring me down here, with them. So we could be together.’
The longer I stood here listening to Ruth in this dark, smelly, chaotic room, the more revolted and sad I felt. The cats had gradually stopped milling around. Now they sat silently, listening. Ruth waited for me to respond. Finally I said, ‘Won’t you come upstairs? We could be together—with the cats, too, of course.’ There was a deep stillness among the cats now, as they waited to hear what Ruth would say.