Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology Read online

  So began Operation Chasing Tibby.

  5.

  The first and most obvious step in Operation Chasing Tibby was to follow Tibby to his den of iniquity.

  “DEN of inIquity,” I said with clenched teeth. I could see it: Tibby asleep on a golden pillow, empty tuna cans scattered like rum bottles, young cats lounging nearby. Every so often a palm frond fan of enormous proportions appeared in my mind’s eye, floating up and down in considered waves, sending a light breeze across his sun-dappled fur.

  “DEN of iNIquity,” I said again, re-syllabizing, as if by doing so I was saying something fresh and startling.

  “Um,” said Wendy. “You mean the place he was for five weeks? But how do you know he’s going back?”

  I didn’t know. Not for sure. But there were signs. He wasn’t eating at home, for one. Yet his fur was shiny and his pantherlike girth remained. For two, he had the smug, self-satisfied look of a husband who was getting away with something on the side. I had never experienced that look before, because I’d never had a husband, but I had seen it enough on One Life to Live and As the World Turns to recognize it immediately.

  “Look,” I said, pointing. “See?”

  Wendy peered at him, but she didn’t see.

  Then again, she wasn’t a veteran cat owner. Of course she would be in the dark.

  “Trust me,” I told her. “He’s enjoying a little hunka-hunka-hunka.”

  Hunka-hunka-hunka? her face said. But she just nodded, cast surreptitious glances at my med list, and said no more.

  Wendy wasn’t completely on board with the quest, but she wasn’t going to fight it. She had grown fond of Tibby and Fibby. Not fond enough to speak to them in baby talk. Not fond enough to substitute the word “kitty” for the word “cat” in every feline-related sentence. Not fond enough to perseverate over where Tibby might have gone and why. But still, fond. So she wanted to help. But how do you follow a cat? Cats are the slipperiest of domestic animals. Thousands of years of genetic coding has taught them to melt into azaleas, lie motionless behind garden gnomes, glide along fence tops, and slink under benches. Meanwhile, I was on crutches and painkillers.

  “We can’t go where he goes,” she mused. “But technology can.”

  Which was why I soon found myself at a “spy store,” hobbling past shelves of tissue boxes that were really video cameras, past pens that were really tape recorders, past brass knuckles and stun guns and large serrated combat knives. At another time I would have been intrigued by the whiz-bang gadgets. But not today. Today I had a mission.

  “I need a tracking device,” I said to the young and pimply employee. “You know, something that follows.”

  “We got that,” the employee said lazily, as if a million betrayed wives had been here before me. “You’re going to want a Global Positioning System, also known as GPS.” He pointed to a cabinet on the far wall and motioned for me to follow.

  The glass case we approached was lit like an aquarium. Inside swam GPS devices of every size and shape, bristling with antennae, magnets, screens, and straps. There were GPS units that could be slipped into a spouse’s purse, GPS units that could be affixed to the underside of a car, GPS units that could be placed in money bags in the event of an armored car robbery. Informational labels offered long model numbers and promised “one-click satellite overlay” and “integrated antennae” and “flash storage.” The young employee lifted a large and heavy-looking box from its shelf and held it toward me with reverence.

  “Seventy-two hours of battery life, live tracking through a website, and magnetic mounts,” he explained. I looked at the price tag: $1,500.

  “I want something a little cheaper,” I said and doddered closer to the cabinet. All the units looked much too cumbersome and heavy for a cat to carry. “And it has to be small. Very small.”

  But each GPS unit he showed me was much too big.

  “I can help you better if I know what you need it for,” the employee said as he put the last contraption away. His voice maintained the neutral tone of someone who has been coached about sensitive situations. But his eyes gave him away. They swiveled up my crutches, over to the head wound, and back down to the large contraption on my leg. I knew what he was thinking. Bad boyfriend? Abusive husband? A confrontation with a mistress?

  I cleared my throat.

  “Um,” I said. “Well,” I said.

  He looked at me expectantly.

  “You see,” I finally managed, “I need to follow my cat.”

  He didn’t understand at first, probably because I was whispering.

  “Cat,” I said. “C-A-T.”

  Blank look.

  “Consider it a quest to track a very short, very hairy husband,” I said.

  Then his eyes lit up. “A cat!” He’d heard a lot of stories here at the spy store, but he’d never heard this one. “Wow! Oh, yeah! Well, go on the Internet!” he cried. “There’s so much there. There’s definitely going to be something for a cat, I promise.”

  Sure enough, my new friend was right. On a strange website full of crude drawings and stiff En-

  glish, I finally found a very small GPS device. It was made by one man, in his garage, for cats.

  Which meant that he was not only a determined engineer; but also a soul mate.

  I ordered it.

  The Cat Tracker arrived. A sturdy, white cube of plastic encased in a blue rubber membrane, it was a little bigger than a Halloween chocolate and about twice as thick, with the same neatness and simplicity. It weighed .75 ounces, at least a third less than any GPS unit at the spy store. There was a button on the front and two lights—one red, one blue—that blinked in various ways, assuring us that what we had was a complicated device that could outwit any medium-size mammalian brain. We went looking for Tibby.

  He was sprawled on the rug, snoring. He lifted his head when Wendy and I appeared, not suspicious of our large fake smiles and our slow-motion approach, our murmured nonsense words, the way we looked upward at the ceiling, over at the wall, anywhere but at him. I told him what a pretty kitty, what a smart kitty, what a perfect kitty he was. The unit went on his collar without a hitch.

  Tibby was transformed. He was now half cat, half astronaut, with a control panel hanging from his neck, blinking red and blue, lighting up his whiskers. Wendy and I looked at each other, mimed silent

  congratulatory speeches, and then peered at Tibby. Would he realize something strange had occurred? But he gazed at us with fondness, unperturbed.

  I took some pictures to record the momentous occasion.

  He got up and stretched.

  He walked toward the door.

  He paused at the threshold, then made his way across the hall and sauntered down the stairs.

  “Okay,” I said. We stood there like parents sending their child off to the first day of kindergarten, proud and forlorn.

  “What do we do now?” I said, as his tail disappeared below.

  “We wait,” Wendy replied.

  6.

  Twelve hours later, Tibby returned.

  “Munya bunya munya munya,” I said. I pulled him onto my lap. “Where the heck have you been, my handsome man?”

  As Fibby looked on with disapproval, I gave Tibby a triumphant chin scratch, watched his eyes glaze in pleasure, and unbuckled his collar. The GPS unit slid into my hand. Already I saw the single track that would beam like magic from this chocolate-size circuit board to the computer and then onto its screen—that straight line from our house to the Gilded Place. Once I found the address, I would act quickly, jumping in the car, leaping out at the location, brandishing my crutches like a weapon. I would dangle the GPS unit in front of the perps and say, “Don’t deny it. I have evidence right here.”

  Fibby waited until I had arranged myself at the computer in the usual way, leg propped to one side, crutches laid against the chair. Then she jumped up and pranced on my thighs like a Lipizzaner. She meowed, as if eager to see the route, though I suspected that she was
already in the know, and perhaps had been all along. This theory—that Tibby had told Fibby all about his wanderings—had been greeted by Wendy with a small, unbelieving smile and the rise of an eyebrow.

  Crazy cat person, her expression said.

  Crazy kitty person, I wanted to correct her.

  I tapped at the computer keys, Fibby on my lap. Tibby, seeing that I had been colonized by his twin, walked to his favorite place on the rug. He lay down, oblivious to the fact that he was still the center of my attention.

  The screen lit up. I blinked, ready for his track, that one line, straight and true. Instead, here is what I saw:

  “This is baby talk for “Hello, Light of My Life, Kitty of My Soul.”

  “Holy moly!” I said.

  “Holy moly,” Wendy said back.

  One straight line? No.

  The screen looked as if a kindergardener had been given a Twinkie, and then been let loose with a crayon. It was chaos.

  We hung the GPS back on Tibby’s collar. He went out, and when he returned hours later, I again slipped the unit from his neck and plugged it into the computer. This time, certainly, there would be a definitive line.

  Instead I got this:

  I had no idea how to read this riot of feline footsteps. Should I follow the lines that went westward across the street? Should I concentrate on the nucleus that seemed to stay within our block? And look at that trail that headed east toward the feral cat colony. My head was reeling. I recharged the GPS unit and attached it again to Tibby’s collar. With my hands on my hips, and my mouth in a pout, I told him to come back with something a little clearer, for goodness sake.

  This was going to be harder than we’d thought.

  7.

  “This isn’t working,” I wailed, pointing to the pile of GPS maps that I had printed and that were now spread on the table before us.

  “I think it’s working fine,” Wendy replied. “You just don’t like it that shy, anxious, only-happy-around-you Tibby seems to have such an active social life.”

  Yes.

  “No,” I said. “I just think we need to see real evidence. Not just crazy lines on a map.”

  What we need, I told her, was a camera.

  “They don’t make cat cameras,” Wendy sniffed.

  Oh, but they do.

  The CatCam, as it was called, arrived in a small padded envelope. It was gray and boxy, and looked as if it had been cobbled together in a basement workshop, which, according to the website, it had. The instructions were in German and English, advising on the Schnellstart of the new device, and after a long period of fumbling, it was ready, programmed to snap a hundred photos, one a minute. That meant that we had under two hours of camera time; enough, surely, to see the perp in flagrante. I imagined a large human visage peering back at me, tuna can in hand. Or perhaps I’d see the furry backside of another cat sharing her food bowl with shy, innocent Tibby.

  Sharing that and who knows what else.

  We found our quarry napping in a sunbeam. He opened one eye when we approached. Again, there was the chorus of excessive praise. There was the circus of innocent expressions. There was the slow-motion approach. Again, the new technological device was attached without a hitch. This time, though, Tibby seemed a little perturbed. What’s this? his look was saying. What ridiculous new idea have you latched onto and now clumsily affixed to my neck? We offered another round of sugary exclamations and condolences full of empty promise. Aww, Tibby. Poor Tibby. Good kitty, Tibby.

  Tibby huffed and walked down the stairs. As his tail disappeared from view, I said, again, “What do we do now?”

  “We wait,” Wendy responded.

  Wendy walked downstairs a half hour later. Tibby was lying on the sofa. Fibby was nearby, on a chair. The camera was clicking away, that photo every minute. Time was running out.

  “Am I ruining the experiment if I put Tibby outside?” she called up to me. We decided the answer was no.

  Wendy picked up Tibby and brought him to the backyard. “Go to your bimbo!” she told him. Then we forced ourselves to begin our own day. We’d done all we could, we reasoned. Now we had to let the camera do the rest.

  My day consisted of lying on the sofa with my leg elevated, imagining where Tibby had gone. Cats have territories, I had been told, and sometimes they are large. True, the GPS didn’t back this up. The maps showed that Tibby mostly ran around our block, just as I had always assumed. He ran around like a kitty on methamphetamine, in fact. But every so often, a pink line crossed the street.

  I knew that GPS could register “anomalies,” especially in an urban environment. Here satellite signals

  *This is the way we arrived scientifically at this decision:

  Wendy: Are you sure we’re not ruining the experiment?

  Caroline: No, I’m not sure. But that camera is clicking. Can you shoo him, but as if you’re not really shooing him?

  Some weak sounds of shooing ensue.

  Wendy: He’s not moving. I’m picking him up.

  Caroline: Okay.

  become confused, ricocheting off tall buildings, narrow alleyways, abundant foliage, even Tibby’s own protruding chin. Could this account for the street crossings? Or was Tibby really wandering two blocks away, maybe more?

  I was divided. One part of me wanted Tibby to have remained close by. But this would have meant that he had not only left for five weeks but he had also ignored my frantic calls, and thus me. So, another part of me wanted to believe he had been far away. “Tibby! Tibby!” I had warbled every night until my neighbors hated me. Surely, if he had heard my plaintive cries, he would have returned.

  Logic: But he hadn’t returned.

  Denial: This meant he hadn’t heard me. Ergo, he was far away, out of earshot.

  Logic: But the GPS doesn’t indicate this.

  Denial: Wait, he was close by, but he was trapped. Yes, held captive in someone’s house, unable to leave.

  Logic: Then why did he seem so healthy and happy on his return?

  Denial: All right then, so now he’s not going back to where he had been. Which was, um, far away.

  Logic: But he’s not eating here. Doesn’t that mean he’s going somewhere else to eat? Someplace he knows? Someplace the GPS is recording?

  Denial: No.

  It was becoming clear that I had my own anomalies, pink-lined hopes, hurts, and assumptions. Who could blame me? We’d had thirteen years together! Good years, or so I had thought. Thirteen years of care that included petting, brushing, clean water, space on the sofa, space on the bed, space in my heart, all abruptly forsaken. Thirteen years of food that promised renal health, a shiny coat, strong nails, weight control, urinary tract protection, teeth whitening, nose wetting, ear perking, and tail straightening, now chucked. Thirteen years of love, snubbed.

  Why?

  Perhaps Tibby had decided to explore the world, like Ernest Shackleton. Wasn’t there a kitty version of Shackleton’s quest, the planting of a flag in ice, the promise of knighthood, fame, glory, numerous biographies, and a slew of movies? Weren’t there continents to cross and mountains to climb, come hell or high water, and finally a kitty hall of fame in which Tibby’s large mug would appear, heroic, self-satisfied, triumphant?

  Or maybe Tibby had been sowing his kitty oats on a long overdue rumspringa. Like an Amish teenager, he had pitched himself into the wide-open world in search of the life he did not have, only to return home after discovering that heathen sin wasn’t as fun as he thought it would be.

  Or had this been a spiritual journey? Tibby was a cat facing the fact that his sprightly years were well behind him, and yet the meaning of life still eluded him. And so, a kitty walkabout.

  I was napping, dreaming these half-dreams, when the hero himself returned a few hours later. I shook myself awake and eagerly loosed the camera from his collar.

  Here is what I saw:

  The perp.

  “The perp!” I cried, and Wendy came running. She looked over my shoulder.
>
  “That’s me,” she said.

  The rest of the photos were just as unhelpful. It seemed that once Tibby had been deposited in the yard, he had decided to stay there until the camera ran out of digital space.

  There were kitty-under-our-bench shots.

  There were kitty-gazing-at-our-sky shots.

  There were kitty-reflected-off-our-glass-door shots.

  But no real clues. If he had gone to the South Pole, to the grimy streets of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, or to the Outback, there was no evidence yet.

  In every photo, Tibby’s whiskers drooped over the frame.

  “Those are cute whiskers,” Wendy said.

  8.

  We decided to reprogram the camera’s interval time. It would still take one hundred photos, but now they would be spaced five minutes apart. This meant we would be recording eight and a half hours of Tibby’s day. Surely we would catch a glimpse of his secret life now.

  When I say “we decided to reprogram the camera’s interval time,” what I mean is “we struggled to understand the directions and hoped we had lengthened the minutes between shots.” For something so small and simple-looking, the camera was complicated. And what I mean by “the camera was complicated” is “it kicked our Luddite asses.”

  I corresponded with the manufacturer. He was German, built these cameras himself by hand, and was eager to help. But the language barrier and my own incompetence meant we fiddled a lot but made little headway. Finally Wendy and I did what most people would at this intersection of hope and desperation. We winged it.