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

  I downloaded the new round of photos with the eagerness of a drug addict who had just scored. But here are a few typical images, caught by the camera:

  Yes, half of the photos were of ceiling lights. Our ceiling lights.

  The other half were no better:

  Ensuing rounds were also underwhelming. One showed a continuous montage of a framed picture. This picture hung in direct eyeshot of those prone on the sofa. I could almost hear a kitty snoring sound as I stared at them. My hopes were raised when this was followed by a tilted view of our staircase—Tibby on the move—but were then dashed by a new artistic series: shot after shot of verdant blurs. This was the view from a camera lying on the green down comforter in the guest room.

  Wendy squinted at all the photos, nodded, and remarked that at least we had some valuable information.

  “What information?” I sulked.

  “Tibby sleeps a lot.”

  Meanwhile, Fibby watched us with baleful eyes. Tibby was getting fussed over, and though it didn’t cut into the time logged on her own human-attention-o-meter, she didn’t like it.

  I loved Fibby but recognized her for who she was: charming, smart, needy, the girl in middle school who ostracized fat kids and boys with bad skin, who whispered loudly behind people’s backs, who snickered at the child with the leg braces and the unspecified disease, who spread mean rumors, who instructed others to do so too, who stole lunch money, who lied about what her parents did for a living . . . and who, despite all this, was loved and envied by every classmate.

  Tibby was the boy with Coke-bottle glasses whose books were kicked into the mud daily. Fibby was not going to be his friend. Did they even love each other, like twins should? It was hard to know.

  Yet.

  There were times when I walked into the living room and caught both on the sofa. Upon hearing my approach, their heads would swivel toward me in unison and they would stare with identical expressions, in the way adults gathered at a bridge table with martinis at their elbows might halt their gossip about the floozy down the road at the sudden appearance of a young child—in the doorway, rubbing her eyes, saying she’d had a nightmare, she couldn’t sleep, could she have a snack? Amusement, secrecy, conspiratorial smugness—it all seemed to cross over my cats’ faces. I would halt in my tracks, overtaken by the sensation that I had not been reading the kitty world around me correctly and that, in some mild way at least, I was being duped. But in the next second, Fibby would rise and stretch and greet me. She would glance at Tibby, a warning look, and Tibby would skedaddle, despite my protests. Then Fibby would climb onto my lap,

  curl her plump body into a comma, and gaze at me fondly. She would periscope both ears forward, tilt her head, and finally shutter her eyelids downward, as if they were handkerchiefs falling from a window, thereby completing her dastardly plan. She had now deftly smelted me of doubt, leaving only the pink, bubbly mess that was my heart, and a stupid, glazed, kitty-loving grin on my face.

  There were a few more downloads of digital photos, a few more e-mails with the manufacturer, and finally a mea culpa on my part. I removed the camera. It wasn’t giving us any answers. Yet the question remained: Where was Tibby going to eat?

  Tibby had never been a food-centric animal. But this was San Francisco, and food snobs emerged all the time. Cheap burritos would be abruptly frowned upon; extolled would be meals that were foamed, fluted, flamed, or built, Dalí-like, into strange edifices on your plate. Perhaps this had happened to Tibby. While he was away, he had stumbled upon his inner foodie.

  So I whisked the weight-controlling, coat-shining, teeth-whitening, ear-perking, tail-straightening food away. Into a bright, clean bowl I spooned new victuals swimming with plump whole shrimps, fiery orange carrots, and heady aromas. Then I lowered the lights, put on soft music, and crooned that dinner was ready. No, I didn’t know who Tibby was visiting. But I was going to beat the bimbo at her own game.

  Tibby turned up his nose.

  No problem. I opened a different can (creamy duck

  confit, bright purple eggplant) and crooned once more, but again he turned up his nose. And again. And again.

  “No problem,” I chirped at each rejection. “A different treat is on the way!”

  For days I kept this up, cleaning the bowl and refilling it with something new until my cheeks were numb from smiling, my voice was hoarse from false cheer, and my apron was worn-out. Finally I admitted defeat. Back into the bowl went the weight-controlling, coat-shining, teeth-whitening, ear-perking, tail-straightening food instead.

  The GPS returned too. It was all we had until I figured out a new stalking tactic. But the newest map again showed an undecipherable flurry of lines all over the neighborhood. I was stuck: The camera was a wash, providing no clues. And the GPS was incomprehensible.

  “Too much information but no way to understand it!” I wailed to Wendy. “We’re like Homeland Security!”

  “We have made one step forward,” Wendy said.

  “What!?” I cried.

  “You seem less depressed.”

  It was true. I was getting better. My ankle may have been healing at a glacial pace, but I had a gleam in my eye and a purpose in my heart. True, the gleam was maniacal and the purpose obsessive. But I was slowly, surely, coming back to life.

  It was in this state of mind that I decided it was time to do something drastic.

  It was time to learn to speak Cat.

  9.

  You would think that only a few people would show up to an animal communications class. You would think four or five, ten at the most.

  You would be wrong.

  In the large college classroom in Marin County, California, fifty people waited eagerly for the lecture to begin.

  The room was alive with the sounds of saliva, shifting bodies, and the jingle of metal. That was because thirty attendees had brought their real, live dogs. Mixed in with these sounds was the crinkle of paper; those of us who were dogless clutched flimsy photos of our animals. On my lap lay a two-dimensional Tibby, his large, wet extraterrestrial eyes staring from a partially crumpled head. Next to me, a lumbering black Newfoundland snuffled, looked at me sadly, and then lay down.

  I know, I tried to communicate. Stupid humans.

  Today I had brought two sides of myself to the class: My skeptical side counted the people in the room and added up the money the teacher was making. My earnest side stared at Tibby’s photo and told him, “Tonight we’re going to have a little chat.”

  The teacher was a scientist. She said that she approached speaking to animals scientifically. Scientifically, she had come to the conclusion that animal-human communication was well within everyone’s grasp.

  She said, “Talking to an animal requires only a loving intent, followed by thoughts.”

  She said, “The thoughts are most powerful if they’re in pictures.”

  She said, “Receiving communication requires an uninhibited mind. Your job is not to filter; it is to recognize and record.”

  She said, “The first thing that pops into your head is probably from the animal.”

  She said, “In order to do this, you have to put aside the fact that you think I’m crazy.”

  Then she asked us if there were any questions. (“Are you crazy?” Skeptical mouthed to Earnest, and laughed meanly.) Yes, there were questions, actually. A young woman raised her hand. Her cat, she said, had passed away recently. How could she speak to him?

  “Put all your questions in the past tense,” the teacher said, nodding with sympathy.

  Someone else asked about talking to coyotes. Another, whether her dog and cat could talk to each other.

  The teacher then hovered over a nearby beagle, swooped him off the floor, and cradled him in her arms. He had droopy eyes, a graying muzzle, and a look of resignation. This was her beagle, and we were going to talk with him, she told us, and we all leaned forward so that not a single thought-picture would be missed.

  Here’s what happened
next: The teacher sent the beagle feelings of love. She requested his permission to ask him questions. She asked him to tell us about himself. Or at least that’s what was supposed to be happening. From where I sat, she was just staring at him. She may have been secretly looking for fleas.

  We were to receive the information the beagle transmitted and write it down. “Free your mind,” the teacher reminded us as we waited for word from our canine friend. “Remember,” she said, “the first thing that pops in is probably from him.”

  I wrote: “droopy-eyed, old, carpet, asparagus, brussels sprouts, red jacket.”

  What did this mean? I had no idea. I did know that we had cooked asparagus and brussels sprouts the night before. I owned a red jacket that I had debated wearing today. We had carpets. Could it be that what was popping into my mind was information not on the life of the beagle but from my own? Yes. So when the teacher asked us to shout out our list, I wisely stayed silent.

  Here were some of the shouts:

  Loves food!

  Loves the outdoors!

  Loves dogs!

  Doesn’t like being held upside down!

  The teacher grew visibly excited.

  Hangs out on the porch!

  Hangs out on grass!

  Plays with other dogs!

  The teacher clapped her hands happily.

  “That was AMAZING,” she said. “Everything was spot-on.”

  “Really?” Skeptical thought to herself. Nearby, a small white dog pranced and tossed her tiny pink nose. The word spoiled was written in sparkles on her sweater vest. Skeptical tried to raise her hand; she was going to point out that, um, these impressions were generic for all dogs. But Earnest said to stop being a party pooper. Skeptical sulked and kept quiet.

  Now it was time to speak to our animal. I stared at Tibby’s two-dimensional face in my lap. I set my intention. I opened my mind. I sent feelings of love. I told myself that his answers would arrive quickly and

  certainly, and possibly be very odd. I thought, My job is to recognize and record! Finally, I asked, Can we talk?

  For a while Tibby just looked back at me, a wrinkle of white along one eye where the paper had been folded.

  Suddenly there was a rush of thoughts in my brain.

  “Is Wendy staying?” Tibby asked. “Are we getting another comfy chair? Are you going to calm down?”

  “Aren’t I calm?” I said back in a thought picture.

  “Not really. You seem to be worried about things. About the future. The past. What’s so great about the future and the past?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” I said. “This is what humans worry about.”

  “Well, humans are kind of dumb,” Tibby responded.

  “Hey,” I said, adding a thought-picture of offended, “this human has fed and cared for you for thirteen years.”

  Tibby ignored this. Instead I heard, “So, what’s going on with this injury anyway. Is it ever going to heal?”

  “Heck if I know,” I sighed, touched that he cared.

  Silence.

  “Hey, class is wrapping up, so I gotta go,” I told him.

  “You humans, in such a rush.” Tibby said. “You know, this injury might be the best thing for you.”

  “Really?” I said. But Tibby was already gone.

  The teacher told us, “Great job! What a success,” but I wasn’t so sure. Had I really talked to Tibby, or had I just been talking to myself?

  That night, I stared into Tibby’s eyes, trying to put all I’d learned that day into play. I stared at him and he stared at me.

  Nothing.

  Eventually, bored of our game, Tibby put his head on his paws and went to sleep.

  10.

  Meanwhile, Tibby’s twin sister, Fibby, talked to us all the time. Here is a speculative interpretation of her meows:

  And yet I missed the one communication I needed to hear:

  he day before, Fibby had seemed uncomfortable. But she purred when we petted her and ate what we gave her and batted her kitty eyes. Everything is fine, I said to Wendy. We made plans for the weekend.

  It was a beautiful sunny afternoon. We left the house to enjoy it. An excursion! Wendy was right, I was feeling better.

  When we returned that evening, we couldn’t find Fibby anywhere.

  “Fibby?” Wendy called. “Fibby?”

  We listened for kitty feet.

  Nothing.

  I crutched up the stairs. She wasn’t on her favorite part of the bed. She wasn’t on her favorite part of the rug. She wasn’t on her favorite chair. Instead, I found Tibby. He was sitting in the middle of the study, and something in the way he stared at me made my stomach drop.

  “Fibby, Fibby,” I began to call, at first calmly, but then with rising urgency. There was a puddle of urine on the bathroom rug.

  We finally found her in the back of a closet. Her head appeared, then her two front legs. She made it a little way out, then collapsed.

  “Oh no,” I said, dropping my crutches, getting onto the ground. “No, no, no.”

  I pulled her onto my stomach. She swayed, couldn’t get her balance.

  “Fibby!” I cried to her unfocused eyes. “Fibby!”

  Wendy stumbled away to call the vet.

  We drove to the all-night emergency room. I expected to wait for hours behind the Very Sick, but the assistant peered into the cat carrier, frowned, and whisked it to the back room. The vet came out moments later, with the assistant trailing.

  I heard “a large abdominal mass.” I heard “very, very sick.” They led us to an examining room and spoke in quiet voices, as if we were dangerous.

  “I don’t understand,” I kept saying to Wendy. How could a tumor grow in her stomach without my knowledge? How could I have missed something so big and so bad?

  The vet said, “She’s bleeding a lot.” Then he enumerated the options, none of them good. He spoke slow and low, like a Secret Service agent giving directions on where to place the snipers. Snipers were bad but snipers were necessary, his tone said. He didn’t react to the fact that I was weeping. He said, “And all of that might not even work.”

  “I just don’t want her to suffer,” I told him through the tissue against my face. “If it was your cat, what would you do?”

  Actually what I said was, “Dkpppt jjersss kiii ablutt her sfffffg.” But vets are used to translating wracking sobs into a native tongue.

  “I’d put her down,” he said.

  Put her down? I must have misheard. You put down a foot, you put down a baby, you put down someone you don’t like. But all those things can be brought back up. If Fibby was put down, she would be gone forever.

  Fibby was slack in her cage. Her pupils were dilated. She whimpered with every breath. We cooed and whispered and ran light fingers along her cheek. Put her down? Only yesterday she had arrived from the pound, it seemed. Only yesterday she had been a ball of fur and ears I could fit into my palm.

  Tell me what to do, I tried to communicate. I wanted to do what she wanted to do, and what was best for her. These are two different things in humans, but in animals they’re often the same.

  Her whimpers continued. I put my head in my hands. I took a deep breath.

  “Put her down,” I said.

  Wendy carried her to a small room. I turned down the lights. Carefully, Wendy put Fibby in my arms. She was so light. How did she get so light?

  The vet said, “Tell me when,” as if he were pouring coffee. I was weeping, rocking, whispering to the kitty clutched to my chest. I wanted more time, but she was clearly in so much pain.

  When? Never, I should have shouted to the ceiling.

  Instead, I said, “Now.”

  Fibby died quickly. Drugs are so efficient.

  “She’s gone,” Wendy said to me. She took Fibby’s limp body from my arms.

  “Where?” I said, bewildered. “Where did she go?”

  Just two days earlier she’d head-butted Wendy’s arm, asking for attention. A day ago she’
d scrunched up her face like an old man shaving when I’d tickled her chin. Last night she’d eaten her tuna treat.

  Wait, we could put the camera and the GPS on her collar.

  Wait, please. Please.

  But she was gone, and we could not follow.

  11.

  In the thirteen years we had been together, Tibby had never greeted me upon my return. But that night he was sitting near the top step of the landing. They say that cats don’t have many muscles in their face, which is why they seem so much more stoic than, say, a sobbing Homo sapien. But the pupils of his extraterrestrial eyes were dilated. His tail was slack on the floor. His two front paws were together, one slightly in front of the other, like the feet of a ballet dancer about to leap, and the hair on his back was raised. He didn’t need facial muscles. It was clear he was asking a question.

  Where’s Fibby? Where’s my twin?

  He stared as I leaned on my crutches. He stared as I wiped my cheeks. He stared as I buried my runny nose in my sleeve. When Wendy appeared beside me, Tibby stared at her too. Then he abruptly got up and walked to the den. After a few moments, he came back, glanced at us once, and went into the guest room. There, he peered into corners and under chairs. After covering every crevice, he reappeared. He sat down. He let out one deep Pavarotti meow, so loud and anguished that it startled us both.

  “She’s gone,” Wendy told him.

  But he rose to search another room.

  For days Tibby looked for Fibby. We know this because the GPS unit remained on his collar. The pink lines now told a story of kitty grief.

  First he searched in and around our house, his tracks scribbling circles in the backyard, the living room, and upstairs.

  Increasingly, his path was frantic, furious. He ignored Wendy and he ignored me. He walked with his head down, his tail twitching, his eyes darting about.