The details of the divorce were the stuff of neighborhood legend. He was cheating, but so was she. Neither one wanted the house and, horribly, neither one wanted the two kids either. Eventually the house was sold and the family moved away in three different directions, presumably to decades of family counseling and alcohol abuse.
One morning soon after, I was sweeping the patio when I glanced over my shoulder and saw the biggest gray cat I have ever seen sitting on the patio and looking around as though deciding whether or not to sign a lease. “Shoo,” I said, brandishing the broom. The cat yawned. “Go away,” I said. The cat put his hind leg straight up in the air and began to clean his nether regions.
I actually recognized the cat as one who belonged to my former neighbors; he was apparently left behind when they moved, and I was outraged that they left the family pet behind until I remembered that they would have left the family children behind, given the chance. Feeling sorry for the poor, abandoned kitty I invited him onto the back porch, poured him a bowl of food and all was lost.
Displaying a lack of imagination that was truly breathtaking, we named him Tom and before I knew it, Tom Cat had become a fixture in our lives. Since our two spoiled house cats went berserk if Tom Cat came into the house, he was relegated to the back porch and our days became an endless round of letting him on and off of the. If we tried to ignore him, his loud caterwauling would wake the dead. Eventually, in a misguided effort to simplify life, we had a cat door installed on the back porch so Tom could come in and out at will. Tom looked at the cat door and screamed louder. It never occurred to me that our fearless Tom would refuse to use it. In his little mind there was simply no room for a file marked “cat door.”
Frustrated, I asked my partner to do something. My partner is a veterinarian, and I assume he knows all there is to know about animal husbandry, even though I know rationally he probably never took a course on “cat doors.”
We spent the better part of a Saturday working with Tom, one of us stationed on either side of the cat door. I would push Tom in through the door and my partner would push him back out. We did this for several hours until Tom got annoyed and hid under a gardenia bush. When we went in the house he meowed loudly and we let him back in. We went back in he house and he screamed to be let out. “He’s kind of an underachiever,” said my partner. “Nothing wrong with his lungs,” I countered.
Later that evening we heard a scratch on the cat door and saw a furry gray paw trying to get in. “This is it,” I whispered, “Tom is going to use it.” “There’s a problem,” said my partner, “Tom is already on the porch.” Sure enough, there Tom was, lounging on a chaise and looking concerned.
A moment later, my partner and Tom and I were stunned as we watched a huge raccoon come through the cat door as though he had been using it for years and make a bee line for the bowl of cat food. As the raccoon came in Tom made a dreadful noise and exited the porch on his own for the first time, completely bypassing the cat door and going right through the screen. Meanwhile, the raccoon sat down and looked around – as though debating about whether or not to sign a lease.