Cat Hair

            by Mary Pinto

 

            I couldn’t bring myself to ring the doorbell.  I knew what was waiting on the other side, and even the sweltering sun couldn’t convince me to go inside. 

            “Just do it, just do it justdoitjustdoit,” I muttered, pacing across the tiny porch.  I tripped over the edge of a large welcome mat each time.  It was clear by the size of the word that it was intended to be read as WELCOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Even the tiny embroidered cats along the edges had maniacal grins on their faces. 

            The cats were just too menacing.  That’s it.  It wasn’t that I’m a wimp, it was that the crazed cats probably jumped out of the mat at night and went on killing sprees.  Feeling relieved with my decision, I leapt down the stairs and began hurrying down the street.

            “Katie?  Where are you going?”  I froze.  Maybe she didn’t see me.  Maybe if I stood completely still, she would lose track of my location.

            “Katie?  What are you doing?”  The jig was up.

            “…I lost my earring over here.”  I quickly ripped the hoop out of my ear and tossed in on the ground.  “Oh look, here it is.”  I picked it up and jammed it back in. 

            “Come inside, hon.  Do you have sunscreen on?  You’ll burn like a rabbit.”

I willed my feet to walk back toward the house.  Just one step at a time, I told them.  Ignore the woman on the porch.  Just keep moving forward.

“It’s so good to see you,” my aunt said, wrapping her arms around me.  I tried to hug back, but a mixture of my sweaty shirt and her craziness stopped me from bringing my hugging A-game.  Once again I noticed the strong similarity between her and my mother.  They had the same high cheekbones and green eyes, but hers were pointy and deranged, not respectively. 

“Hi, Gi.  How are you?  Thanks for letting me stay with you for a night” I asked, feigning politeness while every part of my body wanted to bolt in different directions.

“How are you?  Are you thrilled to be going to BC?  Xiu-Xiu and I are so excited that you’ll be living near us now!  We’re so lucky!”  she gushed.  I nodded, agreeing that they were the only ones who could possibly be lucky in this situation.  Xiu-Xiu, my cousin, is the only barrier keeping my aunt from being a crazy, old cat-lady.  Every neighborhood has a crazy cat-lady.  Mine lives across the street and has an odd obsession with me.  Sometimes I wait for an unnecessarily long time in my car to avoid talking to her, as our conversations always go like this:

HER:  How are you?  You are so beautiful.  I love you.

ME:  I’m good.  How are you?  (translation:  I’m gonna try to subtly walk down my steps backwards in order to get inside before you try to dismember me and turn my organs into cat toys.)

HER:  Not so good.  I think one of our neighbors is breaking into my house.  My furniture looks different.  And one of my cats scratched me yesterday.  It is not good because he has poisonous claws.

ME: (while slamming my front door) That’s too bad!  Have a nice day!  Good luck with the poison!

I’m glad my aunt didn’t turn out like that.  But she really is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from popping up from behind bushes and scaring her neighbors.  Sometimes I’m worried that since I’m named after her, my future might also hold the crazy cat-lady card.  Katherine Woodbury Moore is not that different from Katherine Giles Woodbury.  I don’t know why she goes by Giles, seeing as only British men have that name, but whatever.

“Xiu-Xiu’s inside.  We set up the kitchen this morning!”  Gi said, leading me into the house.  The kitchen is small and made of plastic.  It came with baskets and baskets of fake food, and for some reason my aunt thinks it is an appropriate toy for a twelve-year old and an eighteen-year old. 

“Katie!” Xiu-Xiu squealed, launching herself at me.  I saw that she had been watching, “Learn Chinese with Mimi,” one of the few videos allowed in the house.  I think the only other might be “Learn Yoga with Jamie.”

“Hey, Xiu.”  I gave her a real hug because she, unlike Gi, can’t help any of her quirks.  It’s not her fault that after being adopted at the age of two, she was called Shoe-Shoe until it was discovered three years later that her name is actually pronounced Show-Show.  And it’s not her fault that her “American” name is also Katherine (for some reason, everyone in my family thinks it’s cool that we all pretty much share the same three names.)  Although, I think she changed it recently to Rosemary, as I received a painted plate from her for my birthday last year that said Rosie W. on the bottom.  I guess it’s possible that hers was so ugly that she traded with someone else.

“Why don’t you two play with the kitchen while I run out to Trader Joe’s for a second?  I need to get something for dinner,” Gi said.  I grimaced.

“Yeah!  It’s all set up and everything!” Xiu-Xiu said, dumping the plastic food out onto the floor.  I wasn’t too thrilled with the prospects of the afternoon, but I knew better than to ask Gi if there were any alternative activity possibilities.  A few years ago, I babysat Xiu-Xiu and made the mistake of asking if we could watch TV.  Gi told me that Xiu-Xiu wasn’t allowed to watch TV ever.  I thought she was joking so I started laughing.  I quickly realized that she was serious, but instead of turning my laughter into a weird cough like a normal person, I twisted my neck and tried to stifle the sound with my shoulder.  Bad idea.  My braces got stuck in my sweater, only coming out after five minutes of yanking.  I worry that Gi now thinks I’m just as crazy as I think she is.

“Katie, you can write the menu while I start setting up the food,” Xiu-Xiu instructed me, thrusting a pad of paper and pen into my hands.  I surveyed the food, occasionally writing down things like, “hot dog-$4” or “chef salad-$6.”  Or, if I was feeling creative, “duck l’orange-$35.” 

“We don’t have any duck!  We can’t make that!” Xiu-Xiu informed me. 

“Well, the beauty of this game is that we get to control what we do and do not have.  For instance, this chicken wing might be duck.  And if we put it in a bowl with this orange, voila! duck l’orange!”

I tired of kitchen quickly.  I started to ignore Xiu-Xiu’s cliché suggestions (Hamburgers?  Spaghetti?  How boring can you get?) and began to write my own innovative ideas, like “platter o’ eyeballs” and “baked Alaskan.”  She was game for my weird suggestions though, and loved trying to figure which items we could use for eyeballs.

            “I’m back!” Gi said, stepping in to the house with three bulging bags.  “We’re going to have mushroom turnovers and spinach dip!  I also got some great snacks if you get peckish in the next forty minutes.”  She set down a bag of carrot chips, a bag of broccoli puffs, and a bag of cauliflower nuggets next to us on the floor.

            If I didn’t hate mushrooms and spinach, dinner would have probably been delicious.  Gi quizzed me on my life, wanted to know every detail of my college plans.  In addition to learning everything about my life, she also succeeded in totally freaking me out about starting college in a week.  Except for the look of terror on my face, I think I hid this well.

            After dinner, Gi and I set up the sofa bed.  We had to remove the 2,564 stuffed animals first before I could tell it was couch.

            “I was going to put you in Xiu-Xiu’s room, but then you would have to deal with Cookie.  It’s his bedroom too.  Buddy sleeps in my room and Riley sleeps downstairs.  We have to keep them apart because sometimes,” she lowered her voice, “they fight.”

Cookie waddled into the living room, his ample belly dragging on the floor.  “I’ve been feeding them healthy cat food, but Cookie keeps gaining weight.”  As she spoke, Gi picked up a box from the counter and offered Cookie a fish-shaped treat.

            “Um…what exactly is happening with the boxes?” I asked, trying to tear my eyes off Cookie’s corpulent form, and motioning to a series of cardboard boxes set up haphazardly around the room.

            “Just in case one of the cats goes somewhere outside their area of the house, they still might not run into each other.”

            “Ah, of course.”

            Gi glanced at her watch.  “Oh my!  It’s already 8:30.  We really need to be getting ready for bed.  Feel free to read, if you want.”  I didn’t want to read, and somehow none of their books interested me.  I picked up Little Bucky the Fireman, but it couldn’t hold my attention.  By 9:00, Gi and Xiu-Xiu were in their rooms with the lights out and I was wide-awake in the couch bed.

            I must have fallen asleep because I woke up unexpectedly around 2 am.  Something was making a sound in the kitchen.  Something big.  I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep again, but the sound was louder now, and closer.  Suddenly, as if in slow motion, I saw Cookie take a running leap and catapult himself toward the couch.  His rolls of fat flapped in the air as he landed millimeters away from my head.  With a contented sigh, he proceeded to fall asleep on my hair.

            When I woke up the next morning, the only evidence that Cookie had spent the night on my hair was a small tuft of ginger fur on the pillow.  And a slight odor. 

            “Did you sleep well?” Gi asked over breakfast.

            “Fantastic,” I replied, tucking into a big bowl of Trader Joe’s organic cereal. 

            “That’s great.  I just want you to know that you can stay with us anytime you want.  We have the next four years!” Gi gushed. 

            I smiled and took another bite of cereal.  Great.  Cat hair.