Cat Scratch Fever [part I]

The first apartment the X and I lived in together was a one-bedroom basement near the corner of Grand and Somerled in Montreal. It had tiny windows six feet from the floor that looked out onto the driveway that ran along the side of the building, which provided me with the unusual vantage of being able to keep any eye on my car's tires while lying in bed.

I was moving out of a four bedroom house on Prudhomme below the tracks in NDG, where I had lived with three roommates, all guys. I'd had the biggest room, with a bay window facing the street. Because, you know, I was the girl. One of the other bedrooms wasn't much bigger than a closet, but guys don't seem to care about those sorts of things so much.

The house was for sale, our lease was up, but a couple of us were still there. The landlord didn't mind — in fact, he appreciated having someone there to let prospective buyers in. We didn't have to pay any rent those last few weeks, and it gave us time to move slowly. When you're a student, you don't want to pay for a moving truck and movers if you can move your stuff yourself. Even if it means having pieces of furniture hanging out the back of your Volkwagen Rabbit hatchback. Or tied to its roof.

I'd picked the basement apartment on Grand because it was cool, even in June, and because the rooms were large. I have always had a lot of stuff. Heavy stuff. Mostly books. My friends dread helping me move. This apartment was within my budget, it was still in NDG, my favourite part of the city, and it was on a nice, wide street with trees in a nice enough neighbourhood. I told the landlord I'd take it under one condition: that he refinish the hardwood floors. He agreed, but told me it would take approximately a week, and he couldn't do it until July 1, after the other tenants moved out. That was fine with me because I had the house on Prudhomme. A deal was struck.

I say "I," rather than "we," because the X had nothing to do with either the house or the apartment. Not then. We wouldn't officially be living together for another three months. Even though most of his clothes, all his school books and necessities, everything but his records, had been on my shelves and in my closets for several months now, and even though he hadn't slept at his mother's home since March, I still thought of my apartment as my apartment.

I'm an only child; I'm not so good at sharing. And Jack's not the only person on the planet with a fear of commitment, Gentle Reader.

The Grand Landlord, of necessity, kept a path on the floor so he could come and go during the refinishing process, which allowed us to transport boxes of my stuff and stack them up in the kitchen. On the day when the floors were finally dry, we came in with my navy blue sofa, set it down in the livingroom, and heard,

"Meow!"

The biggest, friendliest, grey cat you ever saw was sitting in the corner, under the window which the landlord had left open to ventilate the smell of Varathane, calmly licking his paws. I love cats, and had just lost Beaker the previous summer. I wanted to close the window and keep him there with me. But I knew he must belong to someone, because he was friendly and clearly well fed.

The X called him Gus, a name we'd always given to people whose names we didn't know. Like when you're driving, and a car cuts you off, and you say, "Whatssamatter, Gus, turn signals broken?"

Still, during those first few weeks in my new apartment, as July turned into August, Gus would come visit a couple of times a week. He'd meow at the window, and we'd pop the screen off so he could jump down. I'd bought a couple of small cans of cat food, and a small bag of kitty treats.

In September, back at the university radio station, we were lounging around in the front office one day, listening to The Buzzcocks, when Rainer mentioned that the cat his girlfriend had rescued from Milton Street, when she'd come across a couple of nasty teenagers kicking it, had turned out to be pregnant. A week later, Rainer had four kittens that needed homes.

It was all I could do to wait another six weeks.

The kittens were all different colours. One was solid grey, another black with white markings, like Sylvester. The third was a calico, the fourth the runt — an unremarkable grey and black tabby, with a bit of white on his belly and paws. He had personality, though. During my postnatal visits I'd test the kittens; see whether they'd react to me, whether they'd play with a piece of string. Whether they seemed to be to clingy with their mother. After the second visit, I knew I wanted that tabby.

I named him Mokie, after the character on Fraggle Rock.

As we were driving home to Grand Boulevard with Mokie squeaking endearingly in his cardboard box, the X suggested that he start paying half the rent at my apartment. I agreed, on the condition that he tell his mother he was no longer living with her. A deal was struck, and we had a cat.

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Continued in Part II