Cat Scratch Fever [part II]
Continued from Part IWe lived two years in that basement apartment before moving to the third floor of a triplex on Harvard Avenue, below the tracks again. In all, Mokie lived in eight different places with me and the X. Then just with me.
When we brought him home that first day, a teacup full of spitfire, we put him down on the floor just inside the door and let him explore his new surroundings. The X followed him into the kitchen and showed him where his food bowl would be. I went into the livingroom and heard a familiar meow at the window. It was Gus.
I didn't want Gus to feel that he was no longer welcome in our home, just because we'd gotten another cat, so I opened the window and called to him to come in. He jumped down gracefully and began patiently licking his paws in his usual spot, the middle of the floor.
When Mokie's walkabout reached the livingroom, I introduced the two cats to each other. Not because I thought they'd understand my words, but so that they'd know from my tone that it was OK for them both to be there.
But Mokie wasn't having any of it. Though he was one tenth the size of Gus, he walked right up to him, opened his tiny mouth and hissed a tiny hiss. Gus drew back, startled; turned, and in one leap was out the window.
We never saw Gus again.
Mokie, X and I learned how to live together. We learned each other's likes and dislikes, and how to read each other's moods. When Mokie was upset about something — like when we took him to the vet to be, you know, fixed — he would hide under the bed or the sofa. X would become quiet and withdrawn, and sit with his arms crossed, with a beer, in front of the TV watching a hockey game.
Mokie liked hockey, too. Sometimes he'd sit in front of the TV, staring at the screen and swatting at the puck.
One of their favourite games to play together, Mokie and X, was bedpost hockey. This involved X, who had been a junior league goalie, positioning himself between the posts at the footboard of our bed. He referred to this area as the crease. The foot of the bed faced the door to the bedroom, a few feet away. Mokie would position himself just outside the door, and attempt to get in, and jump onto the bed. X would do his best to block him. Mokie would deke and swerve, sometimes trying a backpaw, and, eventually, would manage to slip himself past the goalie. Then they'd both fall on the bed, laughing and purring, respectively.
It was our second winter on Grand Boulevard, our second winter of watching hockey games together, when I came home one afternoon to find something was wrong. It was cold inside the apartment; as cold as the outdoors. And Mokie wasn't there.
I called for X, quietly at first, then, as the panic began to rise, more loudly. My mind insisted on conning me into the idea that there was a logical explanation for this; I need only be patient and I'd discover it.
The explanation was, we'd been robbed. The thieves had broken in through the bedroom window, which they'd left wide open. There was my logical explanation for the room temperature.
It was three hours before we found Mokie. In the interim there had been phone calls to the police, to the landlord, to the X's mother and to the moving company where he worked part time. There were no cell phones in the 1980s; it took some time to find him and for him to make his way home.
I don't cry much, as a rule. Hardly ever. But I cried that day.
We walked around the building, and around the neighbourhood, calling for Mokie until our throats were hoarse. When it got dark we came inside, but left the window open a crack so we'd hear him if he came home.
We were sitting in the kitchen, having a cup of tea. I was just about cried out. And then we heard it. A muffled, but plaintive, and clearly Mokie, meow.
He had crawled into a hole at the back of the cupboard under the kitchen sink; the hole where the pipes lead to the outside.
That's why Mokie became an aggressive cat.
Concluded in Part III
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