"Off! Get off the TV. Amy, will you come get jour cat?"
Crash-galumph-galumph-sküüüid-thump't
I arrived in time to see her complete a second Mario Andretti lap. I swear she grinned at us as she skidded past. With the next drive-by Seren stopped long enough to grab my ankle, execute a ten-second feline headstand while bunny-kicking my calves, then resumed her mad dash around the house.
Mahmoud glared. "I thought you said cats sleep sixteen hours a day."
I shrugged and hid a smile. Seren had already learned what buttons to push. Rattling the wooden window blinds worked extremely well, but now she need only eye the decorations to garner all the attention she craved.
Cute kitty. Smart kitty. Mahmoud wasn't amused, but I was.
She raced into the living room, leaped onto the glass-top table, and belly-flopped alongside my treasured Holy Family…
"Off! Get off." Mahmoud shooed the kitten out of the danger zone before I could react in shock. This time, I was not amused.
Mahmoud knew what Grandma's nativity meant to me. "Decorating was your idea. Don't blame me if the devil breaks something," he warned.
Before he could suggest it, I caught the miscreant and gave her a time-out in the laundry room to cool her jets. We'd relegated Seren's potty, food bowls, and bed to this room and routinely confined her at night or when away. Otherwise, she set off motion detectors and the house alarm—or dismantled the house while we slept. Besides, Mahmoud complained that Seren's purring kept him awake at night.
I used a wooden yardstick to fish toys from beneath the washer/dryer to provide necessary feline entertainment during the incarceration. Several dozen sparkle balls—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, pink, purple—and the three missing faux poinsettias emerged, along with an assortment of dust bunnies and dryer lint.
I sighed. The kitten's age meant several more months of madcap activity, and I wasn't sure how much more Mahmoud could take. He only saw Seren at full throttle. He also suffered from "Saint Spot Syndrome," which meant he recalled only the happy memories of our beloved dog, and overlooked potty accidents, chewed shoes, and other normal canine misbehaviors of the past.
Seren suffered mightily in the comparison.
I felt exhausted after the first week of running vacation interference between my husband and the kitten. Whenever possible I kept Seren confined with me in my upstairs office but that backfired. She slept in my office, but once downstairs she turned into a dynamo intent on pick-pick-picking at Mahmoud, especially when he ignored her.
The second week began, and as Christmas drew near I found more and more errands that required my attention outside of the house. Mahmoud came with me for some, but other times he preferred TV.
"Just lock up the devil before you leave so she doesn't bother me," he said. "I don't want to watch her."
It made me nervous to leave them alone together in the house. I worried that Seren might commit some last-straw infraction and I'd be unable to salvage any potential relationship. I loved her, heaven help me; she'd hooked her claws deep into my heart. And I loved Mahmoud. I wanted my two loves to at least put up with each other.
But as I prepared to leave I couldn't find her. At less than five pounds, Seren could hide in the tiniest spaces. One time I found her inside the box springs of the guest bed, but that day—December 23rd—she disappeared and refused to come out of hiding.
I think she planned it. Maybe the spirit of the holidays inspired her. Or perhaps some other loving canine (or grandmotherly) influence worked its Christmas magic. Whatever the motivation, when I returned home that rainy December evening, my unspoken holiday wish had been granted.
I found my husband napping on the sofa. On the glass-top table beside him the Holy Family nested in a radiance of sparkle balls—an inspired feline gift of toys for a very special Child.
And atop Mahmoud's chest, quiet at last, rested a very happy kitten.
Mahmoud roused enough to open one eye. "Fafnir—
I mean Seren still purrs too loud," he grumbled.
Fafnir had been the name of our dog.
With a nod toward the overcast day Mahmoud added, "At least our cat won't need to be walked in the rain."
Seren blinked blue-jean-colored eyes and purred louder.
Along Comes Spit McGee from My Cat Spit McGee
Willie Morris
It was Christmas in Dixie, still months before our wedding. My future stepson Graham was then in high school and had a girlfriend named Savannah. Savannah was cruising along old Highway 51 north of Jackson one afternoon when she sighted a little starving, abandoned kitten in a ditch. She got out and put her in the car and took her home. When Graham saw the kitten, he suggested Savannah let him give it to his mother for a Christmas surprise. She liked the idea. Neither of them checked this out with me, I can tell you.
Graham and his mother dwelled at the time in a house on Northside Drive in Jackson in a neighborhood built up right after World War II, so that all the side streets were named after war sites. This house was at the intersection of Northside and Normandy, a homey domicile with rambling rooms and a big fireplace and a good back porch and lawn. The three of us had decorated a tall fresh Mississippi cedar with old family angels and Santas and reindeer and lights, which twinkled from the pungent branches.
It was late on Christmas Eve. We were sitting in the room near the tree, with a substantial number of presents around it. Nat King Cole's "I'll Be Home for Christmas" was on the stereo, or maybe it was Bing Crosby's "O Come All Ye Faithful." Suddenly, as if on cue, there was an odd rustling from the rear of the tree. And then tentatively stepping out over the packages into view was a tiny pure-white kitten with a red Yuletide ribbon around its neck.
"How did he get in here? " I heard myself exclaiming.
"It's a she," Graham said. "It's for you, Mom."
The kitten looked a little intimidated, which was precisely the way I felt in that moment. Although Savannah and Graham had fed and bathed her, she was a scrawny thing. But when my future spouse saw her, her features became flushed and joyous. Never had I seen such a happy female. She immediately swept the creature into her arms and embraced her. Then the kitten jumped onto the floor, ran back under the tree, and immediately shimmied up the main trunk. Christmas balls and angels crashed to the floor. Cedar trees are very dense, especially those strung with lights and ornaments. There was no way to coax her down; she would only climb farther up the tree. She was obviously going to come down when she was good and damned ready. "Just don't pay any attention to her and she'll come down sooner or later," JoAnne instructed. So we didn't, and that is precisely what she did.
It was a critical moment in my life, and by God I knew it. I left the room with the cat still in the tree and went outside to get some air. Only a couple of days before I had seen on TV a movie about one of my boyhood World War II heroes, Admiral "Bull" Halsey, who when asked about his fluctuating strategies during the Battle of Guadalcanal replied, "It's not so much that you change your mind as that you go in a different direction." Well, it was Christmas, after all. I promised myself to at least give it a civilized try. I took a deep breath and went back inside.
On Christmas morning the little kitten was lapping milk from a bowl on the floor. She turned and looked at me, and I looked back at her. It was the genesis of a most unfamiliar relationship. Of course I did not know it then, but she would someday be the mother of Spit McGee.