After a few days, Mary Nan closed the window, so it really was only five—except on really hot days, when she left the window open and ten or twelve cats wandered in. It was never the ton of cats in the bed that bothered Mary Nan, though. Or the scratched-up sofa and hair-covered chairs. It was the lizards those cats carried into the living room to torture. And that one awful snake.
“It was hard work,” Mary Nan admitted, which made Larry laugh. After all, he was the one who cleaned the litter and served the food. He was the one who got up in the middle of the night when the darn cats wouldn’t stop banging on the kitchen cabinet where their food was stored. He was the one who took them to the vet when they needed it and built the special cage for BJ, who got himself sliced in a fight. The vet gave him some medicine and a patch called New-Skin to cover the wound. BJ didn’t have a tooth in his head—“he had a mouth like a rock crusher,” as Larry put it—but he always managed to get into tussles and knock the patch off. Mr. Bandage, Carl the groundskeeper called him, because for six months the New Skin was hanging half off his leg or lying in the grass somewhere. So Larry built a special cage, and BJ was quarantined until his leg healed. Then, with that problem solved, Larry fixed the condo screens the cats had torn. And repaired their cat house. And mended the shredded curtains. And shooed cats away from the fountain in the courtyard, where they were always trying to drink.
One day, Mary Nan passed a ladder and saw two cats sitting on each rung. Larry needs to put this stuff away, she thought. A few evenings later, Larry opened his barbeque grill to light it and found a cat inside. He picked up a huge piece of driftwood from the beach so they could sharpen their claws. That’ll keep them busy, he thought. Within a few years, it was nothing but a nub, and they still had a four-inch patch on each corner of their sofa where the cats had scratched down to the frame. Larry got the vacuum out every night to suck up the shards of driftwood and cloth.
When they overran the food bowls outside the bungalow, Larry decided to scatter more bowls around the property. Every morning, while Mary Nan fixed breakfast, Larry drove around on his golf cart to the various food bowls. There would be cats lounging in the back and cats clinging to the sides of the cart, trying to open the food bags. He worried at first, but after a while he just whizzed around the property with cats occasionally tumbling off and rolling to their feet in the grass. The feeding trip took most of an hour, and when he finally arrived home and sat down for breakfast, he’d look out the window and see five or six cat staring at his toast and jam.
“They’re hungry again,” he’d mutter to Mary Nan between mouthfuls of the healthy oatmeal she forced on him though he much preferred bacon and eggs.
And they’d laugh. There was never a moment, after all, when a cat wasn’t hungry. They’d follow Larry on his golf cart runs around the property, whining for food. They followed Mary Nan to her car, and she’d have to back out very slowly to keep from running them down. They’d follow her into the office and trail her in a long line as she went around the sidewalks picking up lizard tails, because when geckos get scared, they lose their tails, and the poor lizards at the Colony Resort lived in constant fear of the cats.
The only time you wouldn’t see cats at the Colony Resort was after the bombing run. In those days, Sanibel Island used old military bombers to spray for mosquitoes. They’d fly just above the tree-tops and drop poisonous spray over every inch of the island. One second, it was silence and clear blue skies; the next, an old airplane would appear with an earth-shaking drone. The cats would jump up and bolt away in a panic. It was a shame to see them so terrified, but Mary Nan had to admit it was amusing to see twenty cats scatter in every direction like a double set of bowling pins.
One day, Mary Nan ran into Carl the groundskeeper at one of the bungalows in the far corner of the property. He was casually raking the lawn, like nothing unusual was going on, but there was a cat hanging off each of his pant legs.
“They’re trying to get my treats,” Carl told Mary Nan. He had taken to keeping cat treats in his pockets, and apparently it wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to have cats hanging off his hips, trying to steal a bite or two.
“It wasn’t just time consuming,” Larry laughed. “It was expensive.” But Larry and Mary Nan didn’t want it any other way. Between the cats, the staff, and the resort guests, their childless union was bursting with companionship and love.
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF LARRY
7:30 Wake up. Shove forty pounds of cat off bed. Trudge into kitchen to open bottom cabinet, where cat food is kept. As usual, trapped cat comes waltzing out, licking its lips.
7:40 Start golf cart for morning round . . . of feeding cats. Visit “nine hole course” of bowls scattered around resort. Try not to send hitchhiking cats flying off cart around corners.
8:30 Breakfast of oatmeal instead of eggs. Darn Mary Nan’s health fads.
9:00 Workday officially starts. Cats rush out when workshop door opened since they sleep in the shop when the temperature drops below forty degrees. They think that’s brutally cold. Reason #103 why Sanibel Island is the best! Buffy asleep in toolbox again.
9:18 Check overnight work orders in office. Kiss Mary Nan at front desk. No cats allowed, but Gail has snuck in as usual.
9:32 Inspect torn screen cited in work order. Notice cat claws stuck in mesh.
9:45 Open garage to retrieve new screen material. No cats! Whoops, there was one asleep on the ladder.
11:18 Finish installing screen. Notice young boy and cat watching. Both look disappointed.
11:38 Check chemical level in pool. Notice a cat drinking out of the shallow end. Then notice it isn’t a cat. It’s a raccoon. It stops to sample cat food before waddling off.
12:02 Lunch with Mary Nan in the office. Gail watches, but no handouts.
12:32 Shoo cats out from under the car, walk around twice to make sure they have all left, then back up very slowly and proceed to town to pick up mail.
1:13 Take golf cart around resort to inspect grounds. Cats are sleeping in pile on the rack. How many? Maybe four, but too tightly packed to be sure. Cats along route look up briefly, then fall back to sleep. They know this isn’t the food run.
1:40 Prune trees with Carl the groundskeeper. Cats crowd around to watch. Cat starts gagging, then throws up a lizard tail. Clean up lizard tail.
5:00 Workday officially ends, but tree branches still need to be hauled away.
5:35 Evening meal run. Gail in the back of the golf cart, munching food from the bag.
6:23 Walk to beach with Mary Nan. Pretend cats aren’t following.
7:28 Late dinner. Cats staring in window, begging for food. Where are the curtains?
7:31 Rehang rod that collapsed when cats tried to climb curtains. Pretend there are still eight scratches in the fabric, like yesterday, not thirteen.
7:42 Back to dinner and big staring cat eyes. Oh, what the heck, throw them a few handfuls of food.
8:15 Inspection of bungalow for minor cat damage. Nothing but shards of driftwood. Find three cats, as usual, crammed in the little space between the headboard and the mattress of the bed.
9:00 Kick Maira and Chimi out of the big lounge chair. Watch some TV.
9:36 Almost tell Chimi not to sharpen his claws on the sofa, then remember that both front corners of the sofa have four-inch-square patches where cats have shredded them down to the wooden frame. Decide to sip soda instead. Wish it was soda. It’s water. Darn health fads.
11:30 End of local news. Time for bed. Settle onto mattress in typical cat, Mary Nan, cat, cat, Larry, cat order.
11:35 Turn off light, reposition cats three times, find comfortable position, and go to sleep.