But Homer’s whiskers were trapped inside that cone, unable to do him any good. Deprived of both regular vision and sensory input from his whiskers, he was truly and completely blind. It was the reason why he staggered about the room like someone who’d been blindfolded and spun in circles. Any cat would be thrown off balance if deprived of his whiskers. Homer was doubly so.
Removing the cone, however, would mean the possibility of scratched-out stitches. Much as it pained me, there was no question that Homer’s cone would have to remain where it was for the time being.
Melissa and I finished watching the movie, and when she left I decided to turn in early. Homer followed me—either by smell or sound (or both)—into the bathroom and sat next to the sink while I brushed my teeth and washed my face. He used his litter box one more time, finding it with no trouble whatsoever, then trotted back into the bedroom after me. I turned out the lights and settled into bed, planning to pull Homer up, but he was already climbing after me on his own. The street outside was quiet as I lay down and settled onto the pillows, and the silence in the room was broken only by the faint sounds of Melissa chatting on the phone in the other room, and of Vashti squeaking in mild indignation (because Vashti had, heretofore, always slept with Mommy) on the other side of the bedroom door.
Homer crawled up the length of my body, climbing onto my chest and turning around in a circle a few times before settling down on the spot just above my heart. I was drifting off when I heard an odd, squelching sound and felt something tickling my ear.
I opened my eyes but couldn’t make out much in the dark. Then I realized that Homer was nursing on my earlobe. The cool outer edge of his cone pressed against my cheek. His front paws kneaded the patch of pillow directly behind my ear, and his purr was a low thrum, steadier and more subdued than it had been earlier while Melissa was petting him.
I held my breath, sensing that if I moved at all, Homer would stop what he was doing—although he probably should stop, shouldn’t he? I felt a little silly. It was the kind of thing where, had somebody burst unexpectedly into the room, my impulse would have been to shove Homer away from my ear and insist, It’s not what it looks like!
This was an entirely new experience for me, something that neither Scarlett nor Vashti had ever done. It was obvious that Homer had missed having a mother, that—whatever Patty or I wanted to tell ourselves about how Homer would forget, may have already forgotten, the trauma of his early life—on some deeply fundamental level, Homer remembered that he’d been deprived of something he was supposed to have. He was supposed to have a life that included a mother’s care, that was comprised of affection and adequate nourishment and comforting rituals in the dark.
My hand rose to stroke his back, and his purring grew louder.
I realized something else. It meant something to be trusted by this cat. There was a difference between being trusted by cats or even animals in general and being trusted by this kitten in particular. I was too sleepy to pursue the thought, or articulate it in any logical way, but I understood in that moment that this was something I’d felt without being aware of it from the first moment I’d picked Homer up in the vet’s office.
My last conscious thought was that Melissa had known this, too, and that it was why she had appeared so much softer when she was holding him.
4 • The Itty Bitty Kitty Committee
“Alas,” said he to himself, “what kind of people have I come amongst? Are they cruel, savage, and uncivilized, or hospitable and humane?”
—HOMER, The Odyssey
HOMER’D HAD A GOOD FIRST DAY. NEVERTHELESS, MY APPREHENSIONS remained. Homer had seemed anxious simply walking from the bathroom to the bedroom. The sound of my hand and my voice had drawn him forward—would that always be what it took to make him feel at ease in his new life? Would his life be the constant struggle against fear and limitations that everybody seemed to think likely? Most people who heard about Homer seemed to take it for granted that his life would be circumscribed by trepidation and disability.
But one of the first things I learned about Homer the following morning was how ecstatic he was merely to wake up. I was surprised to see that he had slept the whole night through curled up on my chest, barely moving at all. I soon found that Homer was eager to sync his schedule with mine—sleeping when I slept, eating when I ate, and playing whenever I was in motion. Whether by nature or necessity, he was the quintessential copycat.
I would also learn that Homer tended to be a remarkably happy little kitten. Just about everything contributed to the surfeit of joy he found in his new world—even things I would have normally classified as “cat-adverse.” The whirring of the garbage disposal, for example, or the apocalyptically loud whine of the vacuum cleaner (sounds that terrified not just Scarlett and Vashti, but every dog or cat I’d ever seen) brought him straight over at a fast waddle. His ears would be fully pricked up, his neck and cone turning from side to side as he ran. Yay! A new sound! What is that new sound? Can I play with or climb onto it?
But nothing thrilled him as much as waking up at the beginning of each day. As soon as I sat up that first morning, he began to purr in a humming, distinctive way. There was a melodic undercurrent to it, like birdsong. He rubbed his face so urgently against my hands that he lost his balance and flipped over onto his back, struggling against the weight of his cone and looking for all the world like an incapacitated beetle. Undeterred, he righted himself with a mighty heave and climbed into my lap to prop his front paws on my chest, rubbing his whole face vehemently against mine. I felt the softness of his kitten fuzz and the prickliness of his stitches on my skin.
This is so great! I’m still here and you’re still here! He was so tiny that a single stroke of my hand sufficed to cover his entire body. When I touched him, he dug minuscule claws into my shoulder and attempted to pull himself up, latching onto my earlobe and suckling at it once again.
“I’m going to assume that means you’re hungry,” I said. “Let’s see if you remember where your food bowl is.”
I sat up and deposited him on the floor next to the bed. He was unprepared for this, apparently, because he tripped over his first step, his cone-encased chin once again hitting the floor. But he bounded up quickly enough and toddled straight for his food bowl, after which he scurried to the litter box.
The discovery that food and litter were exactly where he had left them the night before was another moment of bliss. His singsong purring continued unabated, audible even from where I sat clear across the room.
HOMER’S HAPPINESS, ASTONISHINGLY, seemed to be because of, and not despite, the fact that his world had grown so much larger. Lacking vision, Homer’s universe was only as big as whatever space he was in. It’s true that it had once been far larger than it now was—when he was a stray, it had encompassed all of Miami and the world beyond that—but that universe had been lonely, painful, and incomprehensibly dangerous. The relief from pain and danger had come at a price, and his world had shrunk to the size of his kennel at the vet’s office. But Melissa’s house was an eternity of possibility, an infinity of space and smell and sound.
Homer proved to be so incredibly reluctant to be left alone—and so eager to explore—that by his first afternoon in Melissa’s house, we released him from the confines of my bedroom, although I was careful to ensure that Scarlett and Vashti were never in the same room that he was in at the same time.