Poor Homer had no truly bad intentions; he didn’t want to hurt anybody. He was a kitten and he wanted to play. He was blind and he wanted to be sure that whoever he was playing with didn’t run away from him. Why didn’t Scarlett and Vashti understand that? Many was the time when I found Homer, having been recently abandoned by the two of them, turning his head and ears from side to side as he tried desperately to track down the slightest sound that would indicate where they were. He would utter a sad little mew? as if he were playing a game of Marco Polo all by himself, waiting for a response that never came. Hey, guys? Where’d you go?
“You know, they’d probably play with you more if you weren’t so rough with them,” I would tell Homer. The pity in my voice always brought him over for a round of cuddling and head rubbing. Why don’t they like me, Mommy? But the advice—alas!—was never heeded.
In true big-sister fashion, however, it was Scarlett who ended up being Homer’s most instructive influence, who encouraged Homer to develop his abilities to climb and leap as he did everything in his power to keep up with her. If Scarlett could climb a six-foot cat tower to get away from Homer, then why couldn’t Homer climb it, too? If Scarlett could leap to the top of a desk or dresser, then there was no reason why Homer couldn’t climb up the side of it, even if he wasn’t able to leap directly up the way Scarlett did.
Homer was a typical little brother in many ways, always wanting to play with the big kids, who were far more interested in playing with each other and who regarded him, at best, as a mildly annoying “baby.” But like all younger siblings, he learned by imitation—trying things he might never have otherwise tried and learning more quickly than he would have on his own.
And it was usually in Scarlett’s presence that Homer could be found whenever I wasn’t there. When curling up for a nap with me wasn’t an option, Homer always felt safest sleeping somewhere near Scarlett. I think, in his mind, Scarlett was the strongest one in the house next to me, despite the fact that she was also the “meanest”—or maybe because of it. When Homer wasn’t in one of his hyperactive, jump-on-Scarlett-at-all-costs moods, it was surprising how respectful he was of her.
Safety in numbers, right? you could almost hear Homer thinking as he curled up (always curled up, because Homer never—ever—slept sprawled out on his side or back) wherever Scarlett was dozing, close enough for protection but with enough distance left to indicate courtesy.
Scarlett would open one eye and regard him indulgently for a moment before settling back into her nap. Don’t push your luck, kid.
6 • Don’t Be Happy. Worry.
He might have known that he would not prevail with her, for when the gods have made up their minds they do not change them lightly.
—HOMER, The Odyssey
IT MAY HAVE STARTED WITH THE PLASTIC BAG. THE EXCESSIVE WORRYING, I mean.
Like many a new mom, I found myself growing eyes in the back of my head where Homer was concerned, as well as an extra set of ears and an almost preternatural awareness of where Homer was, what he was doing, and what his needs were at any given time.
This had become doubly true since Homer’s stitches had come out and he’d taken to tearing around the house after Scarlett and Vashti. Soon he wasn’t content to merely cover the ground they did, and he began discovering mischief all on his own. Sometimes I would lose track of him for a few minutes and find him in the most unbelievable places—dangling by his front paws from the middle shelf of a bookcase (how had he even gotten up there?), or wedged in the back corner of the cluttered cabinet beneath my bathroom sink, having managed to prise open the cabinet door.
His new obsession was scaling the floor-to-ceiling drapes that hung in the dining room, like one of those Spider-Man types you read about who hand-over-hand their way up the side of an office building. “Homer!” I would shriek when I found him hanging on the drapes by a single claw, six feet in the air. Homer would swing the slight weight of his nine or ten ounces around until all four claws clung to the drapes once again, climbing as quickly as he could to put himself above my reach.
Look, Ma! I always imagined him thinking. No eyes!
In contemplative moments, I would reflect that there was something inspirational in the way Homer was willing to climb and climb anything at all without any idea as to how high he was going, or any plan for safely regaining the ground once he’d reached the top. There was something to be said for that level of fearlessness.
For all that it was inspirational, however, it was also terrifying.
Every parent knows those moments—the ones when you suddenly realize you haven’t seen your child for at least fifteen minutes. You curse yourself for having become so occupied with something else that you lost track of his whereabouts. Where is he? What if something happened to him? Why wasn’t I paying attention?
It had already become a point of pride with me to insist that Homer was a perfectly normal kitten. Better than normal, even. I would have taken the head off of anybody who suggested that Homer needed “special” care because of his “special needs,” angrily insisting that Homer was just as capable of taking care of himself as either of my other two cats, or as any “normal” cat out there. When people asked whether and how a blind kitten could find his litter box, I would reply that Homer could not only find his litter, he could find his way to the top of the kitchen counter and into the cabinet where the canned tuna was kept, distinguishing the difference between a can of tuna (which he loved) and a can of tomato soup (to which he was indifferent), while both were still in their sealed cans. He’d root around in the cabinet, shoving all other canned goods out of his way, until he identified the can of tuna fish, using paws and nose to push it from the cabinet and onto the counter. Feed me this!
Beneath all that righteous indignation, however, and my insistence that I didn’t need to worry about Homer any more than I worried about Scarlett and Vashti, was the truth: Homer wasn’t like other cats, and I did worry about him more than I worried about my other two.
This fear was all my own, and Homer shared none of it. It had been predicted that his blindness would make him more hesitant and less independent than a typical cat. But if anything, the opposite was true. Because Homer was unable to see the hazards in the world around him, he lived in blissful unawareness of their existence. What was the difference between climbing to the top of a three-foot-high sofa and nine-foot-high drapes if you couldn’t see how high you were going anyway? And what was the difference between jumping down from either one when every leap you ever took was a leap into uncertain outcomes, based on nothing but blind faith in invisible landing points?
In the Daredevil comic books, occasional story lines find Daredevil regaining his vision. Although he retains the rest of his superpowers, he suddenly finds himself incapacitated, afraid to attempt the daring stunts he normally undertakes when blind. Are you crazy?! he seems to ask the reader. I’m not jumping off that! Look at how high it is!
But there was no omnipotent writer who, with the stroke of a pen, could restore Homer’s eyes to him. The only absolute fear Homer knew was that of being alone. As long as somebody was with him—whether it was me or one of his feline sisters—Homer had no notion that there were other things in the world that could harm him.
Which brings us back to the plastic bag.
It was a late-fall afternoon, and Homer was now about four months old. He had lost his kittenish bandy-legged gait, and both his walk and his coat were decidedly sleeker than they’d been when he was only a few weeks of age. Every hair on his body, down to the lush whiskers that now exceeded the width of his body by a good three inches on each side, remained a luxurious onyx black. He was growing, although not as quickly as my other two cats had grown—and this, in itself, was something I worried about. Patty assured me, however, that kittens, like children, grow at different rates. And it was also clear that Homer was destined to be a petite, fine-boned cat, one who would undoubtedly remain smaller than average into his adult life.