It was a Sunday and I had decided to enjoy my day off by immersing myself in a novel. I had been concentrating deeply when I realized, on a level that hadn’t yet risen to fully conscious thought, that it had been some time since I’d last seen Homer.
Homer liked to curl up in my lap while I read, but the fact that he hadn’t this time wasn’t something that, in and of itself, would have alarmed me. It wasn’t unusual for him to prowl around for mischief and mayhem while I was distracted with something else.
Then I heard the sound of a plastic grocery bag rustling in the kitchen. I had been shopping that morning, and I’d left a plastic bag on the kitchen counter for the small refuse items we didn’t like to leave in the larger trash can that was emptied once a week. Homer—who had by now climbed up my leg to reach the counter often enough to gauge its height on his own—was clearly up there playing with the bag. Happy that I knew where Homer was and what he was doing, I settled back into my book. A few minutes later, however, I heard a panicky and repetitive Mew! Mew! Mew!—the kind of cry that, previously, Homer had only uttered when he’d been locked up alone in the bathroom.
I tossed my book aside and raced into the kitchen, where I found Homer entangled in the plastic bag. He had stuck his head through one of the handles and twisted it up somehow, so that it was slowly tightening around his neck. His head was buried in the bag itself, and his back claws worked helplessly to free his head and upper body. It looked as through he’d crawled into the bag but, unable to see how to get back out, he had mistaken the opening of the handle for an exit, which was why he had snared himself so far into it.
“It’s okay, Homer,” I said. I tried to sound calm, for his sake as well as my own. It was difficult to tell exactly how tightly the bag’s handle was pressing into his neck, but I was as terrified as he was—afraid he would suffocate or strangle himself before I was able to rescue him.
I lifted both kitten and bag from the counter, slipping a finger between the handle and Homer’s neck—to keep it from tightening any further—and murmuring, It’s okay, little boy, it’s okay. Homer was still struggling fiercely, but I was able to quiet him enough that I could work his neck and head free of the bag.
What kind of a moron leaves a plastic bag lying around with a blind kitten in the house? I berated myself. What would have happened if you hadn’t been home? Homer would have died and it would have been ALL YOUR FAULT!
For all that I worried over the perils of Homer’s climbing and jumping and running around recklessly and leaping wildly, headfirst, from some six-foot perch and falling off backward from God only knew what, this was what had finally felled him: a plastic bag. I had thought that maybe I worried about Homer too much—but apparently, I hadn’t been worried enough. For all the foresight I tried to command in keeping his home environment safe, there were dangers lurking that neither of us had foreseen.
Homer quickly bounced back from his near-death experience. After half an hour of burrowing his face so far into my chest that it was like he was trying to find a way inside my body, he fell into a deep sleep and woke up refreshed and ready for more trouble. Vashti was in the other room nosing around a bottle cap she’d found, and Homer bounded to her side, hoping to get in on the action. The plastic bag, and its attendant moments of terror, seemed completely forgotten.
But it stuck with me for a long time. I kept a much closer eye on Homer after that, unwilling to let him do much more than walk in a straight line across the floor. Anything more daring earned him a swift and unarguable “No, Homer!”
EVEN AS A kitten Homer was far more verbal than most cats, and more sensitively attuned to the sound of my voice. If it had been too long since I’d last spoken to him, Homer would paw at my leg and mew insistently. When I did talk, he would sit in front of me with a very serious expression on his face, cocking his head from side to side as if attempting to decipher the meaning of my words. Cats are notorious for being untrainable, but Homer knew his name and responded to simple commands. The sound of my “No!” always brought him to an immediate halt, no matter how clear it was that he wanted to continue whatever he was doing.
After weeks of my reprimanding Homer whenever he attempted anything more adventurous than playing with his favorite toy, a small stuffed worm with a bell in its tail that had first belonged to Scarlett, a new meow was added to his vocabulary. I thought of this as his “checking in” meow. If he wanted to climb a tall piece of furniture, or forage in the bottom recesses of a closet, he would check in with me first. Mew? Can I?
“No, Homer” was the almost invariable response.
Can I follow Scarlett and Vashti onto the screened-in porch? “No, Homer.” Can I climb up to that small empty shelf on the entertainment center? “No, Homer.” Can I bat around these cords on the Venetian blinds? “Good God, Homer! Do you know how quickly those cords could wrap around your neck and strangle you?”
I could tell that Homer was becoming anxious and frustrated. To act boldly, to investigate every intriguing sound or smell he came across, was in his nature. Holding himself back was not. But if an errant plastic bag could be the cause of a near household tragedy, who knew where else perils were hiding? As much as I hated myself for constantly thwarting him, I was sure I was doing the right thing.
Sure, that is, until one day when Melissa observed me forbidding Homer from climbing up a ladder-back chair. He’s so little! I thought. And that chair looks so high! “You know,” Melissa said, “I think you may be over-parenting him.” When I didn’t respond, she added, “Come on, Gwen, give him some space. You’ll end up raising him all stunted and nervous.”
That was easy for Melissa to say. Melissa wasn’t the one who was responsible for Homer. The world was a dangerous place for a blind kitten, and I had made a promise to Patty, to Homer, and to myself—not a promise spoken aloud, but certainly there’d been an understanding—that I would make the world safe for Homer. Even if “the world” that Homer occupied was confined to the square footage of our home.
But did I want to do that at the expense of Homer’s high spirits and sense of adventure?
You don’t normally think about how you’re going to “raise” a pet. You bring him home, train him as necessary, teach him a few tricks or commands, and then simply enjoy each other’s presence.
I was twenty-five at the time, and not accustomed to thinking about how I wanted anybody’s life to turn out other than my own. But now I found myself thinking about Homer’s life and how I wanted to raise him—what kind of, for lack of a better way of putting it, person I wanted him to grow up to be.
When I put it to myself that way, the answer was simple. I didn’t want him to be crippled by fear and self-doubt. I wanted him to be as independent and “normal” as I already made a point of telling everybody he was.