AFTER A HARD day at work a few nights later, I decided to relax in a warm bath. Homer followed me into the bathroom, greeting me with the high-pitched mew? that meant he was asking permission to jump onto the ledge of the tub so I could pet him while I bathed.
My first impulse was to refuse, afraid he might lose his balance and fall into the tub. But I found myself wondering … why shouldn’t I let him? The water wasn’t especially hot. It wasn’t like he was going to get soap in his eyes, and he wouldn’t drown as long as I was there to catch him. So I said, in a tone I knew Homer would recognize as encouraging, “Okay, Homer-Bear, you can come up if you want to.”
Homer scrabbled his way onto the ledge of the tub, and it was all of about thirty seconds before he slipped on the tile and fell into the water. He flailed around for half a second, but by the time I had reached over to assist him, his front legs had found the side of the tub and he was already lifting himself out.
I climbed out also. If there’s one thing that’s the stuff of cats’ nightmares, it’s sudden and total immersion in water. I would have thought the experience would be even more nightmarish for Homer, who had probably had no idea that water existed in larger quantities than what could be found in his water bowl. I picked him up in one hand, expecting him to be scared stiff. But the rhythm of his heart was as steady and untroubled as if he were lying on my chest at night, waiting to fall asleep.
Homer’s thoroughly drenched fur stuck out from his body at crazy angles that would have been comical under different circumstances. I reached for a towel to dry him off. As soon as he felt the stroke of the cloth, however, he squirmed and struggled until I put him down on the ground, where he promptly began to lick himself clean. Water-rumpled though he was, there was dignity in his posture. I can do it myself!
“Okay, Homer,” I said quietly. I opened the bathroom door a crack so that Homer could leave if he wanted to and stepped back into the tub.
I assumed that Homer would bolt as quickly as he could from what had proven to be an aquatic chamber of horrors. But there was an overhead heat lamp in the bathroom. It was, I suppose, as good a place to dry off as any.
Homer leapt back onto the ledge of the tub, stepping carefully for a moment or two until he found a spot that was still dry. Then, with an enormous yawn, he settled down to doze peacefully while I bathed.
7 • Gwen Doesn’t Live Here Anymore
Zeus does not bring all men’s plans to fulfillment.
—HOMER, The Odyssey
HOMER WAS JUST OVER FIVE MONTHS OLD WHEN MELISSA TOLD ME THE time had come for me to find a place of my own.
Melissa and I hadn’t been friends for very long—only a few months—when I’d broken up with Jorge and she’d invited me to move in with her. Our friendship was one that had sprung up very suddenly, and we’d come to feel so extraordinarily close within such a short period of time that we hadn’t actually been as comfortable with each other as we’d thought before we became roommates.
The reason on paper for my eviction was that Melissa had another friend who needed a place to stay for a while. Neither of us had expected, when I’d first moved in, that I would end up staying the nearly seven months I’d been there. Our mutual concern for Homer had smoothed over numerous small, day-to-day tensions, but undoubtedly, had it not been for Homer, I would have moved out long ago.
“Homer’s welcome to stay as long as you need him to,” Melissa rushed to assure me. “I’d be happy to keep him.”
My nonspecific life plan, up until I adopted Homer, had been to scrape by on my current nonprofit salary, living with roommates until some hazy, undetermined future date when I would either land a big enough promotion to be entirely self-sufficient or get married. Neither a big salary boost nor wedding bells seemed to be in my immediate future, however. Nor did I have any friends who were hunting for roommates. Under different circumstances, I might have scoured the classifieds for some up-and-coming professional girl of about my own age who would have been happy to split rent and share a home with my two relatively mellow cats.
I didn’t have two cats anymore, though. Now I had three.
Three cats were a lot to ask somebody else to live with—especially when one of them, Homer, was active enough for five. And I was still (and always) concerned enough about Homer’s safety that the restrictions I would impose on somebody else’s home life could be both unfair and unattractive. In addition to super-hearing and super-smell, Homer of late had developed super-speed. He was frantic to know what lay on the other side of the front door to Melissa’s house, through which people disappeared and didn’t come back for hours at a time. As soon as he heard keys jangling outside, Homer would race for the door at breathtaking speed—less cat than comet-like black blur—hurling himself through even the smallest crack between door and door frame and making it halfway down the driveway on a few occasions before Melissa or I could catch him.
The one thing that could never be permitted was for Homer to get lost outdoors. To thwart our little would-be Houdini, we were forced to enter the front door of the house sideways, keeping the door closed as far as possible while still allowing ourselves just enough space to squeeze through, one leg extended at Homer-level to block him from slipping past.
How could I ask a stranger to live that way? How could I ask somebody to childproof toilets or tie closed sliding closet doors (which Homer was a whiz at prying open) without sounding like a nut?
And even if I could ask somebody to do those things, and I found somebody who was willing, could I trust somebody else? Anybody I lived with would have to be someone I knew was 100 percent trustworthy, someone who would never slip up. Where would I find such a person?
These were questions without good answers. To keep Homer would mean that I had to have a place of my own. But I could no more afford a place of my own—in anything except Miami’s worst neighborhoods—than I could grow Homer’s eyes back for him.
When I reached this point in my calculations, I started giving serious thought to Melissa’s request. (And it was a request, not an offer—because Melissa loved Homer and wanted to keep him almost as much as I did.) I’d like to say that I never so much as considered her proposition, that I made some grand pronouncement along the lines of Whither I goeth, this kitten shall go too.
But I did consider it.
I even told myself it might be better for Homer in the long run. One of the biggest challenges for a blind cat was getting to know the space he lived in. A sudden move to a new home would be a big jolt for him. He knew Melissa’s home intimately, and she was likely to stay there for a while.
It took him all of forty-eight hours to figure out his way around Melissa’s house, I told myself. If you don’t want to take him with you, that’s one thing—but don’t pretend it’s because you think he’d be traumatized by a new place.
I spent the next few days hoping for some kind of epiphany, for a crystalline moment of insight and clarity that would show me what, precisely, was the right thing to do.
It was a moment that never came. Instead, I found myself more aware of small things—of the way, for example, I was the only one who could tell when Homer was deeply asleep, as opposed to half awake, by the slight tension of the muscles in his face that would have controlled his eyelids. A sudden gust of air would also cause those muscles to contract, closing eyelids that weren’t there to protect the eyes he didn’t have.
I noticed how Homer was never content merely to lie next to me. If he wanted to sleep beside me, he would press his face against the top of the outside of my thigh, then turn his head slightly and slide all the way down to my knee, the rest of his body following behind so that, by the time he had settled into his sleeping position, he was wedged as tightly against me—with as many points of contact between us—as he could possibly achieve. If Homer was sleeping on his own, he would curl himself up into the tightest ball he could manage, his tail coiled around his nose and his front paws wrapped around his face. Melissa and I laughed at what looked like somebody who was determined not to allow even the slightest hint of light to disturb his slumber; Homer, of course, wouldn’t have been able to detect any light on his face.