My only concern was how Homer would bear the separation. He hadn’t been apart from me for so much as twenty-four hours in the six months since I’d brought him home. The day I dropped the cats with Jorge, I pretended to leave something behind half a dozen times so I could run back and peek in on him before driving off. The last time I tried it, mumbling something about a lipstick I was positive had tumbled out of my purse, Jorge said in exasperation, “Go! I’ve been taking care of cats longer than you have. We’ll be fine.”
I waited two days before going over again to check on everybody, although I called Jorge nightly to ask how the cats were doing, particularly Homer. “He’s fine,” Jorge told me. “He’s having a great time here, actually.”
I soon discovered why. When I arrived at Jorge’s house for my first visit, the first thing I saw was one of Jorge’s friends with a palm high in the air, upon which Homer rested on his belly, all four legs dangling down. Jorge’s friend was spinning Homer around and around rapidly, making airplane noises as he spun.
“Jesus Christ!” I exclaimed. “Are you crazy? Put him down now!”
Jorge’s friend, looking both startled and shamefaced, hastily complied. Homer staggered, punch drunk, for a moment (as well he should), but after recovering his balance he stretched his front paws beseechingly up the side of Jorge’s friend’s leg. Again! Again!
“You see? He loves it!” Jorge’s friend insisted proudly. Then, affecting the mock-deep intonations of a wrestling announcer, he added, “For he is El Mocho, the cat without fear!”
I raised an eyebrow at Jorge. “El Mocho? Is this what we’re calling him now?”
Jorge grinned and shrugged. “Well, you know how these things take on a life of their own.”
Mocho was a Spanish word that meant maimed or referred to something that had been lopped off like a stump. To call Homer el mocho was, essentially, to call him “Stumpy” or “the maimed one.”
It doesn’t sound particularly flattering, but among Spanish speakers the giving of nicknames is tantamount to a declaration of love. Things that would sound insulting outright in English were tokens of deep affection when said in Spanish.
“He likes his new name,” Jorge’s friend chimed in. “Watch this. Ven aca, Mochito.” Homer’s ears pricked up and he trotted right over to Jorge’s friend, sitting on his haunches at full attention.
“Oh, Homer,” I said mournfully. “Have a little dignity.”
“He has nothing but dignity,” Jorge’s friend protested, his eyes alight with humor. “He is El Mocho. It is the code of El Mocho to meet all opponents with dignity and honor on the field of battle.”
Even I had to laugh at that one.
Homer adjusted to Jorge’s home with an enthusiasm I found almost unsettling. Jorge reported that, after the first day or so, Homer was able to find his way around without bumping into anything. And he absolutely adored Jorge’s friends, all of whom insisted on calling him El Mocho.
Homer had been used to living with a bunch of girls, none of whom—as it turned out—were willing to play as rough-and-tumble with him as he would have liked. Jorge and his friends were more than happy to chase Homer around the furniture in elaborate games of tag, which ended when Homer sprang out from under a bed or behind a table leg to attack their ankles. They tossed and spun him a good six feet in the air (I learned of this later, because after that first incident they were careful not to do it when I was around), or flipped him onto his back and wrestled him around. During one visit, I noticed that Homer, as soon as a couple of Jorge’s friends walked in, rolled immediately onto his back and pawed frantically at the air with one leg, in a posture that practically begged, C’mon … rough me up!
“He walks around the house at night crying,” Jorge told me after the first week. “He won’t sleep with me. He’ll only sleep near Scarlett. I think he misses you.”
I felt a twinge of guilt—although, I’m ashamed to admit, it was reassuring to receive some small sign that Homer missed me, at least a little.
“And where’s Scarlett sleeping?” I asked.
“Anywhere I’m not.” Jorge gave a rueful laugh. “You’re the only one she was ever friendly to.”
“One more week,” I said. “I promise.”
But the cats wouldn’t end up staying at Jorge’s house another week. On day nine, I got a call from him. “Somebody’s been peeing all over the house,” he said.
“Hey, I’ve told you for years that you shouldn’t let your friends drink all that light beer.”
“I’m serious, Gwen.”
I sighed. “All right, I’m sorry. Which one and where?”
“I haven’t caught anybody in the act, but whoever it is peed on the sofa, my laundry bag with all my clothes in it, and my new leather jacket.” He paused. “I think it’s Scarlett.”
“It’s not Scarlett,” I responded immediately. “It’s Vashti.”
“Has she done this before?” He sounded annoyed, and I could tell he was wondering why, with all the minutiae I’d prepped him with beforehand, I hadn’t bothered to mention this small problem.
“No, she hasn’t. But I’m sure it’s her.”
“If she hasn’t done it before, how can you be sure?”
“A mother knows,” I said wryly.
It was a simple process of elimination, really. I knew why Jorge thought it was Scarlett—because Scarlett, as I mentioned earlier, had a definite perception problem on account of her unfriendliness. Scarlett was so “mean” that, presumably, she was exactly the kind of cat who would pee with abandon all over somebody’s house out of pure malice.
But Scarlett, mean though she was (to other people), was fastidious about her litter box. There were minimum acceptable standards of cleanliness, specific brands of litter that had to be provided, and a modicum of privacy that she absolutely insisted upon. I couldn’t imagine her doing anything as plebeian as urinating out in the open like some common street cat.
As for Homer, this was clearly a spite peeing—Homer didn’t even have a concept of spite.
That left Vashti. And it made sense, when I thought about it. Vashti had been the worst off of any of them when I’d taken her in. Homer and Scarlett had come to my home after spending days at the vet’s office, where they’d been treated and fed before being sent to their new family. Vashti had been found by a co-worker of my mother’s at the elementary school where she taught. They’d locked her in a toolshed to keep her from wandering off while my mother did the only thing she could think of to do for a kitten. She called me.
I’d gone down to my mother’s school on my lunch break, stopping at the pet store for a small carrier and some Similac, and brought Vashti back to my office. I’d honestly thought, that first day, that Vashti’s pink nose was black, so encrusted was it with dirt. Through the bald patches on her skin that the mange had left, I could feel her bones poking through, and her ears were bloody and swollen from ear mites. I’d kept Vashti warm on my lap throughout the afternoon, feeding her the Similac through a dropper, until I was able to get her to the vet’s office that evening. She’d come home to live with us the following morning.
In a way that was different from Scarlett and Homer, who’d come to me through other hands, I think Vashti truly believed I’d saved her life. It was Vashti who always gazed at me with undiluted hero-worship in her eyes. I hadn’t considered the difficulties she might face in being left at Jorge’s house, which was the first home she’d ever known. Insofar as I was her “mother,” Jorge was her “father.” We had adopted her together, and I knew he loved her.