I bought some twine that we used to tie Laurence’s closet doors closed (I didn’t really mind if Homer got into my own closets). We created complicated knots, which were ultimately effective in keeping Homer out. But if Laurence, say, wanted to quickly grab a magazine he’d written an article for back in 1992, he would fumble impatiently with the knots and press his lips together in a restrained silence that spoke volumes.
For all the new things he found to get into, Homer was, as he had ever been, a creature of habit. He still wanted to sit with me or on me at all times, and still insisted on sitting exclusively on my left side. If Laurence happened to sit to my left on the couch, Homer would wander around the apartment at loose ends, “complaining” at the top of his lungs. Like a blind person—who knows the difference between a can of peas and a can of soup because peas and soup are always kept in exactly the same spot—Homer’s life, curious and adventurous though he was, was manageable because certain things always happened in the exact same way. Homer knew where he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to do based on where I was and what I was doing. If I was sitting on the couch, then Homer was supposed to be sitting to my left, and if he couldn’t sit to my left then something was worrisomely out of sync in the world. But Laurence couldn’t understand why I would insist that we get up and switch positions, leaving my left side free. Surely, in a three-bedroom apartment, there was room for everybody to sit wherever the hell they wanted without anybody’s having to jump up and change spots because, seriously, what was that cat’s problem?
And as if all that weren’t enough, Scarlett was not alone in her nocturnal caterwaulings at the bedroom door. Homer had no more intention of being displaced from my bed by Laurence than Scarlett did, and Homer was more insistent than she was in demanding his rights. Homer also cried at the bedroom door at night but, unlike Scarlett, cried whenever I went into the bedroom—whether it was for an afternoon nap or a change of clothes or half an hour of undisturbed seclusion while I read a novel. As soon as I opened my eyes in the morning, I would hear the clip-clip-clip of Homer’s footsteps down the hall, and he was crying at the door within seconds.
What was remarkable about this was that I didn’t get up at the same time every morning, nor did I use an alarm clock (people as neurotic about punctuality as I am tend to awaken on time without the aid of an alarm). I might first wake up at five or six thirty AM on a weekday, or at nine AM on a weekend, or even later, but it was never Homer who woke me up. It wasn’t until I was aware of being awake for a minute or two that I would hear Homer’s footsteps approaching the bedroom—and I couldn’t tell you how it was that he knew. Perhaps the sound of my breathing changed? It seemed unlikely that even Homer, acute as his hearing was, could hear a change in my breathing when he was sound asleep down the hall. But there was no disputing the fact that he knew. Within only a few days, my habit of waking up briefly and then drifting back off for another hour was a thing of the past. It was one thing for Homer to cry piteously at the door at night while Laurence was still awake, and quite another for Laurence to be awakened at five AM by a wailing cat. So I’d grab a pillow and one of the extra blankets from the closet and head for the couch where Homer would cuddle with me—ecstatic with happiness—as I dozed until I was ready to start my day.
When I had first adopted Homer, I’d toyed briefly with the idea of naming him Oedipus and calling him “Eddie” for short. Homer the poet had been blind, but Oedipus the tragic hero had lost his eyes altogether. Melissa, however, had insisted that calling an eyeless kitten Oedipus was mean (this from the person who’d thought calling him “Socket” was a swell idea), and so the idea was discarded.
Nevertheless, I now found myself with a reverse Oedipus on my hands—he’d had his mother all to himself, and now out of nowhere was this father figure who was trying to take his mother away from him. I began to despair of ever bridging the gap between the two of them.
Amazingly, it was Vashti—Vashti who was never aggressive except when she was passive-aggressive, Vashti who never used her claws or raised her voice, Vashti who always gave in and never insisted on getting her own way—who saved the day and solved all my problems. She did so by the simplest means imaginable.
She took one look at Laurence and fell deeply, hopelessly, irretrievably in love.
VASHTI HAD ALWAYS been more partial to men than to women (with the exception of me, of course). She loved to be petted and crooned to and told how pretty she was, and she liked these things especially when it was a man who was dispensing the attention. But all the men who had come into our life had had eyes only for Homer, and Vashti wasn’t one to push herself on anybody.
Now there was a man who, as Vashti shrewdly surmised, didn’t seem interested in Homer at all. It was true that he didn’t seem interested in any of the cats, but perhaps there was an opportunity here.
She didn’t leap upon Laurence all at once. But if she found a moment when the other two cats weren’t around—and, miraculously, now that we lived in such a large home, sometimes Vashti had us to herself—she would jump into my lap and insist, softly and sweetly, upon being petted. She didn’t try to get Laurence to pet her, but as I stroked her she would look at him with a kind of melting adoration in her eyes. It was exactly the sort of gaze that, I often thought, men must daydream about someday seeing in the eyes of a beautiful woman. See how much nicer I can be than those two? Vashti seemed to say. I like you sooooo much more than they ever will.
Vashti intrigued Laurence as well. Sometimes I caught him looking at her with an expression almost identical to her own. “She’s really beautiful, isn’t she?” Laurence would say. “She has a perfect little face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a beautiful cat.”
I don’t know the specifics of how things progressed from there, or who made the first move, but one evening I came home to find Vashti nestled in Laurence’s lap. He caressed her and said, “You’re a pretty girl, aren’t you? Aren’t you a pretty, pretty girl?” He stopped his crooning as soon as he saw me, but Vashti remained in his lap for nearly an hour. Another time, I came out of the shower to find Laurence seated at the breakfast table with Vashti at his feet while he sneaked her bits of food. “Laurence!” I said. “Do you have any idea how long it took me to train them not to beg at the table?”
Laurence looked shamefaced. “But she’s so pretty, and she likes me.”
Ah, well—Laurence wouldn’t be the first man undone by such a pretext as that.
As the months went by and Laurence became more attentive, Vashti seemed to blossom into a second kittenhood. She was full of playful high spirits in a way that she hadn’t been in many a year. She would charge around the apartment—never roughly, because Vashti was quite the lady—batting furiously at anything that dangled or bringing scraps of paper over to Laurence for him to throw for her. She hadn’t done that with me since she was only a few months old. She became conspicuously more fastidious in her grooming habits, unable to tolerate the teensiest speck of dirt in her long white coat. And she would squeak with outraged jealousy if she caught Laurence and me being affectionate with each other, running over to paw gently at his leg as if to say, Hey! Did you forget that I was here? Laurence got a huge kick out of this; he would often make an elaborate show of hugging and kissing me while Vashti was watching, in the hope that he could provoke a demonstration of her outrage.
“I can’t tell you how much I love it when you use me to make the cat jealous,” I would say.