Homer was completely silent during the car ride home. In the first instance of what would prove to be a decade of constant and frequently irrational worries, this concerned me. I hadn’t spent much time around cats growing up, so what I knew of them came primarily from things Patty told me and my hands-on experience with Scarlett and Vashti. And Scarlett and Vashti hated their carriers, screeching like howler monkeys the second I loaded them in—particularly Vashti, who was so unassertive under normal circumstances that she never raised her voice above the level of a squeak.
It seemed unnatural that Homer was so quiet. It might be that he was simply sleepy, or wearily used to being removed from one place and brought to another for reasons that were, to him, inexplicable. Perhaps he even enjoyed the seclusion of the carrier (Vashti and Scarlett loved to make small caves for themselves in boxes and shopping bags) and found the motion of the car soothing. Or, a dark corner of my mind pondered, maybe he was so terrified at this bewildering turn of events that he was afraid to make a sound. I tried to speak to him reassuringly as I drove. We’re almost there, Homer. We’ll be home soon, little boy.
I had thought a great deal about the best way to introduce Homer to his new home. My first resolution was that he should be confined to a relatively small area for a day or so. I felt he was more likely to grow comfortable and familiar with his surroundings if he wasn’t intimidated by too much space all at once. While this would be true of any cat—Scarlett and Vashti has been introduced to their new home one room at a time over a period of several days—I reasoned that a blind kitten in particular was likely to be overwhelmed by more than a single new room at first. And, I was sure, he would be far more likely to get lost or tripped up, unable as he was to create a visual memory of how one room led into another. Truth be told, I wasn’t entirely sure he would ever be able to do this—and I was more anxious on this score than I cared to admit—but I had gained a certain amount of confidence after watching Homer seamlessly navigate the exam room in Patty’s office after one or two passes, and I had decided to worry about these eventualities if and when they came up.
I also planned to keep him completely separated from Scarlett and Vashti until his stitches came out. Vashti was very social and extraordinarily patient, but she hadn’t encountered a new cat since I had first adopted her and introduced her to Scarlett—and I suspected that, sweet-tempered though she was, she’d also grown accustomed to being the “baby,” and to receiving all the attention Scarlett never seemed to want anyway.
Scarlett had been far from overjoyed when I’d first brought Vashti home. Although in fairness to Scarlett, it should be noted that Vashti, who had been infested with a horrific case of mange (fur loss and itchiness caused by tiny mites on her skin), had come home with me fresh from a sulfur dip at the vet’s office. The sulfur had not only turned what was left of her long white fur a startling and unnatural shade of yellow, but also left her reeking with the stench of rotten eggs.
Vashti had been beside herself when she realized that added to the ecstasies of being well fed and itch-free for the first time in her six weeks of life was another cat for her to play with. Scarlett had spent the next few days alternately hissing at and fleeing from this tiny, smelly, bright yellow puffball that followed her everywhere and cavorted in joyous circles around her whenever she put so much as a paw out from under the bed, where she’d taken up a resolute temporary residence.
Scarlett had grudgingly gotten used to Vashti, however, and had even come to enjoy having another cat to scamper around with. So I was hopeful that, with time, Homer would integrate just as seamlessly into our family.
I entered the front door of Melissa’s house carrying Homer in his purple kitten carrier, and Scarlett and Vashti ambled over to sniff at it curiously. Homer persisted in not making any sound, but I felt his weight shift as he balled himself up in the far corner of the carrier. Vashti peered with interest at the carrier’s contents, but Scarlett took one whiff and immediately backed up several feet, a deeply disgusted expression on her face. Oh, God … not another one …
“You guys can meet your new brother later,” I told them and headed into my bedroom, closing the door behind me. “Later” can be “never” as far as I’m concerned, Scarlett’s retreating backside and haughty tail flick clearly indicated. But Vashti wasn’t used to being shut out of a room that I was in and gave a few half-swallowed squeaks of protest (ngeow! ngeow!) from the other side of the door.
The spare bedroom I was utilizing at Melissa’s house was connected to a small bathroom, which was where I had set up Homer’s litter box. I set the carrier down beside it and unlatched it, lifting Homer out and placing him in the litter box. There were three things I wanted to be certain Homer would know how to find: his litter box, his food dish, and his water bowl. I knew that blind people learned how to find things in their homes by counting the steps from, say, a kitchen stove to the dining room door. While I didn’t expect Homer to actually count his steps, I thought that if he got to know the rest of our home in relation to where those three things were, he’d be more likely to find them on his own.
I’ll admit I was apprehensive, both that Homer might be unable to find his litter and that he might not know what it was for. Scarlett and Vashti had immediately grasped the concept of a litter box and hadn’t required any additional training. I was therefore unsure how to litter-train a kitten, and hoped I wouldn’t have to.
When I set him in the litter box, Homer immediately squatted and peed, then dug around furiously to bury it. “Good boy,” I told him. “Good boy!”
From there I walked slowly, and with deliberately loud footsteps, through the door that led to my bedroom, where I had set up his food and water in the exact center of the room—easier to stumble upon by accident, I guessed, even if Homer couldn’t learn or remember on his own where they were. I crouched next to the two tiny bowls containing dry food and moist food (I wasn’t sure if Homer would be able to smell dry food, so I’d put down both), tapping the tile floor next to them with my fingernail and making a pss-pss-pss sound that I’d found always served to summon Scarlett and Vashti.
Homer, when he had finished tidying up in the litter box, obligingly hopped out and made his way over to where I crouched. His neck bobbed from side to side beneath the plastic cone he still wore. He walked in that bandy-legged way of very young kittens, and he wove unsteadily, as if he were slightly drunk. Although I was usually haphazard when it came to storing shoes and clothes in the closet, I had been careful to clean all extraneous items from the floor of the room, to minimize any chance that Homer would bump into something. Even the shoes I’d worn that day and removed upon my arrival at home had been placed on top of my desk, and there was nothing to impede his progress from the doorway of the bathroom to where I was stationed ten feet away with his food.
Still, Homer seemed confused at first by all the empty space around him. The bedroom was relatively small, probably no more than 150 square feet, but it clearly struck Homer as cavernous. He hesitated for a few seconds, his head raised and his little comma of a nose crinkling as if he were attempting to discern a clear path by smell. But the repeated tapping of my fingernail on the floor seemed to reassure him. Once he realized there was a purpose to the sound, and that the sound came from me, he made a fast-trot beeline toward it and the food bowl. His nose bumped into the small mound of moist food, and he took a few eager bites.