But still…I wondered about things.
Fanny, as she grew, began to develop an adult cat’s more complex vocal patterns—perhaps not as varied as Homer’s, but deeper and more mature sounding than when she’d been only a few weeks old. Clayton, however, still had a very young kitten’s undifferentiated, high-pitched squeak. His meow didn’t even have an “ow” at the end. “MEEEEEEEEeeee,” he would say, starting out loud but trailing off as his breath ran out. “MEEEEEEEEeeee,” he said when I walked in the door, and, “MEEEEEEEEeeee,” he said when he wanted his food, and, “MEEEEEEEEeeee,” running to greet some new person, and, “MEEEEEEEEeeee,” when struggling for a plaything that was out of his reach. I joked that when the doctors had removed his bad leg, they’d taken away his “ow.”
“There isn’t any sign of…neurological damage, is there?” I asked the vet during one visit, just before Clayton’s surgery. “Any developmental delays?”
He seemed baffled. “What do you mean? Like brain damage?”
“No,” I said hastily. “Never mind. Just forget it.”
Of course, Clayton was our veterinary practice’s favorite cat, and whenever we came in there was a veritable welcoming committee waiting for us at the door. What a dream for a veterinarian—who presumably liked cats, yet only encountered cats who feared him—to finally find a cat who seemed positively thrilled in his presence. And what a dream for Clayton—who happily scamper-hopped around the exam table from the doctor to the vet tech and back again, demanding cuddles with a head-bonk and a high-pitched MEEEEEEEEeeee, hardly seeming aware of the needles, the rectal thermometer, or any of the other indignities to which he was subjected.
Perhaps the only thing Clayton didn’t like was not having anyone around for him to like. It wasn’t so much that he feared or disliked being alone. He simply never needed to be. Even Homer—much as he generally preferred to be with me—would sometimes head off to any empty bedroom or open closet. Fanny, sweet as she was and as much as she clearly loved us already, needed at least a few hours a day by herself, and would always prefer to be hidden away in some quiet spot when we had people over.
But Clayton never wanted to be alone, or even out of plain sight. Clayton didn’t nap on top of chairs or under beds or buried among piles of clothing or tucked away in a corner of the closet. He’d sprawl out smack-dab in the middle of the floor of whatever room we were in, where you couldn’t walk from one end of the room to the other without stepping over him. A question that, to this day, has literally never once been asked in our home is, Where’s Clayton? I haven’t seen Clayton in a while.
As I said, I loved Clayton right from the start—but he puzzled me. Part of the bond that we form with the animals we love comes from that sense that they know us, and that we know them, better than anybody else does or could. I never had—and never would—understand anybody down to the very bottom of their soul the way that I did Homer. I knew every like and dislike, every joy and fear, that Homer had, and had felt the first glimmers of that deep knowledge in those very earliest moments when we’d first met.
But what did I know about Clayton that any stranger couldn’t have figured out within five minutes? What ultimately makes all of us different from each other—different and unique—are the things we like and the things we don’t. Clayton liked everything and disliked nothing—or, if he did, he kept it to himself—which made him a bit inscrutable.
But if there was one thing that Clayton definitively liked more than anything else—one thing that could raise his usual level of happiness to outright ecstasy—that thing was Homer. Small as Homer was, he still towered over Clayton when we first adopted him—and Clayton clearly thought that Homer was the most fascinating thing in the whole world.
Clayton wasn’t much interested in Homer when Homer was sleeping. But if Homer was awake and in motion then Clayton was right beside him. When Homer walked to his food bowl or the litter- box or down the hall, Clayton bunny-hopped along at his side. The pushiness of this—the lack of any respect for polite boundaries—irritated Homer at first. Every few steps, Homer would pause to whack Clayton in the face with one paw.
I don’t know that Clayton liked being hit in the face by Homer, but it didn’t seem to faze him, either. He’d crinkle his little brow a bit, but he never flinched or stepped back or raised his own small paw in a gesture of self-defense. He’d hop next to Homer or around him in circles, and every few feet Homer would pause to smack him in the face—and, like a Slinky, Clayton’s head and neck would compress for a moment, then instantly spring back up.
Homer and Clayton together reminded me of Spike the Bulldog and Chester the Terrier from the old Looney Tunes cartoons. Spike would stride impressively down the sidewalk with little Chester scampering around him, peppering him with an endless stream of eager questions. What are you doing, Spike? What are doing today? Where are you going, Spike? Huh? Can I come with you, Spike? Can I? And every so often, without breaking stride, Spike would whack Chester in the face with a laconic, Ehhh…shut up.
That was Homer and Clayton to a T.
It pained me to see Homer bothered in any way, after the rough few months he’d had. But, ultimately, being irritated with Clayton was better than being sad about Scarlett. Homer began running and jumping again, at first to avoid Clayton, and then simply for the pleasure of it, as he’d used to do. If Fanny charmed and soothed him, then Clayton brought him out of his shell.
Scarlett and Vashti had never been as playful as Homer would have liked, and with them he’d never been able to assume a role more authoritative than that of mildly annoying little brother. Now Homer was the big brother, accompanied by two kittens who loved to play as much as he did and then some. He had reasons to get up from his spot on the couch, other than feeding times or his daily shift from the sofa to my lap. Clayton and Fanny were perfectly content to be minions and let Homer be the boss, and it was a role that Homer clearly relished.
Even if I hadn’t been able to love them for their own sakes (and I was crazy about them—they were, as I would frequently say to Laurence, “made of adorable”), I would have loved Fanny and Clayton for bringing Homer back to me—my Homer, the Homer I knew and loved best, the Homer who’d always greeted each new day as something to celebrate. Homer was Homer again.
And I honestly believe that Homer wouldn’t have found the strength he needed to fight his illness for as long as he did if not for these two ridiculously happy little ragamuffins, who moved into our home and claimed our lives for themselves.
HOMER HAD SOMETHING like fifteen thousand followers on Twitter, but it was on Facebook and my blog where his real community lived. By now, there were nearly thirteen thousand people who’d “liked” Homer’s Facebook page, but the number of people who actually followed us there on a day-to-day basis was still very small. They were the people for whom I posted pictures of Clayton and Fanny as they grew, and who had sincerely mourned with us when we’d lost our girls. Homer’s community gave us the permission and space we needed to embrace our grief fully and recover at our own pace, without having to encounter a single person who rolled their eyes and wondered rather impatiently why we couldn’t get over it already—why we were so sad when it was “just a cat.”