“I can’t believe he’s blind,” the cameraman marveled. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but if it weren’t for the fact that his eyes are gone, I’d say you were lying.”
I laughed. “My husband says the same thing,” I told him. “To this day, he swears that Homer’s faking blindness.”
It was a long day, and the suite began to fill up as the morning wore on. The next to arrive were Homer’s and my respective groomers, followed by another cameraman, a lighting tech with trees and enormous reflective panels (“It’s hard to get the lighting just right on a black cat,” he explained—which I already knew), a sound person with boom mics, a producer, Caitlin, and my publisher’s Vice President of Marketing, who had arrived to supervise the shoot personally.
But, with all the primping and preparation, with all the setting up of equipment and moving of furniture, with all the phone calls and consultations and last-minute disagreements about the shot list (which detailed the specific things they wanted to capture Homer doing), it was hours before the shoot proper—wherein I would answer questions about Homer and the book, while Homer did various adorable and active things in the background—even started.
By then, as was his preferred habit on rainy days when thunder rolled with a pleasant far-away rumble beneath the sounds of drops splashing against the windows, Homer wasn’t interested in doing anything but napping. He wasn’t upset. He was friendly as ever when new people came over to greet him and introduce themselves. He was simply bored. All the hoopla over the last few months, all the duffel bags and equipment and strangers and cat treats, all the new toys and the cameras following him to catch his every movement as he sat or ran or stretched or jumped or rolled over, had become old hat. All Homer wanted to do now was sit quietly on the couch behind my head, the way we did on rainy days when we were home alone and I read a book while Homer snoozed peacefully beside me.
Everybody’s eyes were on me. But, as every cat person knows, there’s only so much you can do with an uncooperative cat. I tried opening a baggie of catnip and wafting it under his nose. Nothing. I tried jangling a belled toy next to his ear. No response.
I got up and walked across the room. “Homer,” I cooed. “Homer, come over to mommy.”
Homer flicked one ear lazily in the direction of my voice, but didn’t stir. Nah, he seemed to say. Don’t wanna.
“Homer-Bear,” I sing-songed. I tried rattling a bag of Pounces. “Do you want a treat, Homer? Do you want to come and get a kitty treat, baby boy?”
Homer yawned mightily and extended his front and hind legs in a long, languorous stretch. He flipped onto his back momentarily, then curled back into a ball and continued to nap.
And so, here we were. A room full of people, a crew of professionals who’d flown through the night all the way from the West Coast, my publisher’s Vice President of Marketing (upon whom, I couldn’t help but feel, I was making a very bad impression), all the treats and toys any cat would want—all of it here for Homer, and only for Homer, and Homer himself couldn’t be bothered. He’d already been there. He’d already done that.
“Let me make a call,” I told the room, and went to dig my cell out of my purse so I could phone Laurence at home.
“I need you,” I told him as soon as he answered. “We need half a pound of that sliced deli turkey Homer likes, and a whole bunch of those little cans of tuna. Do you think you could go to the grocery store and then bring it all here?”
“Yeah, sure.” Laurence sounded surprised, but willing to help. “What do you want, Chicken of the Sea?”
“No, no.” I was beginning to sound frantic. “Not Chicken of the Sea! He likes Bumble Bee, Laurence. Homer likes Bumble Bee!”
There was a pause, and then we both began to laugh. We laughed until we were practically crying. Tears ran down my face and my stomach began to ache, making it hard to breathe as I tried to suppress the laughter, aware that all the people in the other room could probably hear me.
Our lives had gotten a little crazy. But Homer wasn’t some diva, and we weren’t his flunkies. Homer was still just Homer—the good-natured, high-spirited little boy we fondled and fussed over at home, in private, as soon as the cameras were packed up and gone.
I’d been making myself crazy in part because—yes—I desperately wanted my book to be a success. What author doesn’t want that? I knew how incredibly rare it was for a publisher to put this kind of effort and attention into a book, that this particular moment in my life was fleeting and one I needed to enjoy as it was happening, because Homer and I wouldn’t be the flavor of the month forever.
But it was more than that. I was also proud of Homer—not just of the ease and dignity with which he’d been acquitting himself as all these unusual and unprecedented things were happening to us. I was proud of who he was. I felt entirely vindicated in all the years of faith I’d had in him. And I wanted others to see that. I wanted the whole world to see—naysayers I’d never even met and probably never would, who nevertheless I knew would think, Why would anybody want a blind cat? I wanted everybody to view for themselves what a blind cat—my blind cat—could do. The veterinarian from whom I’d adopted Homer was writing the Foreword to Homer’s Odyssey, and I had an idea that some of the people who’d had the chance to adopt him but turned him down, all those years ago, might read this book. They might put two and two together, they might realize what they had discarded as if it were nothing. Their loss had been my infinite gain, but still I wanted them to view Homer with amazement, to read his story with envy and think, That could have been me.
And, although I generally didn’t consider myself a vindictive person, I wanted to make that one publisher who’d called Homer “creepy” eat her words. I wanted to make her rue the day she’d turned from him in disgust. I’ll show you “creepy,” I’d say to myself, in steely tones.
Before any of that would happen, however, there was still our immediate problem to contend with—a cat already bored with a fame he technically hadn’t attained yet, and the necessity of recapturing his interest just long enough to make it through this last shoot.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can with turkey and tuna,” Laurence promised, when we had finished laughing.
“Thank you,” I told him. “Oh—and make sure it’s the fancy albacore. That’s his favorite.”
Laurence ran out to the grocery store in the rain, waited forever to find a cab—which was always tougher on soggy days like this—and sat in the heavy crosstown traffic for nearly half an hour as he crossed from Second Avenue to where we were waiting at the Hotel Pennsylvania on Seventh. Once he arrived, we had to open a slew of those little cans of tuna before the sound of cans opening and the aroma of fish filling the room intrigued Homer enough to rouse him from his slumber. Laurence went into the suite’s kitchen and rattled the paper Homer’s favorite turkey was wrapped in, actually going through the motions of making a sandwich until Homer rose languidly from the sofa and trotted into the kitchen to paw at Laurence’s leg. Hey—is that turkey?