This assessment seemed borne out by Maggie’s reports when I called to check in. “I haven’t heard a peep out of her,” Maggie told me. “If I didn’t already know she was here, I’d never guess there was another cat in the house.” She added that Scarlett would retreat under the bed whenever Maggie entered the room, or else head for the bathroom where she could watch from an untouchable distance as Maggie put down food and cleaned out used litter.
“Don’t take it personally,” I told her. “Scarlett doesn’t like people all that much.” I realized, as I said it, that I’d been secretly angry at Jorge for saying something not very different, not so very long ago.
I’d dropped Scarlett off at Jorge’s parents’ house on a Wednesday morning, and it was around five o’clock on Friday afternoon when I arrived to pick her up. Jorge’s parents had their own architectural firm and often worked long hours, and the house was empty as I let myself in with the key Maggie had lent me. Jorge’s sister had been by earlier to release Targa into the backyard, and I poked my head out to say hi to her—and, of course, I stopped to give Pandy an affectionate hello as well.
“Hey, Scarlettsita bonita!” (Spanish for “pretty little Scarlett”) I called cheerfully as I opened the door to the guest room. Scarlett leapt from the bed and ran over to where I stood, stopping a few inches away to sit on her haunches and look up into my face with bright-eyed anticipation. Scarlett had never once greeted me at the door like this—preferring, as always, to evacuate any room as I entered—although at the time I didn’t register how unusual her behavior was. My mind was too occupied trying to figure out the most efficient way to get Scarlett and all her things loaded into the car, and a route home that would avoid the worst of Friday rush-hour traffic. There was too much for me to carry out in one trip, so I decided to load Scarlett’s gear into the car’s trunk and backseat first, and then I’d return to the house to put Scarlett herself in her carrier and bring her out.
I had just slammed the lid of the trunk shut over the litter box when I heard it. The wild howling of an animal in great distress rose—sudden and sharp—to cut like a band saw through the peaceful tweeting of birds and humming of insects in the glowing, late-afternoon air.
Jorge’s parents lived at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac, just beyond which lay a wooded copse. There were a few feral cats who lived among the trees who Maggie had arranged to have spayed and neutered some time back, and who she still continued to feed. They reminded me of Scarlett, with their tiger stripes and yellow-green eyes, and their persistent wariness of any human contact. Every so often they would emerge to sunbathe on the hot asphalt of the driveway, and I was always careful when I drove up to the house to make sure the coast was clear before pulling in.
My first, awful thought now was that, despite my precautions, I might have run one of them over. My stomach rose into my throat as I knelt on hands and knees to look beneath my car. Thankfully, there was nothing there.
Loud as they were, the howls had a curiously muffled sound. Maybe a stowaway had crept unnoticed into the trunk or backseat as I’d packed in Scarlett’s things? But a thorough check of both revealed nothing. I also examined the wheel wells of all four tires and popped the hood to see if a cat, or some other small animal, might have crawled in to doze on the warmth of the engine and gotten trapped.
Nothing.
The howls sounded close by, but I couldn’t find anything in or around my car to account for them. As I slammed the hood and doors shut, however, they escalated in both urgency and pitch. Thoroughly mystified, I stood in the middle of the driveway and turned in a slow circle, nerving myself to venture into the darkening woods for further investigation if I didn’t spot anything immediately obvious.
The glare of the setting sun off the guest bedroom window, which had previously obscured my view inside, receded a little. And that’s when I saw her.
Scarlett was on the windowsill. She stood high on her back legs, her front paws clawing desperately at the glass. She was looking directly at me; when our eyes met, she threw back her head and opened her mouth wide, yowling at the top of her lungs.
“Scarlett!” I cried. “Scarlett, I’m coming!”
For the second time, I felt my throat tighten and my stomach clench. I had no idea what was wrong with Scarlett—my only thought was that some unknown, terrible thing was happening to her. My hands shook, and I nearly dropped my keys as I fumbled with the lock to the front door of the house. I raced down the hall toward the guest room, nearly tripping over the purse I’d set down upon entering, and flung the bedroom door open.
Scarlett broke off mid-yowl when I came in, and the abrupt silence was as piercing as her cries had been. She leapt from the windowsill to land at my feet, whirling and dipping in frantic figure eights in front of me. At the head of each loop, she paused to rub furiously against my ankles from her cheek to her hip before resuming her spins once again.
I saw no blood, no swelling, no limping or hobbling, nothing to indicate any kind of injury or illness. I hadn’t seen any sign of the other three cats when I came into the house, and I guessed they’d gone into deep hiding when the howling started. At any rate, they hadn’t gotten into Scarlett’s room to attack or upset her. Targa remained securely in the yard; I’d caught a glimpse of her sitting at attention just outside the glass door that led out back, looking anxiously into the house as a low whine rose in her throat. Clearly, Scarlett’s cries had disturbed her, too.
“Hey,” I said, gently. “Hey, Scarlett.” I crouched down and reached out to her. I wanted to pet her, to try to calm her with the touch of my hand. But I hesitated. When had the touch of my hand ever meant anything to Scarlett?
To my surprise, Scarlett half-rose on her hind legs so that her head met my hand in midair. I tentatively scratched along the side of her neck and lower jaw, and she turned to press her whole face into my palm.
I lowered my body further until I sat cross-legged on the floor, facing Scarlett with my back against the bedroom door I’d closed behind me. She sat down on her haunches facing me, and as I continued to scratch gently along her neck and jaw, her eyelids drooped, and the low, rumbling sound of her purr rose to fill the room.
It was the first time Scarlett had ever purred when I touched her.
“Did you think I was leaving without you?” I asked softly. And I realized, as I said it, that that was exactly what Scarlett had thought. She’d seen me walk out with all her things, and then she’d heard the slam of the car door, and she’d assumed that the next sound she would hear was the car engine as I drove away and left her behind.
My fingers paused in their scratching, and I cupped Scarlett’s face in my hand. She regarded me solemnly with her luminous, inscrutable yellow-green eyes.
I leaned forward slightly, to make my own eyes level with hers. “I will never leave you,” I told her. “Not ever. You and I are stuck with each other. Okay?”
I didn’t expect a reply, of course, and I didn’t get one. Instead, Scarlett stretched out her front legs and her neck, until her belly rested on the floor and her chin rested on my ankle. Then she closed her eyes. The vibrations of her purr soon gave way to the steadier rhythms of her breath as she fell asleep.
The room grew dim in the gathering dusk, and I reached up to flip the wall light switch that would turn on the bedside lamp. The fur of Scarlett’s neck was soft on my ankle, and I lowered my arm to stroke her back.
I waited for my legs to stiffen, to feel my arm growing tired or the weight of Scarlett’s head becoming uncomfortable on my ankle. But that never happened. The warmth and drowsiness of Scarlett’s sleeping body seemed to seep into my own, and all I felt was a sense of balm. Balm and ease. The feeling that a tiny, twinging knot, which I’d lived with long enough to have stopped noticing it, had finally begun to loosen.