And so it went. The cats stood guard for hours at a time.
At night I would feel my way through darkened halls to the kitchen for a glass of water and there they were, waiting, their slanted eyes glittering in the pale moonlight filtering in through the window.
The cats refused to leave their guardposts, and the creature under the fridge grew in my mind to epic proportions of filth, hair, and malicious intent. I started giving the cats 101 extra snacks to keep their strength up.
“Be good girls,” I told them. “Catch the mouse for Mommy.”
I spoke to my husband about calling in an exterminator.
Or an army of them.
“What for?” he asked.
“To kill the creature under the fridge,” I said.
“What creature?” he asked.
“Oh my God, are you blind?” I said. “The cats won’t leave that spot. There is obviously some huge, horrible, fanged mutant mouse thing that has taken refuge in our home.
Probably the only reason we haven’t been eaten alive is because our babies are protecting us.”
He smirked. “The only reason the cats sit there is because you feed them every time you walk by. If I’m the only one home, they just lie around the front room.”
I stared at him, sure I heard wrong. Was he inferring that my babies would intentionally mislead me, purely for their own gain? But my husband is an intelligent and astute man, an honest man. It came down to having to believe the love of my life or thinking something slightly ill of my cats. It was a simple choice.
“You are full of it,” I told him. “I’m telling you the cats are on the scent and there is something huge and horrible under there. Now please, call in the National Guard.”
As we entered the kitchen, both cats snapped to attention.
The older cat approached the fridge and growled.
The kitten hissed and arched her back. Both peered hopefully up at me from the corners of their eyes.
Squatting on all fours, my husband peered under the fridge. Grimacing, he reached for the broom and raked out four bouncy balls coated in grime, two browned and wilted pieces of lettuce, 14 marbles (I don’t even want to hazard a guess), three pieces of pasta, and a Christmas ornament we lost two years ago.
He started to get up, took a second look, and eased the broom back under the fridge. As he drew the broom toward us, I glimpsed something brown and dirty. Then the cats were upon it. All we could see were claws, ears, and tails. I screamed, my husband tried to pull the cats away, and marbles rolled everywhere. When the cats finally separated we looked down and saw…nothing. Whatever had been pulled out was now no more than a few stray wisps of cobweb, some lint, and lunch in our cats’ stomachs.
“I told you so,” my husband and I said at the same time.
He looked at me. “There was no creature.”
I looked back. “There most certainly was. Did you not see the cats go berserk?”
“Yes, over an old mouse toy.”
“Or a man-eating rodent.”
“Was not.”
“Was too.”
“Was not.”
“Was too.”
The disagreement continues to this day. I suspect his insistence that there was nothing under the fridge is simply a manly cover to conceal his fear of the beast that almost destroyed us.
So I’ve explained to the cats that even if Daddy won’t acknowledge it, we are both extremely grateful for their saving our lives from the horrible fanged mutant creature that surely lived under our fridge.
-18-
Can You See Me?
When she was little, my sister used to poke her fingers beneath the bathroom door and wiggle them.
“Can you see me?” she’d ask.
“Go away,” whoever was inside would answer.
She would shove her hand further beneath the door.
“Now? Can you see me now?”
“Yes, I see you now. Can you please go away for a few minutes?”
The hand would disappear and there would be a light thud as she leaned her small body against the door.
“When are you coming out?”
We were all happy to see that phase end, and I thought my days of being stalked while on the toilet were over. I admit to giggling when friends moaned about how their children never left them alone, even when they were in the bathroom.
“Should’ve had cats,” I informed them smugly.
But my life of bathroom solitude has been upended.
Both cats have recently decided they can’t abide a closed door, be it a closet door, bedroom door, or—you guessed it—bathroom door.
They scared the daylights out of me the first time. I woke in the middle of the night and felt my way to the bathroom. Half asleep, I sat on the toilet, when suddenly, “Whump!” The bathroom door flew open and a small tabby cat stood illuminated in the doorway. She gazed steadily at me before turning away. My heart raced. I felt like I’d been given a warning visit by the kitty Mafia.
Keep the door open, or else.
I alerted my husband the next morning. “Better lock the door when you’re in the bathroom.”
“Why? Is asking you to stay out not enough?”
“No, it’s the cats,” I said, looking over my shoulder. “They don’t like closed doors.”
“Uh-huh,” he said slowly. “And I should be concerned…why?”
But Mister Oh-so-smart wasn’t laughing when the cats body-slammed the bathroom door open while he was reading Newsweek. I was upstairs when I heard his call for help.
“Would you get the cats out of here?” he asked. “I can’t do this with them watching.”
So we started locking the door. That’s when tiny paws began to appear underneath the door.
It was cute for a while. A tiny white paw would slide beneath the door and tap the floor.
Can you see me?
But then there was the talking. Finding the door wouldn’t budge and unable to reach us from beneath the door, the cats would sit outside the locked door and “talk” to the person inside.
“Mrow. Rowr-rowr. Mow?”
When are you coming out?
The best though, was coming home early and finding both cats sitting outside the bathroom where my husband had locked himself in. He was talking back to them.
“Rowr? Meow, meow,” said the cats.
“Yeah, I know. I hate when that happens,” he answered through the closed door.
“Purr, rowr-meow.”
“Really? So what did you tell them?”
“Mow! Psfft! Meow.”
“Ah, ha ha,” he said. “You are so clever.”
“Honey?” I knocked. “Everything okay?”
There was a moment of silence. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he called back.
I wasn’t letting him off that easy. I squatted on the floor and wriggled my fingers beneath the door. “Can you see me?”
I asked.
“Go away,” he growled.
I scratched on the door. “So when are you coming out?”
“The minute I do I’m having you committed,” he warned. “Go away!”
And so it went. We had pretty much resigned ourselves to a life of potty-patrol, when luck struck. Running into the house one day, I dashed for the bathroom without bothering to close the door. No cats appeared. Excellent. I shared my discovery that night with my husband.
“I broke the code!” I said. “We need to adopt an opendoor policy. If you don’t close the door, they take no interest in what you’re doing in there.”
He seemed less than thrilled. “But I like closing the door.”
I sighed. “Pee with an audience outside a closed door or do your business in peace with an open one. It’s your choice.”
“I miss our life before cats,” he said.