Clayton’s second pursuit of the mouse was, if anything, even cuter than the first one had been. He ran for a bit, then slid the last few inches in dramatic fashion on his legless rear haunch, like a baseball player stealing home.
“Awwwwww!” I called after him. “You’re a good, good boy, Clayton!”
By now, Clayton was as happy with me as I was with him. Once again, he galloped back with the mouse still hanging from his jaw, eager for more praise and petting. I was lavish with both.
Technically, I was supposed to be working. I was on a deadline and had more than enough writing ahead of me to occupy the next several days, and then some. But, like most writers, a good fifty percent of my “work” time is spent procrastinating. (And at least half of the other fifty percent is spent thinking up new ways to procrastinate.) Watching my cat frolic with his toys was certainly a more appealing prospect than getting down to business. And so, once again, the little felt-covered mouse went airborne.
I think it was this third toss of the toy mouse that started the gears turning in Clayton’s mind. This time, he didn’t wait for me to praise him or tell him what a good boy he was before promptly running back to deposit the mouse at my feet. Instead of craning his neck to angle his head closer to the touch of my hand, he sat on his haunches and looked eagerly from my face above him to the toy on the ground, and then back again.
“Aha! So it’s a game of fetch you want, is it?” Before I knew it, an hour of toss-retrieve-repeat had flown by—at which point, Clayton, seemingly spent, pulled himself up the side of my desk, stepped down from the top of the desk into my lap, and flipped onto his back for belly rubs and a snooze.
Engaging as that hour of fetch was, I’d more or less forgotten about it by the time I sat down to dinner that night. Laurence had a story to tell that took precedence. A magazine-writer friend of ours, who’d been on the receiving end of months of verbal abuse from his new editor but had yet to stand up for himself, had finally brought matters to a head in the worst possible way: He’d meant to send Laurence a text complaining about his editor. Instead, he’d sent the text to the editor himself.
“He’d just gotten out of a meeting with the guy, and it was the usual barrage of sarcasm and insults. He meant to send the text to me, but two seconds later he realizes he’s actually sent it to his editor, whose name also begins with an L. And it says—”
“OW!” Looking down, I saw Clayton at my feet with the toy mouse on the ground between his front paws. I’d been engrossed enough in Laurence’s story not to have noticed Clayton’s soft pawing at my leg for attention—so he’d decided to step things up a notch and unsheathe his claws. “Don’t do that again,” I told him sternly, picking up the mouse and throwing it all the way across the kitchen. Clayton immediately tore after it. “Continue,” I said to Laurence.
“So the text says, ‘I can’t believe—’”
“MEEEEEEE!” Clayton was beneath my chair again. Dropping the mouse in front of me, he nudged it hopefully in my direction.
“Just one more time—okay?” I turned from Clayton back to Laurence. “I’m so sorry. Please go on.”
“‘I can’t believe I have to—’”
“MEEEEEEE!” This time, Clayton had chosen to bypass sitting at my feet and waiting for me to notice him. He’d pulled himself up onto an empty chair, hopped from there onto the kitchen table, and dropped the mouse into the middle of my dinner plate.
“Clayton!” I picked up the mouse, now covered in pasta sauce, and wiped it with my napkin. “Stop it already!” But of course, having cleaned the mouse off, I threw it across the kitchen for him to scamper after.
“What’s with him?” Laurence asked, watching as Clayton did his baseball slide across the kitchen floor, caught the mouse up between his jaws, and brought it back over.
“He taught himself to play fetch today.” Without even thinking about it, I reached down as I spoke to pick up and then toss the mouse. “Anyway, please finish the story.”
“It-said-I-can’t-believe-I-have-to-sit-in-meetingstaking-abuse-from-a-cretin-who-probably-can’t-evenspell-cretin,” Laurence said in one long rush, trying to get the full sentence out before Clayton could interrupt again.
“Yikes!” It was probably unclear to Laurence—because it was unclear even to me—whether I was reacting to the painful implications of that text or to the fact that Clayton was standing yet again on the kitchen table next to my plate. “Do you think it was really an accident, or do you think he was finally trying to break a bad pattern? Here you go,” I added as an aside to Clayton, and lobbed his mouse in the direction of the pantry.
“Bad patterns can be tough to break.” Laurence looked at me and rolled his eyes pointedly.
“Ain’t it the truth.” I sighed and shook my head sadly. And then I bent forward to pick up Clayton’s mouse, which he’d already retrieved, and threw it for him again.
* * *
The obvious question is, why did I capitulate so easily? When it was so very clear right from the start that Clayton’s new hobby, left unchecked, stood to play such a large and intrusive role in our day-to-day lives, why didn’t I try to stop it—or, at the very least, limit it?
Hindsight, as they say, is always 20/20—but, in my own (partial) defense, I’ll say this: When Clayton taught himself to play fetch, it was far and away the smartest thing he’d ever done.
We live in a 150-year-old row house in a leafy bedroom community just two train stops outside of Manhattan. Living in an old house has its charms (marble fireplaces! crown moldings!), but central air conditioning isn’t one of them. At the height of summer heat, we rely on a small window unit in our bedroom. In an effort to retain as much of the cold air as possible—while still giving the cats free access in and out—I’ll leave the bedroom door just ajar enough that it’s nearly closed but still easy for a cat to manage.
Fanny has no problem with this—and why would she? When she wants to come in, she simply nudges the door with her nose until it swings wide enough to allow her to pass. When she wants to go out, she slips her paw into the two inches of space between the door and the floor and pulls it toward her until there’s a large-enough crack for her to fit through.
I’ll admit that Fanny is particularly adept when it comes to doors. She’s figured out how to sit atop the railing of the third-floor balcony, which puts her right at the level of the knob on the upstairs bathroom door, and twist the doorknob with her front paws until it opens (something she does to startling effect if Laurence or I happen to be in there).
Still, it’s hard to claim that pushing open an already slightly open door requires much in the way of special skills or intelligence—especially for a cat.
And yet, for the first four years we lived in this house, Clayton couldn’t figure it out—despite having watched Fanny nose open the bedroom door when it was ajar a million times. Fanny didn’t have to watch anybody push on the door before she figured it out. Nevertheless, the mechanics of this process were beyond Clayton’s grasp. He’d sit outside that slightly open bedroom door, and cry and cry, until I got up to let him in.
To reiterate: Clayton, a cat (creatures universally acknowledged for their cleverness, even by their detractors), could not figure out how to walk through an open door unassisted.