But the very best part of my being sick, from the cats’ point of view, is that they get to join me in bed for a full day, or—if I’m really sick and the cats are really lucky—maybe even two full days. Clayton and Fanny are longtime practitioners of snooze-all-day-ism, and they seem to regard my sick days as a possible—and promising—first step toward a permanent embrace of their lifestyle. They’ll pile into bed with me, and frequently on me, like senior members of a cult keeping close tabs on a new initiate, making sure she doesn’t begin to have second thoughts or stray from the path. If they sense that I’m about to get out of bed, one or the other of them will climb onto my chest and bring a whiskered black face as close as possible to my own. You can’t quit now, they always seem to be saying. You’re doing so great! And if I’m sick enough to run a fever, so much the better. Burrowing under the blankets with me, they add the not-insignificant warmth of their own furry bodies to my heightened body heat, until the space beneath the covers feels like a sauna—one that vibrates with the strength of my cats’ purring contentment.
The day that my back went out, however, wasn’t quite like my usual sick days. For one thing, I had no interest in lying under the covers and had Laurence shove them entirely to one side of the bed—along with the piles of clothing we were still cycling in and out of the laundry in an effort to rid ourselves of moths once and for all. Even worse, I never once turned onto my side for a delightful session of cuddling one or the other of my cats in a spoon position. I just lay there sprawled out, flat on my back, in a kind of Vitruvian Man pose. I lay so flat that I couldn’t even see the TV screen across the room, or much of anything other than the ceiling. The number of moths we’d spot fluttering around the house had abated almost entirely but, from time to time over the course of that day, I’d spy one or two hovering above me. Fanny spotted them, too, and leapt onto my belly in order to use my motionless body as a springboard heavenward in her pursuit, each time prompting a loud “Oof!” from me.
Convenient a launching pad as my inert body made, it wasn’t exactly Clayton’s or Fanny’s notion of the ideal day spent in bed with Mom. Nevertheless, there was plenty to be happy about on any day that saw me spending so much time with them. And the heating pad had been duly taken down from its closet shelf and was turned over to Clayton or Fanny every twenty minutes or so, whenever I felt I’d used it long enough for the time being. That, at least, was something.
The only real moment of consternation on that first day came in the evening, when Laurence helped me into a hot bath that I hoped would help soothe my knotted back muscles into something resembling their previous shape. Proper baths—as opposed to showers—are a rare event in our house, and Clayton and Fanny peeked anxiously over the side of the tub, occasionally daring to rise up on hind legs (or hind leg, in Clayton’s case) and dip a tentative front paw into the water before quickly withdrawing it. Their little brows furrowed in anxiety and confusion. Whatcha doin’ in all that water, Mom? IT’S WATER!!!
Eventually, however—having clearly concluded with a mental shrug that humans were just weird sometimes, and there was no explaining them—they sprawled out in front of the tub like two ebony-carved centurions. Perhaps they’d decided that, with my having taken this foolishness into my head, someone had to make sure I didn’t drown. In any case, their refusal to leave the tub area so long as I was still in there made Laurence’s job getting me out of the tub, a half hour later, needlessly complicated. (“Just step around them,” Laurence kept saying patiently. While I—trying vainly to move sideways a leg that refused to go in any direction other than backward or forward—replied through gritted teeth, “I can’t step around anything!”) The cats seemed relieved as, with Laurence’s help, I finally hobbled back to the bedroom and the three of us settled into bed.
They weren’t nearly so sanguine, however, by the following morning. Like all cats, Fanny and Clayton are wedded to the routines that make up their typical day. One of the most important items on our daily agenda is when I get out of bed at five a.m. precisely and head down from the third-floor bedroom to the first-floor kitchen to give them their breakfast—tossing Clayton’s toy mouse for a few preliminary rounds of fetch along the way.
Even when I’m down with a cold or flu, I still manage to sneeze and cough my way downstairs to feed the cats on time. So nothing in their previous experience had prepared them for this first morning after my back injury. The pain in my lower back did feel distinctly lessened when I initially woke up—although possibly that was the lingering effect of the Vicodin (left over from some dental surgery Laurence had had a few months earlier), which I’d taken before going to sleep.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t sit up. I had to sort of rock from side to side until, eventually, I rolled out of bed and onto the floor in a semi-crouching position, at which point I stood up as straight as I was able and limped to the bathroom at the end of the hall. After that, staggering back to bed was all that I could manage. Walking down two flights of stairs to feed the cats—and then two flights back up again—was as unattainable a goal as climbing Everest.
The cats appeared flabbergasted as I got back into bed without having fed them. Laurence was sleeping in the guest bed in his office next door—to allow me the full and undisturbed span of our bed—and I’d advised him the night before to keep his door closed, anticipating that, when the cats found me unresponsive, they would be disinclined to wait for him to wake up on his own. There was a solid five minutes of caterwauling in the hallway as the cats did their best to rouse at least one of us—but Laurence, a sound sleeper, kept dozing undisturbed. Thanks to his closed door, they were unable to deploy any of their more aggressive tactics, like stomping onto his chest and meowing loudly into his ear.
They could, however, still use both maneuvers on me. “Laurence will be up soon, you guys,” I assured them over the loud and increasingly desperate cries that were beginning to make my eardrums hurt (although I knew that “soon,” given that Laurence kept a much more normal schedule than I did, wouldn’t be for at least two more hours). “You’ll get your breakfast—I promise you will.”
Vexed and baffled by this unprecedented state of affairs, they were obviously working hard to figure out a way of getting me onto my feet, down the stairs, and pointed in the direction of the pantry where their food was kept. Clayton seemed to be of the opinion that if he kept doing the things that he normally does in the morning, then inevitably I would also fall back into my normal routine. Accordingly, he kept bringing over the rattling toy mouse he likes to play fetch with, hauling himself up onto the bed so he could rattle it a few times in his mouth and then drop it into my hand. I would toss it half-heartedly as far across the room as I could without moving any more of my body than my arm. Clayton was patient with me at first as he dutifully retrieved the mouse, climbed back onto the bed, and dropped it into my hand once again. No, see, you’re doing it wrong. You’re supposed to get up and throw it for me—and then you’re supposed to keep walking. After four or five repetitions, however, he was stumped. He looked over to Fanny for guidance. Got any ideas?