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When my kids started clamoring for a pet, I was strategically indifferent. I grew up in Miami, in a house with more pets than kids, and while I believed that there was an emotional benefit to the dogs, the cats, the birds, the fish and the mice, I wasn’t going to admit it, because then I’d have to think through the practicalities: health, space, food, waste. My wife, who also grew up in Miami, also with pets, readily admitted the benefits and started thinking through the practicalities. She concluded that a cat was problematic. She told the kids. They cried. They promised that they’d do all the cat-related jobs. “Enough,” I said. They fell silent, which meant only that I heard the noise of the clock ticking. The countdown to cat had begun.Then one day last summer, I was walking with my kids. The weather was nice, which I’m guessing was partly to blame: false optimism. We went by the cat store, and my younger son, who was 3, asked if we could go in. We did, and the woman at the desk asked me if we were thinking of adopting. “Of course,” I said. My older son, who was 6 at the time, stood stiffly while the woman lowered an orange kitten into his arms. The prospect of caring for it seemed to go through him like a not entirely unpleasant current. He was sold, and he sold me. I called my wife and told her about the cat. She was happy but guardedly so.She was wrong to be guarded — the kids loved the cat and the cat loved the kids — and then she was right. Cheddar, as the cat came to be called, liked to show her appreciation for her new home by urinating on it. She hit the couch in the guest room, once in a puddle the shape of Australia, once in the shape of Greenland. She hit the clothes that were folded in the laundry room. One morning, I grabbed an upside-down hat and put it on without looking. I should have looked.
So, an unwanted urinator in the house: what to do? I was relatively unconcerned. I have two sons, and I am one of three sons. It seemed like a fact of life. On the other hand, I didn’t have to clean Greenland off the couch, or take my hat to the dry cleaner or be perpetually disgusted and furious at the cat’s behavior. My wife did. Again, she spent more time thinking it through — and also asking about it on message boards and mailing lists. Some people thought the problem was correctable. Use organic litter, they said. Get two litter boxes. Lock her in the room with the litter box(es). But when none of that worked, some of those same people started saying we should get rid of the cat, as quickly as possible. “Cut your losses,” one cat breeder wrote. “Get her out of the house and start over. This is not going to get any better.”
I hadn’t been particularly interested in having the cat in the first place, but the prospect of giving her away — to strangers, to cat prison, to the Great Unknown Euthanizers — filled me with horror. “You can’t do that to her,” I said. And, as afterthought: “Or to the kids.” And it was true: when my older son caught wind of the plan, he cried, histrionically at first but then for real, and he made a Post-it note that he stuck on his bedroom door that said, “Please don’t go away, Cheddar: I love you.” You try sending a cat to prison after that.
“What are we going to do?” my wife asked — no, declared — as if challenging an irresponsible adult who had cavalierly introduced a problem into the home only to then turn away from its darker aspects.
“I guess I’ll solve it,” I said. I didn’t. Well, in a way, I did. I listened to her tell me horror stories about overcrowded shelters and animal rescue operations, and then I remembered that we were all scheduled for a trip to Miami soon. “Let’s give her away down there,” I said. “There are people with big yards and kind hearts. No offense.”
“Very funny,” my wife said. But she sent e-mail to all her friends, and everyone agreed, in theory, that taking the cat down to Florida would improve its life. But no one knew exactly what to do with her once we got there. So my wife went back to the Internet, which has all the answers, and the answer in this case was a place 100 miles west of Jacksonville called the Caboodle Ranch, a 30-acre sanctuary for unwanted and incontinent cats. It sounded like a dream: Cheddar would frolic in the meadow, climb trees, maybe even wave at the Webcams that the ranch planned to install. We didn’t have to take her to Miami; all we had to do was put her on a plane to Jacksonville.
So the cat, which had come into our lives accidentally, went out purposefully. At the airport, the kids hugged her and told her that we’d see her soon but that she wouldn’t be able to see us, on account of the one-way video technology. Of course, that night my younger son said he wanted a dog. “A cute puppy that’s white and warm and soft,” he said. The clock was ticking again.
Ben Greenman, an editor at The New Yorker, is the author of “A Circle Is a Balloon and Compass Both,” a book of fiction.
So, an unwanted urinator in the house: what to do? I was relatively unconcerned. I have two sons, and I am one of three sons. It seemed like a fact of life. On the other hand, I didn’t have to clean Greenland off the couch, or take my hat to the dry cleaner or be perpetually disgusted and furious at the cat’s behavior. My wife did. Again, she spent more time thinking it through — and also asking about it on message boards and mailing lists. Some people thought the problem was correctable. Use organic litter, they said. Get two litter boxes. Lock her in the room with the litter box(es). But when none of that worked, some of those same people started saying we should get rid of the cat, as quickly as possible. “Cut your losses,” one cat breeder wrote. “Get her out of the house and start over. This is not going to get any better.”
I hadn’t been particularly interested in having the cat in the first place, but the prospect of giving her away — to strangers, to cat prison, to the Great Unknown Euthanizers — filled me with horror. “You can’t do that to her,” I said. And, as afterthought: “Or to the kids.” And it was true: when my older son caught wind of the plan, he cried, histrionically at first but then for real, and he made a Post-it note that he stuck on his bedroom door that said, “Please don’t go away, Cheddar: I love you.” You try sending a cat to prison after that.
“What are we going to do?” my wife asked — no, declared — as if challenging an irresponsible adult who had cavalierly introduced a problem into the home only to then turn away from its darker aspects.
“I guess I’ll solve it,” I said. I didn’t. Well, in a way, I did. I listened to her tell me horror stories about overcrowded shelters and animal rescue operations, and then I remembered that we were all scheduled for a trip to Miami soon. “Let’s give her away down there,” I said. “There are people with big yards and kind hearts. No offense.”
“Very funny,” my wife said. But she sent e-mail to all her friends, and everyone agreed, in theory, that taking the cat down to Florida would improve its life. But no one knew exactly what to do with her once we got there. So my wife went back to the Internet, which has all the answers, and the answer in this case was a place 100 miles west of Jacksonville called the Caboodle Ranch, a 30-acre sanctuary for unwanted and incontinent cats. It sounded like a dream: Cheddar would frolic in the meadow, climb trees, maybe even wave at the Webcams that the ranch planned to install. We didn’t have to take her to Miami; all we had to do was put her on a plane to Jacksonville.
So the cat, which had come into our lives accidentally, went out purposefully. At the airport, the kids hugged her and told her that we’d see her soon but that she wouldn’t be able to see us, on account of the one-way video technology. Of course, that night my younger son said he wanted a dog. “A cute puppy that’s white and warm and soft,” he said. The clock was ticking again.
Ben Greenman, an editor at The New Yorker, is the author of “A Circle Is a Balloon and Compass Both,” a book of fiction.
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nice..........
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