Гвен Купер - Stop Trying To Make Fetch Happen

Stop Trying to Make Fetch Happen

Gwen Cooper

BenBella Books, Inc.

Dallas, TX

Copyright © 2018 by Gwen Cooper

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

BenBella Books, Inc.

10440 N. Central Expressway, Suite 800

Dallas, TX 75231

www.benbellabooks.com

Send feedback to feedback@benbellabooks.com

e-ISBN: 978-1-946885-88-3

Distributed to the trade by Two Rivers Distribution, an Ingram brand www.tworiversdistribution.com

I Choo-Choo-Choose You!

Even as I sit to type these words, I hear it. It’s the sound that’s come to define my waking hours and haunt my dreams, the first thing I hear when my eyes open in the morning and the last thing I hear at night before I fall asleep. Whether I’m writing, cooking, reading a book, cleaning the bathroom sink, talking with my husband, blow-drying my hair, or lying in bed, it’s always with me, like the beating of my own heart.

Rattle. Rattle. THUMP.

Rattlerattlerattlerattlerattle.

It’s the sound of a tiny, felt-covered plastic mouse—adorned at its tail with rainbow-colored feathers and filled with something or other that produces a rattling noise—being picked up and shaken vigorously by a cat, then dropped at increasingly closer intervals to my desk chair before being picked up and shaken again. Sure enough, when I swivel in my chair to look behind me, Clayton sits on his haunches about a foot away, his black fur groomed to a high gloss in the sunlight that streams through the window next to us. His golden eyes are impossibly round and hopeful as he stares at me without blinking.

“MEEEEEEE! ” Clayton’s meow has no “ow” at the end, so he lives perpetually in the insistent first person. His voice is comically high-pitched and squeaky for such a stocky cat, and under different circumstances I’d probably laugh as he repeats “ MEEEEEEE! ” picking up and rattling the toy mouse once more for good measure. Its tail feathers curl to form a jaunty rainbow moustache beneath his little black nose.

But it’s already later than I had intended to begin my writing for the day, the precious morning hours of peak mental clarity slipping into the creative doldrums of early afternoon. My arm is sore from having spent the better part of two hours hurling that plastic mouse: pitching it down the stairs as I yawned my way out of bed, throwing it from the bathroom to the living room as I brushed my teeth, tossing it from one end of the kitchen to the other as I poured myself some orange juice, and spiking it from my office nook in the back of our little house all the way to the bay window at its front—then throwing the mouse again and again each time Clayton retrieved it.

Enough is enough.

“Clayton, I’m working ,” I tell him, in a voice that’s meant to be stern but comes out sounding like a plea. “How can I afford to keep buying you toys if you won’t let me work ?”

Human logic so rarely prevails with actual humans that I shouldn’t be surprised when it fails to move my cat. Still, for the first time all morning, he sounds uncertain. “ Meeeeeee? ” He lets the mouse drop from his mouth and noses it a few inches closer to me, reaching out to paw at my leg with gentle persistence. “ Meeeeeee? ”

His dip in confidence helps me find my own. “ No ,” I say firmly. “Playtime is over. I have to work now.” I make a show of turning away from Clayton and toward the computer keyboard, randomly hitting the keys to type nothing in particular as I watch him from the corner of my eye, trying to gauge if, indeed, he’s ready to let me move on with my day.

Perhaps my exaggerated determination has done the trick. More likely, however, is that the effort required to propel a three-legged cat up and down the stairs of a three-story house for two hours has finally sapped even Clayton of his energy.

Whatever the cause, I exhale a small sigh of relief as Clayton uses his powerful upper body to haul himself up to the windowsill next to my desk, stretching out his forelegs with the toy mouse balanced carefully between his front paws.

“Good boy.” I reach over to scritch him affectionately behind the ears, and he responds with a sleepy, subdued, “ meeeeeee. ” His yellow eyes are still fixed on mine, but the lids droop as he nods off into the first of today’s catnaps.

I turn back to my computer screen and start typing again—actual words, this time—while birds chirp outside the window and, from his perch beside me, Clayton begins to snore lightly. Serenity reigns in my sunlit writing nook. Finally, the game of fetch is over.

Well, maybe not over . But at least my demanding feline overlord seems willing to allow me a small window of time in which to get some actual work done.

For now. Until the next round of fetch begins.

* * *

Cat lovers are fond of referring to themselves as their cats’ “slaves” or “adoring servants.” Dogs have owners, cats have staff, the saying goes. I’ve repeated it myself often enough for humorous effect, but privately I never used to think of myself as being the servant of any dog or cat I’ve lived with. I’ve always indulged them, of course. I legitimately don’t know what the point of adopting an animal—especially a rescue animal—even is if not, at least in part, to allow yourself the fun of spoiling them silly.

I’ll freely admit, however, that nowadays I’m wholeheartedly and downright euphorically enslaved to my three-legged cat, Clayton, in a way I’ve never been with any other cat before—not even my blind cat, Homer, who burrowed so deeply into my heart that I felt as if he were literally my flesh and blood. Clayton hates to be alone, and if he awakens from a nap to find himself in an empty room, he’ll let out an anguished howl—and I always come running, no matter where I am or what I’m in the middle of doing. He pushes me like a slave driver, nipping at my ankles with his teeth when it’s his feeding time and I’m not walking to the kitchen quickly enough, or at my calves if I’m standing and talking to my husband, Laurence, or doing anything that doesn’t involve paying attention to Clayton. He has a habit, when I’m sitting at my desk and working on the computer, of hopping in semi-circles behind the desk chair, rising up on his one hind leg, every other hop, to nip at whatever parts of me he can reach through the chair’s lower back—usually my hips and rear end.

“Silly boy!” I’ll say with a smile, as I reach down to rub beneath Clayton’s chin and Laurence looks on in amazement at my cheerful benevolence.

If I’m reading a book, a throw pillow in my lap to prop it up on, Clayton will often pull himself up onto the couch and unceremoniously head-butt the book out of his way, installing himself in its place. Not only don’t I get angry at this, I don’t even get irritated. “Who da fuzzy wizzle man?” I’ll croon, my book forgotten. As I scratch Clayton’s back, he lifts his head at a regal angle and sprawls out to his full length atop the cushion on my lap. “Who got da mushy wizzle belly? Who such a good boy? Gooooooood boy . . .”

“It’s unbelievable how much better the cat’s treated than I am,” Laurence likes to grumble. He’s not wrong. There’s nothing more irksome to a bookworm like me than being pulled abruptly out of an engrossing read. If Laurence were to slap a book out of my hands and shout, “Pay attention to me right NOW!” he’d be treated to an earful of obscenities rather than a back scratch. I can state with near certainty that no affectionate rubs of his “fuzzy wizzle belly” would be in the offing.