I Called Her Cat

"Listen, chump" she let go of my hand and play punched me on the ribs, "I'll make no promises, OK? I'll just go have lunch with George, and see what's what, OK? I'll be back around two or three and we'll talk for real. Alright?" She peered closely at me, and sighing loudly said, "Oh Gawd! You really are bummed out, aren't you? I am so sorry! Look Sweety, you do mean a lot to me, we really need to talk this through."

"So I guess that answers the question about being a boyfriend." I was astonished at how even and calm my voice sounded. Well she was right, after all. We had only made love a couple of times, and maybe I had been reading more into her constant presence than I should, but I was still a little rocked by this sudden turn of events.

"NO! This doesn't mean that I am going to go running back to George, idiot! It means that I am going to talk to him. Period. I have had more intense times here in the past two days than I have with George for the whole three years we've been together. And I'm a little confused by the speed with which I leapt into your bed right after he and I had that fight. And after three years I owe it to him to listen."

I smiled a little, but my lord! It was an effort.

At that point I noticed that Cat was no longer grasping just three fingers, but had moved her whole hand into mine, and now that Goodall had left, so had most of the tension on my palm. Jane continued, grabbing my other hand again, "Sweety, please wait for me?" She looked into my face with an expression not unlike a little kid wheedling for a treat that is seldom given: sort of resignation at the anticipated answer coupled with intense hope.

I looked at Cat for a moment; she looked back at me and gave the slightest nod of her head. "If Cat thinks I should wait and listen to you later, then I will." I smiled for real this time at the look of instant anger on Jane's face, "Seriously, Jane. I would wait for you anytime, and listen to anything you need to tell me. Go. Have a delightful lunch with George. Whatever the result. I'll be here for you."

She leapt to her feet, gave me a hug that would have my neck in a crick for three days and left to get dressed. I looked at Cat and said that it was once again just the two of us, but she gave a definite shake of her head, a tiny glimmer of a smile, and held up three fingers.

It was a long tiring day for all of us, I suppose. I went back to bed to try fruitlessly to get some more sleep, Cat puttered a bit, but of course I didn't hear her. Jane went to lunch.

Jane returned a couple of hours later, and we had our talk. Long into the dark of the evening we talked. Mostly about her options and mine and what George meant to her, and I realised later, that it was a sort of grieving process for her. She had told George that she wasn't going to return, but it seemed to hurt her to do so. She also told me that she wasn't going to be my girlfriend, in any real flowers-and-marriage way, but she felt comfortable at my pace, so she would take it day by day.

She was so despondent that I forbore to ask anything about any future plans; although it is unlikely I would have under the best of circumstances. Anyway, when we were talked out, Cat came into the doorway from the kitchen, and once again staring at me in the way she had the night that I found Jane in the bathroom, indicated by that look that she wanted me to follow her. I went with her into the kitchen to discover that she had laid the table for three, and there was a delicious smell coming from the oven. Jane and I had been so engrossed in her misery that I hadn't even noticed!

I called Jane and we sat to dinner. Jane prettily apologized to Cat for ignoring her that afternoon, and Cat reached out and gave Jane a hug. I think, by the expression of astonishment in Jane's eyes, that this must have been the first time that Cat had initiated their infrequent hugs. She seemed to be coming out of her thick shell with some rapidity. Adversity, being terrified and stuffing yourself into a clothes dryer, while not recommended for everyone, seemed to be an effective therapy.

When supper was finished and the dishes done, we three went into the living room, watched a little television quietly. There was a sense of waiting in the air, but also an extreme closeness, Jane and I on the couch, Cat on the floor in her usual position near the kitchen doorway. There was no need to speak, and no real desire on my part to start yet another conversation in which it would be necessary to bare the live wire of my emotions, and I got the feeling that Jane considered it a good idea as well. What Cat thought was as always a mystery, but I got the distinct impression that she had climbed her watershed of obsessive privacy, and that there would continue to be improvement in her communication and human interaction.

XIV Telling Cat not to bother bringing coffee in the morning, Jane and I toddled off to bed. I awoke early the next morning hearing a coffee cup being placed on my night table, and muttering irritably to myself, cranked open an eye and checked the time. It was 4:30! I opened both eyes, sat up and stared into the steely eyes of Goodall, who with his characteristic grin wished me a good morning.

Taking a sip of coffee, (it was good! Certainly not Cat's effort!), I said,

"Mr. Goodall, while I am as always delighted to see you, don't you think that breaking into my home twice in two days and at such an hour, is putting a little bit of a strain on the bounds of hospitality? By the way this is good coffee, if you ever need to change professions, you might consider a career in food services. Your ability to keep people calm and at peace is showing some disintegration."

"I suppose that it might be considered a little unorthodox to be seeing people this way, but then I am a success because I tend to be a little unorthodox. Where is your Cat?"

"She's not here?"

"Now, sir, I don't want you to think that I am a suspicious fellow, in spite of the nature of my profession, but it looks a lot like you might have spirited her away. There was a man outside the whole night, and he saw nobody leave, but she is definitely not in this apartment."

"Did you look in the dryer?" Jane's sleepy voice announced her inclusion in the conversation, "When Delgado was here that's where she hid."

"Jane! I don't think you should be telling him anything about Cat. That's actually none of his business." I was becoming uncharacteristically angry. Chalk it up to a lack of sleep and all the shocks of the previous three or four days, but I was extremely annoyed at the ease with which the entire world seemed to be waltzing into my home, and the cavalier disregard for the privacy shown by all and sundry.

"Now children, play nice." Goodall admonished us. "Janie, tell him how important it is that I reach Cat now. She has something I need, and she is still in some danger, even though we have Ttransferred Delgado to a far more secure facility than the city jail."

Suddenly it hit me. Cat was gone! I leapt from the bed, and without bothering to dress, ran for the utility room. As I was passing the bedroom door, I heard Goodall ask Jane, "Does anyone wear clothing in this house?"

The door to the drier was open, and the futon on which she usually slept was still rolled in the corner. The new clothing, tags removed and pressed, had been hanging on the same nail that she used for her former clothes. It was bare. Cat had left soon after Jane and I had gone to bed. I couldn't believe what a sense of loss I felt. She had said nothing for eight months. She padded about in utter silence, and tended to remain out of sight for most of the day. Yet I felt as though I had just lost my best friend.

I stood there, bereft and stunned, when Goodall came up to me with my bathrobe. Mechanically I put it on as he said,

"Not that you ain't a beautiful sight – to Janie - but for me, I would distinctly prefer to see less of you. Any ideas where she might have gone? How she managed to get out of here without my man seeing her go? Anything at all. This is becoming less and less funny, if it's your idea of a joke."

"No. Nothing." I said, stilled a little shell-shocked. Then I looked at him, and he seemed really worried. I moved into the kitchen, where Jane and Burt the Cop were sitting. Jane had brought my coffee cup in, and I took it up as I sat.

"Goodall, I don't know anything about her beyond what you and Jane have told me. I found her crouched in my doorway last September, and she has, to my knowledge, not been out of the apartment since. Who she really is, and why she elected to remain here, are as much a mystery to me as where she might have gone. I actually expected her to go in those first few days, but when she didn't, I just sort of got used to her being around.

"I often wouldn't even see her for a couple of days at a time, but I always knew she was here. How she got to my door, and more importantly how she left, I have no idea. But it really doesn't matter. She is patently an adult, and with no evidence to the contrary, I assume she is in her right mind. She has the right to go wherever she pleases without telling me. Or telling you. I suppose that you and your bully boy there," Burt glared at me but made no other response, "Mmust have terrified her enough that she no longer felt...."

I looked up and saw Cat in the doorway. A Cat like none I had ever seen before. Her hair was cut short, above her ears, and she was wearing a baseball-type cap over it. Engineer's boots, dirty jeans and a t-shirt were under a ratty parka whose best days were so long in the past that the original owner was probably dead. How she had managed the transformation I couldn't guess, but then she had surprised me before, with dinners, and such. Her bearing was subtly different too, regal almost, but self-effacing at the same time, if that's not too farfetched a concept. She presented the body language of someone who didn't want to be noticed – but was very confident in their selves herself and their her environment. Goodall was still turning to see what had stopped me in mid-sentence, when Cat reached into her parka's pocket, (the only one remaining intact), and withdrawing a black diskette sleeve, tossed it onto the table in front of him.

Calm and collected as always, she turned and even in engineer's boots, walked to the bathroom in total silence. Equally silent for once was Goodall as he tore open the diskette sleeve, and extracted three diskettes. Two were unremarkable, no label or anything, but the bottom one had a label with the Government Coat of Arms prominent. A quick glance and he hastily stuffed them back in the sleeve, then the sleeve into an interior pocket of his sports coat.

"That's what we were looking for." He said in a satisfied voice. Then he looked at Jane, Burt and me in turn. "An interesting lady, your Cat. Got out of here and back in without my man downstairs even noticing. He's good. Very good at what he does, and it takes an extraordinary person to beat him. I wonder if she would be willing to do some small jobs for us?"

"Arthur! NO!" Jane leapt to her feet and leaned belligerently over the table towards him. This had the effect of opening her own bathrobe, so that Goodall was attacked on two levels. He didn't have a chance. "I remember what happens to those who 'do a few small chores' for you! And it isn't something a girl like Cat needs on top of all the other shit she's been through. So forget it right this minute!"

"Easy, Janie, I was just supposin'. Burt we have to get this back right away." Goodall and Burt stood. Goodall turned in the doorway, and looking at me asked, "Is it all right if I come back someday soon? Cat is an interesting case, and I think I can help you two to get her back to normal."

"Why bother asking?" I am seldom intentionally rude, but it was early in the morning, and I had sipped only about half of my first cup of coffee, "Sorry. That was unnecessary. You would probably be welcome, but please make it a more civilised hour?"

Again the grin, and a nod of assent. He and Burt the Cop departed, leaving me king of my own castle again. And that's the story of my housecat. Sort of.

XV I saw Goodall twice more. About a week after the incident with Delgado, he showed up with a bottle of wine for me, a bag of designer cookies for Jane and a huge bouquet of flowers for cat. He invited himself for dinner.

After dinner he sat with us three, Cat still a little distrustful of him, and explained about Selective Mutism. How it usually affected children, more often females than males, and was usually accompanied by one or more phobiae. Then he looked at Cat, and it was as though Jane and I had ceased to exist; He told her that she was very fortunate to find someone she could trust as much as she had Jane, that her need to communicate would come but it would be slow, and not to try to push it.

To us, he offered the advice that we would be better to work on the assumption that Cat would never be comfortable speaking freely, and accept whatever she offered. He also said it usually took three to five years before progress was measured in adults, but that Cat seemed already showed signs of breaking down certain barriers.

The second time I saw Goodall was at his wedding to Jane's mother. About two months ago, just before Christmas. That was a fun time for the three of us! Goodall danced with every woman at the reception, I got into a spirited argument about the merits of a football team I normally scorn, and found myself defending it, and Jane disappeared for a time with her ex-boyfriend George, and when she returned, looked for the first time in months as though she had finally put him behind her.

Goodall left for his honeymoon on some Caribbean Island, and Jane and I stumbled in, a little bit drunk, a lot giddy and more comfortable in each other's company. Cat met us in the living room, and we sat and told her all about the wedding. Then Jane and I went to bed. Sometime in the middle of the night, I got up to pee, and returning to bed realised that Cat was lying there too. An open eye looked at me, a little anxiously, so I just bent towards her, kissed her on the forehead, and rolled over.

Things have returned to normal, or as normal as they possibly could be with a private investigator, and a naked mute for housemates. Cat is much more comfortable with being hugged and touched in a casual way, and I can see the day when she will trust us enough to speak, soon.