BANDIT'S THIRD LIFE

Bandit sat hunched on the fence behind her old home at the grocery store. The wind whipped the old familiar smells away and it was cold.  This was the second home she had lost in her life.  Her first home was with a little girl who picked her out in the shelter then left her behind when her dad refused to move the ‘damn cat’ with the family.  Then Mrs. Huckabee had to move from the grocery store to Spokane to live with her son when Mr. Huckabee died.

She gazed off into space as her mind filled with a sense of her earlier times.  She didn’t think in words like a human but she did think and she did remember.  Bandit had lost a few pounds and her coat was in need of a good grooming. It was also possible she might have picked up a few fleas she guessed as she scratched her neck.

A group of little boys ran down the alley and started throwing rocks when they saw her.  She ran up the fence and leapt up to a nearby roof and quickly disappeared from the area.  Humans could be pleasant one to one, but they became beasts in large groups.

Waking up stiff and hungry after a night of dozing and no real sleep she stretched and decided that maybe it was time to move on to a new area.  She trotted off to explore and find breakfast.  By noon she was still hungry and there were fewer places to find food.  She was in a suburb. 

Bandit was under a lilac bush in soft grass enveloped in lovely, moist smells and taking a bath in the warmth of midday when a heavy set black woman dressed in starched white told her to get around to the back door.  To Bandit a door was a door but this lady seemed to know the difference. She followed the woman and was rewarded with a bowl of left overs.  She went back around to her lilac bush and finished grooming.

When Bandit woke up she saw several old people being pushed around the well-kept garden in wheel chairs.  One pleasant smelling old lady was dozing near a bed of flowers all by herself.  She had a crocheted lap rug with a dozen different shades and Bandit walked closer and got a better whiff.  The lady woke up and looked at the cat.  Bandit decided she looked lonely so she brushed by her legs gently and sat and looked and smelled some more.  She could tell the woman needed gentleness because she was old and weak and that appealed to Bandit in some strange way. 

“You better hide, kitty, here comes nurse,” she said, conspiratorially.  Bandit rose with dignity and sauntered back to her lilac bush.  She checked in with crocheted lady every day after that encounter and the reflection in crocheted lady's glasses set off Bandit's nurse is approaching alarm in  time for a dignified retreat.

Over the next few days she met many of the patients at the home and found them to be a pleasant, friendly lot.  The cook who she met the first day, continued to supply lunch when she knew the cat was there so Bandit made sure the cook saw her and that the nurses didn’t.  A clear designation of friend and foe which caused her to follow the line between sunlight and shadow so she could melt away when necessary.

One day she came up to crocheted lady, but the lady wasn’t dozing and seemed upset.  Bandit was curious and jumped up on her lap and nuzzled her hands. 

“Why, hello kitty,” she said, “Come and let me pet you, little one.” 

Bandit accepted the attention and was about to find a comfortable place to rest on the bony lap to commiserate with crocheted lady when the nurse came and shooed her away. 

Bandit stayed there the rest of the fall but when winter came it was a cold in the yard and she was thinking about going back to town when the crocheted lady called her from a window one evening and invited Bandit into her small room. 

Bandit felt comfortable as long as the window was open and she often slept in the room with the kind, old woman.  Soon she had other ‘friends’ and thought she had found a home, but the nurses weren’t about to accept her so readily. 

“She’s all raggedy and dirty”, one said.

“She’s probably got fleas,” another chimed in.

“Well, she does calm them down,” one of the nice ones offered.

“They say pets can lower blood pressure,” one well-read nurse contributed.

"They also have kittens," another nurse with more practical knowledge added.

Almost all of the patients and the cook wanted to keep her and one day they decided to take up a collection and ask the vet across the street to bathe her and make sure she couldn’t have babies. They gave the cook their collection and sent her across the street to see if it was enough money..

The cook walked in the door and there was a gum chewing teenager behind the counter.  When the cook told her the problem the girl giggled, “We don’t take charity cases,” she said. 

The doctor walked in from the back to ask for a file and said, “Good morning,” to the cook.  “Haven’t I seen you before?” he asked.

“Likely, doctor, I’m the cook in the old folks home across the street.”

“And what can we do for you today?” he asked.

She told the doctor about the cat that all the patients loved but the staff hated and called her dirty and said she would have kittens. 

“They took up a collection to see if we could get her cleaned up and examined,” she said.

“The patients did?” the doctor asked.

“Yes sir,” she responded, “She keeps them calmer and happier,” the cook said, “And she's real gently with them.”

“Tessie, get the lady one of our cardboard kennels,” the vet said.

He gave the kennel to the cook and told her to bring the cat over.

The cook gave him a big smile and said she’d be right back. She found Bandit curled up on crocheted lady’s lap near the lilac bush and told her the news. 

Between the patients and the cook they got Bandit into the box and cook trotted off for the exam.  Bandit didn’t know what was going on but all of her friends seemed happy so she endured the bumpy ride in the dark box and was composed when the vet opened the box on the examination table. 

The room was layered with antiseptic smells and the table was too cold to sit down, then the kindly looking man grabbed her by the tail and shoved something inside of her.

“Yeow!” Bandit bellowed indignantly.

He soon removed it and said, “Temperatures, good.”

He began petting her then feeling her all over.

What is he, some kind of pervert? Bandit asked herself.

“Well, she’s not going to have babies, I can assure you of that, and she seems to be a very healthy cat,” he said. 

“Leave her here tonight and we’ll give her a flea bath and she’ll be pretty as can be.  She looks like she fell on hard times very recently,” the vet said.

The next morning before the cook made it to the vet’s office he came over with a clean, well groomed Bandit and clean bill of health stating that she couldn’t have kittens.

Mrs. Crocheted almost bounced out of her wheel chair when she saw her friend and all the rest of the patients gathered around to see what their money had paid for.    

“She’s beautiful,” they cooed and petted her and even the nurses were impressed with her makeover. .

The vet went and talked to the head nurse about Bandit and a truce was called. Bandit enjoyed her life at the home even though it was as much a job as anything because the patients needed constant attention and affection; and occasionally one of the old ones died.  Crocheted lady was taken away after Bandit's first year at the home but cook and all of the rest of the patients were still there.  The head nurse gave Bandit Mrs. Crocheted’s lap rug for her cardboard box and she could still detect crocheted lady's scent mingled in with her memories of the lady.   

copyright August 2013 Karen MacEanruig

BANDIT'S SECOND LIFE

Bandit jumped from the slippery, peaked roof down to the fence and trotted along the fence rail for about twenty feet finding the scents assailing her nose more and more enticing she jumped to the dusty alley and began a grid search to pinpoint the source of all the lovely aromas.

Just as she located the right doorway, a skinny man with a broom came out and began to sweep the steps and the loading platform behind his little grocery store.

“Scat,” he hollered and shook his broom in her direction.  She melted into the shadows and waited for him to go away so she could get on with her business. 

When he went back inside she approached the door  cautiously and again smelled the delightful odors  drifting through the screen.  She listened and sniffed the air from the old wooden steps still warm from the sun.  She sharpened her claws on the bottom stair and sniffed at the screen door, bumping it in the process and it bounced open a few inches. 

Bandit jumped back and watched the door for further threat and then slowly approached it again because the smells were so tempting.  This time she was ready when she bumped the door and she scooted through the small opening before it bounced shut.

The man came stomping back to the storeroom, “What’s the ruckus back here.”  When he saw that  he had forgotten to latch the door he decided to lock up for the night.

Bandit had faded under a shelf behind some boxes to wait for him to disappear again.  She would have to find another exit now that he had locked up but only after she had located the source of the smells that were making her salivate and her little tummy growl.

She had had a perfect home until a few weeks ago when she had been left behind when the dad was transferred to another city.  Bandit and the little girl had an upstairs room with a soft warm bed and a window that opened out onto the rooftops of the city.  A huge moving truck had come and removed everything, and Mom, Dad, and little girl had climbed into their car and driven  off and never returned.  The little girl had cried and begged for them to take Bandit but her Dad couldn’t be bothered with ‘the damn cat’.

Bandit explored the shadows in the gloomy storeroom behind the neighborhood grocers.  There was one light, a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling and a small lamp on a cluttered desk.  She kept to the shadows and almost forgot the delicious smell as her senses were overwhelmed with dozens of new exotic odors to sort and catalogue.   Even if the room were empty the old wooden floor had absorbed smells over dozens of years and could entertain any half literate cat for hours.

Bandit had checked out the right side of the storeroom when she saw the open doorway.  She peeked around the door jamb and saw the man with the broom behind the counter engrossed in some task with the cash register.  Then she saw the stairs and smelled the delicious aroma again.  She calculated the distance to the man and decided to chance it and bolted silently through the door and up the stairs.

There were three doors at the top of the stairs with a light under one of them and that was where the delicious smell was coming from.  She heard a human voice humming, stirring sounds, and water running when she sniffed under the door.  The room felt warm and filled with good smells so she had her head down sniffing when the door suddenly opened and a plump lady stood looking down at her.

Startled, Bandit looked up and blinked.

“Well, hello, little kitty,” said the plump woman looking down at her.  “Why your markings are just like a bandit,” she said delighted with her own clever observation.

“Well, come on in little kitty before the mister sees you,” she opened the door wide for Bandit and the cat put on her best runway walk auditioning for a cat show’s first prize.

The woman prepared a bowl for Bandit telling her that she had lost her adorable little calico a year ago when a car ran over her.  Lost in thought, the woman stopped preparing the bowl and Bandit decided to meow in sympathy to get the show back on the road.

“Why aren’t you a sweet little thing, chatting and all,” the woman said, and placed the bowl of stew on the floor in the corner for Bandit along with a bowl of water. 

Bandit noticed the window was open wide enough for her and then the smell brought her attention back to the food.  She would explore the upstairs later.

The woman fixed two plates and took them to the dining room and hollered down the stairs, “Mr. Huckabee your dinner is ready, please come while it’s still hot.”

Bandit heard heavy tromping on the stairs and decided to hide in the pantry until she found out where the skinny man with the broom was going.

When the missus came back to the kitchen with two empty plates she told Bandit, “Mr. Huckabee will stay in the living room in his recliner until bedtime, Kitty, and he never comes in the kitchen so we’ll be quite comfortable here.”

After she did the dishes, the missus sat in her rocker in front of the stove knitting a sweater for the mister’s birthday.  She chatted with Bandit and told her all about the calico and Mr. Huckabee. 

Bandit lay in front of the warm stove and bathed from head to foot as the human voice droned on and on.  Occasionally, Bandit would meow just to be polite but after bathing she dozed off as the missus talked and knitted. 

They spent the next three years doing this every evening until the mister passed on and the missus had to go live with her son in Spokane.  Bandit went out in search of her third of nine lives a little heavier, a little more spoiled, and set in her ways.