Covert Mom: The Lovecats

By Mariah Mottley

I worry about what people will think when they come to our house. As I write this, there is a cagey tiger draped across my neck, forepaw batting at the keyboard. There is a cat asleep on the printer, one in the laundry basket, one asleep by the woodstove, another waiting by the door to be let out, another waiting on the other side to be let in. It’s like a TS Eliot poem around here, except that these cats are not practical.

When I got up to get a drink, I put my heel down on an empty Ceresto flea collar canister and cursed. My passenger disembarked, heading for more stable territory.
It began with just one. We were just going to get one.
Billie sat my husband and me down at the dining room table, months in advance of her birthday, an Ithaca College padfolio in front of her. This was no casual request, but a marketing campaign, complete with propaganda and talking points. She wanted a kitten.
As the middle child, she has the corresponding low expectations and coping skills needed for such a job. She handed us a series of self portraits from the folder section of the padfolio. Billie reading on the sofa with the kitten, Billie lying in bed reading with the kitten, Billie lying by the fire, reading with the kitten. In retrospect, none of the portraits illustrated her emptying the litter box.
While we perused the visuals, she outlined the reason we needed a cat. We were running low. Oberon, the ancient black barn cat, was getting old. He would probably die soon. Cabbage and Dinah, our outdoor recluses, had been MIA for months and presumed dead.
Her job, she told us, was the hardest of all the kids, because she had to be both a big sister and a little sister at the same time. The position was very taxing, and a kitten would help to lower her stress levels. We thanked her for her time, told her we’d be in touch.
She had me at the padfolio. Of course we could get her a kitten. I filled out adoption applications, spread the word that we were kitten hunting. A family we knew was fostering a litter. Two brothers, closely bonded. We went to visit, and they fell asleep in our arms, purring. We had planned on just one, but it would be cruel to separate them. Two kittens seemed manageable. They would keep one another company.
Excitement mounted; the adoption day was marked on the calendar, one day after her birthday. I checked the box on my to-do list. Birthday expectation: met. But then, friends of mine responded to my kitten inquiry. They had a little girl for Billie, as a birthday surprise. Well, we already had our kitten, but looking couldn’t hurt, could it? Billie looked. So wonderfully pretty.
Three kittens, two closely bonded brothers, a sweet little girl. That wasn’t so bad, right? They were so small. And they liked to sleep in a pile. A kitten for each kid, I reasoned. We hadn’t seen Oberon in weeks. Perhaps he had gone out hunting for the last time.
When the kittens came home, they lived only in Billie’s room. Catlandia, I called it. Billie proudly filled and refilled their dishes with fresh water and kitten food, squealed with delight when the girl kitten fell asleep on the doll bed. They doubled, then tripled their adoption size, licked divots in the butter left on the counter, used the snake plant as a toilet.
When it got cold, Oberon moved back in. Just under 20 pounds, black all over with jade eyes and a split ear; he looked to be in excellent health. He took over the doll bed, his sides falling over the edges, one eye on the newcomers, one out the window.
Four cats, now. I started a fire in the woodstove; they basked in the heat, bellies exposed, tails outstretched.
“That’s a lot of cats,” Sean commented, stepping around them.
Then, meowing at the door. Cabbage, a dilute tortie, back from the dead. We hadn’t seen her in six months. I let her in, shocked.
“Speak of the devil,” Sean put his newspaper down.
Cabbage ignored us all, took her place in the radiant heat.
“Five cats,” I said to Sean, rushing to the computer to order another flea collar.
“Dinah’s gotta be dead,” Sean said, shaking his head and looking at the lumps of purring bellies on the floor. “That cat was crazy.”
The next morning, Dinah was waiting for me at the door, the markings on her face lighter than I remembered. She is under my desk now, hissing at something that isn’t there.
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Originally from Manhattan, Mariah was educated in Massachusetts, Montana and Texas, often by failure. She lives with her husband and three children in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. Mariah can be reached at mariah@mariahmottley.com.