We’re getting rid of my grandparents’ cat, Julius. And when I say we, read my girlfriend, Sarah. After grandpa died, the family entrusted Julius to me, but his favorite game deals with biting the toes of anyone passing by. Sarah’s his usual target because her signature sandals leave her exposed, but he’s tagged my bare feet, too.
“We can’t have people over,” Sarah says. News flash, we never had people over before the cat. Yet, her argument wins, and now, the animal rescue center appears on a hill behind a steel mill. The road isn’t even fully paved. The car’s tires bounce over every hole in the gravel path that circles up to the concrete pad in front of the building with a worn awning and tinted double doors.
The cat crawls around the fabric crate my grandparents bought for him. His paws press through the bottom and into my lap as the whole car shakes, and I lift the container so that his claws don’t pick at my skin. My grandparents used to always joke that really the cat picked them. It just showed up on their back door step, and they got to take care of it. “At the back door. Kind of like how we first met you,” grandma once said to me.
A picture of me and the cat sat on their mantle and now sits on my desk. In it, I’m around twelve, and turned to face away from the camera so that Julius stared directly at it. His head snuggled next to mine with his paws wrapped around both sides of my neck in a hug.
In the parking lot, Julius finds a hole in the fabric and reaches a paw out to swipe at Sarah. “See what I mean,” she says. This has always been their relationship. The first time Julius bit Sarah she ran to the bathroom before I could do anything.
“Look at the blood,” she said.
She was in the bathroom, so I really couldn’t see it. When she got out, it didn’t look like much, just two tiny red marks.
Inside animal rescue, behind the front desk, two workers help a family adopt a cat. Well, one helps two parents and a little girl while the other worker’s there for moral support. The cat’s maybe seven months old unlike Julius who’s nine years at least. Sarah begins explaining our situation.
When done, moral support grabs the paperwork that needs to be filled out.
I ask, “How often do you adopt?”
Moral support says, “We get a number of people.”
My head bounces in agreement like I knew this answer already. I probably look like some fool giving up the last vestige of his grandparents, or more likely, I look like anyone else choosing adoption for their pet. I shouldn’t care. These people don’t know my backstory. They don’t know the fact that every other family member took something from the house that just sold yesterday.
Julius pokes his nose up through the hole where the zipper doesn’t fully close at the top stop. He smells the adopted cat. His nostrils flare as he gets a good whiff of the other. The cat’s a mutt like Julius, but I’d never think of Julius that way. Well, maybe Julius’s coat was that dark when he was younger.
“How long before you take them to the back?” There’s an implication with the word “back” that rubs against my subconscious. I begin to tear up and hope that it’s at least not noticeable.
Moral support’s eyes dart back down to the keyboard as she furiously types Julius’s information into the computer. “Two weeks. We give them two weeks in the pass before moving them to the back. That way, everyone gets a chance.”
Sarah says, “He’ll be fine.”
I want to scream. Two weeks is nothing, but Sarah doesn’t get it. How could she? She wasn’t there when he’d curl up in my lap after getting into trouble for playing just down the street but out after sunset with my friends, Hyram and Daniel. Or, the time I wrecked grandmother’s car, and the only thing to touch me after was his nose against my bruises. She’s never felt the way his purr vibrates through your body or been aware of the fact he wasn’t that way with just everyone. It had to be earned.
I ask, “Can I talk to you outside?”
It isn’t a conversation. Well, it is if I begin but only get to ask a simple question before Sarah butts in to remind me of how she’s right. I don’t go back inside the shelter.
Well, I do go back after two weeks, and apparently, Sarah was right. The cat’s too cranky. No one adopted him, wanted him. Animal rescue charges me one hundred twenty dollars to get him back, which isn’t a big deal. In some ways, it cost me less, and more, to get rid of Sarah, and I can only hope she’s found someone without any pets.
Frederick Charles Melancon lives in Mississippi with his wife, daughter, and cat, Jiji. More of his work can be found on what is now formerly Twitter @fcmwrite.