imaginary cats

When I was a Brownie, my mom was the troop leader, and we had meetings at our house. Our troop was a strange amalgamation of girls from different layers of the elemenary school social strata, and meetings were one of the few times some of us sat in the same room without engaging in biting, pre-teen conversational jousting.

As a meeting place, our house held several fascinations for troop members: a phone that you actually had to dial (many a girl felt it necessary to call home to confirm that her ride was on the way, just for the experience of using the phone), a Frankenstein-esque home computer - housed in a cabinet that was taller than I was, and a framed picture of a sculpture of a small, naked boy. This you had to climb up on the radiator register to see, leaning precariously over the living room floor, braced against the door jamb...but it was worth it.

Anyway, though my mother was the leader, my position in the troop was always somewhat borderline. I was never cool. I was always awkward. But, it was my house, my mom was the leader, and I was willing to stand look-out for girls who wanted to climb onto the radiator. I was keenly aware of the need to bolster my social standing in the group by adding to my collection of strange and unusual objects...honestly, how long could I expect the popular girls to be distracted by a phone, a computer, and a tiny penis? So, I made up a cat.

Our household was not short on cats...we had nine...but this was no ordinary cat. The cat I created was pure white, with blue eyes and long, silky fur. He was deaf. He had disappeared tragically and no one in my family, conveniently enough, was willing to talk about it because the sadness was so deep, the grief so overwhelming. He was exotic, mysterious, and perhaps still alive somewhere. I bravely held on to hope.

I would answer questions about the deaf cat sometimes when mom was out of the room, getting a snack or overseeing the girls being picked up by the pre-minivan collection of station wagons outside our house. "We could call him by tapping on the floor," I'd say in a hushed, stricken tone. "He had to stay inside because he couldn't hear the cars," I'd whisper...my voice trailing off as though I were unwilling to discuss the implication of our beloved pet's escape into the outside world. I got pretty good...

Then, our troop merged with the troop across town. More girls. A more complicated social labyrith to navigate...and meetings in the basement of a local church. No more phone. No more computer. No more standing on the radiators. My imaginary cat stayed out of the picture as well. No one asked about him. He had disappeared...for real, this time.

Years later, my friend's family opened the door to find a cat, apparantly lost, mewing pitifully on their front porch. Already home to quite a few cats, they took him in while they searched for his former owners. They never found any. They decided to keep him, and named him Jesse.

He was pure white, with blue eyes, and long, silky fur. He was deaf.