Playing Fair and Being Kind

Timothy held the spoon out to the large feline sitting on the arm of his chair. The cat turned its head away but then, with an attitude of superiority, leaned ever so slightly toward the offering intending to take a tiny nibble. Timothy quickly pulled his hand back. The cat looked annoyed but only gave the slightest side-eye glance. The man took the spoon into his own mouth and in one exaggerated lick removed the remaining cat food. The cat feigned disinterest. Timothy wheezed a noise that passed for a laugh. He loaded the spoon up with more of the smelly contents from the tin he held in his lap. His other hand was resting on the cat’s lower spine above the tail. He was gently stroking and kneading the cat’s fur. The man repeated the gesture including the wheezy laugh at the end. The cat stayed seated on the arm of the chair, mostly for the soothing rub he was enjoying. As long as the hand was in motion the cat remained.

The cat was named for a road sign; “Detour”. Detour had been found while Timothy was wandering the woods on the island. He had been left behind by campers probably. No telling. The cat fit into life at the shack and all became good.

Detour came into Timothy’s life shortly before the lady of the house departed. She was the fifth wife of Timothy and by extension she was his fifth divorce. Timothy was as disappointed as anyone in this event. He wanted to have a partner and he wanted to love someone, to be married and devoted to their comfort and wellbeing. He suffered five failed marriages trying to be happy. After all these failed attempts Timothy was ready to conclude that he was emotionally incapable of being a husband. He admitted being unfit for marriage. He concluded that, of the two types of people, he was of the kind that preferred to work, live, play, and travel alone. He liked people but if given a choice he wanted to do things solo.

Timothy lived in a region where there were few mating opportunities. Some of the intervening variables that shaped the limited choices for Timothy were poverty, mill closings, short growing season, long winters, sparse population of women, even the price of beer and cigarettes, to be honest. Add to that the statistics of divorce, crime, and murder and you have an idea where Timothy stood on the altar of availability in the mating game. One statistic stood out; the number of marriages in which there were no instances of mental, emotional, or physical abuse. Zero. He knew of nobody in town who was married without at least two of those three handicaps. Timothy was not inclined to be abusive. He just wanted to live and let live. Long term companionship did not fit his life style.

Timothy’s most recent wife had left him while he was up at deer camp in November. She’d had enough of whatever it was that she’d had enough of. He didn’t know for sure. He just knew that she grew quiet about six months into their marriage. He asked her to go to couples counseling because he’d assumed that, after four other marriages, it was probably a very simple miscommunication that could be addressed in time. She told him she’d think about it. Timothy left for deer camp and when he returned in late November she had left. No word, no note, nothing to indicate when, where or why she’d gone. He called around to her friends but they were all conspicuously mum. They were secretive and polite for a while. Afterward they were cold, impolite, and borderline rude leaving Timothy with regrets, anger, and resentments to hold him on this plane. Not much, but it was all he had.

The only thing number five 5 left behind was his recliner, in which he was presently sitting with Detour, and the vacuum cleaner. The vacuum cleaner gave him a way to make light of the situation. He told his friends she left it behind because she didn’t know what it was. After the first dozen times that he’d told the story it grew stale and didn’t make him laugh anymore. He was sad but not angry. That is until he discovered that she had taken his box of service medals from his military days. Actually, the box held more than the medals. Also gone were the photographs of him and his Navy buddies, his only remaining contact with his younger days when he was happy.

After he returned to what is known in these parts as “The County” he worked for a while at the regional airport that used to be an Air Force Base. He took a low-level maintenance job until something at the mill opened. Nothing ever did. The mill closed like many others before and since. He took day jobs with other carpenters and a little plumbing when he was needed. He got by because he knew everyone and because he was a reliable guy. Timothy lived close to the bone. He went through four marriages in ten years. Two of his ex’s were working at a bar in Presque Isle that was euphemistically called a men’s club on specific nights of the week; Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, holidays or not. Timothy’s life passed before his eyes without him noticing. After ten years he figured that if he stayed here in The County, he’d end up rotting away alone, slowly growing more insane. He had cable and internet which saved him a lot of grief and loneliness. He had money for beer and cigarettes and potatoes were cheap enough. Deer meat was plentiful year ’round. He still had his 30-aught-six.

The fifth wife showed up out of the blue. How else? Timothy had taken Detour to the vet to make sure he was up to date on rabies shots. In the waiting room was a smallish woman, delivering her ancient peeka-poo to be euthanized. The poor thing was blind and deaf. The dog, that is. She had it on a leash and it was lying by her feet. Timothy sat three chairs away with the cat on his lap. Detour took up all of the space. He weighed twenty-five pounds and was as large as a small Labrador retriever. The woman sitting near him was small and trim and cute as a button and talking almost non-stop to the peeka-poo. Baby talk. That affected speech that made Timothy’s skin crawl. The little dog caught the scent of Detour and it stood up and walked right over toward Timothy’s chair. It had no idea what was coming. Nobody did. Detour saw the little dog approach and slowly shifted his weight off of his left elbow, the one closest to the dog. The dog sniffed the air and homed in on Detour’s perch up on Timothy’s lap. The peeka-poo feebly stood on its hind legs and pushed its nose up into where it thought Detour was. It guessed right. With a motion as quick as, well, a cat Detour swiped at the little dog’s face with his left. A fist full of nails raked the pup’s tiny button nose. It let out a scream. The baby talk ceased.

The woman came unglued. She’d had the dog for fifteen years. It was her life, to hear it from her. What was Timothy doing with a wild, possibly feral, cat outside of its cage where it could freely attack, maim, disfigure other people’s pets? He should be talked to by the police and have the cat taken away and put down. Timothy tried to tell her that it was her dog who’d made contact. She wouldn’t hear any of it.

To mitigate further violence, Timothy slowly, with great care and deliberation, got up and went into one of the empty examining rooms leaving her and her little dog howling in the waiting room. Detour was calm but alert. The encounter with the ancient peeka-poo had made his day and he was still in a mood to inflict damage. The veterinarian technician entered by another door. She was wearing jeans, Birkenstocks, her hair pulled back into a pony-tail, no makeup. Under her lab coat she wore a t-shirt with “Peace” printed in Arabic, Hebrew, and English top to bottom. Timothy recognized it. He had an identical shirt at home he’d gotten from a concert. He liked the veterinarian technician immediately. You can guess that this was wife number five. We know what happened there. After a brief period of courtship which included pool playing and dancing at the local sports bar which featured a trendy “Road Kill” menu, Timothy and Kitty tied the knot at the town hall. Both had been married multiple times and neither was interested in inviting a bunch of friends to witness the beginning of another episode of smiling through tears. So, it was when she was gone that Timothy resumed his life with the cat.

Detour was tired of Timothy’s game involving the spoon and cat food. He leaped from his lap to the floor and sat for a while washing his face. It took him a few minutes and then he stalked across the floor of the cabin to his box and took a noisy shit. He covered it in the manner of an excavator. Detour was the most ineffectual shit covering cat on the planet in Timothy’s estimation. For all the noise and racket and scratching and back-filling he made in his box the scat remained uncovered and mostly spread about. Timothy always took over and removed the mess before the house incorporated the smell. They made this into a routine. Detour would approach his box and Timothy would patiently wait until the chaos subsided before going for the plastic scoop. Timothy was grateful for the cat just the same. His cabin was rodent free.

The two were suited for each other in this respect. Neither could abandon their personal preferences for independence, nor could they relinquish any of their privacy needs. Detour would disappear for a few days and return satisfied with his experiences. Timothy could leave the cabin for a week at a time. As long as he left out food and water Detour never complained. The cat box would be a mess but so what? Small price to pay for the convenience of their habits. All was good and both creatures cohabited thus. Both were able to mindfully torment each other with their proclivities and that was good. Their world turned on a simple thread and left plenty of room for other gestures of love and good will.