This happened last night and this is what I wrote shortly after it happened. I’m probably going to do some “light editing” and make additions to the handwritten script but I will not stretch it as far as “based on a true story.” Here it is:
On the way to the spa this eve, a black cat chanced upon me as I casually strolled down the much too clean, grass lined sidewalks of the walled-in enclave zombie-fortress-compound of my apartment complex. A few cats seem to roam about the place, not an entirely uncommon event.
At first I was much too busy with the world inside my head, and ignored it as it brushed by me twice. Friendly enough I thought. Then it crossed my path - Shit - meowed a few times and did the headbutt body glide across your leg thing that cats do. I stopped, then tried to walk again. Same result. The cat proved determined to follow me toward the spa area. It then cut across my path a few times as if knowing the act irked at my immediate superstitions so that I finally leaned down to test the presumed friendliness. Okay, super-friendly cat with a collar and tag. Friendly and civilized. The tag had a couple phone numbers on one side and a name on the other: Leonard. What’s up Leonard? Why won’t you let me pass, bro?
Leonard was pretty pumped to get my attention and it was a little difficult to get the numbers off his tag and into my phone. I dialed the first number: straight to a message proclaiming in a robotic eve voice, “the mailbox of the number you are trying to reach is no longer in service.” What does that even mean?. Tried the second number: something about the phone not being in active mode at this time. How does one even do this to their phone? I am turning 30 soon, maybe I need an evening-time adult remedial course in the cellular telephone held at a community center with coffee, lemonade and cookies.
At this point I hear the smooth electric hum of the friendly neighborhood zombie-guard golf cart. The same dude I see ninety nine of hundred times I see the zombie-guard in their retirement community wheels patrolling the complex. I promptly wave him down. He sees the cat.
“You find a cat?” he asks as he pulls over the vehicle responsible for removing 89% of the exercise from the sport of golf.
He has a name, zombie-guard man.
“Yeah,” I say “he won’t leave me alone either. I've tried both phone numbers on the tag and no answer.”
“Where did it come from?”
I point towards the nearest ground floor patio wall.
“Ahh, I bet it’s this lady. She likes cats...”
Good to know.
“... and the patio door is open.”
My inner Red Foreman: “You dumbass.”
I think I muttered “ah, okay. Cool.” as Leonard suddenly decides he is tired of being confined by the (hu) man and shoots off with a gallant feline leap towards the aforementioned patio wall and zombie-guard man walks off towards the cat-lady premises. I looked around quick, Leonard seemed to have slipped into the foliage around the patio. I say “thanks, man” and the zombie-guard muttered something as I turned and walked to the outdoor/pool area next door where I sat in a giant bath, drinking bottled water in an attempt to cleanse myself of Super Bowl Sunday sin and writing this piece. I’m not 100% sure Leonard is back with his owners, more like 83%.
But what I’m thinking now is why did it take me so long to reach down to Leonard and make those calls. I was pretty preoccupied and didn't feel like dealing with some random cat who was laying-on some pretty hefty bad luck. If my dog was out there I would certainly want somebody else to do the same thing. Tater Tot would not have been so persistent. But she has other skills: a scared shitless, shaking puppy with a face that will tug at every heart string you have.
I did do it, eventually. It was right thing to do and Leonard made rather a point of it. But reflecting now and switching roles to that the pet-owner rather than the preoccupied spa-bum put things into the empathetic perspective. Empathy is not at surface, not always, and seems a bit lacking in the versions of modern culture I have experienced. It took a cat named Leonard to remind me of it.
Thank you, Leonard.
~
Denver, wtf?! Train wreck Super Bowl.
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