Part Two – TESS: THE TRUE ADVENTURES OF AN EXTRAORDINARY CAT BEFORE SHE WAS REVEALED AS A SOCIOPATH.

It’s not like we hadn’t had cats before. We had – Pearl and Buddy. We should have called them Willie and Nelson because they both spent all of their time and energy trying to get out of the house and back on the road again. Both eventually succeeded and we never found them. There just comes a time when the cat runs under your legs and out the open door and you don‘t chase it. I can still remember watching Buddy look back at me in my tshirt and underwear and then jump out an open first floor window, confident of a decent head start.

Then there was Peanut, who we rescued from a feral mother living under FitzGerald’s, who died just a few days after coming home and will never leave the back yard again because she’s buried in it.

With that history, when Tess arrived we were much more laissez-faire about the whole thing. As a kitten, she was too busy getting to know the house and the kids to be too interested in going outside, but after the initial thrill wore off and they left her alone, she saw the bright lights of the city, in her case birds and squirrels, outside the window.

At first, she would go out a bedroom window onto the back roof and just sit there watching. We thought this was great – out in the nice fresh air but still contained. Then, one day, for some reason, she simply jumped, and was found three-legging it up to the front porch. All the neighborhood kids signed the cast, and after it came off she used the doors like everyone else.

She didn’t go far, though. At first, we’d get a call from neighbors who read the tags. “Your cat is in my yard.” One of the kids would be dispatched to get her and take the heat from the occasional neighbor who was actually frightened/angry that a cat was in their yard. Some of these folks were not allergic to cats, running an aviary, or calling because they thought we were worried — they just wanted to know where the cat got off strolling around their property. I always thought that was odd.

But when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro — after awhile Tess would get out of our house but then go INTO other people’s. If she couldn’t get in, she’d hang around on the porch. The phrase “like she owns the place” was used more than once. We tried locking her in the basement during the day, but there was always someone looking for socks or a tool or just feeling sorry for her, and the minute she was up she was headed for home – other people’s.

Our kids were still crazy about her and gave her tons of attention, so we couldn’t figure out the attraction. Serious boundary issues. She was like that kid every block has who’s always looking in your refrigerator when you walk into the kitchen. We even got a knock on the door from the mailman – “Um, your cat won’t get out of my truck.” We took a lot of ribbing at the block party, offering only a weak smile and a pan of potato salad in reponse. I mean, what could we say?

We live on a great block so eventually she found her haunts or was simply tolerated, like the oddball relative in a southern novel. We thought Tess was strange but still within normal cat limits, until we heard about the passing of our elderly neighbor Heinz Kuehn, who lived at the other end of the block.

Heinz had been bedridden for a quite a while before his passing, and after his death we were told that for weeks Tess would make almost daily visits, showing up at about the same time and curling up at the foot of his bed. Very unusual, but essentially just another soft quilt and warm welcome, you’re thinking? So did we, until the next story came.

On the day of his funeral, held at Ascension church just a block away, the doors were propped open due to the heat, and church members reported that during the mass Tess walked directly up the center aisle and onto the altar, laid down for a while, and then got up and walked out. Or was kicked out; accounts vary.

Of course after this there was much talk of reincarnation, channeling, guardian angels and the like, and Tess had her 15 minutes – I think there might even have been something in the paper. It all calmed down, she went her way, and as the weeks passed she grew heavier and rolled around a lot, and someone finally pointed out that Tess was pregnant. She became a mother one weekend when we were, oddly enough, up on the river, and that’s when whatever had been lurking beneath the surface came into full bloom.

NEXT : The Gripping Conclusion — In Which Tess goes all Joan Crawford and Moe does not come out of it an Olympic hero or celebrated memoirist.

You’ll Be Blogging In Minutes!

I made a promise to myself that I would start a blog and write something every day from now until Christmas.   I don’t know, you get older and you start having these just-do-it impulses, and this seemed easier than yoga.

The most labor-intensive thing about starting this was coming up with a “User Name.”  I started out with some admittedly fairly conventional offerings, and they quickly came back “This name is already being used!”  So I started getting weirder:  “Unused Portion” – taken;  “Up With People” – Taken; “Down With People” – taken; “Tar Baby” – taken; “Paint The Pig”-taken; “DahmerMom” – taken.  I became convinced that I was being played–I mean, who else would want “BoobyBobBooty”?   I finally struck gold with “Re-Elect Hitler” but decided that I couldn’t, mostly because of the people who might follow it.  All in all, it took me about half an hour to find something not taken, and I actually stole “Married Alive” from my brother Paul; it’s one of his unproduced screenplays (another is titled Meat Cleaver Fever).  I’ve been married for 20+, so it’s not untrue.   But enough for now.  I’ve got to start following “I Eat Dirt” and “Satans IPod.”