The Cat That God Sent Read online

  Jake nodded, slowly translating Big Dave’s words in his head and trying not to think about how “purdy” the lady vet was. He gathered his purchases, and the cat stood up and followed him to the door.

  “I’ll see you Wednesday evening then, Dave?”

  “It’s Big Dave. And you betcha. Wouldn’t miss a potluck. Good luck with your cat. Seems to be a keeper, if you ask me. Hard to find a special cat. Ordinary ones are easy.”

  The town of Coudersport was not that big and Broad Street was not that hard to find. Jake drove slowly, looking on both sides of the street, looking for “Emma . . . something, Vet.”

  And he found her, or rather, her sign. It stood in front of a large, rambling, ornate, two-story Victorian house, with large front porches on both floors that wrapped halfway around the structure, and abundantly fussy filigree work. It looked freshly painted—whites, greens, darker greens, and ochre accents.

  Maybe it’s the weather up here. All the signs seem to be at either more or less than ninety degrees. Freeze and thaw, perhaps?

  EMMA GRAINGER, VET.

  That’s what the sign read—simple and declarative and tilted. There was a phone number at the bottom and nothing else. It did not indicate her political preference.

  Jake looked to the cat. “Do you think she’s open?”

  The cat appeared to look at the sign carefully, then meowed.

  “Okay. You want to walk in, or should I carry you?”

  The cat stiffened at the suggestion of being carried and carefully made his way out of the truck, now lifting his paw cautiously with nearly every step.

  Jake stepped up on the porch and tried the front door. The handle turned, the door opened, and a small bell sounded.

  “Hello?” Jake called out modestly loud.

  The cat followed him into a small reception area and stood next to Jake, holding his right paw up and close to his body.

  “Be there in a second,” came a voice from the back. Jake thought the voice sounded pretty.

  A woman emerged, wearing a doctor’s white coat. She was almost very tall, Jake thought, maybe an inch or two under six feet. Blonde hair, most likely natural, though Jake was far from expert in those matters, blue eyes, looking almost Nordic. Her hair was disheveled in a professional, careless way, with two pencils sticking out from above her left ear. She had penetrating blue eyes. Precise, sharp features—almost chiseled, yet attractive in their arrangement. Her nametag read: Emma V. Grainger, Vet.

  Jake tried to offer a welcome, safe smile but wasn’t sure he managed to pull it off.

  “Who’s sick?” Dr. Grainger asked, eyeing them both.

  Jake could not think of a witty reply, or any reply at all, and instead pointed to the cat who now sat calmly a few inches from his feet.

  “I think he might have something in his paw . . . or something.”

  Very clever.

  “Name?”

  “Uhh . . . Jake Wilkerson.”

  “Nice to meet you, Jake, but I meant the cat’s name.”

  Jake was seldom speechless, but was almost speechless now.

  “Ummm . . . I don’t . . . he just showed up this morning. He looked skinny, abandoned, and he’s limping, holding up his right paw.”

  The cat held up its right paw.

  “Well, he has to have a name for me to treat him,” the vet said with a medical firmness, crossing her arms and pursing her lips to one side, staring at Jake, almost testing him.

  “He doesn’t have a tag or a name,” Jake replied.

  Maybe she’s just being quirky.

  “I’m not good at names,” he continued. “What does he look like to you?”

  Emma the Vet came around the counter, a few steps closer, bent down, and stared hard at the cat. She rubbed her chin, as if this naming was a standard part of her normal examination. The cat stared back with interest.

  “I would say . . . that he looks like a Petey. Or P. D. . . . P period D period. Either of those would suit him fine.” She knelt down. “What do you think, big guy? P. D. or Petey?”

  The cat appeared to be mulling the choice over.

  “P. D.?”

  The cat stayed silent.

  “Petey? As in Petey, the normal name?”

  And with that, the cat meowed loudly and pushed his head into the vet’s knee.

  The vet picked him up carefully. “From now on, this noble feline will be known as Petey. Now, follow me,” she said with a doctor’s authority and led Jake to a very white, very clean, very well-lit room, with a long stainless steel table and a row of cabinets on one wall.

  The vet set the cat on the table, carefully, and ever so gently lifted his right paw, bent close to it, and stared for a long moment.

  “It’s a thorn in the pad. Imbedded pretty deep.”

  “Like Andromeda and the lion, right?” Jake volunteered. “You know, that old Roman fable.”

  The cat, now named Petey, turned to Jake and narrowed his eyes.

  It’s Androcles. And Aesop was Greek. I saw that on the television. It was a movie. I think. Did they make movies when Aesop was alive?

  Then the cat stared up at the doctor, his eyes wide and almost pleading.

  Emma the Vet kept on with her examination and simply said, “It’s Androcles.”

  Petey the cat began to purr in agreement.

  If Jake was embarrassed by his lack of knowledge, he did not show it.

  “Can you hold Petey?” Emma asked Jake. “I need to give him a shot to deaden the pain. I’ll need to cut the paw open, a little, to get the thorn out.”

  Jake held Petey while Emma administered the shot. The cat did not flinch.

  Jake thought he smelled lilacs as he and the doctor stood side by side, holding onto Petey.

  “Hold him like this,” she instructed, and Jake did as he was told. He saw the glint of a scalpel and turned away. Jake was most unfond of needles, knives, and other unpleasant medical devices. The vet hummed as she worked. Jake heard the metallic plunk of either a scalpel or forceps. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the sewing motion of stitches being added. Then he heard the cutting of the thread.

  “Stay there. He needs an antibiotic. I can administer that with a shot. Hard to give pills to a cat.”

  Jake did not watch that shot being given either and only turned back when he heard the hypodermic’s plastic clatter when Emma laid it on the counter.

  “Stay. I’ll be right back.”

  In a moment she returned with a small bootie-shaped bandage and a roll of medical adhesive tape. She slipped the bootie on the stitched paw, then proceeded to tape it securely to the foreleg.

  “You don’t shave the hair?” Jake asked.

  “No. Most animals hate that more than a shot. You just soak this tape in water for a while and most of it comes off easily. And a little bit of alcohol. Less trauma. And easier for me. And for Petey, too.”

  She stepped back to admire her handiwork.

  “Let me scan him for a computer chip,” she said, and waved a small wand, the size of a TV remote, around his neck and shoulders several times. “Nothing,” she said. “I didn’t expect it, either. Him being lost and all. Or abandoned, like you said.”

  She looked at the cat again. “He’s neutered, too.”

  “You can tell that?”

  Emma Grainger narrowed her eyes this time. And this time Jake did seem embarrassed, just a little.

  “Oh . . . yeah.”

  The vet reached into a cabinet and extracted a large white plastic cone.

  “I should put an Elizabethan collar on him so he won’t chew off the dressing.”

  The cat looked up, a frantic look in his eyes. He meowed loudly, nervously. And then again, even louder. She stared back, then softened.

  “But I don’t think that this one will chew at it. Will you, Petey?”

  Petey meowed, and anyone could tell he was in full agreement.

  “If he does chew on the dressing, bring him back right away. Okay?” Emma
the Vet said with a voice that made obedience all but imperative.

  Jake nodded.

  “I will. Promise.”

  Petey meowed, obviously agreeing to the terms of his care.

  “He’s a talker, this one.”

  “A talker?” Jake asked.

  “Some cats are quite verbal. They meow and chatter all the time. I think Petey will be that way. It’s almost as if they are actually trying to talk to you. If you listen closely, they’ll repeat certain sounds, almost like a chirp, that means ‘I want food,’ or ‘yes,’ or ‘I want out.’ They really are quite intelligent animals. But you have to pay attention to them.”

  “I guess I’ll be learning a new language then. Thanks for the heads-up.”

  Emma picked up Petey, placed him carefully on the floor, and led him and Jake back to the reception area. Petey chirped and churred as he followed her. She sat down at the computer behind the counter and began typing out the invoice.

  “You new in town?” she asked. “I don’t think I have ever met you, have I?”

  “I am new. I’m the new pastor at the church on Dry Run Road. The little white one.”

  “With the crooked steeple?”

  Jake leaned in. “I thought that was just me.”

  “Nope,” the doctor answered. “Drives me nuts every time I drive past. I want to climb up there and give it a shove—either upright or off.”

  Emma hit PRINT.

  “You don’t look like one of those,” she said, eyeing him carefully.

  “One of those whats?” Jake replied.

  “Those church people. Narrow-minded. Judgmental. Bad haircuts. Hypocritical. Wearing suits that don’t fit. Like most of the people in this town—churchgoers or not. It’s in the water, I think. And don’t say I’m being judgmental. I grew up here. I know these people. Just haven’t gotten up the gumption to leave.”

  Jake was almost used to getting odd, sometimes angry responses to his profession.

  “Maybe I’m not like all those people. Though I do admit I need a haircut.”

  Emma the Vet smiled, a wry smile, knowing, almost inviting.

  “We’ll see. And the only barber shop worth going to is Jeff’s—on Main Street. I have a cousin who goes there. And they don’t butcher him.”

  Emma pulled the invoice from the printer.

  “You married?”

  If Jake was surprised by the question, he didn’t show it. He was almost used to bold, intrusive questions from total strangers—or almost total strangers. “No.” He didn’t think the vet would be interested in how Barbara Ann Bentley broke his heart nine months ago.

  “That’s a surprise. I thought you church-pastor people had to be married—sort of like the reverse of Catholics.”

  Jake’s day began off-kilter and had stayed off-kilter.

  “Well, maybe in some churches. But I’m not married. The church didn’t make it a condition of hiring me. So I haven’t been frantically looking for a mail-order bride.”

  Emma folded the bill and handed it to him.

  “I gave you the clergy discount. It’s the same as the AARP discount. It was a slow day and you made it more interesting. Pay me when you can. My overhead is pretty low here seeing as how I live upstairs.”

  “Well, thanks so much. I do appreciate it. I bet Petey appreciates it, too, right, Petey?”

  The cat, content to wait by the door, meowed patiently.

  “Well, it’s not every day that I get to name a patient,” Emma said with a grin. “You knew I would have treated him without a name, right?”

  “I assumed as much. It was nice to meet you, Dr. Grainger. I hope to see you again.”

  “Hey. It’s a very small town. You will.”

  “Maybe at church?” Jake asked, already knowing the answer.

  Friendly. Outgoing. Starts now and starts with me, right?

  “Well, stranger things have happened, but I wouldn’t take a bet on that, Pastor Jake.”

  And as he reached for the door, the twinge in his shoulder went off like an alarm clock. As they walked to the truck, Jake thought that he should have asked her if she knew of a good chiropractor.

  Next time.

  And she was probably a Democrat.

  Jake pulled into the church lot. The cat stepped out of the open truck door cautiously, nursing his bandaged paw. Jake glanced to where the mouse had been. It was gone.

  That’s good. No disposal problems. Must be coyotes or foxes or possums around here that noticed the free meal. Or a crow. Or a hawk. Something.

  He grabbed a cardboard box marked DISHES from the truck, then shouldered the door open—he hadn’t bothered to lock it—and Petey followed him in. Jake had tossed his groceries from Big Dave’s in the kitchen before heading to the vet, making sure the pizza was in the freezer and the milk and half-and-half were refrigerated.

  He found a saucer in the box and a cereal bowl that Jake knew didn’t match any of his other cereal bowls. He filled the bowl with cold water and emptied an entire tin of beef ’n’ liver onto the saucer and placed them both at the far end of the cabinets, in a little alcove. The cat watched him as he prepared his meal and slowly made his way to the food. To Jake, it was obvious that the cat was famished, but it was also obvious that this cat had a special sense of dignity and decorum about mealtimes. No mad rush to the food, no caterwauling at the sound of the tin opening.

  Petey walked, with deliberate steps, to the food, limping, holding his bandaged paw aloft. He sat and sniffed at the dishes for a long moment. First, he took a long drink of water, tiny little lap-lap-lap swallows. Then he set into the food, eating slowly, chewing thoroughly, taking time between bites to look around, often looking back at Jake, who was watching him eat.

  “For someone who looks malnourished, you certainly have good table manners. Or floor manners, I guess.”

  Petey pivoted his head to face Jake and meowed in explanation, as if to say that hunger does not, or should not, supplant proper manners, or feline civility. Then he meowed again, as if to reinforce what he had just said.

  Jake had first planned on baking the pizza, but that would take fifteen minutes, plus waiting for the oven to preheat, and even he couldn’t eat a microwaved pizza. And he was hungry now, so he made a large cup of instant coffee and unwrapped the donuts.

  Not the healthiest of lunches . . . but it will do. Just for today.

  It took Jake two and a half donuts for Petey to finish his one full can of beef ’n’ liver. Jake figured Petey would eat more if he put it out, but that might make him sick. A can was more than enough. No need to try and fatten him up all in one day.

  Petey stepped back, sat down, and used his good paw to clean his face—but only for a few minutes. Then he rose, walked to the living room, and looked around. One large chair stood in a corner, lit by a bright shaft of afternoon sun. That was the one he chose to jump up on. He circled a few times, then coiled himself into a ring, laid his head on his good paw, and watched Jake walk about the room.

  I should unpack now. It won’t take long.

  Instead, he sat on the couch, nursing the last of his second cup of coffee. He leaned back, trying not to wonder if the decision to move to Coudersport and assume the pastorate of this church would prove to be rash or misguided or monumentally shortsighted. He tried to put all those thoughts out of his head.

  History does not have to repeat itself. It doesn’t. I can do this. I can. Faith will follow works. I think somebody famous said that. And if they didn’t, they should have. Sometimes just doing good things brings about a heart change.

  And that’s when his shoulder did not twinge but wrenched with an intensity he had not yet encountered. Not painful, exactly, but just prominent, pronounced, and impossible to overlook—like a sore thigh muscle after a marathon.

  No more shoulder omens, please. No more pain alerts, okay? Just a burning bush. Something that is easier to interpret. Maybe a letter in the mail. That would work.

  Petey looked up, his he
ad up, his ears pitched forward, as if he had heard some rustle in the distance, a prewarning.

  “No. Not you, too,” Jake said. “Please. No seeing things that aren’t there. Okay?”

  “So, Winston,” Emma Grainger asked, “What did you think of Pastor Jake and his cat?”

  Winston was Emma’s bulldog, now eleven years old, semi-arthritic, with more than a slight weight condition, and a wicked snore that would put a chainsaw to shame. Winston must have hoped Emma was talking about food, because he began shifting his weight from side to side, anxiously anticipating some manner of sustenance that would be forthcoming. He was most fond of his cheese crunchies.

  Emma, of course, who was on to his anticipatory behaviors, shook her head, “No, Winston. No food. No crunchies.”

  Winston appeared crestfallen and sat back, heavily, on his haunches, and snorfed his disappointment.

  “Winston, I have to tell you that he was the first single man I’ve met—in years—who wasn’t wearing camouflage clothing or a stained baseball hat or chewing on a wad of tobacco. Good teeth, too. All of them right there in his mouth. That in and of itself is reason enough to swoon. And he even realized he needed a haircut. Amazing self-awareness, right, Winston?”

  Winston let his tongue loll out of his mouth. Bulldogs, not the best designed dog in the canine kingdom, were chock-a-block full of idiosyncrasies that only the most tolerant owner would put up with, let alone find endearing. Emma, a lover of all things four-legged, was that sort of person. She would readily admit to being more taken with four legs than with two.

  “A prime catch—that’s what my mother would call him. Right, Winston?”

  Emma asked Winston to agree to a lot, and Winston would do so, as long as there was a treat somewhere near the end of her questions.

  Winston snorted and seemed to try to smile, which was a cross between a snarl and a grimace in a bulldog. Emma knew the dog had almost given up hope of a treat now. The longer she talked, she knew, the less likely she was to remember that he was near starvation most of the time.

  “Of course, there are at least a dozen mothers of Coudersport’s most eligible spinsters who will be doing the same thing, right, Winston? A man who probably doesn’t have a record for petty crimes and misdemeanors. A man whose truck actually includes a functioning muffler system. And he was wearing an honest-to-goodness, real belt—not suspenders or a tool belt.”