This Month's Story

(Originally published in 2004)

“It looks a little small.”

It was small, an oval, about twenty inches long and about ten inches wide, made to look like sheepskin, but really made with some type of man-made fiber. At least, I thought, it would be washable.

“I have a fourteen pound cat that sleeps in one of these,” this from the Pet Smart sales person who had taken the cat bed from me and was looking at it critically. I felt that he and I were deep in some type of consultation, as if our decision would result in perhaps a critical surgery.

In a way it was critical. It was getting to be winter. We had a hard frost the other night and, although he is still staying outside at night, Holly has taken to lying in a corner by the fireplace through the late evening. Evidently it’s a warm spot and I liked him seeing him there. As it gets colder he will begin staying in more and more each night, and I wanted to get him something warm to lie on.

Stella was staying a few feet away, watching, staying close but yet apart from the discussion. The whole thing is an exercise in futility according to her. When Holly was small, we had bought him a bed. It was expensive and when I had returned it almost a year later, obviously unused, Wal Mart returned our money without question. The padded stool in the kitchen however, had had to be cleaned of cat fur fifty-two times in that one year.

Lately, when I go into the kitchen at night, I find that Holly has also adopted Jennie’s faux sheepskin bed under the kitchen table. This I knew would not do and something had to be done. Then I realized that Jennie’s bed came in different sizes and today we were at Pet Smart looking at its smaller clones.

“We have other sizes,” again from the helpful salesperson, who put the small cat bed down and picked up the next size.

There is a reason for all this. I love the picture of Holly presented as he lay in the niche by the fire. To me that was what cats were supposed to do. My fantasies were residues from old prints, from times when people sat warm in front of a blazing-fire-with-cat as a horse and sleigh went by the ideally frosted living room window. We didn’t have a horse and sleigh any nearer than five hundred miles and frosted windows are hard to come by in the south, especially with double paned glass. But, we do have a fireplace and we do have a cat.

However, it was obvious that the cat bed the sales person was showing me was be too large to fit in the niche by the fireplace. I picked the smaller bed back up. It would have to do.

“How would I get him to use this?”

“Well, my suggestion would be to put a little something on it.” With that, he turned and strode to another part of the large store. Stella and I followed, passing whistling, colorful birds and aquariums of equally colorful fish. We walked passed a room with large glass windows where Pet Smart people were shearing the fur of large and small dogs in artful patterns. There was a smell around everything reminiscent of sawdust.

“This should do,” he had reached a long rack and taken down a packet of small crushed herbs that in another venue would have been mistakenly thought to be a “nickel bag.” Checking the label, he handed it to me.

I looked at it. It said catnip.

“How do I use it?”

“Just sprinkle a pinch or two in the bed. Once he gets a smell he will be in it in no time. He’ll act a little spacey for a bit, but that will go away.”

That evening was cold enough for a fire and after getting one going, I carefully put the new bed with “just a pinch or two” of catnip on it in the niche beside the fire. Stella watched, she had given up her cynicism, she was as anxious to have a Currier and Ives fire scene as I was.

Holly, who was eating his meal up on a shelf above the living room wet bar (a place Jennie can’t reach). He was watching. He would eat a bit, stop, look around with a sort of wandering, disinterested look, then eat again. But, he was watching.

Stella and I finally left the fireplace and moved off toward the coach. We became busy, pretending to do other things. Timed passed, a moment, then two moments. Having stretched it out as long as he (or we) could stand it, Holly jumped down, walked over to the new bed, sniffed carefully, then sniffed again.

Satisfied, he turned and, walking a half dozen steps, leaped up on my recliner and went to sleep.