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Jeff's Life
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Jeff Stimpson, 39, has been a working journalist for 15 years. He lives in New York with his wife Jill and sons Alex, 3, and Edwin, four months. He maintains a site of essays, Jeff's Life, at:
JEFF'S LIFE
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Raising Toast
by
Jeff Stimpson
 It's almost two months now since Toast strolled through our front door one frigid holiday evening. We're teaching the boys to feed her. "Toast!" says Ned. "Eat your dinner!"
We named Toast after the dog in the movie Funny Bones. She is black and delicate, although getting rounder in the middle. She is Jill's second black cat. First was Mimi, a delightful and deeply missed boy. "I don't see Mimi when I look at her," Jill says. "At first I thought I would, but I don't."
She (Toast) eats peas and spaghetti, and claws into plastic bags of barley in the pantry. When you come out of the bathroom, she's always waiting by the door; she likes to watch the water twirl down the bowl, from which she then drinks. The other night she hopped into a bath with the boys, then leaped back out and stalked away, shaking her hind legs as if it had all been someone else's fault.
"She's kind of nutty," says Jill, who might be liking having another (nutty) woman around. "That damned cat was just on the table eating Ned's porridge. Eagerly licking it up, too. I mean there was a little butter in it, but it wasn't swirling in butter or cream. What kind of cat eats oatmeal?"
She (Toast) also squirms under the pantry, maybe to get away from Ned. Ned's too rough with her for me; he's either a boisterous 3-year-old or a psychotic, not that there's much difference. He holds her up by the front shoulders. He squeezes her until she meows. We've explained over and over and over that this is wrong, to which he hangs his head. We give Toast a treat after these episodes - though we're careful not to let Ned do it so he doesn't get the idea that he can make it up to her that easily. I've shown him how to cradle his arm underneath her hind legs and rest her front paws on his shoulder, though he's not big enough to do this yet. I was heartened when I showed him how to use the cat dancer toy, and Toast chased him around the house.
"The other day, Ned made me wave it for him to chase," Jill adds. Ned also crawls around on all fours and meows. Which is scary. Toast saw him doing this the other day, and swatted him.
One of her favorite toys is a ball of tinfoil, which rolls and ricochets better than a wad of paper. She also seems to love skidding into doors, bookcases, boxes, and other surfaces that seem to attract an out-of-control year-old cat. At bedtime (ours), she tracks me with her eyes, makes sudden soft noises, and bolts down the hall, then on top of our bed, then under the bed in a black slither.
"I see her out of the corner of my eye and I think I've seen a mouse," says Jill.
We're teaching her (Toast) to fetch cough drops. I toss one clattering down the hall of our bedroom. She bolts. Then a second later she's back, her pale green searchlights boring into me. "Did you bring it back?" Bore go the searchlights. Flick goes the head. "Did you bring it back? I can't throw it again unless you bring it back." Flick goes the head. Throw another! she silently demands.
Any mouse around here would swiftly feel the vibration of her teeth, just like my toes do through the comforter at bedtime. Her claws are lightning. She's a killer. "Kill-ah!' giggles Ned. Which is scary.
Wherever Toast came from, she's used to being around kids. She likes to sleep in the boys' room, especially with Alex, who used to tug her tail once in a while, but who now just pets her nicely and sometimes meows in her face. In play, she likes to crouch by my side of the bed, for instance, and pounce at my wiggling fingers. My fingers she swats at with full force. When Ned wiggled his fingers, however, she looked at me, looked at Ned, then swatted gently, with no claws.
Our first major foray into cat-ownership, not counting Tidy Cat Crystals and the scooping thereof, has been claw-trimming. "Oh, she's going to nice about it," says Jill, who has Toast in her arms. I'm behind them, and I see her (Jill's) grip suddenly tighten and her shoulders hunch. "Oh no, she's not going to be nice about this."
When she walked through the door, nobody said anything about "nice." Still, with each day and each pea, it's getting harder to remember that time before she walked through the door.
Copyright 2003 Jeff Stimpson, all rights reserved
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