The woman spent her late twenties and early thirties living with a string of boyfriends but since then it had just been her and Leroy, her wiry orange tabby, inside the little tan house with brown trim. It wasn’t that she could not find male companionship – she was, after all, a handsome enough woman with straw blonde hair and blue eyes, if a little chubby and an on-again, off-again chain smoker. At a certain point, she simply didn’t see the need for it. Leroy had indeed been the first male she could sleep with and put up with, and even though, she had never thought of herself as a “cat person,” she found it to be a pretty successful cohabitation. Leroy’s need for affection made her feel valued, and she happily provided him with a belly rub every few days. Over time, she even warmed to his habit of chasing after the loose strings on her clothes.
When Leroy died two weeks after his 14th birthday, the woman put a framed photo of her dead cat on the antique olive green table up against the wall in the hallway off the bedroom. She had not thought to keep photos of Leroy around when he was alive – but now that he was not there and would never be again, she felt like it was something that needed to be done.
She was not taking his absence particularly well, becoming distraught nearly every time she awoke in the night to find an empty space between her fleshy, pale legs -- a space she left open for her late cat out of habit.
She began reading material on the Internet for ways to cope with death, and eventually found an article entitled “How To Get Over A Pet’s Death In Five Steps.” The first few steps, she realized, she had unknowingly already taken. The fourth (“Tell your friends about how you feel”), she thought to be hogwash. But the fifth (“Think about getting a new pet”) had some merit, she concluded.
In fact, the more she thought about it, the more it seemed to her a good idea. And so, she began emailing people who were selling cats on Craigslist. She eventually set up an appointment with a man with thinning red hair who lived in a sea green house that was filled with tabbies and smelled like a giant litter box.
In the living room, she counted 12 tabbies of all shapes and sizes – fat, lean, muscular, bottom heavy, shorthaired, longhaired. In the end, she opted for a three-year-old cat that reminded her of her Leroy, albeit with a bit more of a paunch in the belly area. When she got him home, the lady decided to name him Leroy in honor of her first feline friend.
The two got on swimmingly. The second Leroy was a darling little thing – always following her around and possessing the most unsettling meow the lady had ever heard, one that never ceased to crack her up. After reading about how a pet and its owner often looked alike the more time they spent together, she started seeing a resemblance between herself and the second Leroy. Both had a small belly that they were not looking to get ride of anytime soon; both possessed raspy vocals that made people uncomfortable. When his fourth birthday came around, the woman bought him a mouse toy, and happily placed a framed photo of the new Leroy beside the one of the first Leroy on the olive green table in the hallway.
A few weeks later, the second Leroy became very sick after he ate a chocolate bar that the woman left on her dining table. He had seemed okay for a few days following the incident, but by the fourth day he began to vomit every half hour. Seeing him so ill made her ill, and she began vomiting as well. Later at the emergency care wing, the veterinarian had pronounced Leroy with life-threatening pancreatitis, and advised that he be put down. She waited by his side until the pentobarbital set in.
The lady took the second Leroy’s death even worse than she did the first. She found herself breaking down in public places – at the library, in the supermarket – and having to be consoled by perfect strangers. Remembering how replacing the first Leroy had helped her cope, she decided she would get another cat as soon as possible.
This time she knew exactly what she wanted. She scoured the Craigslist ads for tabby cats with paunch bellies -- but every time the woman went to look at one in person, something was off. The cat was too skinny, or too shy, or possessed a voice too much like honey.
After three weeks of searching, she finally found him at a shelter forty minutes from her house. A meow like a mechanical saw, an adorable little belly she could not wait to squeeze, and an absolute dear to everyone who picked him up. The cat had come with an especially odd name – Brazenheart – one she changed almost immediately.
Things went okay for a while – she secretly loved that whenever the UPS guy came to the door, the third Leroy’s meow would cause him to do an almost unseen little jump in place as he waited for a signature. Much like the second Leroy, the third Leroy had a knack for scaling tall structures, and she enjoyed that commonality as well.
The only issue was that that her new cat seemed to have a real attachment to his previous name. In fact, he never came when the woman called him.
She figured his behavior would pass, but five months went by and he remained firmly and irrevocably Brazenheart.
She knew it a trivial thing to stew over, but the woman soon found herself wincing whenever she had to utter the dreaded B word. The wince eventually became anger, and anger evolved after some time into hatred.
Preparing to retire to bed one night, the woman ordered Leroy to join her from some other part of the house. She still enjoyed having something warm and furry between her feet while drifting off to sleep.
"Leroy! Leroy! Come to bed. Now."
No response.
"Leroy!" she spoke again, this time louder, with more urgency.
Still nothing.
“Oh for goodness sake! Brazenheart!” she finally said.
Brazenheart sauntered into the room.
“You are a stubborn little shit, aren’t you?”
Later that night, while the woman slept, there was a sound.
Whack!
Then another.
Whack!
It sounded like the dull thud of metal colliding against wood.
The woman gathered up her ill-prepared body parts and crawled out of bed in order to investigate, turning on the lamp attached to the wall. Walking out into the hallway, she discovered two framed photos lying face down on the olive green wooden table. The first showed the original Leroy at around 10 years old lying supine on the porch, sunlight pouring onto him. The next was an image of the 2nd Leroy just having scaled the top of the refrigerator, his eyes nearly the size of plums.
The next day the woman drove Brazenheart back to the shelter where she had originally found him.
“I would like to return this cat,” she told the young man with the dreadlocks at the front desk.
“May I ask why?” asked the man politely.
“This cat will not respond to the name I have given him.”
The man shook his head while avoiding eye contact with the woman.
“We can’t take him back for that reason.”
"I'm not asking for my money back. I would just like to return this cat!"
"We cannot take an animal back for that reason," the man repeated, with a slight bit of edge in his voice now.
When she got home, the woman threw out all her cat food and put Brazenheart out on the front lawn of the house. Brazenheart sat very still in the spot where she left him for some time. Eventually he leapt up onto a brick wall that ran the length of the front of the house, one that at its highest point afforded him a pretty good view of the woman’s bedroom. The woman's tiny blue eyes observed him through an upturned slat of the dark gray window blinds until they did not.
Two years pass, and Brazenheart grows adept at fending for himself. He subsists off of the rabbits he discovers make their home in the thick vegetation beside the lady’s house. In winter, he takes shelter under the house. Every so often he climbs up to the top of the brick wall and stares into the bedroom.
One particularly drab February morning, Brazenheart is settled on his perch, when he notices a pair of eyes foreign to him peeking at him through a missing slat in the window blinds. They are brown and much bigger than the ones he's used to.
“Auntie! Auntie! There’s a cat outside your window!” shrieks a little girl’s voice.
With this, Brazenheart can hear slippered feet swishing their way across the hardwood of the bedroom floor in his direction.
And then suddenly the blinds fling up, and he finds himself face to face with his former owner.
“Hmm…it must be a neighborhood cat,” utters the woman, her voice resembling a creaky doorframe.
“The people in this neighborhood just let those wretched things have the run of the place.”
When Leroy died two weeks after his 14th birthday, the woman put a framed photo of her dead cat on the antique olive green table up against the wall in the hallway off the bedroom. She had not thought to keep photos of Leroy around when he was alive – but now that he was not there and would never be again, she felt like it was something that needed to be done.
She was not taking his absence particularly well, becoming distraught nearly every time she awoke in the night to find an empty space between her fleshy, pale legs -- a space she left open for her late cat out of habit.
She began reading material on the Internet for ways to cope with death, and eventually found an article entitled “How To Get Over A Pet’s Death In Five Steps.” The first few steps, she realized, she had unknowingly already taken. The fourth (“Tell your friends about how you feel”), she thought to be hogwash. But the fifth (“Think about getting a new pet”) had some merit, she concluded.
In fact, the more she thought about it, the more it seemed to her a good idea. And so, she began emailing people who were selling cats on Craigslist. She eventually set up an appointment with a man with thinning red hair who lived in a sea green house that was filled with tabbies and smelled like a giant litter box.
In the living room, she counted 12 tabbies of all shapes and sizes – fat, lean, muscular, bottom heavy, shorthaired, longhaired. In the end, she opted for a three-year-old cat that reminded her of her Leroy, albeit with a bit more of a paunch in the belly area. When she got him home, the lady decided to name him Leroy in honor of her first feline friend.
The two got on swimmingly. The second Leroy was a darling little thing – always following her around and possessing the most unsettling meow the lady had ever heard, one that never ceased to crack her up. After reading about how a pet and its owner often looked alike the more time they spent together, she started seeing a resemblance between herself and the second Leroy. Both had a small belly that they were not looking to get ride of anytime soon; both possessed raspy vocals that made people uncomfortable. When his fourth birthday came around, the woman bought him a mouse toy, and happily placed a framed photo of the new Leroy beside the one of the first Leroy on the olive green table in the hallway.
A few weeks later, the second Leroy became very sick after he ate a chocolate bar that the woman left on her dining table. He had seemed okay for a few days following the incident, but by the fourth day he began to vomit every half hour. Seeing him so ill made her ill, and she began vomiting as well. Later at the emergency care wing, the veterinarian had pronounced Leroy with life-threatening pancreatitis, and advised that he be put down. She waited by his side until the pentobarbital set in.
The lady took the second Leroy’s death even worse than she did the first. She found herself breaking down in public places – at the library, in the supermarket – and having to be consoled by perfect strangers. Remembering how replacing the first Leroy had helped her cope, she decided she would get another cat as soon as possible.
This time she knew exactly what she wanted. She scoured the Craigslist ads for tabby cats with paunch bellies -- but every time the woman went to look at one in person, something was off. The cat was too skinny, or too shy, or possessed a voice too much like honey.
After three weeks of searching, she finally found him at a shelter forty minutes from her house. A meow like a mechanical saw, an adorable little belly she could not wait to squeeze, and an absolute dear to everyone who picked him up. The cat had come with an especially odd name – Brazenheart – one she changed almost immediately.
Things went okay for a while – she secretly loved that whenever the UPS guy came to the door, the third Leroy’s meow would cause him to do an almost unseen little jump in place as he waited for a signature. Much like the second Leroy, the third Leroy had a knack for scaling tall structures, and she enjoyed that commonality as well.
The only issue was that that her new cat seemed to have a real attachment to his previous name. In fact, he never came when the woman called him.
She figured his behavior would pass, but five months went by and he remained firmly and irrevocably Brazenheart.
She knew it a trivial thing to stew over, but the woman soon found herself wincing whenever she had to utter the dreaded B word. The wince eventually became anger, and anger evolved after some time into hatred.
Preparing to retire to bed one night, the woman ordered Leroy to join her from some other part of the house. She still enjoyed having something warm and furry between her feet while drifting off to sleep.
"Leroy! Leroy! Come to bed. Now."
No response.
"Leroy!" she spoke again, this time louder, with more urgency.
Still nothing.
“Oh for goodness sake! Brazenheart!” she finally said.
Brazenheart sauntered into the room.
“You are a stubborn little shit, aren’t you?”
Later that night, while the woman slept, there was a sound.
Whack!
Then another.
Whack!
It sounded like the dull thud of metal colliding against wood.
The woman gathered up her ill-prepared body parts and crawled out of bed in order to investigate, turning on the lamp attached to the wall. Walking out into the hallway, she discovered two framed photos lying face down on the olive green wooden table. The first showed the original Leroy at around 10 years old lying supine on the porch, sunlight pouring onto him. The next was an image of the 2nd Leroy just having scaled the top of the refrigerator, his eyes nearly the size of plums.
The next day the woman drove Brazenheart back to the shelter where she had originally found him.
“I would like to return this cat,” she told the young man with the dreadlocks at the front desk.
“May I ask why?” asked the man politely.
“This cat will not respond to the name I have given him.”
The man shook his head while avoiding eye contact with the woman.
“We can’t take him back for that reason.”
"I'm not asking for my money back. I would just like to return this cat!"
"We cannot take an animal back for that reason," the man repeated, with a slight bit of edge in his voice now.
When she got home, the woman threw out all her cat food and put Brazenheart out on the front lawn of the house. Brazenheart sat very still in the spot where she left him for some time. Eventually he leapt up onto a brick wall that ran the length of the front of the house, one that at its highest point afforded him a pretty good view of the woman’s bedroom. The woman's tiny blue eyes observed him through an upturned slat of the dark gray window blinds until they did not.
Two years pass, and Brazenheart grows adept at fending for himself. He subsists off of the rabbits he discovers make their home in the thick vegetation beside the lady’s house. In winter, he takes shelter under the house. Every so often he climbs up to the top of the brick wall and stares into the bedroom.
One particularly drab February morning, Brazenheart is settled on his perch, when he notices a pair of eyes foreign to him peeking at him through a missing slat in the window blinds. They are brown and much bigger than the ones he's used to.
“Auntie! Auntie! There’s a cat outside your window!” shrieks a little girl’s voice.
With this, Brazenheart can hear slippered feet swishing their way across the hardwood of the bedroom floor in his direction.
And then suddenly the blinds fling up, and he finds himself face to face with his former owner.
“Hmm…it must be a neighborhood cat,” utters the woman, her voice resembling a creaky doorframe.
“The people in this neighborhood just let those wretched things have the run of the place.”
