Reflections - Cat Lady 

Cat Lady

“You need to stop.” Fists on hips, Spence stood by the stove and scowled. “It’s not fair to the boy. He’ll get depressed losing constantly.”

Glancing down the empty hall where our grown-son Charlie had retreated moments earlier that cloudy January afternoon, I put a rubber band around the deck of Cat Lady cards. “You’ve got a point.” But I resisted taking advice from Spence, a notorious game hater. The Cat Lady game meant more to Charlie and me than a score.

For years, we’d bonded over games. Charlie had given me plenty—cribbage, Pandemic, Ticket to Ride, Flash Point, Agricola, Marrying Mr. Darcy, all their extensions, plus enough others to fill two bookcases in the loft. When he visited on vacations, I spent many an hour dithering over which one to play—until my birthday this past July.

That’s when Charlie gave me a pastel box with a picture of a cat, ball of yarn, and mouse. Inside were wooden cubes representing food, a gray cat row marker, and two decks of cards. That’s also about the time UPS transferred Charlie to Meadville and he moved into Wells Wood with us.

Because Charlie and I only had a few precious hours together on his workdays, Cat Lady fit our schedule. It didn’t take long to play.

Charlie works the morning shift at UPS. He wakes in the wee hours.

Occasionally, on groggy trips to the bathroom, I passed his door and spotted him. Wearing a hoodie and Bermuda shorts, he sat in lotus pose on a chair by his antique desk to smash video game monsters. Other times from my bed, I heard pots and pans clanging in the kitchen or gravel crunching under his tires in the driveway at 5:30. Mostly, I slept through his prework activities. I woke to find his empty bedroom and a poem, which he’d scribbled on a small whiteboard that morning, propped against the empty coffee pot.

Poems fresh as dewy roads

Lie stuck upon the lawn

Mired like a fog-horn toad

They’ll never see the dawn

On a typical day, he returned around 1:00 p.m. and we made our lunches—well, my lunch. With his schedule he didn't label meals as breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Heating Spence’s homemade chicken-barley soup in the microwave, I quizzed Charlie about his workday starting with the miniature dog that accompanies his owner picking up her business packages. “How was Divit?”

“Feisty.” Charlie chopped cheddar cheese. Whack, whack.

“Were the customers nice to you?”

He shrugged, added the cheese to celery, onions, and sausage heating in a skillet on the stove. Tired, at the end of his day, he didn’t offer many answers.

Just being together satisfied me.

After we ate, he washed his bowl. I cleared my dishes and asked, “Do you want to play Cat Lady?”

He pursed his lips, stood silently for two moments, then spit out, “Sure.”

I dealt a three-by-three array of cards. He dumped the bag of wooden cubes. We were ready to adopt cats and provide them with food, toys, catnip, and costumes. From the frowns on the costumed cat-card faces, the game cats enjoyed the costumes as much as our three tabbies would—if I could get them into any. 

 

But our tabbies did enjoy the Cat Lady game. Ande jumped onto the table, sat on the array, and batted food cubes off cat cards.

Inspecting my empty cards, I asked, “Did I feed Pablo Picatso or Jazz?”

“It doesn’t matter.” Charlie petted Ande and selected the row of cards not under his rump.

Waltzing across the table, Gilbert wagged his tail which swept cards, food cubes, and the gray cat row marker to the floor.

Charlie lifted Gilbert to my shoulder. “Sweater, Gilbert. Sweater!”

The cat kneaded my sweater while Charlie and I replaced game pieces in approximate order.

Only Rills stayed off the table during the games. His ears twitched, however, if either Charlie or I mentioned “chicken.”

A few days before my September operation, Charlie whisked an Amazon envelope from behind his back and handed it to me. “I got you this for Christmas.”

“I can wait.”

“No.” He shook his shaved head and grasped my hands to prevent me from giving the package back. “You need it now.”

Yielding, I opened the envelope and pulled out Cat Lady Box of Treats, an extension of the original game.

Passing the instruction book back and forth, we studied the new rules. I shuffled the slippery white-edged new cards—rip, whoosh, tap-tap—with the worn finger-stained brown edged old cards. Little Nicky joined Shadow and Chairman Meow on the array.

Charlie took a vacation the week following my surgery. Perched on two pillows, I played Cat Lady Box of Treats with him. Ande and Gilbert took turns pawing through the new treat pieces.

 

Ande Playing Cat Lady

Throughout the fall, when Charlie stuffed the food cubes into their plastic bag and I put a rubber band around the cards, Spence looked up from his computer to ask, “Who won?” Though an odd question for a man who disliked playing games, his face glowed under his beard if we’d split the games. “That’s great.”

Christmas came. Charlie, who must have a Santa gene in his DNA, showered me with Jane Austen gifts—not a single game. “You only play one. There’s no use buying you anything else.”

But Spence told me to stop playing Cat Lady.

Though I didn’t stop, I observed.

Did Charlie choose cards at random? During my first study, he chose the best row or column except to scarf up chicken cards because I’d muttered I needed more chicken to feed my hungry cats. He wasn’t sabotaging the games.

The next day a soft buzz distracted my debate over which cards left me with fewer unfed cats. I glanced at Charlie.

Elbow on the table, he leaned his head against his fist. A blue light blinked on the earbud tucked in his exposed ear. Perhaps he was concentrating on a European history podcast rather than the game. 

“Am I taking too long?”

“No. You’re fine.” He sat straighter in his chair. 

Another day, I caught his eyelids drooping and he rubbed his shoulders. He dragged down the hall and plopped onto his bed as soon as we finished. Whether tired, sore, or bored, he was playing at his proverbial midnight while I played at midday. I shuffled the deck—now all edged in brown finger-sweat—and decided I would suggest playing the card game Spence had given me for Christmas. 

The following day I asked, “How about playing Exploding Kittens?”

He jerked as if I’d jabbed him with the fire poker. “No!” His face registered shock and disbelief. Sitting, he opened the Cat Lady box and spilled the bag of food cubes.

Ande raced across the great room, leapt onto the table, and glanced from Charlie to me. Whatever tension the cat had sensed dissipated. He curled beside the cubes and accepted Charlie’s pets.

Charlie came within two points of winning the first game and tied the second. No blue light blinked on his earbud that afternoon.

We resumed our fall routine. Spence called from the sofa, “Who won?” I reported splits, ties, and game winners—until Charlie’s losing streak returned.

Once, while Charlie sorted his hand into piles of catnip, costumes, and toys, I mustered the courage to say, “We don’t have to keep score.”

He paused with a card mid-air between two piles and cast puzzled eyes on me. Without comment, he set the card on the toy pile.

Cowardly, I totaled the points.

A couple days later, I said, “We don’t have to tally the score. You probably won.”

He stared at me.

I added the points. He did win.

After winning the second game, I braved delivering the mom-speech that had fermented in my brain for days. “When your sister and I play Dutch Blitz, we don’t count points.”

 

Charlie scooped a handful of food cubes and dropped them in the plastic bag.

“Ellen suggested we stop scoring and just play for fun. You and I could try that with Cat Lady.”

Charlie’s face wore his little boy’s look of wait-for-Mom-to-finish-so-I-can-go.

I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t blather on.

Charlie dropped the cube bag. “It doesn’t matter to me.” He walked to his room. Box springs creaked.

The next day I stuffed the instruction booklet and recycled envelopes I used for scoring into the box—Charlie had said it didn’t matter—and closed the lid.

Charlie raised his eyebrows.

At the end of the game, we sorted cards, and I scanned both our hands. “Wow! You got lots of toys!”

The corners of his lips twitched.

“And we both had a cat that didn’t get fed.” I scooped up the cards and shuffled them for the second game.

We played and sorted again. This time I compared silently—content that we’d had our bonding time and no one lost.

Spence and I layered for a walk. Snowflakes meandered through the frosty air and road snow creaked under boots. “We didn’t keep score in Cat Lady today,” I said through my breath dampened ski mask.

“Oh?” Spence kicked a twig to the berm. “So, who won?”

Gritting my teeth, I raised both fists intending to shake them for emphasis while repeating in my teacher-voice that Charlie and I hadn’t kept score. I did neither because—

Spence grinned from one beanie covered ear to the other.

 

Snow Capped Seeds