with the bifid paws that resembled a splayed-out human hand—
“Ugh!” I blurted out, thinking of how the customers might react to seeing mutant kitties in the window, then Rik turned around, showing me the pair of kittens he’d zipped into his brown suede jacket.
The female was a tortie, long-haired, with a narrow face, while the male was a tuxedo with the characteristic stripe of white dividing the black patches over his eyes. He was long-haired, like his companion, but obviously bigger, so he probably wasn’t a sibling—
“You caught two of them? In one live-trap?” Years ago, when my husband was alive, we’d tried to catch some stray cats living under our porch before winter set in, and it was slow-going at best; if we caught one, it might be days before any of the others would venture into that noisy springing trap, even if we baited the rectangular cage with sardines. Ferals were as wary as they were smart.…
“Uh-huh,” Rik grunted, as he hurried over to the counter to deposit the kittens near the cash register. I started to wave him away, saying, “No, no…they might have fleas or who know what—” but he shook his head of bi-colored hair and assured me, “Oh no, I check them over…they’re clean. No ear mites, nothing. Believe me, they’ll be fine—”
Before I could continue my protests, he’d unzipped his jacket and spilled out the kittens on the counter next to the register. The female sat there in a bundle of brown ombré fur and too many toes, looking up at me with close-set greenish-yellow eyes, while the other one—also soft-furred, and remarkably clean-looking—darted off the counter, and ran between my booted feet (it had been a busy morning, so rushed I’d not had the time to take off my boots) toward the rear of the sore. He’d made a perfect four-point landing on his many-toed fuzzy paws, then scurried off in an undulating ripple of patchy black-white long fur-and-feet.
“What the—”
“Don’t worry about Scooter, he’s like that. Loves to run. He’s just getting the lay of the land—he’ll be back.”
“Not like The Terminator, I hope…don’t tell me he’s already litter-trained,” I added, as I wondered how Rik had managed to not only find me a male/female pair of kittens, but true literary oddities, genuine Hemingway kittens, all within the space of less than twenty-four hours of our conversation about possibly getting some new store-cats.
“Well…Jake and I left them in the bathroom with a litter-pan, and they’d used it come morning. Maybe they were dumped?”
Hoping that they’d used clay litter, and not shredded paper (I didn’t want them associating any kind of paper with going to the bathroom), I turned my attention to the female cowering on my counter. “So, what’s her name?”
Gently scooping her up in his many-ringed hands, Rik slid one of his fingers under her right paw, and showed off her hand-shaped toes, saying, “Mittens…I know it’s rather mundane, but I couldn’t think of anything else on short notice. Cute, isn’t she/”
Mittens avoided my stare, but she didn’t jerk away or grow when I patted her head. Certainly not feral.
“They couldn’t been dumped…I suppose some people don’t know what a Hemingway cat is. Yes, she’s cute,” I lied, giving her smallish head another pat, before I asked, “Don’t you think you’d better find Scooter? Before he finds those boxes of books I bought on Tuesday?”
“Scooter wouldn’t go in those…he’s too smart for that,” Rik said a little too confidently, as he shucked off his jacket and made for the back of the store, leaving me with the stoically silent Mittens.
When Rik was out of earshot, I leaned down and whispered to the kitten, “I just hope he didn’t pay too much for you two…you didn’t crawl into any life-trap, did you? I’ve seen ferals, and you two don’t fit the bill.” Mittens looked up at me as I spoke, then ducked her head off to one side as I finished, as if she couldn’t bear to look me in the eye. You know, don’t you? I thought, then dismissed it; the kitten was just shy. I’d spent too many years working in a shop whose living mascots were routinely anthropomorphized by my doting repeat customers, I decided; even if she had been purchased rather than live-trapped, there was no way she could understand what I’d just said. Not with that tiny little walnut-sized brains of hers—
“Why don’t you take a break, show the new arrivals around?” Rik was carrying Scooter in his left arm, cradling the kitten like a baby, so that all four of the animal’s over-sized paws were extended toward me. The pads were soft, shell-pink and that grayish oxblood color, and as I reached for the kitten, I realized that those paws hadn’t been in contact with asphalt, concrete or any other outside surface in all of Scooter’s life—which looked to be perhaps three or four months so far. And his fur was deliciously soft and smooth—he was definitely either a pet store or possibly a shelter kitten.
He’d been so active so far, squirming, scooting and wiggling around, that I hadn’t gotten a good look at his face—but when I finally held him in my arms, and looked into those clear leaf-green eyes, I was enchanted. While I thought that most cats were beautiful (save, perhaps, for those hairless Sphinx kittens, which had originally hailed from a Minnesota farm cat), Scooter was special—it wasn’t just the way his eyes shone, or that “smiling” expression of his, but he was simply unique, above and beyond his mitten-like paws, or, as I noticed when he nestled into my arms, his twisted, truncated stump of a tail. He just had…it, that spark of pure personality that leaps out through the eyes, and touches a person to the core. Like finding a genuine first edition in among a box of book-club reprints.
And, as if to prove to me just how special he was, he placed one of his wide paws on my arm, just above my watchband, and blinked up at me, giving me “kitty kisses” as one cat-breeding customer of mine called them.
“Here, take Mittens in the other arm—there—now you can show them the store,” Rik said, before sliding behind the counter in anticipation of the post-lunch crowds. What he was suggesting was rather silly, me, showing them the store, when all they really needed to know was where the food and water dishes, as well as the litter-pans, were located, but somehow, after the was Scooter had regally placed one paw on my arm like that, it didn’t seem all that ridiculous to show the kittens my store. It was going to be their home, after all—
“Ok, guys, here’s the bestsellers rack…a case of each title, stacked alphabetically. Positioned close to the cash register because I’m too cheap to buy one of those surveillance cameras, and bestsellers cost too much—am I doing ok, Rik?” Behind me, he laughed, “Ok—fine…they’re smart kitties, aren’t you guys? Just listen to the Boss-lady,” before turning his attention to the door as it jingled open with our next customer. Not wanting to show the kittens off too soon, I hurried down the aisle, toward the middle of the store, saying softly to the kittens, “And this is the place where bestsellers that aren’t end up…the remainder rack. Followed by the place I like best, the used books. You smell the other kitties on these, don’t you,” I found myself saying, as the two kittens leaned forward, their pointed faces seemingly scanning the hundreds of mixed paperbacks and hard-bounds, their moist pink noses working vigorously. I supposed that the smell was enticing to a cat; all those hand-oils rubbed on the worn, cracked spines, not to mention the hundreds of other things which had either rubbed onto the books, or had been spilled on them at one time or another…perhaps they’d even made contact with food. Plus the previous bookstore cats had undoubtedly rubbed against them, maybe even (even as I hoped they hadn’t!) sprayed them. The layers of scent here had to be akin to cat heaven for them.
But as they sniffled the rows of books as I walked slowly down the aisle, I found myself trying to look at the store through their eyes—I’d read up enough about cats to know that they probably did see all colors, albeit not as intensely as humans, so I wondered what they made of Rik’s color-coded filing system, that flowing sweep of blues into reds. Perhaps they noticed the unexpected highs and lows of paperbacks standing next to hard-covers and vice versa, the pleasant undulation of assorted books nestled close—but not so close that you’d have to pry the books off the shelf—for row upon row. Did they notice the abrupt gaps