Love Saves the Day

4



Prudence





JOSH AND LAURA KEEP SAYING HOW UNUSUAL IT IS FOR THERE TO BE snow so late in April, but that’s just what happened this week. A giant snowstorm came in with such hard wind that it blew the snow sideways. Back in Lower East side, you would have been able to hear the wind howling through the cracks between the window frames and the wall. It was odd to see so much wind outside while inside, the apartment stayed silent.

Sarah used to laugh when I would press my nose against the windows during snowstorms, trying to catch some of it on my paw. Even knowing I couldn’t get to it through the glass—and even knowing how cold and nasty the snow would be if I could get to it—the urge to catch some as it fell was irresistible. Laura and Josh went to their offices anyway, even though it was snowing so hard. With nobody here to laugh as I batted at the windows, trying to catch snowflakes, suddenly didn’t seem like as much fun as it used to be.

The day it snowed, Josh came upstairs to my room with the Sarah-boxes to pull out his and Laura’s heavy winter coats from the back of my closet. He’d thought they’d put them away for the year and wasn’t expecting to have to wear them again so soon. He also wasn’t expecting to find so much of my fur clinging to the wool. He complained to Laura about it, which just seems unreasonable. After all, my fur is what keeps me warm, so having some of my fur on their coats could only keep Laura and Josh warmer, too. Really, Josh should be thanking me, if you think about it.

Not that most humans know how to show cats the gratitude we deserve.

Josh asked Laura if maybe they should start closing the closet door to keep me out, and the fur on my back twitched hard at the thought of losing my favorite dark, cozy sleeping place. But Laura laughed and said it would be easier to move the coats to another closet than to get a cat to change her habits.

Two weeks after Laura gave me Sarah’s dress to sleep with, things between us haven’t changed a lot. It’s true that I’m sleeping much better than I was, now that I have something that smells like Sarah and me together to curl up with. I also spend a lot more time downstairs, now that I’m more used to things. Laura’s eyes have a way of following me whenever she looks up from whatever work papers she has in front of her. Sometimes her fingers bend and straighten, and I can tell that she’s thinking about touching me. She hasn’t tried to pet me so far, though.

Nobody has petted me at all since Sarah went away, which seems like a long time ago now—five weeks. When I think about that, it doesn’t make me miss being touched by a human. It just makes me miss Sarah all the more.


Even though, with all the snow, it doesn’t feel like springtime, Josh and Laura are having his family over to the apartment tonight for a springtime holiday called Pass Over. Sarah and Anise used to talk sometimes about the casual “potluck” holidays Sarah would have in her Lower East Side apartment when Laura was young. Neighbors and friends and people who worked in Sarah’s store would come in and out all day whenever they felt like it, bringing food with them and eating foods the other humans had brought while Sarah played music on her DJ table. Christmas was one of only two days in the whole year when her store was closed. The other was Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving wasn’t so bad, Sarah said, but there would always be at least one person who would call her at home on Christmas Day, begging her to open the store just long enough to sell him one last black disk he needed to give some other human as a gift. When you’re raising a daughter alone, according to Sarah, you have to get your money when you can. So she would run over to her store long enough to sell that one black disk to that one human, and then it was good there were so many people in her apartment to keep an eye on Laura while Sarah was gone.

I don’t know how Upper West Side humans celebrate holidays, but it doesn’t seem like there’s anything “casual” about Josh’s family coming over. It’s Monday morning now, and Laura spent all Sunday attacking our apartment like she was mad at it. She’s always cleaning things whenever she has a few extra minutes, but yesterday she cleaned everything from the floors to the ceiling until every speck of dirt was gone and the apartment smelled unbearable from cleansers. She even cleaned under the bed in her and Josh’s room. Josh laughed when he saw her doing this and told her that his mother wasn’t going to inspect under their bed. But Laura said it was the first time his parents were coming over for dinner since they’d gotten married, and she wanted everything to be “immaculate.”

While Laura was busy cleaning, Josh went out to buy special foods to serve to his family. Everything went into the refrigerator when he got home, and now whenever Laura or Josh opens it, the smell of wonderful meats and other things I’ve never tasted before drifts all the way upstairs. I hope Laura remembers to be generous when she arranges my special Prudence-plate of food at dinnertime tonight.

I don’t know who exactly in Josh’s family is coming over, but the one person I know won’t be coming is the man who used to be married to Josh’s sister. That’s because yesterday I heard Josh say, “At least I don’t have to look at that Dead Beat at holiday dinners anymore.”

I’m not sure what a “Dead Beat” is. Anise used to say that Laura’s father was also a Dead Beat. But Sarah always used the word beat in a positive way when she was describing the music she loved. Anise also said that Laura’s father was a talentless good-for-nothing. He tried being in a band, and then he tried being an actor, and he was even a photographer for a little while, but he never stuck with anything long enough to become good at it, although he took that picture of Sarah that Josh brought to live with us here, and I see Laura looking at it sometimes when Josh isn’t in the room with her.

I know what dead means (it’s what happens to mice, for example, when cats catch them), but I also know how unusual it is for humans to say anything bad about dead people, because they can’t help being dead. So maybe being a Dead Beat means a human who makes really awful music and then forces everybody to listen to it until they wish they were dead. That doesn’t seem exactly right, though. I almost wish the Dead Beat was coming over tonight, so I could see what one looks like.

The thump of Josh’s feet coming into my room distracts me from my thoughts. He must be waiting for Laura, because he doesn’t do anything except stand there in the middle of the floor next to the Sarah-boxes. His eyes make a quick circle of the room without seeing me in the back of the closet, and they come to rest on the boxes of Sarah’s black disks. Crouching down, he starts to flip through them. My ears flatten against my head when he takes one out to look at the back of its cardboard cover. Those are Sarah’s black disks! It’s one thing if Laura wants to look at them (I guess), but for Josh to go through them by himself seems wrong.

Josh must be thinking the same thing, because he seems cautious at first, keeping one ear tilted toward the door, but it’s like he can’t help himself. And he’s forgotten all about his caution when Laura’s footsteps approach. “Look at this!” He turns his head up to her. “There’s a picture of your mother on the back of this Evil Sugar album! Right here.” He holds the black disk in its cardboard cover up to Laura, pointing to a spot I can’t see from where I am. “There she is with Anise Pierce in front of the Gem Spa awning.”

“She and Anise were roommates.” Laura’s voice sounds like she doesn’t really want to talk about this. “Before Evil Sugar moved out to LA.”

It’s funny to hear Josh call her “Anise Pierce,” because Sarah always calls her “Anise’s to Pieces.” Back before Anise was famous, crazy things always seemed to happen to her. Sarah teases Anise that she couldn’t even go out to buy a can of tuna for her cats without getting hit by a car or having her purse stolen or a tree branch fall right onto her head, or making some poor guy fall desperately in love with her at first sight—and usually all those things would happen in the same day.

“This was my favorite album in junior high,” Josh says. “I was obsessed with that whole generation of New York bands recording at Alphaville Studios.” He laughs. “I was devastated when Anise Pierce married Keith Amaker. That’s when I tried to convince my mother to buy me a drum set. I figured if drummers got girls like Anise Pierce, then I’d be a drummer, too.” Josh turns the cardboard cover over in his hands. “I never realized how tiny she was until I saw her standing next to your mother.” He looks up at Laura, his eyes shining with excitement but also looking confused. “How could you not tell me your mom knew her?”

“It never came up.” Laura shrugs. “Come on, let’s get these chairs down to the dining room before we’re late for work.”

Josh seems reluctant as he puts the black disk back into the box with the others, but he walks with Laura over to the black chairs that live in the corner without saying anything else. “There’ll be seven of us tonight, right?” Laura asks.

Josh puts one hand on her shoulder. “It’s not too late to call it off,” he says gently. “My parents would understand if you weren’t ready yet for a houseful of people.”

“Don’t be silly. We’ve been planning this forever.” Laura turns her head around so she can smile up at him, although her nostrils widen slightly the way humans’ do when they’re irritated. “And I keep telling you, I’m fine. Honestly.”

Laura carries one chair and Josh carries two as they pick their way around all the boxes on the floor. This is the only room Laura didn’t clean yesterday. She still doesn’t like coming in here, and I notice how her eyes don’t look into the Sarah-boxes on her way out, just around them to make sure she doesn’t bump into anything.

I think about that man Sarah talked about once—the one who lost his cat and all his reminders and didn’t want to be alive anymore after that. I wonder why Laura doesn’t want to look through these boxes and remember Sarah with me, so both of us can make sure she has a reason to come back.


The day seems to go by more slowly than usual while I wait for Laura and Josh to come back so tonight’s wonderful holiday dinner can get started. I try to pass the time by sleeping in the places I don’t get to sleep in when Josh is home, like the cat bed on the desk in Home Office and the spot on the couch where Josh likes to sit and watch TV sometimes while he waits for Laura to get home from work. I’ve learned, though, that if I roll onto my back and pretend to be deeply asleep, Josh isn’t as likely to make me move. “She looks so comfortable,” he says to Laura. “I feel guilty.” Whenever he says this it makes me feel sorry for humans, who are forever doing the wrong thing and then having to feel guilty about it.

I’m also drawn again and again into the kitchen, even though none of the holiday foods have started cooking yet. I should probably spend more time here, because kitchens are where some of the best things live. In Lower East Side, the kitchen was where I sometimes found things that are lots of fun to practice my mice-fighting with, like the twisty-ties that keep bread closed in its bag, or the plastic straws that Sarah sometimes uses to drink her sodas through. (I could never make Sarah understand what straws are really supposed to be used for, although I tried to show her many times. Finally I started hiding my straws under the refrigerator or the couch, so she wouldn’t try to take them back from me to use the wrong way.) And there are delicious things to eat and drink in the kitchen even when there isn’t a holiday dinner, like tuna fish from a can, or the thin pieces of turkey meat that live inside crinkly paper in the refrigerator. Sarah had to stop keeping things in the kitchen like cream for her coffee and cheese when the doctor said dairy products would be bad for her heart. Maybe if I come in here more often when Laura and Josh are here, I could get some of those little treats again.

The day may have felt long, but I can still tell that it’s much earlier than usual when I finally hear Laura’s key in the lock. It isn’t even dark outside yet. I knew Laura was anxious about tonight, but I didn’t realize she was so anxious that it was worth leaving work early for.

Laura and Josh did something this morning to the dining room table to make it long enough to fit seven chairs. Now Laura reaches up to the highest cabinet in the kitchen for cloth mats (which are much nicer than the rubber mat she put underneath my food and water bowls and don’t have insulting cartoons of smiling cats all over them). Then she goes to the front-hall closet and drags out two huge, heavy boxes. From these she starts taking out fancy plates and glasses that are nicer than the plates she and Josh usually eat off of. Laura’s hands move slowly, and she lingers to look at each plate as she sets it out. Once everything is on the table, she looks out the tall windows behind the table and watches the coffee-colored pigeons across the street. She stares at them so long that I turn to stare, too, but as usual the pigeons aren’t doing much of anything except flying in pointless circles.

It isn’t very long until Josh comes home. He comes up behind Laura to give her a big hug. “I can’t believe you got home so early!” he says happily.

“Pass Over is a time of miracles and wonders,” Laura tells him, using her “dry” voice.

Josh goes upstairs to wash his hands, and when he comes back he starts helping Laura, pulling platters down from the higher cabinets and taking bottles out of the refrigerator while Laura turns the oven on. “Do you think your mother will be offended we got all the food from Zabar’s instead of making it myself?”

Laura sounds worried, but Josh laughs. “She’ll respect you for it. Zelda hasn’t cooked voluntarily in years.”

The air in front of the oven isn’t even hot yet, which means it’s still going to be a while before the food is ready. I decide that napping in the closet upstairs is the best way to make the time shorter between now and when I can eat. As I’m leaving, I hear Josh tell Laura, “I’m going to vacuum in the spare bedroom. I was noticing this morning how dusty it is in there.”

“Sounds good,” Laura says, in a distracted-sounding voice. My Prudence-tags ring softly against my red collar as I climb the stairs, and I hear the dull thud of Josh’s footsteps following me.


I’ve just settled down comfortably in the back of the closet when Josh flicks on the light in the ceiling. There’s so much extra light all of a sudden that I can’t see much—just the blurry shape of Josh standing in the doorway, pushing what looks like a tall triangle with a handle at the top and a flat square thing on wheels at the bottom. It’s attached to a leash, which Josh plugs into a socket on the wall right next to the door.

My eyes adjust to all the new light, and now I see Josh leave this strange object so he can walk over to the Sarah-boxes. He starts moving them around and pushing them into arrangements different from the one they’re supposed to have—the arrangement I’ve spent days memorizing. I rush out from the closet to leap onto the boxes, thinking that maybe the extra weight of my body will make them too heavy for him to move. But I don’t slow him down at all. He just says, “Come on, Prudence, out of the way,” in what he probably thinks is a friendly voice, nudging me gently on my backside with his foot until I’m forced to jump out of one box after the other.

Once the boxes have been lined up in two rows on either side of the floor next to the rug, Josh goes back to the strange thing standing in the doorway. He kicks its base and a white light comes on. Then it begins to scream!

It screams and screams without stopping even to catch its breath. It doesn’t scream like something in pain, but like something that’s vicious and wants to hurt somebody. Maybe even a cat! It’s a monster—just like the monsters I’ve heard about in TV movies that everybody says aren’t real. Except this one is! It roars in anger because Josh holds tight to its neck and won’t let it get free, even though it gnashes and pushes itself back and forth trying to break away from him—glaring fiercely right at me from its one awful eye that lights up near its mouth. It gobbles up all the spilled litter from my litterbox and the little bits of my fur that have rubbed off over the last few weeks. It has to move over the litter a few times before it gets it all, but it sucks my fur right up. It’s trying to find me! It’s not satisfied with just the scraps of my fur—now it wants to eat a whole cat!

I knew Laura didn’t like having all the Sarah-boxes up here, but I never thought she’d send Josh to kill them—and me at the same time. I try bravely to defend at least one row of Sarah-boxes from this terrible monster. I puff up all my fur, to make myself look much bigger than I really am, and I hiss at it and rake its smooth head with my claws as a warning. Humans are usually intimidated by this, but The Monster is obviously much stronger than any human—except Josh. He just says, “Shoo!,” waving his hand in my direction as if I were a dog he was chasing away. That he can control this horrible beast with only one hand must mean he’s the strongest human in the entire world. Finally I give up and run to hide deep in the closet, my heart racing. I can hear The Monster roaring near the closet door, but it doesn’t come in after me. Probably it can’t see very well because it only has the one eye. Still, I don’t know how well it can hear, and my heart is beating so loud! I concentrate on trying to quiet my heartbeat, and soon I hear The Monster’s roar get fainter and fainter, until I know it’s gone to look for cats in another room.

I wait until I can’t hear it at all anymore before I dare to creep out of the closet again. None of the Sarah-boxes seems to be hurt, although everything’s in the wrong place.

I crouch in my upstairs room for a long time, so long that the sun is coming in low through the windows the way it does when it will be dark soon. The aroma of meat cooking in the oven is what finally draws me down the stairs again.

I walk cautiously through the living room and dining room. The meat-smell in the kitchen is so powerful that I hardly know what to do with myself.

I’m usually in perfect control of everything I do, but today the meat’s will is stronger than my own. It uses its scent to pull me to the spot right in front of the oven and hold me there, with so much power that I couldn’t resist it even if I wanted to.

So this is where I curl up and fall into only a half sleep. I want to stay at least a little alert, because as soon as that meat comes out of the oven, I’m going to demand that Laura or Josh feed some of it to me. Otherwise I won’t get any, just like with the eggs.


I had thought that I’d be able to circle around the food until it was ready, the way all my instincts are telling me to do. But it turns out that I won’t get to. That’s because the moment Josh’s family finally gets here, I’m forced—most rudely—out of the kitchen.

Josh’s family are his mother and father. They’re older than any humans I’ve seen in real life (other than on TV, I mean). They drove a car here from a place called New Jersey. Josh’s sister also comes and brings her litter with her, a small girl and an even smaller boy. They’re the youngest humans I’ve ever seen up close and not on TV. They took a train here from Washington Heights. I know this because when Josh opens the front door, everybody says how funny it is that they all got here at the same time, even though they came from different places.

“Chag Pesach,” Josh says as he kisses them all on their cheeks. Then he says to the little girl and boy, “That means Happy Pass Over in Hebrew.”

The little girl says, “I know,” in a voice of such offended dignity that, for a moment, I think I’m going to like her. “They taught us that in Hebrew school. Actually,” she adds, “you’re supposed to say, Chag Pesach sameach.”

“Duly noted.” Josh sounds amused. “I keep forgetting how smart ten-year-olds are these days.”

I decide the little girl is like me—somebody whose intelligence is underestimated by humans just because she’s small. But when she and the little boy walk past the kitchen and spot me guarding the food, they squeal, “Oooh, a kitteeeeee!” Then they both run at me with their hands outstretched, not even giving Josh a chance for an introduction. And when I turn and flee from this attack, the little wretches chase after me! I race for under-the-couch as fast as I can. The two of them kneel and plunge little hands that smell like fruit juice and snack chips after me, trying to grab at my tail and bits of my fur!

I’m in so much shock from this display of horrible manners (has nobody bothered to teach these littermates anything?) that I can think of no better way of handling the situation than to hiss and swipe at their hands with my claws. My breath becomes loud and rapid as my fur twitches, what Sarah called “chuffing.” I don’t like reacting this way, but the whole thing is simply more than dignity or patience can bear. Finally, Josh’s sister says, “Abbie! Robert! Leave the kitty alone. She’ll come out and play with you when she’s ready.”

Not likely, I think, twitching my tail back and forth as I try to calm down. “I’m sorry,” Laura tells Josh’s sister. “Prudence isn’t really a ‘people cat.’ ” Hearing Laura try to pass this story around again just makes me madder. If she was telling the truth, what she’d say is, Prudence will only play with humans who have good manners.

Josh’s parents come into the living room where Laura stands in front of the couch pouring wine into glasses. “There’s my gorgeous daughter-in-law!” Josh’s father says in a loud voice. They each hug her, and Josh’s mother murmurs, “We’re so sorry your mother couldn’t be here with us tonight.” Laura hugs them back a bit stiffly and says, “Thank you,” in a polite but brief way that means she doesn’t want to talk about Sarah right now. Then she and Josh’s sister kiss each other on the cheek.

The couch has a long side and a short side, and I’m crouched beneath the shorter part. The littermates come to sit right above me, kicking their legs and playing with a kind of small black plastic box that has buttons and moving pictures all over it. Sometimes they try to grab it away from each other, saying things like, You’re taking too long, or, It’s my turn now.

Josh and his father sit all the way on the other side of the couch, where I can just see their faces if I peek out far enough. Josh’s father wears shiny black shoes with laces on top and black socks that slide down his ankles when he crosses one leg over the other. Laura is sitting between Josh’s mother and Josh’s sister on the other side of the coffee table. Josh’s mother is sparkly all over with more jewelry than Sarah ever wears. The rings on her hand catch the light as she keeps grabbing Laura’s arm while she talks, which makes Laura look uncomfortable. Sarah once said that Laura and I were alike, because neither one of us could stand being petted unless it was our idea first.

I notice how carefully Laura is watching everybody. It’s like she wants to make sure nothing happens that she isn’t prepared for or doesn’t know how to react to. I realize that Laura grew up in Lower East Side with Sarah, where holidays were celebrated differently than they are in Upper West Side. Laura’s an immigrant, like I am. She must also be trying to understand the way things are done in this country.

Not that I feel any sympathy for her. She did, after all, send Josh upstairs with The Monster to try to destroy me and the Sarah-boxes.

I’ve never been in a room with so many humans at one time, and with everybody talking at once it’s hard to hear everything. I can’t tell what Josh’s mother is saying, but I do hear Josh and his father talking about Josh’s work. Josh’s father sighs and says he never understands what young people do anymore, so Josh explains (in a voice that sounds like he’s explained this to his father already) how he does something called “marketing and public relations,” which means he talks to reporters and writes sales presentations for humans called “advertisers” and helps create awareness so other humans know they should buy the magazines his company makes.

“Eh,” Josh’s father says. “That’s too complicated for me. I still don’t know what it is you do all day.”

Josh laughs a little and says, “You know, your job seemed pretty complicated to me when I was a kid.”

“What complicated?” Josh’s father answers. “I sold electrical supplies. I had the electrical supplies, I sold them, and then the other guy had supplies and I had money.” Josh’s father sighs again. “That was when you could describe a man’s job in one word. Salesman. Contractor. Accountant.” From underneath the couch, I can see the tips of his fingers as he gestures in Laura’s direction. “Now, a lawyer,” he says. “That’s a job I can understand.”

“Really, Dad?” Josh sounds amused, but also exasperated. “You know what lawyers do all day?”

“How should I know what a lawyer does all day?” Josh’s father replies. “If I knew that, I’d be a lawyer.”

If Sarah had ever talked to Laura like this, Laura’s face would have gotten tight, and she would have left Sarah’s apartment without saying another word. But Josh bursts out laughing and says, “One of us sounds crazy right now, and I’m honestly not sure which one it is.”

“It’s your mother,” Josh’s father says. “She always sounds crazy. I think we should rescue Laura.”

“What’s that?” Josh’s mother calls from the other side of the coffee table. Her voice is loud and what Sarah would call “raspy.” “Are you two talking about me?”

“We were just wondering what the ladies were talking about,” Josh’s father says.

“I was telling Laura and Erica about Esther Bookman. She’s getting married again, you know.”

“Ah, Esther Bookman!” Josh exclaims. “The sexual dynamo of Parsippany. What is this, husband number five?”

“Oh, stop,” his mother says. “You know perfectly well this is only her third marriage.” Turning to Laura, she adds, “Do you see how they make fun of me?”

“One time, when I was nine or ten, I had to call Mrs. Bookman’s son Matt about a school project,” Josh tells Laura. “Mrs. Bookman answered the phone and I asked to speak to Matt. After I hung up, my mother said, Did Mrs. Bookman answer the phone? I said yes, and then she said, Well, did you say hello, Mrs. Bookman, how are you? I said no, and she told me, You call her back right now and apologize for being so rude.” Josh laughs again. “I really didn’t want to. I begged and cried, but Zelda was relentless. Finally, after an hour of fighting, I called Mrs. Bookman and said”—Josh pretends to sound like he’s crying—“I’m s-sorry I d-didn’t say hello, how are you, Mrs. Bookman.”

Laura laughs, too. “At least I know why Josh is so polite,” she tells Josh’s mother.

Humans aren’t nearly as good at being polite as cats are. But even I have to admit that it was very smart of Josh’s mother to try to teach him the proper way to greet someone by her name. I wonder why he didn’t remember that the first time he met me.

“I have no idea what he’s talking about,” Josh’s mother says. “He’s making that up.”

Laura just smiles. “Would anybody like another glass of wine? More soda?”

“You don’t need another glass of wine, Abe,” Josh’s mother says, before his father can answer Laura.

“It’s a holiday,” Josh’s father says. “I can live a little, for God’s sake.”

“A seventy-five-year-old man shouldn’t drink so much,” she tells him.

“Mother loves reminding me how old I am.” I see his hand reach for the bottle on the coffee table. “As if she wasn’t only five years behind me.”

“Five years is five years,” she says. I wonder why some humans, like Josh’s mother, like to talk so much that they think they have to point out perfectly obvious things.

“How old are you, Mom?” It’s the little boy who asks this.

“I’m forty-two,” Erica answers.

“And how old is Uncle Josh?”

“Thirty-nine,” Erica says.

Now Abbie speaks up. “How old is Aunt Laura?”

“A lady never tells,” Josh’s mother says. But the corners of Laura’s mouth twitch into a smile, and she says, “That’s okay. I just turned thirty.”

With everybody talking about their ages (I had no idea they were all so old—I’m only three!), this seems like the perfect opportunity for me to creep out from under-the-couch and into the dining area without the littermates noticing me. The food smells unbearably delicious, and everybody else must be able to smell it, too. I even hear the sound of a human stomach growling. It can’t be too much longer before they eat.

Laura must be thinking the same thing, because she puts her glass of wine down and says, “Why don’t we head over to the table?”

“Hooray!” the littermates yell. They run over so fast that I have to crouch down into the shadow next to the couch to keep them from seeing me. Josh’s father and mother struggle a little when they stand up from the couches, but soon everyone is at the table. My mouth has so much water in it that I have to lick my whiskers a few times while I wait for the eating to begin.


I was sure that, once everybody was sitting in their places, the food would come out of the kitchen right away. Any smart cat knows you should eat the food you like as soon as it’s available, because who knows what might happen later to prevent you from eating?

But now I understand that a Seder, which is the meal we’re having tonight, is a very specific thing that’s different from other kinds of dinners. (I know because at one point Robert had to read something called the Four Questions, and the first question was, Why is this night different from all other nights?) A Seder takes a long time, and a lot of things have to happen in a very specific order before you’re allowed to eat. And even though I’m so hungry for that wonderful-smelling meat by now that I can hardly stand it, I understand how important it is to do things the exact right way, especially when it concerns food.

First they have to say something called “blessings” over the wine they’re drinking and a kind of flat cracker. Then everybody around the table takes turns reading from a book that tells the story of a group of people called the Hebrews, who were forced to be slaves in a place called Egypt. A man named Moses tried to convince another man called Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go live someplace else. Every time Pharaoh said no, a third fellow, called God, made bad things happen to Pharaoh and his humans. Each time a bad thing happened, Pharaoh decided to let the Hebrews leave. But then (and this is the part I really don’t understand), God would force Pharaoh to change his mind and make the Hebrews stay, just so Moses could go to all the trouble of asking him again to let the Hebrews go, and God could go to all the trouble of making one more bad thing happen to Pharaoh. They went through this back-and-forth ten whole times!

This just goes to show that humans aren’t nearly as smart or efficient about figuring things out as cats are. Anise liked to say that a cat might touch a burning stove once, but after that she’d never touch any stove ever again.

At long last, when all the cracker-eating and storytelling are finished, finally Laura and Josh start bringing out the food. There’s the delicious-smelling meat (called “brisket”) that I’ve been salivating for all day, and a soup made from chicken, and something called chopped liver that looks and smells so wonderful, I can’t believe Sarah never thought to have it in our old apartment. There are lots of other things, too. Everything looks beautiful and perfectly arranged, like on one of those TV shows that tell humans how to cook things.

Of course, as soon as the food is out I jump onto the table, ready for Laura or Josh to put together my little Prudence-plate of food. Sarah always sets aside some food for me when she eats at the kitchen table, so I can eat with her. I put one paw lightly on the brisket, which is the food I want to try first, so that Laura and Josh know that’s the first thing they should serve me.

Well! Never in your whole life have you heard such a commotion! Laura and Josh yell, “PRUDENCE, NO! Get down!” And Josh’s mother yells, “What is the cat doing on the table?” in the same kind of voice a human might use if they found a cockroach in their food. And the littermates shout, “It’s the kitteeeeee!” and lunge at me again with their sticky hands while Josh’s sister tries to hold them back.

There’s so much yelling and confusion that even all that good food-smell isn’t enough to keep me here. The only problem is that I can’t find a place to jump down from the table. Everywhere I look, there’s a human trying to touch me or grab me. I turn in fast circles, looking for an empty spot I can slip through and escape, and I hear a glass tumble over. “Mom, the kitty spilled on me!” Robert cries. I try backing away, but my left hind paw steps into something hot and liquid. It’s Josh’s father’s bowl of soup, and when he jumps up and says, “Hey!” I pull my paw back so fast that the entire bowl flips upside down. Now the table is slippery and wet. I’m skidding around, and the more I try to run the more things I knock into. My ears and whiskers flatten against my head and my fur puffs up, and when somebody stabs their finger right at me and yells, “Stop it! Bad cat!” I hiss and whap at it with my claws, because the rudest thing in the world is when somebody puts their finger in your face.

Finally Laura stands and says, “Everybody be quiet!” The whole table gets silent as they all turn to stare at her. Laura’s face is a bright, bright red. It’s as red as the little tomatoes that were on top of the salad bowl that got knocked over. Her hands are shaking a bit, but she nevertheless strokes the back of my neck calmly. Then she scoops one hand underneath me and lifts me up the way you’re supposed to pick up a cat when you absolutely have to, and she puts me on the floor, very gently. For a moment, I can’t move. I feel the shock of human hands touching me for the first time in so long. Hands that aren’t Sarah’s. Hands that are warm and not cold the way Sarah’s always were the last few months I lived with her. The table that was so beautiful with food only a little while ago now looks like a pack of dogs ran over it.

This time I don’t run to hide under the couch. This time I run as fast as I can upstairs and into the back of the closet in my room with the Sarah-boxes, burrowing deep beneath the dress with the Sarah-and-me-together smell. I twitch my back muscles so hard I almost give myself a cramp.

I don’t think anybody has ever been treated as cruelly as I’ve been treated tonight. Whenever Sarah used to be upset about something bad that happened to her, she would cheer herself up by saying, Worse things have happened to better people. But I don’t think anything worse than this has ever happened to anybody. Even that long story about what the Hebrews went through seems like nothing in comparison.

I hear Laura’s footsteps coming up the stairs, but they pause when Josh follows her. “I just want to check on Prudence and make sure she’s okay,” she tells him in a low voice.

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Josh says in an equally low voice. “She’s just a little rattled. Come back down and help me straighten out the table.”

“I will,” Laura tells him. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

Josh’s footsteps start to go back down the stairs when I hear Laura say, “Josh?” She’s silent for a moment. “I’m sorry about this. I really wanted everything to be perfect.”

“It is perfect. Well,” Josh adds, “maybe we got a bit of unexpected dinner theater.” He chuckles. “But everything can be salvaged. No harm done.”

“I know, but …” Laura falls silent again. “It’s the first time we’ve had your parents over for dinner,” she finally says. “I don’t want them to think that … I just don’t think Prudence knew any better. Letting her eat on the table is exactly the kind of thing my mother would’ve done.”

“Prudence is a cat, Laura.” Josh’s voice is gentle when he makes this (obvious) statement. “Of course she didn’t know any better. Nobody thinks it reflects on you or your mother.”

As if I were the one with bad manners!

“I’ll be down in a minute,” Laura says again. Her footsteps continue up the stairs and down the hall until she’s standing in the doorway of my room. “Prudence?” her voice whispers into the darkness. “Prudence, are you okay?”

I can tell she’s waiting for me to meow in response, but I have nothing to say to Laura right now. “Prudence?” she whispers again. I turn around three times in Sarah’s dress and wait for Laura to leave so the room will be silent and I can fall asleep—even though I never did get anything to eat for dinner except for the dried chicken soup I lick off my left hind paw.