Mother Cat did not come out. I could smell her when the man carried me away from the den, and imagined her still in the tight hiding place, cowering from the humans. I didn’t really understand this—what was there to be afraid of? I felt as if I had never seen anything as amazing as the man holding me, never experienced anything as wonderful as the feel of his hands on my fur.
When the people closed the door on their vehicle the sounds of my kitten brothers and sisters was abruptly cut off, and then the truck drove away, leaving only lingering traces of my feline family on the air. I wondered when I would see them again, but I did not have time to dwell on this odd separation, where my siblings went in one direction, our mother another, and me in a third. There were so many new sounds and sights, I was dizzy with it. When the man brought me into the place I would learn to call home, I smelled food and dust and chemicals and a woman. He set me down and the floor was luxuriously soft with carpet. I ran after him when he crossed the room and dove into his lap when he folded his legs and sat down to be with me.
I could sense the man’s anxiety rising, it was on his skin the way Mother Cat tensed when she knew humans were approaching the hole.
“Lucas?” A woman’s voice. I associated the voice with the scents of her layered on every object in the room.
“Hi, Mom.”
A woman walked into the room and stopped. I ran to meet her, wagging, wanting to lick her hands. “What?” Her mouth dropped open and her eyes widened.
“It’s a puppy.”
She knelt and held out her hands and I went for them, rolling on my back and chewing on her fingers. “Well, I can see it is a puppy, Lucas. What is it doing here?”
“It’s a she.”
“That is not an answer to my question.”
“The people came from the animal rescue to get the rest of the cats. Most of them, anyway. There was a litter of new kittens, and this little puppy was under the house with them,” he said.
“And you brought her home because…”
He came over and squatted next to the woman and now I had both people touching me!
“Because look at her. Someone abandoned her and she found her way to the crawl space and probably would have starved under there.”
“But you can’t have a dog, Lucas.”
The man’s fear was gone now, but I felt something else stirring in him, a different emotion. His body was stiffer, his face drawing tight. “I knew you would say that.”
“Of course I would say that. We’re barely hanging on, here, Lucas. You know how expensive a dog is? Vet bills and dog food, it adds up pretty quickly,” she said.
“I’ve got a second interview at the VA, and they said Dr. Gann is bound to approve me—I know everybody there, now. So I’ll have a job. I’ll have the money.”
His hands were stroking me, and I felt myself relaxing, getting sleepy.
“It’s not just the money. We talked about this. I really want you to focus on getting into med school.”
“I am focused!” His voice was sharp and I snapped out of my fatigue. “Do you have a problem with my grades? If that’s the issue, let’s talk about it.”
“Obviously not, Lucas. Grades, come on. That you can carry the load you’ve got and hold a four-point oh is amazing to me.”
“So is it that you don’t want me to have a dog, or that you don’t want me making such a big decision on my own?”
His tone made me anxious. I nosed him, hoping he would play with me and forget about what was making him upset.
There was a long silence. “Okay. You know what? I keep forgetting you’re nearly twenty-four years old. It’s just too easy to fall back into the mother-son dynamic we’ve always had.”
“Always had.” His voice was flat.
Another silence. “Yes, except for most of your childhood. You’re right,” she said sadly.
“I’m sorry. I don’t know why I brought that up. I didn’t mean anything.”
“No, no, you’re right. And we can talk about it as often as you need to, and I will always agree with you, because I have made so many, many bad decisions in my life, and so many of them concern leaving you. But I’m trying to make up for that now.”
“I know you are, Mom.”
“You’re right about the puppy. My reflex is to act as if you’re still a teenager and not my adult roommate. But let’s think about this, Lucas. Our lease doesn’t even allow pets in the building.”
“Who is going to know? Probably the only advantage of having what everyone thinks is the crummiest apartment in the complex is that the door opens onto the street instead of the courtyard. I’ll pick her up and walk outside and by the time I put her down no one from the building will even know where I came from. I’ll never let her out in the courtyard and I’ll keep her on a leash.” He flipped me over on my back and kissed my stomach.
“You’ve never had a dog. It’s a big responsibility.”
The man didn’t say anything, he just kept nuzzling me. The woman laughed then, a happy, light sound. “I guess if there’s anything I don’t need to lecture you about, it’s being responsible.”
*
Over the next several days, I adjusted to my new, wonderful life. The woman was named Mom, I learned, and the man was Lucas. “Want a treat, Bella? Treat?”
I gazed up at Lucas, feeling something was expected of me, but not comprehending any of it. Then he pulled his hand out of his pocket and gave me a small chunk of meat, unleashing a flood of delicious sensations on my tongue.
Treat! Soon it was my favorite word.
I slept with Lucas, cuddled right next to him in a soft pile of blankets that I shredded a little until I understood how unhappy this made him. Lying next to him was even more comforting than being pressed up against Mother Cat. Sometimes I gently took his fingers in my mouth while he dozed, not to bite, but just to apply the gentlest of nibbles, so full of love my jaw ached with it.
He called me Bella. Several times a day, Lucas would bring out the leash, which was what he called the thing that snapped to the “collar.” He would use the leash to drag me in the direction he wanted to go. At first I hated the thing, because it made no sense to me that I was pulled by the neck in one direction when I smelled wonderful things in another. But then I learned that when the leash was unhooked from its place by the door we would be going for a “walk,” and did I delight in doing that! I also loved when we came home and Mom would be there and I would run to her for hugs, and I loved when Lucas put food in my bowl or when he would sit so that I could play with his feet.
I loved wrestling with him and the way he would hold me in his lap. I loved him. My world had Lucas at its center and when my eyes were open or my nose was active I was seeking him. Every day brought new joys, new things to do with my Lucas, my person.
“Bella, you are the best little puppy in the world,” he told me often, kissing me.
My name was Bella. Soon that’s how I thought of myself: Bella.