Four Paws and a Funeral

I asked my dad if I could write a blog post about him and his recently acquired cat. “Sure,” he said resignedly. “Go ahead and make fun of me.”

That was all the permission I needed. “Thanks, Dad!”

At the beginning of this year, my mom and dad got a cat. That might not seem like a big deal, but after years of listening to my dad talk about wanting a cat and listening to my mom say they were never getting a cat, it became a big deal when she relented and said he could get a cat. She actually encouraged him to get two cats. 2020 had obviously affected her in unexpected ways.

So yay! Dad can get some kittens. All is well. Right?

Sort of. My dad first had to spend countless nights tossing and turning, second-guessing whether they should get two kittens, would they know what to do with two kittens, how does one go about getting two kittens, and what to name the two kittens. 

“Fran and Fred? Does that sound like good names for two kittens? What about George and Martha? Or maybe Alex and Lizzy?”

My dad may very well have spent the rest of his life thinking about cats and never owning cats had my brother not been in town for the holidays. “I’m here to make things happen,” my brother declared. And he did. The day before he left town, he ensured that my parents had litter boxes, cat food, toys, and an appointment with the Animal Protective League. 

On Sunday, January 3rd, with everything in place, my parents drove to the APL intending to bring home two playful striped kittens they’d name Alex and Lizzy. What they brought home was one shy gray kitten named Serri.

“Are you going to change her name,” I asked. “It sounds a lot like Siri. Your phone might respond every time you call the cat’s name.”

“We actually kind of like it,” my dad said—before spending the rest of the day butchering the name and repeatedly asking us how to say his name again. 

To which we’d remind him the cat was a her and you pronounce her name like Merry. Except it’s Serri. “Are you sure you don’t want to change the name?”

“No, I really like that name. I think we’ll definitely keep it. Now how do you say it again?”

Whether my dad could pronounce the cat’s name or not didn’t matter. He was smitten. That first evening when Serri sat in his lap, my dad looked as proud as he had holding his first grandchild. So it really came as no surprise to anyone when a few days later he told us about the customized t-shirt he ordered that contained a drawing of an old man and a cat, and included both his and Serri’s names beneath it. 

My dad loved his cat. And she couldn’t have arrived at a better time. On the day my parents brought Serri home, we received the news one of my aunts had gone into the hospital. The next day we received the news she had passed away. 

This was obviously not how any of us had expected to start off the new year. That timid little four-month-old kitten suddenly became a much needed bright spot, even if she did spend most of her days hiding beneath one of the beds and her nights ripping holes in the shower curtain.  

With the shadow of my aunt’s death lingering over all of us, and the weight of her funeral approaching, I was glad my parents had found something to lift their spirits. “I just think the world of that cat,” my dad kept saying. “I’m so glad we got Sir—Sar—Ser—oh, whatever her name is.”

And though my mom may not have taken to serenading the cat with a Bobby Sherman song called “Julie, Do Ya Love Me” the way my dad had, exchanging Julie’s name for Serri, she had clearly grown fond of the cat as well. 

Which is why, the day before my aunt’s funeral, I figured they were overreacting.

“We can’t find Serri.”  

Earlier in the day, she had disappeared. This wasn’t unusual for her, so I wasn’t concerned. She’d come out eventually. But hours later, she still hadn’t come out. My parents were getting worried, and as more time passed, I started to worry too.

In the one week they’d had her, she’d never stayed hidden for this long. They’d always been able to find her. Where could she be? She had to be in their house somewhere, right? There’s no way she could have gotten out. Right? Right?

All day I kept waiting for a text to say that they’d found her. The little stinker was clinging to the top of the shower curtain. Something like that.

But a text message never came through.

Later that evening my oldest brother, who had flown in for the funeral and was staying at my parents’ house, came over to hang out with the kids and me. “Well?” I asked him as soon as he stepped through the front door. “Have they found her?”

He sighed and shook his head sadly. “We think she may be loose in the neighborhood.”

“What? No. How? That doesn’t make sense.”

My brother shrugged, explaining how they’d searched everywhere inside the house. Everywhere. She hadn’t touched her food. She hadn’t used the litter box. And when he walked the perimeter of the house, shaking a treat bag, he thought he heard a meow and caught sight of a cat dashing into the neighbor’s backyard.

“A gray cat?”

“I’m not sure. It was hard to tell. I didn’t see it again.”

But this terrible feeling in my gut told me it was her. The new love of my parents’ life. And I wanted to weep. 

When my husband got home from playing platform tennis, we told him the bad news. In his typical fashion, he told us we were worrying over nothing. “Remember, she’s a tiny cat. She probably just found a hole in the couch and has been tucked up inside it all day. How would she have gotten outside? That doesn’t make sense. Your parents don’t have holes in their walls.”

I knew it didn’t make sense. But lately, what did? Maybe she’d chiseled her way through one of the walls Shawshank Redemption style. I couldn’t explain how it had happened, I only knew that she was gone. “A cat owner knows when their cat isn’t around,” I told my husband. “My parents would know if she was there. They’d be able to sense her presence. She’s not there.”

My husband looked at me like I was delusional. But at least I wasn’t in denial. “She’s lost and tomorrow is going to be awful.” 

“She’s hiding in the couch and everything’s going to be fine,” he insisted. “That’s what I’m going to believe.”

Well, I didn’t share my husband’s confidence. And the thought of driving up to my aunt’s funeral the next day, not knowing what had happened to the cat, how she had gotten out, if she’d ever be found—all while knowing my dad would never allow himself to get another cat again because of this ordeal—made me depressed. Especially because this aunt held a particular distaste for cats. It almost felt sacrilegious to be worrying about a cat at all when we were in the midst of grieving for a woman who had meant so much to our family. 

Bottom line, we needed to find this cat. 

And the only way I knew how to find this cat was to hit my knees in prayer and beg God to please please bring this cat back from wherever she’d gone. “You know my parents, God. You love my parents. I mean, come on, this is Greg and Ann we’re talking about here. They literally just spent all evening at a Bible study. If anybody deserves to find their cat, it’s them. Plus, my dad bought that shirt. What’s he going to do when that shirt arrives in the mail and he has no cat to wear it for?”   

I finished my prayer and prepared to go to bed when I noticed a text message on my phone. It was from my brother. “The cat is found!”

That had to have been the quickest answer to prayer I’ve ever received. And I’m pretty sure it was because God had already heard way more about this one cat than He ever wanted to hear.   

Whatever the reason, I was euphoric. The cat had been found. Oh hallelujah! “Where was she?” 

“Dave called it,” my brother said. “She was in the couch.”

Now I was less euphoric. “You mean my husband was right?”

“Yep. There was a tiny slit in the back of the couch. Somehow she crawled up into it and was sitting on a little hidden ledge behind the cushions all this time. We kept hearing this strange scratching sound a little bit ago and there she was.”

So apparently my talk about cat owners being able to sense the presence of their beloved felines. . . yeah, complete hogwash. At one point, Serri had been less than a foot away from my dad’s head as he lay on the couch, lamenting the loss of his cat.

“Well,” I told my brother, “the important thing is she’s been found. Not that it will make tomorrow any easier, but—no, actually it will make tomorrow a little bit easier.” Because now we’d be able to focus on my aunt, a wonderful woman who would have been shaking her head and thinking we were crazy for allowing a cat to cause so much drama. 

And boy, would she have been right.