She glances at me with slitted eyes, her lithe form tense and wary of my every move.  Her name is Katie Jo, and she's my cat.  Or so I pretend.  In her mind I'm only barely tolerated.  

Now my husband--that's another story.  

We adopted Katie Jo five years ago.  She was nine years old.  Abandoned in a cage at the veterinary clinic.  

My husband and I had been visiting the vet frequently with a ten-year-old cat who had chronic medical problems.  That cat was dying and her rapid deterioration was breaking our hearts.  We knew, though we hoped otherwise, that she had little time left.  She was only ten, but had been sick since kittenhood, given only months to live in her first year.   

Ten years had passed.  Her problems--a collapsed lung, a malformed heart, hypothyroidism and non-functioning adrenal glands--had caught up with her and us.  

Perhaps because they saw our grief and recognized our impending loss, or maybe because they needed Katie's cage, they introduced my husband to the cat.  

"We've got this lovely older cat, kind of a short-haired calico, very quiet and well-behaved, spayed, too.  She needs a home.  Are you interested, Mr. Stowe?" the young vet tech asked my husband.   My husband shook his head.  We had one sick cat--the reason he was at the vet's office--and another younger male at home.  We didn't need a third cat.  The tech persisted, maybe she smiled and flirted a little--I wasn't there.   

My husband relented.  He agreed to meet the cat.  

She wasn't much.  She certainly didn't put her best foot forward or try to charm my husband into adopting her.  She cowered in the cage's corner.  As she tensed her body and her claws clutched at the newspaper on the cage floor, the technician reached in and drug her out.  Placed in my husband's arms, she didn't purr or nuzzle or look at him adoringly.  As he rubbed her head and murmured encouraging words, she shed clouds of short white fur.  Irritating and annoying cat hair floated everywhere.  

My husband came home and told me about the sad little cat in the cage. We shook our heads; we couldn't take another cat. 

The vet visits continued.  Each time my husband asked about Katie.  He visited her.  She resisted all attempts at consolation.  She refused all shows of affection.  She left my husband covered with sheddings.  

My husband asked, "Why is she here?"  

The secretary frowned.  "She lived with one family for nine years. Their only cat.  They decided to get a puppy.  She hissed at it.  So they brought her here."  She paused.  "To be euthanized."     

"No," my husband said.  We had observed a similar scenario several years before.  Despite our actions to forestall it, there had not been a happy ending for that dog.  "But you're not, are you?"  It was surely not the immediate intent.  After all, my husband had been visiting Katie for weeks.  

"We asked if we could hold onto Katie and look for a home.  The owner said yes."  Permission granted, a reprieve from the needle.  A chance for Katie.  No matter how unfeeling her previous owner had been in tossing her aside for a new pet, at least they had not insisted on her immediate execution.  They'd left open a second chance.  Now it was up to someone else.  "Do you want to take her home today, Mr. Stowe?"  

"I need to ask my wife," he said, shifting the decision and the blame onto me.  The next day I visited the clinic to meet Katie.  She was no more interested in charming me than anyone else.  The nicest thing that could be said was that she had no personality.  She was a classic-looking short-haired cat: long and lean, a pink triangular nose, the white under her chin as white as white can be.  My husband acknowledged, "She's kind of plain."  

"She's all right, just a normal cat," I said as I shook away handfuls of shedded hair.  No purring, no paws kneading my sweater, no looks of adoration--only shivering and shedding.  A very traumatized cat. Waiting for something other than us.  Waiting for her true owners.  Not willing to settle for less.  

We were headed out of town for the weekend.  My husband asked, "What do you think?"  

"We can't take her and then leave her alone for three days with two other cats."  

"I suppose not."  

I turned to the secretary.  "If no one else adopts her, and she's still here on Tuesday, we'll take her."  

Everyone nodded at the possibility that Katie might be gone on Tuesday when I returned.  

She wasn't, of course.  We dragged out of her cage--fur flying everywhere--and eased her unwilling form into a carrier.  I loaded her bed, a worn scratching post, and a stained kitty litter box  (all her worldly possessions) into the trunk and drove home with her on the seat next to me.  Not a sound from the carrier.  

When I released her, she sniffed the air and then, without any attempt to seek out the other cats in the house, scuttled behind the refrigerator.  That's where she lived for the next six weeks.  

Not that we didn't try to get her out.  We moved the refrigerator, gently prodded at her with a broom, lifted the cover at the base and showed a flashlight into her glinting eyes.  We tempted her with treats.  But for six weeks we never saw more than a twitching tail or a glinting eye.  We knew she was alive.  She came out to eat at night when we weren't around, and used the kitty box, too.  

During those weeks, our dying cat preoccupied us.  Still my husband worried about Katie Jo.  We had christened her with an additional name for her new life.  "We can't let her live behind there forever."  

"It's her choice.  She's better off than she would be in a cage--or dead.  Give her time.  She'll figure out how to deal with this."  The dying cat no longer ventured downstairs; she didn't recognize that we had a new member of the family.  The male cat stared back along the narrow entry way to Katie Jo's hiding place.  At twenty pounds he was too bulky to squeeze into the tight space himself.  He seemed undisturbed by this addition to our household.  As far as he was concerned, she was a ghost.  

In early November, our older cat died.  It was a painful time.  We were full of doubts about whether we had done the right thing.  Within a week, Katie Jo appeared for breakfast.  She daintily cleaned the plate of food that my husband had set before her.  She shied away from being petted, but she began to establish her relationship with the male cat.   

Still skittish, she frequently sought shelter behind the refrigerator, though with each day she spent less time there.  At night, she tiptoed upstairs and explored her new domain.  At other times, she stared out the window by the front door.  As she glanced back at me, I saw the longing in her eyes, the certainty that someone else was coming for her.  That her stay at our house was only a temporary passage.  

My husband and I gave her free roam.  Though we attempted to touch her between the ears, we didn't force our affection.  The cat bed I had brought home from the vet's was matted with old cat hair.  I tried to wash it, but gave up and purchased a new bed.  The male cat sniffed it and walked away.  Katie Jo sniffed it, climbed in, curled up and began her slow accommodation to our home.  

On my days at home, I assumed breakfast duties, serving up the portions of canned food.  When I positioned the plates on the floor, one on each side of the water bowl, the male cat began to eat immediately.  Katie Jo paced back and forth, sniffed the air, glanced at me, and refused to eat.  Inevitably, it was necessary for my husband to lift up her plate and resettle it on the floor before she would eat.  As the weeks passed, sometimes it was only necessary that my husband touch the plate and utter a few reassuring words.  But Katie Jo had made her point. 

Apart from meals, Katie Jo spent little time with us during those early months.  She disappeared, sometimes to her bed in the sun, sometimes to other hiding places.  Always wary, always watching, she never purred.  December became January and Katie Jo settled into her routine.  Unlike our male cat, who rolled over, purred, and in every way played the part of Mr. Cuteness, Katie Jo remained the epitome of an aloof cat.  Beneath that exterior, my husband and I sensed a longing--a longing to be loved.   

(Okay.  I know this is terribly anthropomorphic, but if you're a cat owner, or an animal lover in general, you know what I mean.  If you're not, stop reading now and drive down to the SPCA, pick out the most forlorn of the little caged and abandoned creatures and bring it home.  After about six weeks, continue reading.)   

One morning as my husband prepared the cats' breakfast, Katie Jo crouched on the corner of the counter.  My husband settled the plates on the floor and walked over to pet her.  She studied him for a second, then lifted her head and showed him her chin.  As he scratched the soft, white surface of her throat, she began to purr.  That was probably the moment when Katie Jo accepted her new home and her owners.  Or should I say--owner?  

It's been four and a half years, and Katie Jo has still never purred for me.  In the morning, when my husband sits at the table reading the newspaper, she curls up in front of him and butts his hand to solicit his attention.  If I walk into the room and do anything to divert my husband's focus, she squints her eyes and turns her back to me.  

In the evening, my husband and I sit in the den to watch the news. Our male cat joins us and begs for treats.  Not until I leave to work in the office does Katie Jo venture into the den.  If I walk back into the room, I catch her curled up next to my husband on the couch, sometimes sprawled out on his chest, and always purring as he scratches her between the ears or under the chin.  There's always that look.  The look that says, "I thought you were gone for the evening--this is my time."  

I've tried to tell Katie Jo that I decided to adopt her.  She doesn't believe me.  She's stopped waiting for anyone else to rescue her.  The only thing she waits for is that hour when my husband walks through the door.  No matter where she's been hiding all day, when she hears the grumble of the old Mercedes in the back alley, she strolls down the stairs and sits in anticipation at the door.  

Last night I walked in on them in the den.  My husband lay on the couch; she cuddled on his chest.  She squeezed her eyes tight to block out my intrusion--as if to send the message that I was the other woman.  My husband rubbed her between the ears.  He said, "She's purring."  

I said, "I'm sure she is."  Then I addressed them both.  "You know, you two, you've both had other lovers.  You shouldn't be quite so smug.  This is just second hand love."  

Katie Jo reached out her paws to knead the fabric of my husband's shirt.  She refused to acknowledge my words.  My husband spoke for both of them.  "It may be second hand love, but it's a first class romance.  Right, Katie Jo?"  She opened her eyes and looked up at me, exposing her chin to my husband's fingers.  There was a certainty in her eyes--the certainty of being loved.

Author's Biography

Kathleen J. Stowe divides her time between Norfolk, Virginia and the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  She is a current flight attendant and a former nurse.  

Her short story "Oh Sure--I Understand, Honey" appears in the Fall 2002 issue of Virginia Adversaria.

E-mail Kathleen at kstowe@dellepro.com

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