Dink, Page 2

DINK

  It was sometime last week when I awoke from my bed at the normal hour to the normal ringing of the alarm clock. The music was playing as I matted my hair down to throw my fist on the off button. With a yawn, I scratched my chest and felt the day beginning around me. I took a shower, made breakfast, checked my e-mail and then took a few minutes to myself.

  It wasn't until I was putting the cereal away when I discovered the one thing that was off about today. It wasn't Friday the 13th or any other superstitious holiday. It was actually a normal day with normal occurrences. Except for one thing. As I stared at my box of cereal and eying down at the colorful pebbles, I put it away before turning around and noticing that I hadn't fed the cat yet. That's when I realized that something was wrong indeed. My cat had escaped.

  I checked the bathroom, my closet and even in the fireplace on the off chance that it would dare to tarnish its beautiful short hair. That tabby loved to get dirty and here I was about to have a free day to myself after a week of work and my cat went missing. I checked the entire house before I returned to the room at which this story started. Suddenly, I was met with the annoying reality that I had left the window open. The mini-blinds were blowing in the wind and the hot air was reminding me why I had opened them in the first place.

  I tried to think of the night before. I didn't focus on opening the window so much as wondering what would draw the cat out of his hiding place. He was usually resilient when I left the window open. However, this time was different. What was outside that appealed to this indoor cat? I thought long and hard about the cat as I sat on my bed and looked out at the fence that separated me from my happy neighbors who were thankfully off happying things up somewhere else. They could be real pricks about things when they wanted.

  It wasn't how I wanted to start my one day off, but I had to do it. I slipped my shoes on and walked outside. Looking up and down the street, I saw the neighbor's cat before I had a glimpse at anything resembling another one. I ran to the corner, looked, and ran down the corner again. I was sweating as I passed by the morning joggers who had their smiles on. I didn't know if I should tell anyone about my cat just yet. Maybe I was a very negligent looker and that this was all a big mistake. That's when I began to wonder if I left the front door open. I ran back. Nope. I'm good.

  As I went outside to sit on the porch, I saw a familiar face arrive. It was Reggie from up the block. We enjoyed hanging out, grabbing drinks and watching games. Our relationship was fairly common to the fraternal mindset. As he waved his hello, I walked up timidly and without any real eye contact. As I finally shook his hand and we said our good mornings, I decided to tell him the truth.

  "I lost Dink." I said while scratching my neck, my still wet hair dripping on my hand.

  "Not Dink!" he said in shock, "Man, that cat was cool. He loved everyone and didn't let no one mess with you," he said leaning in, "You think coyotes got to him?"

  My eyes went wide, "Oh no, not coyotes."

  "Well, man," he said while rotating his arms, "I'd love to help you, but I don't know anything about finding cats. Did you give your whistle?"

  "Yep."

  "Did you pour food in his dish?"

  "Yep." which was a lie.

  "Hmph," Reggie said while scratching his chin, "A puzzler." He said reaching out and touching my arm, "Listen, man. I'll let you know if I find Dink."

  "Thanks, Reggie."

  Reggie was gone. He got in his car and left. I had no choice but to post messages on Facebook and anywhere that I thought that someone might know Dink from. I was a terrible photographer, which made finding a good shot of him hard. They were all too saturated and the complexions didn't do him any justice. Still, it ate at my soul to see those cute pictures staring back at me with his green eyes. I remember them purring at me only a few hours before I had gone to sleep. I stared at it and did what I could in a Word document to make a flyer to find him.

  I went to the nearby hardware store to buy a stapler and some blue tape as I prepared to plaster Dink's face all over town. I saw people come up to me and ask. They were strangers who had no idea who or what a Dink was. In a sense, the picture that I had decided on as edited through my black and white printer didn't do Dink much justice either. It looked like the Cheshire Cat, staring at us through big black eyes. I did what I could to flyer the poster around town before I realized that it was hopeless. The picture looked too generic and lacked any distinguishing features.

  As I threw all of the papers away, I sat on a bench outside of a local Jack in the Box. I considered going inside to buy food so as not to look like a hobo, but there was a lot of hoodlums inside keeping them busy. They were yelling and shouting and all I could do was walk in as this older white man in his late 20's who didn't understand their references. I wouldn't know what DGK was or why they chose to wear baggy jackets in this weather. I didn't want to appear racist, which is why I sat on the bench.

  Then she came up. A smiling woman came up and gave me a hug and sat next to me. I adored how wide her mouth was when she smiled. I loved the way her blonde hair draped over her face but didn't cloud her view. There was so much to her that I had missed since our brief time hanging out in high school. Sure, we had seen each other at various points afterwards, but we weren't ever hanging out for more than 15 minutes at a time. She was married and I never got along with her husband, who in my head remains a fiancé if I think of him on a good day. As she looked at me, I realized that I still had a flyer out.

  "So what brings you to this neck of the woods?" she said.

  "Do you remember Dink?" I said.

  "Dink?" she said while tilting her head, "Is he that drunk kid that always came to Tim's parties?"

  "No. Dink was my cat that I got in senior year."

  "Oh! Dink!" she said, "I liked that cat. He must be getting up there in age now."

  "Well," I said while looking at her firm legs kicking back and forth, "He went missing and I am not sure where he went." I waited for an answer that I knew that she couldn't deliver if she even knew how to lie.

  "Well..." she said while raising a finger and looking around, "... good luck with that."

  "Thanks anyways, Vera."

  "Oh hey," she said while rubbing my shoulder, "Listen, Tim is having a party this weekend. You know, for Cinco De Mayo. You should come. Just like the old days."

  "Right," I said, "Old days."

  We parted ways and I finally went inside to grab a burger. I sat there eating and wondering where I needed to go next to find this cat. From where I sat, I could see three poles with my dumb flyer on them. I saw the hoodlums tear one down and laugh at it. I just took in the noise from the cooking machines in the back room as I tried to satisfy some part of myself in this time of worry.

  I tried to think of why the cat would leave in the first place and where he would go. As I threw out my trash, I began to walk back towards my house and ended up walking around a few blocks where the kids were playing outside. There was some street hockey going on. I looked around and would stop if I saw a small but rapid movement come from a fence or a bush. I smiled and tried to approach, remembering that Dink was very skittish. It was no use. In every case, they were the neighbor's cat.

  I talked to an older woman. I think her name was Esther. She gave me the advice that sounds like you're helping, but not really, "It's always in the last place that you look." Well... duh.

  Nothing could really cheer me up. That cat kept me company on some rough nights. I remember when I was studying for a test in college and Dink kept jumping on my book so that I couldn't read my geometry work. I like to blame my lack of knowledge on triangulars or whatever they're called on him. I yelled at him then, but it was funny now because I made up for it big time by paying major attention to him in the time following the test. I had nothing to do and those lonely nights had to end somehow.

  As I finally got back to my house, I realized that there was no luck anymore. I had checked everywhere. I went back through the house and did
all of the searching. I even checked in the dryer on the off chance he got stuck in there. Part of me was relieved that he wasn't mangled somewhere. The other half was obsessed with finding him and getting this whole ordeal over with.

  It was the unknown that hurt me most. If I knew that Dink had escaped in the night, I would feel somewhat reassured. If I had kicked Dink for a dumb reason, I would hold regret, but it would make sense still. I didn't handle the idea of uncertainty very well. I hold an odd relationship with my grandmother because I missed her death because I was out of town with friends on a camping experience. We were too wrapped up in the moment to really care. To come home to the news of her death and to see everyone grieving left a feeling of disconnect in me that didn't settle well.

  So whenever something happened, my feeling was that I needed to be there or face potential excision from the group. I would be considered a jerk for not being able to be where I was needed. In a way, it has made me a little annoying in trying to please everyone, but also puts immense stress on me. I wonder if Reggie or Vera would wind up dead and what my last words to them would be. Would they be something very juvenile? Would my final thoughts be of ogling Vera's curvaceous body or Reggie's awkward mole? I did what I could to make my goodbyes always textbook. It likely is why I often get accused of having no personality.

  Still, it was hard to let go of Dink because I said a lot of dumb things to that cat. I knew that he didn't hold a grudge, but I worried that maybe I pushed him once too many times or that he was growing anxious. Maybe he had an abscess that I didn't clean properly. I wanted to know why he ran out through the window and into the night. To the best of my knowledge, I was nice to that cat and he has no excuse to do anything but rub his cheek against my pant leg as I did my studying.

  The house felt emptier without Dink. I wanted to hear him scamper from room to room. I wanted to hear him slide on the wooden floors. I wanted him to knock over something. I wanted him to yell at me. I wanted the house to smell because he ate something that he shouldn't have. I put a bowl of cereal that I was eating on the floor with a sliver of milk in it with hopes that it would draw him near. When it didn't, I left the room and walked into the backyard, where I looked into the trees, hoping that he had climbed a tree and that I had neglected to get him down. I looked in the bushes.

  I eventually sat in the lawn chair and accepted the fate. Dink wasn't anywhere on the property. I could expect Reggie to call, but it was no use. Dink was gone. I sat there and suddenly, it came to me. I had figured out why Dink left me in the first place. I thought back to the day before.

  I had gotten home late from work and didn't have time to refill his food dish. His water was empty and the toilet lid was closed. He had no way of having any sustenance. He yelled at me from the moment that I entered and I ignored him. I had important things to do. Something involving work that required me to focus on typing a document on my computer for a few hours. I stopped a few times to watch some TV, but that was brief periods to keep my sanity afloat. The rest of the time, I was on that document.

  But every now and then, I would hear Dink yelling at me for food. I told him to shut up. I am not sure why my cognition let me down on this particular occasion, but it did. He jumped on my lap. I stared into his old, frayed face and picked him up. He was purring, but instead of cuddling him, I put him on the floor in order to focus on the TV show I was watching. How insignificant was it? I cannot even recall what it was at this moment.

  As I turned on the TV. That show was on. McHale's Navy. Why did I care so much about McHale's Navy when my cat wanted food and attention? I didn't even like Ernest Borgnine that much. I yelled at the scream, cursing his name. I blamed him for my lost cat, who was out there somewhere, crying and scared. I turned off the TV and decided to look in the fridge on the off chance that he was hiding in there. He wasn't, but some comfort food was.

  I sat there and popped on Harry and Tonto, which was comforting because it was about Art Carney and his cat. Their relationship felt like a sign from somewhere that I needed to watch the film. If Dink had jumped on my lap during this time, I would feel lucky. I stayed in front of the TV, leaning forward, watching the film as the elderly Carney hitchhiked across the country because of his condemned home in New York. I watched that cat, feeling an odd connection to it as the story continued.

  Then it happened. I received my revelation that didn't necessarily make sense when I had started my journey. The cat in the story died at 11. I began to realize everything that was similar between his cat and mine. While I had owned Dink for a solid nine years, he was getting frail and I have treated him with more gentleness than I had in the past. I would rub his mouth and see that his teeth were a little fractured and that maybe his eyesight was going. Occasionally his voice even creaked.

  I understood finally why Dink had left. In my final moments with him, I had neglected to say goodbye and ended up leaving a lot of questions about the cat. Had I left the window closed, he would still be here, albeit dead. However, he was likely gone and resting in some place that was far from where I could pay my respects to him. The animal control would likely have come and taken care of him as it were.

  I felt alone and full of regret. I wanted to hug the cat. I wanted to pet him longer than I had before. His fur was so soft, even in his old age where it had grown a healthy shade of white. I leaned back and looked at the ceiling, wondering what was the point of everything. The day had turned into night and I was staring into darkness as I decided to walk outside and look out at the night sky. The stars were beautiful and my grumbling stomach only helped to ground my reality.

  I ran into Reggie out front, who smiled, "Hey man, did you find Dink?"

  "Nah," I said, not even looking at something in particular.

  "Well man," he said, "Better luck tomorrow. I have my friends looking around town for him. He was a good cat."

  I paid too close attention to his word choice. Yes, Dink was now a was. I said goodbye to Reggie, who shook my hand and suggested that we get together and watch the Alien movies one of these afternoons. It has been awhile since I had seen them and was curious to see if they held up. In a way, the cat in the film reminded me of Dink. I know that I would never ever forget Dink, even if the Alien cat didn't look a thing like him. I bought some beer the next afternoon and put it in a cooler in the garage.

  As we sat watching the Alien movies, I felt the woe disappear. For the moment, we were talking about all things technical. We dissected the story beats and laughed at really dumb things. Then of course, the cat showed up. For a moment, I was worried that this would take me out of the moment. I watched the cat as it ran around the room. I took a drink and looked over at Reggie, who was going on about the film, and not the cat in particular.

  That's when I realized that it was the only way to handle the situation. I had to move on and think of something else. It would be hard to find someone as lovable as Dink. I still think of him pretty often. I even thought of him as I hung out at Tim's party, playing rock music from 10 years ago and dancing with Vera. Her fiancé wasn't there, which made me relieved. It was the old gang back together for a moment. The moment didn't lead to another one, at least not immediately.

  In my drunken state, I sat out in front of Tim's house with Vera and talked for a few hours. As we did, I was reminded of why I loved her. Not as a girlfriend, but as a friend. As we leaned in on each other, I thought that I saw Dink. However, I was too busy thinking of the joke that Vera had just told me when this happened. As I looked back over at her, I was finally at peace for the moment being.

  You never forget a cat that you have for nine years. However, it is hard to ever say goodbye to them in the right way. They don't communicate that they're leaving. They just leave. If they love you, they'll give you enough time to cherish your time together. They'll stare into your face with their eyes and communicate something deeper than the typical demands to be fed or smothered with attention. Part of me regrets not giving Dink more attention. H
owever, I cannot regret the other days when I was there for him. Some would say I loved that cat too much. If that's our lasting legacy together, then I will be fine with it.

  THE END

  About the Author

  Thomas M. Willett is a writer based out of Long Beach, CA with a passion for film, TV and getting inside your head.

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  © Thomas M. Willett, 2015