Big Al’s Pet Emporium
By Kari Treese
Alabama was Tom’s cat. He left her in a closet too long when she was a kitten and she’d been skittish as hell ever since. A dark calico, black and orange all over, her colors matched her personality—dark and wild. “The cat was non-negotiable,” he’d said; I could have Tom and Alabama or I could have neither.
After I moved in, we had to keep the bedroom door shut because she kept pissing on my pillow. She took to hiding in the laundry basket, launching attacks when I came too close. She refused all my attempts to pet her, preferring instead to wander in figure eights through Tom’s boots when he returned from the field, skitter onto his shoulders, purr into his hands while he watched TV. We enjoyed a tenuous peace, Alabama and me, while Tom was in the house.
She turned into a real bitch when Tom deployed. She took to wailing outside the bedroom door at night, loud enough to wake the neighbors. MP’s knocked on my door 3 times in Tom’s first month gone.
“What do you want me to do,” I’d say. “Reason with a cat?”
“Just have to ask ma’am. We keep getting noise complaints and housing won’t be renewing your lease.”
“You got it sir. I’ll ask my cat to keep it down.”
I took her to a vet who prescribed kitty Xanax. I slept a full 8 hours for the first time in weeks.
Tom returned on R & R 4 months in. We had two weeks to make up for lost time and prepare for the next 8 months gone. Within hours, Alabama was staking her claim. She hissed whenever he kissed me, started lunging at my ankles, claws bared, from under tables and around dark corners. Tom started locking her into the travel crate every time we disappeared behind the bedroom door. Otherwise, she’d paw at the door scraping and caterwauling until we relented.
When Tom flew back to Afghanistan to finish what was left of his 12 months, I started looking for no-kill shelters. I’d tell him she ran away, scooted out the front door while I was carrying in groceries, and just like that, lost.
“We’re full on cats,” I heard again and again. I even checked one state over, un-phased by the 4 hour drive. One of the wives at an FRG meeting suggested I try Big Al’s—a pet store on route 83.
“They take cats sometimes. I was out there buying a bunny for Macy last week,” she said.
The clerk at Big Al’s Pet Emporium asked, “How’s her temperament?” while Alabama hissed and spat in the crate.
“Oh, fine. She’s a real sweetheart.”
I felt good driving away. I imagined tossing out the last box of kitty litter, the last plastic bag of piss piles and little round turds. I rolled the windows down, crooned with Chris Isaac singing, “things go wrong, but I still love you.”
Tom took it hard. “I should’ve waited to tell you,” I said. “The other wives warned me not to give you bad news.”
“No. It’s fine,” he swallowed loud enough for me to hear through a country, a continent, the whole world between him and me. “Really.”
When 12 months was extended to 15, I thought I saw Alabama in the Westfield mall parking lot. I chased her under a car, tried to coax her out. “Bammy, come here sweet girl. Come,” all the while making that sound thkk, thkk, thkk, and rubbing my thumb into my fingers feigning a treat. The cat stared at me. I stayed there stretched, belly on the asphalt, hand jutted under someone else’s sedan, pleading “Come, come here girl.”
Her eyes held me there, stuck on a taut line. When I blinked, she flashed gone. I was dizzy when I stood up, head swimming with the cat, the man, and the smell of Big Al’s Pet Emporium stuck for 3 months in my nose.
About the Author:
Kari Treese is an MFA candidate in prose at Mills College where she is the managing editor of 580 Split. Her work has appeared in The Los Angeles Review, Lunch Ticket, Rivet, and others. She is a fiction reader at Atticus Review. Before writer, Kari was a casino customer service rep, hostess, Baker’s drive-thru extraordinaire, military spouse, and mother. She’s a fish person, for whatever that’s worth.
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