Our Mau-Mau
A few years ago, the division of the company I work for moved from one suburb to another, and so my manager at the time called a meeting to announce the office assignments. The good news, she said, is that we'd get a real office with a door and everything. This was just wildly exciting, as we'd all previously worked in cubes. The (semi) bad news was that the offices were semi-private, meaning there'd be two per office. Before the manager had finished pairing us off, the man assigned to share the office space with me was shaking his head while mouthing "no, no, no."
"Is there a problem?" the manager asked my office mate, who has indicated he'd like to be called Gustavo, or, alternately, Rinaldo, in this blog. He's promised if I do so, he might take before-and-after pictures of his study makeover and let me post them on the Quest. So Rinaldo or Gustavo it is.
"I'm allergic to cats," Gustavo said in answer to the manager.
The manager leveled her gaze at him and waited. "So?" she finally said.
"She. Has. A. Cat," he said, emphasizing each word by raising and lowering his eyebrows.
The manager's expression didn't change. The manager was seated to my right, Gustavo to the left; I was in-between the two. Gustavo, for his part continued staring at my manager in return, coupled with a strange head-tilt in my direction. At first I thought he might have a creak in his neck, but then I realized there was a deliberate direction to the thrust of his head, which I followed in spite of myself. And that's when I saw it: an enormous, knotted tangle of downy white cat fur, wedged in my crotch.
I plucked the tangle from its ignoble position and held it in front of me, unsure what to do with it. Gustavo stared at it. My manager stared at it. Across the table, another colleague stared at it. For a long moment, it was as if time itself had stopped so we all, my colleaguess, manager, and I, might examine this artifact from Mau-Mau Kitty, our long-haired, Maine Coon cat. "We'll get her a lint brush," my manager said then.
Look at that furry tummy!
After Mau-Mau Kitty passed on our bed last June, I washed the sheets. As always, little balls of fur covered the freshly-cleaned sheets, requiring an extensive plucking process to (more or less) remove all the fur-balls. The next time I washed the sheets, I noticed that there wasn't nearly as much fur. The third time I washed the sheets, there was virtually none. By this time, we'd adopted the kittens, but being relatively short-haired, combined they didn't shed a fraction of what Mau-Mau Kitty had. The day I realized this, I cried and cried, because I realized anew that Mau-Mau was gone. Even the physical evidence of his existence--the ubiquitous cat dander floating in the air--was slowly disappearing. It made me very sad.
Every once in a while, when I vacuum under the bed or move a piece of furniture, I come across a bit of downy white fur. "Kitty tumbleweeds" is what Alpay calls them. Alpay has kept a tangle or two, which he keeps on his desk as a kind of talisman.
A few weeks ago, I came home from work and found a little knot not under but on the bed. And stranger still: it wasn't white, but a darkish brown. And I realized that it came from Snapdragon. "Look!" I said showing Alpay. "A kitty tumbleweed!" Alpay said. We were excited and very proud. Since then, I've noticed more tumbleweeds: on the chair in my study, on the floor by the bed. When I washed the sheets, I had to once again pluck fur balls off it, as I've done for the past 19 years. Gustavo may not be happy about it, but really, I'm delighted. What's a home without a little cat fur?
Our two boys: Lickity Split and Snapdragon