The Wanderer

My sister and her husband recently adopted two young cats from a rescue shelter in their neighborhood east of St. Paul, Minnesota. The cats, Bella and Zaya, were the first new pets they had brought into their lives since the early years of their marriage in 1994. We had the opportunity to meet them near the start of the year when we traveled to the Twin Cities area to visit my husband Jim's parents and my sister, as well.

Zaya got out of the house by accident around April 25, and could not be found. They posted notices in Craigslist and posters around the community. They walked around the neighborhood several times daily calling for her. By Memorial Day, she still had not come home. My sister reported that she was not giving up hope, and the Tuesday after Memorial Day, she text-messaged me with some ecstatic news: "Zaya is home!" She was found about ten miles from their house, and a visit to the vet proclaimed her healthy and unhurt. Her departure had reminded me of the aging cats who had walked out of my life, and hadn't returned. Zaya's reappearance, however, brought to mind a much happier story, that of my cat Pepper, whom I periodically also refer to as "The Wanderer."

This is a long lead up to a story, perhaps because it is late and I'm not quite sure how the story is going to unfold. The reason why I am starting into the story so late is because of Pepper, so I thought perhaps it might be fitting to try to throw down the antics of The Wanderer.

Pepper came into our lives as a kitten, about two or three months old. We adopted her with one of her siblings, a long leggy kitten who often gyrated while jumping, earning the name B-Girl. We thought both were girls until B-Girl revealed himself one night to be a boy. We thought about changing his name, but we had named her/him in honor of the b-girls of hip-hop who exude an extraordinary level of confidence, exuberance, and strength. To change the name simply on the basis of gender ultimately made no sense.

If B-Girl was long and leggy, Pepper was like a typical striped Tabby cat, small, stocky, and sweet. She seemed like the lead kitten of the two we adopted, covering B-Girl with her paws on the first night as they slept in a box I had prepared for them while our two older cats embarked on a bout of feigned disinterest and low-grade growling and teaching B-Girl the next morning how to climb onto the king size bed where the other two cats held court. She also was demure and petite, and her antics provoke elaborate exclamations over her cuteness.

But she had a wild side, as well.

Two days after we got the kittens, I woke up to a repeated, plaintive, squeaky meow. Searching our apartment on Catherine Street for our cats, I discovered her in the building's main hallway outside the front door. Somehow, she had gotten outside the apartment. Somehow, she had spent the night in the hallway. Two weeks later, our two older cats -- Pascha and Salty -- were on the prowl. Pascha was keeping an odd guard on the deck below us while Salty was running up and down a set of rickety wooden stairs that separated our deck from a unit above. A search indoors revealed no Pepper. Mounting the stairs, I saw two golden-brown eyes staring back at me. Recognizing me, Pepper made her way down and safely into the house. Sensing that she was safe, Pascha and Salty also ran back into our apartment.

Moving into a much bigger house on a three-acre lot in a more rural area didn't quench Pepper's curiosity. We closed on the house in mid-February and moved in a few weeks later. Snow still lay thick on the ground, but as soon as it melted, all four cats raced outside under the watchful eyes of Jim.

We thought B-Girl would be the one we'd have to worry about. His gyrating cartwheels and long-legged leaps in our apartment had morphed as he approached adolescence into a persistent meow to go outdoors, As snow fell thick and hard, he would run from window to window and rattle the doorknobs, pestering to go outside. Each morning I had to move my car parked on the street to a new site to avoid getting a ticket. The kittens would race into the hallway as I made my way out, and eventually onto the porch. In the new house, B-Girl wasn't much calmer, but it soon became clear that the real wanderer was not him but Pepper.

As spring lengthened into summer, Pepper's outdoor sojourns stretched into ten-, twelve, fourteen-hour stints. We would find her walking in what we called our garden circle at 10 p.m., completely oblivious to the worry she had caused us. The following year, she would saunter out of the woods well after midnight or just show up on our deck ready to eat and sleep.

Jim worried about her all the time, and sometimes would not allow her to go out after 5 p.m. After I told that he was acting like an overly cautious father, he would let her out and then berate her for coming home late and causing him to fear the worst. I could not convince him that she had no clue what he was trying to tell her, and that she was just acting like a cat. So I tried a different strategy: I told him to create a mood that would make her want to come home. Instead of scolding her for staying out, I said, ask her if she had a good time. Get her to tell you about her walks through the woods, the other animals she encountered, the prey she caught.

For months, the strategy worked. Don't ask me how, but Pepper seemed to enjoy the trade-off. All she had to do was be home by dark.

Today, we spent the bulk of a very hot afternoon planting tomatoes and celebrating the fact that the threat of frost had finally eased. We spotted Pepper periodically strolling through the woods, lounging under lilacs, lazily stretching her paws outward to swat at a moth. She came in around 5 p.m. and went out again an hour later. We headed into town around 7 p.m., figuring we would be back before dark.

We were back right as dusk faded to dark. It was approximately 9 p.m. The other cats were either waiting on the deck or came running as soon as we called them. But Pepper was missing in action.

I put together a quick dinner of rosemary potato fries and chicken fajitas while Jim looked for Pepper. Around 9:45 p.m., he poked his head in the kitchen, his eyes wild with worry.

"She'll be home," I said. "She's just being a cat."

"But it's late," Jim said.

"She's been out much later than this."

"I know, and that's what worries me."

Around 10 p.m., I went out with a flashlight to look for our wayward cat. I heard the frogs who inhabit our neighbor's unused swimming pool chirping and, knowing that this was one of her favorite spots, headed over even though I was sure that Jim had searched there a few hundred times.

"Come on, girlfriend," I called. "It's time to come home. We'll do it all over again tomorrow."

I played my light over the pool and caught two soft eyes. Pepper had just arrived at her perch and was preparing to put her paws in the water to try and reach for the frogs.

"Pepper!" I said.

Looking up, she recognized me. She reluctantly stood up, arched her back and stretched. Waving good-bye to the frogs with her tail, she made her way over to me. She didn't want the experience to end. But perhaps a part of her sensed that there was always going to be a tomorrow to look forward to.