room to fend for himself. He waited by the door, and when morning came he shot inside. But today he didn’t hide or run under the bed or into the closet. This time he marched straight to the pile of Joe’s clothes, squatted, and peed. It was a lot of pee, because he’d been saving up all night.
“Max!” Melody stood near the foot of the bed, bare legs poking out from under her nightshirt with the cats on it.
Max kept peeing until he was finished, then, with a flick of his tail and a shake of a paw, he stepped off the pile of clothes. He fully expected somebody to throw something at him. Instead, both humans stared at him in shock and worry.
“Did you ever take him to the vet?” Joe asked. He was lying in bed, head propped in one hand.
“No, he seemed to be better, so I forgot about it.”
“I think we’d better do that today.”
We. Like they were a team. That was only slightly less disturbing than a vet visit.
Max ran from the room, heading straight for the doggy door he’d forgotten was sealed until he smacked his head against it. With that escape route out of the question, he thundered down the basement steps and hid behind the clothes dryer, where Melody found him a few minutes later.
“You must be sick if you’re hiding down here in this awful place.” She tried to coax him out, but he refused to budge. Let her come and get him. Which, unfortunately, she did.
She pulled out the machine and dove for him before he could make a run for it. Then she crushed him to her racing heart and brushed the cobwebs from his face and whiskers. He felt her terror, and for a moment he couldn’t place it or understand it.
She kissed his head and rocked him against her. “You can’t be sick. I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you.”
And then her terror made sense. She was afraid of losing him. And he suddenly felt bad about peeing on Joe’s clothes. He wanted to tell her he was fine. Instead, he squirmed away and ran upstairs. Once in the kitchen, he began meowing for food the way he did every morning, this time to demonstrate that he did indeed feel completely normal.
“Something is wrong,” Melody said.
Joe poured fresh food in Max’s bowl. “I say we get him to a vet right away. Could be a kidney infection.”
Together Joe and Melody took Max to the vet. Joe drove his car, a little black job he called a Civic, while Melody held Max on her lap in the carrier. Neither one talked, but Max could feel Melody’s tension and nervousness. He tried not to say anything or make the situation worse, but he couldn’t help but yowl several times. He was too upset to be embarrassed.
Max knew the exact number of turns from his house to the vet’s parking lot. He could smell the coffee shop on the way, and the Laundromat just up the block. And when they pulled to a stop, he could even sense the terrified animals inside, and that made him yowl even louder and longer.
“Oh, he’s a noisy one,” the woman behind the counter said.
The smell! The smell struck terror in his heart. An odd odor that he associated with hands and needles and animals in pain.
They took him to a room and closed the door. It wasn’t as bad inside the smaller space, but it was still enough to drive a cat mad. He could sense the animals that had been there before him. Some young, some old, some that never went home again.
Home.
That was all he wanted. Home. His home, his bed, his food, his catnip, his strip of sunshine.
The doctor had a nice voice, and that calmed Max some. An exam, then the doctor left, and a young girl took Max away from Melody. Max screamed when the door closed and he could no longer see his mistress. They did things with needles. He didn’t know if the needles bothered him. He didn’t think so. It was more the not knowing what was going to happen. It was more about not being in control of the situation.
After more poking and prodding and holding Max down, the doctor carried Max back to the small room and handed him to Melody. Never had Max felt so relieved. He pressed his head to her chest and closed his eyes, trying to block out the room and the doctor.
“I can’t find anything wrong with him,” the doctor said. “We did a urine tap, and that was negative. We drew some blood and will send it to the lab. I’ll call you in a few days, but I don’t expect to find anything. Sometimes cats just do weird things. Has anything changed in your life? Most cats don’t like change, and that can cause uncharacteristic behavior. If he’s urinating in odd places, you might have to retrain him to use the litter box.” That was followed by barbaric and hideous retraining instructions that Max hoped Melody would ignore.
And then they left.
“I’m not going to shut him in the bathroom for two weeks,” Melody said, her voice fretful.
“That does seem extreme,” Joe said.
“I think it’s the change in routine.”
“You mean my staying over?”
“I’m just so worried. I never thought about anything happening to Max. Not for years anyway.”
“I have the feeling everything is going to be okay.”
That was something Max had been trying unsuccessfully to tell Melody for a long time.
Joe pulled up in front of Melody and Max’s house. Max couldn’t wait to get inside. He was quiet now, calm, but full of anticipation.
“The blood tests were just a precaution,” Joe said.
Instead of breaking them up, the trip to the vet seemed to have brought them closer together. And Joe’s concern and support had Max confused about dumping him.
Max may have been unsuccessful in getting rid of Joe, but that night, after Melody got off work, things were more like the old days. She brought him a treat and a special blend of organic catnip that made him go crazy for a full thirty minutes. Afterward, he and Melody watched television on the couch. There was almost no talk of Joe, and that night Max wasn’t shut out of the bedroom. Instead, he took his rightful place on the pillow next to Melody’s head.
Melody scratched his nose the way he liked. “Just you and me.”
But she sounded a little sad. Max almost wished he’d never found the gun.
Chapter 8
Melody dropped a pile of folded T-shirts into a cardboard box. “It’s called purging,” she told Max.
The house was still filled with David’s stuff. His shirts and pants and jackets still hung in the bedroom closet, and his jogging shoes sat on the floor in a neat row, as if he would come home at any moment.
Max meowed and circled once, arching his back, legs stiff.
“I know it’s unsettling,” Melody told him, “but it’s something I should have done a long time ago.”
It had been too hard right after David was killed. It hadn’t seemed right. Almost like she was throwing him away. And then later it was hard for a different reason, almost as if saying she’d forgotten him.
But she hadn’t.
She wouldn’t.
But keeping his clothes in the closet was just plain weird. And maybe a little crazy.
Max’s health scare had been a wake-up call for Melody. It made her realize that she cared for Joe even though she hadn’t known him that long. His being there when she’d taken Max to the vet, and his support afterward, went a long way toward proving he might be the right guy for her. How many men would have been so concerned about Max? None. And how many would have called or stopped by every day until the blood tests came back negative? None.
She’d been hiding. Maybe not physically, but mentally. Burying herself in work and the occasional awful night out with friends that almost always ended up with a stranger and a hangover. That wasn’t who she was.
She had to move on.
A knock at the front door was followed by a “Hello!” and a “Just me!”
