Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner (31 page)

Fletch grasps me by my shoulders. “Jen, it’s going to be okay. I promise you we will get them back. Whatever it takes, we’ll get them back.”

Fletch tries to distract me with a late dinner and free rein of the remote control but I can’t eat and I’m not interested in TV. I mean, I know that they’re just cats and in the scheme of things, kittens are pretty much free… at least until you take them to the vet. Plus, they’d probably prefer to live in the wild anyway.

Despite the fact that I equate the cats with being my children, it’s so not the same. As untethered as I feel right now, I have to wonder what happens to families who have to deal with a real missing child, and not just a furry surrogate. I feel awfully self-indulgent right now, wallowing in my own unhappiness. I can’t even imagine what parents must go through; it’s unthinkable. Part of why we never opted for children is that I couldn’t handle it if anything ever went wrong. I’m already so neurotic and controlling that if I had to
worry about a tiny person’s life, I fear I’d go over the edge. My constant anxiety and worst-case-scenario-ing would consume me.

Angie, mother to four healthy, happy sons, says you eventually learn to balance the need to protect your kids with their need to explore boundaries, but I wouldn’t be capable. I’d want them in a full set of pads and a helmet and I wouldn’t ever want them out of my sight. I would be the poster child for helicopter parents everywhere. [
Yes, there would be leashes. Laugh at me all you want in the mall, but I’m not letting these guys wander away.
]

My children would likely resent me for my overprotection and we’d all be miserable. Plus, since I can’t even keep a damn cat safe, apparently, I’m sure I’d be a huge failure. The whole secret to my success is avoiding anything I wouldn’t immediately be good at; ergo I’m never going to be anyone’s mother.

No, let me rephrase that.

I plan to be good at catching these damn cats, so after dumping additional tuna juice and handfuls of catnip all over the front step, I sit by the door and watch and wait.

Not more than ten minutes after I rebait the trap, Chuck Norris appears out of the bushes!!

Opening the front door startles him, but the lure of the tuna is too great and I’m able to scoop him up while he stuffs his maw with fish. I’m somewhere between euphoric and devastated—I’m thrilled to have him back, but Chuck’s the ringleader, so I sort of thought he’d bring everyone with him.

Chuck appears no worse for wear. Actually, he seems a bit smug.

Hope you enjoyed your walkabout, you little asshole, because
it is never, ever happening again. I lecture Chuck on how he’s lost “catio” privileges before I resume my vigil by the door.

Every few minutes I leave my perch to go outside and call the others. Earlier I walked up and down the wood line with an armful of cat food cans, willing the sound of opening them to bring them running. Finding this unsuccessful, I left all the open cans out there for the coyotes so they’d be full and wouldn’t need to eat the tender young Thundercats.

About an hour later, I notice a gray ball of fluff in the darkness. Odin! It’s sweet little Odin! He’s come home! Carefully I pry open the door and attempt to grab him, but Odie’s way too skittish to stand still. He immediately streaks out into the darkness. But that’s good news because it means his instincts are to come back. Now all I have to do is convince him I’m not a scary monster.

I get Fletch and we both strap on our headlamps and begin to sweep the bushes. “You see anything?” I ask.

“Something over here has one and a half lasers. Unless there’s another creature who’s had eye surgery, I’m looking at Odie. Here’s what we’re going to do—I’ll flush him out and then you grab him,” Fletch says, cutting back behind the lilac bushes.

But every time Fletch herds Odin in my direction, he gets spooked and dashes under the boxwood hedges. I’m afraid we’re terrifying him, so I insist we speak in super-soothing tones. “Odie, sweetie, please come to your mama because she loves you,” I beg.

Fletch adds, “Nice, nice, little Odie, please go to your mama because I’m being eaten alive by mosquitoes and I’m about to pass out from blood loss, okay, good boy?”

“Stop that! He understands sarcasm,” I hiss.

“He’s afraid of paper bags and the dishwasher and thinks
we’re scary monsters,” Fletch replies. “Sarcasm isn’t even in his top ten of what bothers him.”

After a solid hour of playing cat to Odin’s mouse, we decide to take a break. “Maybe if we sit on the step and toss tuna to him, we can lure him over?” I suggest. I’m so frustrated sitting here, knowing Odin’s so close to safety, yet being unable to bring him in.

Fletch tosses chunks of tuna down the bluestone path and Odin inches closer and closer. “Those pieces are too big! He’s going to be stuffed before we get him over here,” I say.

Then I get the genius idea to rub catnip all over myself and douse my hands with tuna juice so I’ll smell irresistible. And I am irresistible. To every biting bug in Lake County. I’m going to need my own flea collar after this.

After woofing down big chunks of tuna, Odin seems satisfied and we can’t lure him any closer.

“This isn’t working,” I cry.

“This cat is coming in this damn house right damn now,” Fletch says. [
I love when he goes all General Patton.
] “We’ll funnel him into the hedges and I’m going to force him down by you. Grab him and throw him in the house. Let’s do this!”

And then we do this.

Unsuccessfully.

Whole buncha times.

We’re almost three hours into the hunt when Fletch gets an idea. “Odin keeps going to the window where he escaped. What if you went inside and popped the screen to see if he wants to come in that way?”

“Couldn’t work less than what we’re currently doing,” I agree. I hurry to the bedroom and ease the window open. Gingerly I pop the screen, the whole time saying, “Odie, come! Come on, little guy, come see your mama.”

And then that little son of a bitch walks right up to the window, arches his spine, and raises the back of his neck as though he wants me to pick him up.

As though I hadn’t been
trying to do exactly that
for the past three hours.

I’m able to grab him and whisk the window shut and the whole time, Odin’s purring contentedly in my arms, all, “You shoulda seen the scary monsters that was chasing me!”

Two down, one to go.

After we got Odin back and I washed all the fish juice off myself, Fletch insisted we call it a night. We left the screen off the window and lined the sill with tuna in the hopes that Gus would follow suit.

In the morning, the meat’s gone but there’s no sign of Gus. I’m sure any number of animals could have eaten it, but I choose to believe it was Gus. Because he’s the most skittish of the group, we need to rethink our strategy. I feel he’s too nervous to come out on his own, so I send Fletch out to buy a cruelty free trap while I spend the day in the woods. I catch nothing, save for the possible exception of malaria.

We set the Havahart trap and cover it with a towel and I dash out the door in the morning to find the tuna gone and nothing in the trap except an enormous toad and some mouse droppings.

I really thought Gus would be back within twenty-four hours,
but he’s not. What’s he doing out there? Is he hurt? Is he scared? What’s he eating, other than the possibility of windowsill tuna? It’s so hot—is he able to find a water source? Does he even want to come home?

Maybe that’s it. Maybe I’ve spent so much time anthropomorphizing him that I just assumed he loved me back and wanted to live here. I mean, he’s not a person; he’s an animal. Maybe he got out in the wild and the feral part of his brain took over. Maybe he’s been miserable here and all he’s ever wanted to do was roam free. Maybe he’s still pissed off about the time I stuck him in a pumpkin costume and put his picture on the Internet.

Yet I’m not about to give up on him. I’m scouring the Web for information when Fletch comes up behind me.

“Any news on Gus?” he asks.

“Um, so far he hasn’t checked in on Foursquare or updated his Facebook status, so, no. No news,” I reply. (Except Stacey who sent me a note saying,
“He’ll come slinking home smelling of clove cigarettes and wine coolers, having made out with someone inappropriate. Oh, wait, that was me in high school. But he’ll be back, don’t worry.”
)

“That’s not what I meant. Why don’t you ask your readers for help? They know everything,” he suggests.

The thing is, he’s right. I swear I have the most plugged-in readers in the world and there’s pretty much nothing they can’t resolve. They figured out when my tree was infested with Emerald Ash Borers and informed me it was Tatiana Patitz in my favorite George Michael video, and not Elaine Irwin. [
Freedom ’90.
] When I was hit with my second instance of those bastard ear crystals, alert fans
pointed me to the Epley Maneuver and in ten minutes, I was able to fix what my primary care physician couldn’t in three months. How did I not think to ask these guys two days ago?

As soon as I post a status update, advice pours in. Those who don’t have a specific strategy offer support and I’m grateful for their kind thoughts. I’m overwhelmed with all the useful information, from setting the trap on the lightest possible setting to leaving the garage door cracked so Gus can come inside on his own. We also plan to set out baskets of dirty laundry and used cat litter, so Gus will be attracted to a familiar smell. [
Fletch drew the line at the suggestion he pee in the bushes. But if the above doesn’t work, I’m not opposed to trying myself.
]

Putting the suggestions into action requires a trip to Target for sardines and a baby monitor. Now it’s no secret that I’m a Target aficionado. From Archer Farms and Merona and Mossimo to Up & Up, I have intimate knowledge of almost every product and aisle. I speak bull’s eye. I can even tell you which Target carries my favorite brand of milk [
Grassland at the Target Highland Park.
] and which stocks my favorite moisturizer [
Johnson’s Deep Hydrating Lotion at the Target Vernon Hills.
] and I plan my shopping trips accordingly. But until today I’ve not had much reason to set foot in the baby aisles.

Let me just say this—I had no idea having a baby required so many accessories. From onesies to crib bumpers to lanolin-based n-i-p-p-l-e salve, how does anyone have a kid without going completely broke? Just getting a nursery ready for Day One of a baby’s life has to cost thousands of dollars and that’s way before they start crying for Air Jordans or flip phones or whatever it is the kids need these days to preserve their self-esteem. You have one kid and you’re
never
going to be able to afford that generator. And didn’t
people used to have their babies sleep in drawers fifty years ago? Where did all these products come from?

There’s even a million choices when it comes to baby monitors. I’ll probably opt for the thirty-dollar model because all I want to do is hear if the cat comes into the garage. But how does any new parent see the option with the video feed and
not
buy it?

As I stand next to the monitors, a couple of people give me big, happy smiles while Fletch and I compare features. In every other part of this store, everyone’s always rude and wedging in front of me. But in this aisle, the assumption is that we’re first-time parents and the attitudes are adjusted accordingly. I haven’t the heart to tell anyone I have a missing cat. [
And really? I’m just kind of fat.
]

After Target, I spend more time in the woods, but find nothing. Yet I feel hopeful that something good’s going to happen because I’ve employed every possible suggestion I was given [
Except for the peeing and I’m not above doing that.
] including taping some of the cats’ whiskers to an unseen part of the wall. I have no clue as to why this is supposed to work, but damn it, I’m trying anyway.

Before we get ready for bed, we slosh sardine juice all over the cage and place the bits of fish into a plastic bowl. I’ve been told the more highly scented the lure, the better. If I don’t catch a freaking bear with this stuff, I’ll be shocked. And even though I’ve happily eaten far more disgusting stuff, I have to put a scarf over my mouth when doling out the sardines.

We set the trap and once I’m in bed, I concentrate on Gus extra hard when I say my prayers. It’s been three days—my feeling is he’s coming back tonight or he’s not coming back at all. For the
past two days, Odin and Chuck have been wandering past the doors and windows all confused, like something’s out of place, but they’re not sure what. It’s a little heartbreaking.

So tonight is my line in the sand—if Gus doesn’t come back, I’ll have to accept he doesn’t want to. Tonight determines if we actually have the bond that I imagined. I have such trouble believing that the little guy who curls up with me every night was just biding his time until he could make his escape. I think of last week when I was watching
So You Think You Can Dance
and he was sitting on my chest. Whenever Gus is really happy, he drools. And he must have been delighted because long strings were hanging out of either side of his mouth. Had I known then that might have been our last time, I wouldn’t have been so quick to be annoyed when he slobbered all over my shirt.