Fluffy
“No, Fluffy! Put Jack down! You’ve been very naughty.” He just didn’t listen to me and ate my
mother’s boyfriend anyway.
Well, I probably should begin
from the time I initially met Fluffy. My
original purpose had been to find the perfect cat to not only be my pet, but a
shot at becoming rich and famous. I told
my mom when I first got Fluffy that I was determined to get him all trained. My mom strongly cautioned me against getting
a pet in the first place, thinking I couldn’t take care of him. I was going on ten, so I was responsible
enough. With the utmost reassurance, I
informed her that not only would I clean his litter box and make sure that he
was fed, but that I would teach him to respond to my commands like a dog. And, I said this with a great deal of
sincerity in my voice, so she had to believe me. Other kids might have been irresponsible, but
not this boy.
Anyway, she was quite skeptical
of my plan to train up a cat. I couldn’t
blame her for feeling that way, and I acknowledged the reputation cats had for
being difficult to train. However, if I
could manage to do it, I would go on T.V. and we would put on shows
together. Then, my mom and I would have
enough money to get a better car and she wouldn’t have to work so long and so
hard. Dog tricks were cool enough, but
cat tricks would rock everyone’s world.
When I first saw Fluffy at the
animal shelter, I saw that he was all alone.
The shelter volunteer described how they found him wandering around
outside their building and reckoned someone just abandoned him. Animal shelters got that a lot. Fluffy, a short-haired yellow tabby, wasn’t
all that friendly of a cat (I named him Fluffy just because he wasn’t all that
fluffy). He was more aloof than most
cats and they wondered if he was too much of a feral animal to give away as a
pet. Feral cats were not raised with humans when they were kittens and resisted
domestication. Only, when I placed my
hand against his kennel, he came up to smell me and tried to lick my
fingers. Maybe it was the fried chicken
I just ate that he liked, but the shelter worker, Angie, took him out and I
held him. He purred in my arms and
meowed, snuggling his face against mine.
Angie, who was a college student
with a cute face, was surprised at how he responded to me. “Wow.
He wouldn’t do that with any of us.
Sometimes with cats you never can tell.”
After pleading with my mom we completed the adoption process and I even
signed a paper stating how I would take care of him since I was listed as the
official owner. He had been neutered and
given whatever vaccines the vet at the shelter thought necessary to
administer. Fluffy was ready for a new
home—my home.
Now, people might think that I
shirked my responsibility with Fluffy, but I didn’t. I made sure he was fed and watered. Fluffy woke me up at four in the morning
expecting a feeding, sitting on my chest until I got up. My mom and her boyfriend, who would be my
step-dad at the end of the summer, made sure to get the type of kitty litter
that all I had to do was to scoop away the nasty stuff instead of constantly
dumping out the tray and refilling it.
I remembered waiting for my dad
to take us to his house in Indiana for his full two weeks in the summer. Since
my parents were no longer together, I visited him every other weekend, but he
got to have me in the summer for two whole weeks. Anyway, I sat on the couch with Jack, my mom’s soon-to-be
husband, and he flipped through the channels to find a baseball game. He stopped on a local station and they had
like a news break. A picture of a cat
that looked like Fluffy flashed on the screen.
The animal had escaped from a lab in town that tested new drugs for a
pharmaceutical company.
Looking at Jack’s face, I told
him, “You don’t think that’s Fluffy, do you?”
He turned to me with his backward
baseball cap and freaky giant loops lodged in his ear lobes, and sneered at
me. “Oh…you want to have bonding
time. I don’t do that, kid. When your mom’s around, I just pretend to
like you. So, just sit there and don’t
bother me.” I was stunned. First of all, how could anyone not like
me? Second of all, what kind of guy was
this?
“But, I thought you liked
me. You’re just fooling my mom? I’ll tell her and she’ll kick you out.”
Jack just smirked. “She won’t believe you. I’m gonna talk her into giving you to your
dad. Sorry…tough breaks, kid.”
As I got off the couch to yell at
him, I had completely forgotten the news flash about the cat that looked like
Fluffy, and my dad arrived, honking the horn to let me know he was there. My dad never got out of his car now that Jack
was in the picture. An intense dislike
existed between the two men, but like my dad, I now despised Jack, too. Well, if this dude didn’t want me around, I
was just fine living with my dad, except he probably wouldn’t let me bring
Fluffy along so I would have to give him up.
My only fear was that my mom would agree with Jack and send me
away. What kid wanted to be rejected by
his mother? Hopefully, when she would
hear of his plan, she would kick Jack out on his rear. Another honking from my impatient father
signaled that I needed to grab my suitcase and go.
Jack snapped, “Will you hurry up
and go, kid? I’m sick of smelling
you.” Dejectedly, I snatched my suitcase
by the handle and rolled it towards the door.
“Are you gonna at least feed and
take care of Fluffy while I’m gone,” I asked the big jerk.
He only chuckled. “Dude.
I’m throwing that thing out as soon as I see it.”
“You’re nothing but a big
jerk! And I know my mom won’t go along
with your plan.” Opening the door, I
yanked my suitcase out towards the driveway.
I heard him respond, “Well, I’m
not really giving her a choice.”
Stopping dead in my tracks, I
questioned, “What do you mean by not giving her a choice? You’re not her boss. She’ll kick you out right on your butt.”
Sneering, he said, “That’s where
you’re wrong. She agrees or I’ll mess
her up. Now, close the door already.”
Alarmed by how upset I looked, my
dad stepped out of his Mercedes, and yelled, “Hey, Nate. Everything, okay?” Even though I stifled back the urge to cry,
since I was practicing to be a man and all, the tears leaked out anyway. My dad knew something was wrong. I began shutting the door, but my dad rushed
up to the porch and looked in the house to see Jack on the couch watching his
baseball game.
Smiling as fake of a friendly
grin as he could, Jack greeted my dad with a nod. “Your boy and I were just having some bonding
time and he was like doing the ‘You’re not my real dad’ kind’a thing. Have fun you guys.”
My dad snorted at Jack,
suspecting something strange going on, but he just shut the front door and
helped me with my suitcase. “What’s
going on, Nate?”
“Can we talk about it in the
car?” I whined through my tears. If
anyone from my school saw me blubbering like I was, I would never hear the end
of it. So, my dad threw my suitcase in
his trunk while I slumped into the front passenger seat. As soon as we pulled out of the driveway I
explained the cruel way Jack spoke to me and his plan to hurt my mom if she
didn’t agree to give up custody.
“Well, you always have a place
with me. It’s probably safer anyway with
that maniac in the house. Too bad your
mom found a real loser.” This helped me to
feel better. Now I was terrified my mom
would get hurt by Jack…and Fluffy would be a homeless animal again.
“Dad, what about Fluffy? Can I bring him? I mean, I take care of him and everything. I wish I could go back and go get him.” I stared at the traffic on the highway.
“Oh, sure. That’s no problem. I didn’t even think about the cat. We can’t bring him this time, but if and when
you move in, we’ll be sure he comes along.”
This brought a sigh of relief
because I signed a form agreeing to provide Fluffy the care he needed. “Jack said he’s gonna throw him out.”
Adding some optimism to my
situation, my dad retorted, “The thing about cats…you can toss them out, but once
you think you’ve gotten rid of ‘em, they come right back. He’ll be looking for you. Cats are weird that way.”
Those words would prove to be
exceptionally true when it came to Fluffy.
I spent my two weeks with my dad going fishing, detailing the hot rod he
was constructing in the garage, and either eating out or cooking on the
grill. He even let me fire up hamburgers
and never even complained eating them (they were greatly overdone and tasted
like ash). Two weeks had vanished as if
they were a mere two hours, and it was time to drive me home. Before going back to Michigan, I couldn’t
believe the national news was covering my home town there. The lost cat that I first saw on our local
news, back when Jack displayed his jerky quality, apparently grew to an
enormous size. Experimenting with a new
growth hormone for cattle, the local pharmaceutical company had caused that cat
to be exceptionally huge. It chased
after cars and trucks, swatting them clear off the roads. People cringed as it strode through downtown,
leaping on top of the largest buildings in town. No one went outside. Even the National Guard was ineffective with
him.
Once my dad and I approached the
town from the highway, we could see the animal in the distance and it looked
like it was over in my neighborhood.
“Dad,” I stated. “That has to be
Fluffy. It looks just like him.” We drove into town and weaved through Main
Street, not one person out and about.
When we finally came to the road I lived on, we drove through National
Guard troops following the giant cat, shooting at it. The cat only meowed and hissed in
annoyance. Bullets irritated and they
must have hurt as it considered possibly attacking the troops, but hesitated
since it had an aversion to pain like most cats, so I guessed.
Suddenly, we were stopped by the
National Guard. After my dad rolled down
the window, a lieutenant commanded, “You gotta turn right around. It’s not safe.”
I interrupted before my dad could
speak. “But, my house is down here. And, I think that’s my cat. Same coloring and everything. Only, now it’s giant size.”
“I’m sorry,” muttered the
lieutenant. “We can’t allow you to go
any further. It’s for your own
protection.”
“But…” I began to say, but my dad
had calmed me down.
“We’ll leave. We’ll just wait until this is all over.” As my dad mentioned this, I spotted the
enlarged Fluffy paw at the roof of my house, and it totally swatted the A-frame
into the yard. Fearing for my mom, I
yanked the car door handle open, removed my seatbelt by throwing it off me, and
sprinted towards the giant cat. “Nathan, no.”
I hated to be disobedient, but if this was indeed Fluffy, then perhaps I
could persuade it to end his rampage. I
had to dodge the National Guard troops who chased after me and that’s when I
made it to the next door neighbor’s driveway.
Through the gaping hole at the
top of my home, Fluffy stuck his head in and the next thing I knew, Jack was dangling
in its mouth by its teeth. While being
tackled by the Guardsmen, I shouted at Fluffy in hopes he would respond. “No, Fluffy!
Put Jack down! You’ve been very
naughty.” He just didn’t listen to me
and ate my mother’s boyfriend anyway.
Jack screamed something terrible,
but it didn’t last long. The Guardsman
pulled me on my feet and spoke to me, but I just ignored him. My attention went right to Fluffy and I
yelled to him as the Guardsmen continued to strike him with bullets. So, I called to him, “Here,
Fluffy-Fluffy. Here.” That cat glanced at me and meowed
considerably and it bounded towards me, while the troops continued shooting
him, backing away pulling me with them.
However, Fluffy batted them all away, resulting in each Guardsman sailing
through the air over a hundred yards from where I was. For a moment, it was just the giant cat and
me. Lowering its head, Fluffy knocked me
over trying to rubbing his head on me.
Exiting the house was my mom, who
looked beaten up with bruises all over her face. She watched me with the cat and she shouted,
“Nathan. I think your cat is looking for
you. Jack had tied it in a bag and threw
it in the river. I guess Fluffy wasn’t
too happy about it. That guy was a
jerk!” Running over to her, I gave her a
hug.
As for Fluffy he fell completely
unconscious and shrank back to normal cat size right in my neighbor’s
yard. The National Guard had to take him
away. I wasn’t sure if they planned on
returning him back to the pharmaceutical company or not. Perhaps he died and I cried, running after
him, begging for his release to me.
The lieutenant explained, “We
can’t let this cat leave our possession.
It threatens everyone’s safety.
He even ate a man and nearly killed our troops and people on the roads
in their cars.”
“But, he saved me and my mom from
that man that he ate. He was a
jerk.” This would not persuade the
Guardsman. Fluffy wasn’t even moving and
I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. “Is
he dead?”
“I think so, kid. Where’d you get him?”
“From the animal shelter. I was going to raise him to do tricks so we
could be on T.V. together. I’m the only
one he ever really became friends with.
Can I at least say good-bye.” I
reached to pet him. Tears welled in my
eyes for Fluffy. “I hope there are plenty
of mice up there in cat heaven. Bye,
Fluffy.”
“Well, just think,” added the
lieutenant. “All that happened here will
be on the news. So…in a way, you did go
on T.V. together.” The National Guard
all caravanned away from the neighborhood and I saw people finally daring to
leave their homes.
I walked back to my battered
mother and noticed my dad had left his car to join us. Giving both of them a hug, I asked them, “So,
does this mean you guys might get back together?”
They only glanced at each other
with smiles and both insisted, “I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”
Sighing and puffing out a breath,
my dad said while rocking on his feet, “Well…I guess I better be off. Hey,” he rubbed my sandy blonde stubby head
of hair. “I’ll see you in two
weeks. Take care.”
Watching him head back to the
car, I glanced back towards my mom.
“So,” I started to say. “When can
I go and pick out a new cat?”
Laughing through the bruises on
her cheeks, she wasn’t as eager to replace Fluffy as I was. “I don’t know. We’ll have to stay with Grandma until our
house gets fixed. If it’s all right with
her, we can do it then.”
“Darn, I’m gonna be lonely until
then. I don’t think I’ll ever find
another cat quite like Fluffy,” I uttered.
As soon as I said that, an
enormous meow came thundering through the town.
In the distance I noticed that Fluffy was still alive and as gigantic as
ever. He came bounding towards our
house. The sounds of the National Guard
had followed behind it.
“You know, Mom. Dad was right. Cats do come right back.” Then, I turned to Fluffy as he leapt over
houses, getting closer and closer.
“Fluffy!” And, I ran over to
him. He lowered his head, I climbed up
between his shoulders, and I rode him throughout the city. I was the happiest kid on Earth.
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