Oklahoma Dreaming: Che
by Donna Schoenkopf
It’s Thanksgiving morning.
The phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Donna. This is Neighbor Jim. Just calling to wish you a Happy Thanksgiving and to ask you if you have a missing cat.”
“Uh. Yeah. Actually I have TWO missing cats.”
“What do they look like?”
“One’s a kind of camouflage cat, multicolored, and the other’s a big orange tabby.”
(Rosie, the camouflage cat, has been missing for almost two months and Che Guevara, the big orange tabby, has been missing for two weeks.)
“Well, I hate to tell you this but there’s a big orange tabby that’s been killed out on the highway, just where you turn onto our road.”
My heart stops.
“Oh, God. It sounds like Che.”
John looks up from the computer to ask what’s going on. I tell him.
“Well, thanks, Jim. I’m going to check it out. And Happy Thanksgiving to you.”
I climb into my car and drive out to the highway.
And sure enough. There is Che. Lying stretched out on the road. Dead.
I had seen something like a cat the night before, streaking in front of my car out on the county road, and disappearing into the woods.
I pull the red throw rug off the passenger seat to wrap him in and open the car door and step out.
Cars are racing past on the highway. My eyes are riveted on them and Che. I stand with an intense “Don’t run over my dead cat!” look on my face, holding that red rug. Car after car passes, each one skirting my poor dead cat. Finally there is a break in the line of cars. I hurry to the center of the road, scooping up his very heavy body in the rug, and scurry back to the car. I open the back door and lay him gently on the back seat.
I drive back to my house. I am stunned. No tears.
But then when I pick him up and carry him to my side “yard” I begin to sob. I cry and cry as I look around thinking about where I am going to lay his body to rest. I cry and cry as I remember the last time we walked to the mailbox together just two weeks ago, me strolling, him trotting, the two of us. He loved to walk to the mailbox with me, even enduring Diego the Dog when he came along, too. He’d hiss whenever Diego would get too playful, but would NOT leave me. I was HIS human.
I cry when I think of his little kitten self, eyes infected, ears full of mites, skinny and unweaned. An ugly little critter. I had treated those conditions completely wrong and ended up with him at the vets. I fed him by eye dropper. And because of all that, I became his mother.
He loved me with all his heart.
He would want to nurse off the back of my head, through my hair. At first I let him, but when I found a lump there, a hickey, I would avoid it. He wanted to cuddle with me always. But my asthma would act up and eventually I would scat him off my bed.
If I went outside, he went outside and followed me around, even when I was watering the plants.
He sat next to the Outdoor Shower and watched me, even though spray wetted him down.
He slept in the bathroom sink sometimes.
He loved it when I petted him, wrestling my arm as though I were a female cat.
He annoyed Rosie no end. Always waiting for her to go into heat, which never came.
He followed her everywhere when I put them out together.
He loved climbing trees.
He never got over his eye infection, always having the third eyelids partially extended over his eyes. He had periodic bouts of ear mites.
But he was robust and a happy feller.
And now I stand looking at the hard-baked ground wondering where to put him.
I look at the fig tree. Yes. That would be the place. He’d have shade in the summer and sun in the winter. The tree would have many birds in it, eating figs. He loved birds. In every way. For breakfast, lunch and dinner. Fricasseed and roasted, fried and in soup.
I lay him gently on the ground in his red rug and go to the back of the shed for the shovel and pitchfork.
I begin to dig but I can’t make a dent.
I go inside where John is still on the computer. I tell him it was Che who was on the highway. He is very sad for me. We go outside and he takes the pitchfork from me and begins digging a hole. It takes a long time to dig a hole deep and long enough for him. At last we lay him in and cover him with dirt. I drag some logs over to lay on top of the grave so the dogs won’t dig him up.
Then I go inside and sit down at the computer and begin pulling up pictures of Che.
John stands over my shoulder and says, “That wasn’t Che!”
I look at the picture on the screen.
I look again.
Doubt about Che’s identity begins to swell inside me. I look again and again. John and I look at each other.
“Let’s dig him up and see,” I say. John says again, “That was NOT Che!”
We go back to Che’s picture and memorize the markings of Che’s fur and walk back to the grave.
I pull off the logs and John and I push back the dirt. We unwrap the cat’s body from the red rug.
It is not Che.
The cat we’d buried has testicles. And no white ring around the neck. And no white chest. And no real definitive tabby rings on the tail. Yes, he is exactly the same size and nearly the same color and an orange tabby, BUT it is not Che.
Relief floods over me.
IT IS NOT CHE!!!
It is a cat very, very much like Che, but it is not Che.
We both laugh. Hard.
Then I think, “Maybe it’s Fidel! Maybe he’s been hiding in the woods for the last two years.” (He was also an orange tabby, who disappeared two days after I let him out when we first moved here. And he, too, loved me. He had never come back.)
But the testicle test eliminated Fidel as a possibility, too.
So we reburied the anonymous cat. Gently. And with respect.
I am going to put a marker on the grave.
It is going to read “Not Che OR Fidel”.
And I guess Che’s and Fidel’s whereabouts will never be known. Because I know one thing. If Che or Fidel COULD have come home, they would have.
Afterword
I go to Orval’s every day to leave food for Rosie and Che. Yesterday I saw Rosie for the first time in two months. It was about 8:30 in the morning. She had scurried out from under her favorite defunct car, the white Chevy Corsica. Orval has a bunch of old cars standing around. She was licking her chops because Orval had also fed her that morning.
She was happy to see me, but, being Rosie, wouldn’t come to me. However, she didn’t run off either. She raised her tail and gave me her love look. I put a bowl of food down on the ground and stepped several paces back. She came up guardedly and began eating, wolfing it down. Then when I moved slightly she jumped away and sat on a piece of sheet metal behind Orval’s barn. She sat in the sun, washing her face with her little paw, then her back and sides. She’d look over at me with love light in her eyes. We were both happy.
Some day she’ll let me pick her up. And then we’ll come home together.
As I watched Rosie contentedly washing her face in the sun, I called and called Che’s name as sweetly as I could, all the words he loved, standing there behind Orval’s barn, but there was still no sign of him.
I felt it. He’s gone. And I cried.
After-afterword
Just got back from feeding Rosie. She let me pet her. I made my move. I grabbed her by the scruff of her neck and didn't let go in spite of all the fury of a cat who thinks death is imminent. Got her in my car and then parked and put her in my cloth grocery bag. She calmed right down. Brought her indoors and she is in heaven. Purring, eating, loving me up one side and down the other. Then I bandaged up my wounds—face, hands, and one arm chewed up. A small price to pay.
AND Orval has seen a yellow cat next to his barn. Hmmmmm. Che?
AND we now have ANOTHER dog ... the cutest ever! She came yesterday. She is a blue heeler/Jack Russell cross, I think. She is a cattle dog. She was dumped on our road. She has a pink collar. She is smart and now sits proudly on the deck, guarding the premises, which neither Diego Rivera nor Angela Davis ever do; they just roam the neighborhood in a marauding fashion. I love the new dog. Her new name is Emma Goldman. Look it up.
donna@fourstory.org
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