I have a cat inside my head. I like to think they found him on the CT scan of my brain and lungs but it turns out he was such a part of my insides that nobody batted an eye. That CAT scans don’t scan cats. Harvey was just there in the lurching. A cartoon firing from brain to hand,   undetected, until my world tilts and the cat steps up to keep me sane.

Harvey used to happen on bar napkins. A crumpled sketch, whiskers inked and captions screaming out of Harvey’s mouth about how he could have been somebody or what’s up with Port? Showing off my artwork to my husband and the bartender like an energetic five year old. A five year old on her second glass of cabernet. [1]

But we haven’t gone to bars in over a hundred days. And I was having symptoms.

The doctor asks me if I ever smoked. I confess just socially, in my twenties. You know in bars.

I forget the second type of smoke. Growing up, riding with my pack of sisters, unbelted, windows rolled up, mom’s one hand on the wheel, the other grabbing for another pack. Salem. Not lites. The real deal.

My doctor says, to be sure, we should get you tested.

Four days to get me scheduled. Four days of feeling like the elevator doors will never open, of shortened breath. Four days of remembering my mother hooked, then hooked-up: to lines and tanks, her lungs saying the longest goodbye.

Meanwhile, Harvey wouldn’t shut up. So I posted him on Facebook. A socially responsible mouth, telling us to wash our paws [2], change our passwords [3], or make our own masks [4].

Then we settled into isolation: me, Harvey, my husband, Rick, and Jack.

For the record, Jack is not our child. Just the newest cat. Harvey was the cat I brought into our marriage, a diabetic stray who never scratched and once flung himself into an unlit fireplace when my husband and I disagreed. The soot on his face a reminder of gratitude. Harvey was a walking cartoon of fur and love who died by a needle we ordered because cancer is cancer and with cats, we get to be God. Then make them immortal on grocery lists, bar napkins, and pandemic postings: playing Scrabble [5], reading [6], and doing what should never be done: [7]. [8].

 

Jack, however, is a foster scowl of piss and vinegar whose abandoned soul morphed into Harvey – a backward reincarnate reminding Rick and me we still had a lot of work to do in loving the battered of this world.

For four days, I reminded myself that chest tightness was anxiety, that for weeks I had been doing the responsible thing. Giving blood [9], social distancing [10], reaching out to friends [11], preparing for Fall online teaching [12], [13].

 

 

Then, waiting, I get company. Jack was having symptoms.

The real deal. Not a cartoon.

The Vet phones me in the parking lot. She doesn’t ask if Jack ever smoked (although I picture Harvey smoking, cross-legged, making clay ash trays for his mom in 1965) [14].

Instead, she tells me Jack is dropping weight. We should run more tests.

Cats don’t drop weight. Wrestlers do. Anorexics do. Svelte running dogs who worry about their waist do.  But not cats. They throw up, yes, but they never fetch or go for walks. They sleep four thousand hours a day and pack on the pounds. And get diabetes, then cancer. Wait. Jack might have cancer?

The Technician brings Jack back. We are mask to mask as I open the car door and he says what a handsome boy. I joke that’s what saves him. I look at Jack looking at me from inside his carrier. Driving away, biting my lip, I whisper don’t you dare die.

In another parking lot, a nurse swabs my nose for twenty bucks co-pay. Two days later I pay four hundred bucks for Jack’s ultra sound. Just to make sure. Four hundred bucks because we love that cat. We love him despite the vomit at 5 AM and the violent attacks. We love him even though he isn’t Harvey. Or a dog. Because in small ways Jack started loving us back. The claws not so deep, the relaxation of bone and fur and muscle in our arms. The curling up on the couch. He’s such a handsome boy.

Harvey waits for our results with me. In 2020, like grief, there are stages of waiting [15], [16].

 

Harvey adds the sorrows of the world to our list [17], [18], reminding us to pay respects.

 

On my walks I check my breathing, thinking of the 100,000 lungs that gave out this year. How their lives had meaning. I think of my mother years ago. I think of Jack. Don’t die. Don’t you dare die.

There are flyers posted on telephone poles. Everyone’s losing their cats. I want to find a lost cat and return it to their owner, watch them wrap arms around that damn tabby. This would be a salvation. In 2020, there is so little to hang on to anymore. I want to save something. Or, at least, find joy in chaos.

My results come nine days and three minutes later when I return the clinic’s call and the receptionist says let me put you on hold.

Then, finally, It’s negative, Jennifer says on the line, adding congratulations! As if I had won something, as if I had earned an award for dodging the smallest float of air.

I hang up and relief comes like power being turned back on. Better yet, the next day, when the vet says it’s not cancer it felt like the band coming back on stage, so I grab Jack and we dance across the kitchen floor imagining thousands and thousands of hands holding up tiny torches of light.

A life is a life is a life, even if it once was twelve pounds then ten then nine.

And lives inside your head [19].

Deborah Meltvedt is a recently retired Medical Science teacher who lives in Sacramento, California with her husband Rick and their cat, Anchovy Jack. Deborah has been published in local literary anthologies and in the Creative Non-Fiction Anthology, What I Didn’t Know: True Stories of Becoming a Teacher. Her first book of poetry, Becoming a Woman, was published last year.