Mukey had to reconsider the possibility that Lou was a girl cat when he woke one day to find a kitten coming out of it, goopy and helpless, white with itsy orange spots. His sense of betrayal at Lou’s not being a boy gave way to amazement as he watched her thoroughly lick the kitten and chew off the string that protruded from its belly. The kitten whimpered faintly and then sort of crawled around blindly until it found a little bump on its mother’s belly. It plopped itself there and started sucking.
Mukey stared dumfounded. There was a smell that was unfamiliar but not unpleasant. A deep serenity pervaded the room.
Lou’s body suddenly jolted and she let out a scraaaaw! Something was happening. Another kitten! A dark, fist-sized globule, taking its time to come out. When it finally emerged, it wasn’t moving, and he wondered if it was alive, but Lou licked it incessantly and eventually one of its teeny paws moved. It crawled up and found a spot next to the other kitten. Mukey noticed it was striped.
Lou looked over at Mukey, proudly it seemed, though clearly exhausted. Mukey smiled back and patted her. Her fur was thick and soft. He had almost never felt so close to anyone as he felt to Lou right then.
“She’s having her kittens!” Louise shouted, and rushed to the bed.
Mukey winced at the word “she” though obviously it could no longer be denied that Lou was female. His mother came too, and a hush fell over them as they witnessed the emergence of new life. The bed was no longer a place the world had forgotten.
After the fifth kitten it seemed there were no more coming out. Lou was an attentive mother, making sure her kittens were washed and fed, nudging them toward her when they crawled off in the wrong direction and started to whimper.
“I wonder why she didn’t have them in the box we made for her?” Louise asked.
“We’ll have to move them,” Mukey’s mother said.
“Move them?” Mukey said, startled. “They’re totally happy here!”
“What if they fall off the bed?” Louise said.
“What if you roll over and suffocate them?” his mother said.
“I won’t.”
“They can stay a bit longer but then we have to move them.”
“How much longer?” Mukey asked, voice quivering.
His mother sighed. Mukey noticed strands of grey in her hair for the first time. She left. Louise followed.
Night fell, but the moon shone in on the sleeping blobs of slimy fur. Mukey watched, captivated, as their tiny bodies breathed in and out. He himself was breathing too quickly. He pulled the puffy, pink comforter up over his shoulders carefully so as not to disturb Lou, who was lying against his thighs with her kittens. Clasping the dragonfly lure to his chest, he felt like part of the cat huddle, and it was cozy.
His mother peeked into the room. He feared that once he fell asleep she would take the kittens away. He tried to stay awake but he was so sleepy.
The next time Mukey awoke, all that was left of Lou and the kittens were a few blood stains on the pink bedspread (which thankfully wasn’t his). A new kind of loneliness enveloped him. He was chilled, shaking in fact. He happened to look out the window and see Pukey walk down his driveway and turn the other direction. Probably going to the corner store to get black-bottomed green and yellow gummy tarantulas. He watched smoke billow from the forested mountains that encircled the town as he waited for Pukey to come back. Twenty minutes later Pukey hadn’t returned. Mukey didn’t see how he could possibly have missed him. There was a strange clenching around his heart.
Finally—there he was. But it wasn’t Pukey; it was Pukey’s dad. Looked just like him: ultra-pale, with deep-set eyes that glinted strangely. Mukey had always been a bit afraid of him, but he wished he could ask him about talking to aliens by tuning into other dimensions.
He overheard his mother gossiping on the phone in the room he still thought of as his parents’ bedroom.
“Broken ribs and no tail,” she was saying. “I know. It’s horrible.”
Mukey shuddered to think what she might be referring to.
“And another one completely dismembered. Yes, on this street!”
Mukey covered his ears with his pillow, and then uncovered them upon hearing his name.
“It’s lasting too long to be the flu. Probably pneumonia. I’m worried,” his mother said in a voice that wasn’t adult-like.
Mukey’s head pounded. He touched his cheeks and then his forehead. They were hot as scraps of Okawee metal lying in the sun. His whole body was ablaze.
“He’s back in the hospital. Came by a few days ago, drunk as a doorknob, of course. Asked to see Mukey but Mukey was asleep.”
She’s talking about Dad, Mukey thought. In the hospital? Again? But he tried to see me! He wished his dad had woken him up.
“I’m trying to keep it together, but Christ!” his mom said. And then, “Yep, talk to you later.”
Mukey was deathly thirsty. The glass of water by his bedside was empty.
“Mom?” he called out weakly. “Mom?”
He felt the bed move, and turned expecting to see his mother. Instead there was Lou carrying the white-with-orange-polka dotted kitten in her teeth!
“Lou!” he said, grinning.
Lou dropped the kitten on the bed and left. Mukey was bewildered. Then she came back with the striped kitten, who, he now could see, had faint orange stripes as well as grey ones.
“Mom!” Louise screamed from somewhere in the house. “Two of the kittens are gone!”
Mukey tried to get out of bed to get some water. Reality wobbled. He grabbed the iron curlicues of the bed to steady himself. By the time he got back with a glass of water there was another kitten on the bed. Then another.
“Where’s she taking it?” he heard Louise say.
Cats and humans converged at his sick bed, which was again the happening place to be.
“Lou is strong-willed,” his mother said. “I guess we’ll let her raise the kittens on the bed.”
They pushed the bed against the wall so there was only one side where the kittens could fall off, and piled pillows along the floor so that if they fell they would fall on something soft.
“Look mom, there’s blood on the pillowcase,” Louise said. “Did you wash it after the kittens were born?”
Mukey’s mother frowned. “No, just the bedspread. I didn’t notice that before. I’ll get a fresh pillowcase.”
When his mother returned, she untied the sheer curtains that fell from the canopy bed so that Mukey and the cat family were hidden in an ethereal oasis surrounded on three sides by translucent dusky pink curtains, and to the left a large window. Mukey could barely make out the mountains due to the forest fire smoke, and the sun was a hot-pink smear. He curled himself around Lou and her purring pile of kittens who had decided that they wanted to be with him. He fondled the dragonfly lure with one hand, and wiped tears of happiness from his eyes with the other.
