Another Kind of Rescue

My new neighborhood teems with cats. As I'm driving home late, I see them race up the sides of trees. Their eyes glint from the bushes. They perch on fence posts.

One met me in the street, as if she'd been waiting like an old debt. No collar, no tags. I opened a can of tuna. She ate, smacking and purring, and then slid out the door like a liquid shadow.

Afterward, I lay in bed and listened to the wails and shrieks of cats, fighting or mating. I should know the difference; my grandmother once owned 35 cats. She welcomed every stray that showed up, and kept her cat lodge a secret from the outside world. People might not understand, she said.

Her husband, Carl, would not have understood, nor would he have tolerated the dirt, the smell or the cost of food. Carl, though, had left her for a woman he met at the power plant. My grandmother's sadness lasted the rest of her life. "How could he do me this way?" she asked me. Growing up with her in the Midwest, I had no answers. I tried to disappear among the cats.

When the meter man rang our bell, we fell silent in mid-sentence. Nobody moved. We could not allow him into the basement. He would discover the sea of cats and report us to the health department. He might notice the penny in the fuse box, too—a fire hazard, but it worked when money was low. Never use a penny , warned the manuals. Only the correct fuse can protect against overload.

The meter man gave up knocking and looped a rectangle of paper over the doorknob, like one of those "Do Not Disturb" signs in hotels. My grandmother read the meter herself. With a pencil she made marks on the tiny clocks and hung the paper out again.