Be Our Guest

by Anna Merlan

As with many successful con artists, it can sometimes be difficult to remember how he entered our lives. The first time he appeared, as far as I can recall, he was trying out the neighboring apartment building where a half dozen kids live, all of them eager to claim him as their own mangy new toy. The cat is very large, by cat standards, a stately tuxedo with a white crescent moon on his face and very fat cheeks, because no one bothered to get him fixed for years and that’s apparently what happens. He hung around the courtyard of the apartment building for a while, cadging food and sleeping in a pile of abandoned outdoor toys, a jumble of grimy paws, his cheek pressed against a plastic airplane. 

The kids proved a little noisy for his taste, I think, and the next thing we knew he had taken up residence in the backyard my husband and I share with three other neighbors. One day, it was hot, and he was huddled against the side of the house. We brought him a dish of water and a can of tuna hastily unearthed from the emergency food bin; he looked at us curiously when we set it down, waited for us to step back a few feet, then dug in. 

This went on for weeks: we fed him. One of the other neighbors fed him. He took to standing on the railing next to our back steps and demanding to be petted. He napped on the roof of a shed where we keep spare junk; from there, he could also peer into a kitchen window, awaking when he heard me in there and howling for service. We bought cat food because, we reasoned, it was cheaper than tuna. 

Then, inevitably, one day we were taking too long delivering his breakfast and he invited himself inside, waltzing through the back door of the house and looking around the kitchen. We put a ratty towel on the floor. He kneaded it with his claws, heaved an audible sigh, and promptly went to sleep.