Page 5 of Freak
The marriage and kids thing was not on his to-do list. With the age of fifty looming a couple years ahead, he could safely say it never would be. He loved kids, but he’d never felt a need for one of his own. Being the fun uncle scratched whatever itch he had in that regard. And he’d never seen a reason for marriage without the offspring part.
So his life was just the way he wanted it.
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~oOo~
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After a beer and ahandful of pretzels, a shower and a change of clothes, and a quick preen before his bedroom mirror, Mel was ready to go. First, though, he went out back and checked supplies.
He didn’t have any pets, per se; he spent a lot of time away from home and would feel guilty leaving an animal cooped up alone in the house. But he loved all animals, from praying mantises to polar bears and everything in between, and there was a feral cat community somewhere around—in the woods, probably. About five years ago, he’d started seeing a huge old orange tom lurking around the trees and tall grasses, or sometimes drinking at the pond, or stalking fieldmice. Tom was far too feral to get close enough to touch, but eventually he’d seemed to decide Mel was an okay human. Shortly after that, a small grey cat with orange and white splotches came around with Tom. And so on, until now there were seventeen cats in a true colony, living their best lives out here in his woods.
Clearly they had their lives figured out and needed little from him, but one bitterly cold winter he’d built some of those feral-cat houses he’d seen online, big plastic tubs filled with insulation and padding, so ferals could get out of the bad weather. Those had been a huge hit with his feline neighbors, and over time thereafter, Mel had, without ever precisely planning to, created a Kittyland under his back deck—the insulated houses, enrichment installations, and kibble, too, for those days when the fieldmice, sparrows, and lizards were just too quick.
After withstanding a lecture from Lexi Elstad, at the most recent Christmas party, about how important it was to ‘control the feral cat population,’ and all the little kittens who were killed in shelters every year for lack of space, and this thing called ‘TNR,’ Mel was trying to capture his neighbor cats and take them in to get fixed. After, what, nine months of trying, only four had the tell-tale ear dock so far—mainly because he felt like such a ripe shit when the trap thingy he’d found online snapped shut. The cats who got trapped yowled like they were being dismembered in there. He didn’t put it out as often as he probably should.
Tom was not among the cats he’d managed to TNR. Though that big old bastard was around just about every day, he considered Mel a servant, not a friend. Friendliness was therefore beneath him. He took one look at that trap when it was out and leveled a gaze at Mel so disdainful Mel practically blushed. Trapping that wily fucker would take more than a plate of shredded tuna or a hunk of cheese.
Considering the preponderance of orange in these cats—orange tabbies, orange tuxies, calicos and tortoiseshells made up a good two-thirds at least, and each new kitten season had at least a couple pumpkins in the crop—Tom had been deploying his nut juice liberally. Mel was going to need to sack up himself and figure out a way to catch him, no matter how guilty he felt about it, or how long Tom held a grudge once it happened.
That was not a problem for this moment, however. Tonight, before Mel headed back out, he checked to make sure everything was intact and where it belonged. In the warm seasons, when there was plenty for them to eat out in the woods, he didn’t leave the feeders full around the clock, but he untangled a few ropes they’d flung about, he made sure all the resting platforms and cubbies had their padding (he thought of this as ‘turning down their beds’), and he refreshed the water trough. They could and did drink from the pond at the bottom of the hill there, but he saw no reason they had to make that long walk in the middle of the night, when they stayed over at Hotel Lind.
Half a dozen cats were close enough to trot over and mewl at him while he worked, and each who wanted one got a chin scratch or head pat. He’d learned that ‘feral’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘hostile’; a good half the colony loved belly rubs and scritches, and when he sat out by his fire pit on a pleasant evening, he’d invariably end up with a few cats draped over him.
Tom, on the other hand, had never yet been close enough to touch. Tonight, he perched primly atop the brick ring around the firepit, his head high, his posture still, his golden eyes regally observing his subjects, the roster of which included Mel himself.
“Hey, buddy,” Mel called. At the sound of his voice, Tom tensed, his haunches coming slightly off the bricks, ready to bolt if Mel took a step in his direction. “I’m not gonna bug ya, don’t sweat it.” As if he understood, Tom sat down again and continued his surveillance.
Mel got a kick out of that kitty cat treating him like his servant, and the cabin and the woods themselves like his own personal kingdom. Chuckling to himself, he headed to his old Wide Glide, parked in front of his garage, on the dirt lane he called a driveway.
With his helmet in his hands, he paused. A new idea had tweaked his thinker.
A few years back, he’d gotten a few free packs of wildflower seeds in the mail—some kind of junk-mail promotion from a seed company. Mel was no gardener. He’d almost tossed them in the trash, but then he’d thought twice. He’d put in a new pre-fab garage a few weeks before, and the ground around its foundation was still tilled up and ratty looking. He’d been meaning to put shrubs in, or maybe just a ring of gravel or something, but there he stood with six packs of wildflower seeds. He dumped the packs, soaked the ground, and waited to see what might happen.
What happened: his garage was ringed with a riot of color from mid-spring straight to the first hard frost. Mel wasn’t a flowery sort, and he had no clue what most of the flowers were, but the fuckers were damn pretty. And they seemed to self-fertilize, or whatever that was called. Every year there were more.
Shit like that was why he loved life, the world, all of it. For every shitty thing a person did, another person was doing something wonderful. For every storm, there was a rainbow, or at least that awesome smell after. For every mound of bare earth, there were flowers. Even the worst day had a sunset. And a whole new day after.
He considered those vibrant flowers and knocked the idea around in his head for a minute. Would it be dumb to do it?
How could it possibly be dumb?
