Geodes, Cats, and Neighbors

by Donna Schoenkopf

Friday morning the dogs and cats had their 5:00 am breakfasts. I always grumble about it but I really do love the mornings and if they weren’t pestering me I’d sleep away that prettiest time of day.

By nine all four of them had gone outside for their various adventures. I was hoping the cats would be back before my visitors came at four o’clock, but that was not to be the case. I figured I could somehow corral them at home so they wouldn’t run away. They are scared of unknown people. Rosie’s the worst, as you know if you’ve ever read this column. She once stayed at Orval’s house for four months. THAT was an endless trial, let me tell you!

The first bad omen about their return was some yipping about ten in the morning coming from my forest to the southeast, next to Neighbor Dave’s house. It was my dog, Diego, and he was giving that high pitched yip that meant he either had treed something or killed it. I immediately thought of the cats. They have always been something he couldn’t resist if he came across them outdoors. I never had trouble if all the dogs and cats were in the house together. They (mostly) got along all right, not that they were best friends, but they coexisted without any fuss. But outside, with the smell of excitement in the air ... well, everything was fair game, pun intended.

As I’ve said, my visitors were to arrive at 4:00 pm. They would be staying Friday and Saturday nights. That meant I could go look for both cats before everybody got here. So out I went, into the dripping forest. (There had been torrential rains for three days, resulting in three drownings in Oklahoma City.) I walked down to the edge of the trees, looked around, pushed through a huge spider web, then squoooshed through the sodden soil and over the broken tree limbs littering the ground, calling both cats. I gave them my “come and eat!” call. Nothing. I went further and scrambled through the underbrush and briars, calling, listening, but eventually gave up and turned around and went home.

I kept thinking about them. I wondered if Diego had buried Che or Rosie like he had the little newborn puppy he had brought home several months ago and played with until it died. After he realized it was not moving he took it gently in his mouth and ran down the hill behind some cedar trees and dug a hole in the layers of fallen leaves and buried it. I ran down the hill, uncovered it, picked it up and carried its limp little body to a secret place and buried it. It was a little male.

After a couple of hours I went into the forest again and squooshed around some more and began looking for places on the ground that looked like they had been dug up. Nope. Nothing.

Well, the mosquitoes were thick and God knows how bad the ticks were in the trees, so I decided to go home.

But I still couldn’t stop thinking about my cats, so an hour later, out I went again. Still nothing. And a fourth time. Nothing.

But my guests would be arriving soon, so I had to put the cats on hold.

My guests:

John teaches high school science in Long Beach to mostly Latino and black students with a few Cambodians thrown in. Helen is a pediatric therapist in Torrance. She massages the hearts of newborns, suctions their noses when they can’t breathe, and sundry other duties. Chris is their seven-year-old son. They were my neighbors in San Pedro. They lived right next door and moved out just before I did but we kept in touch.

I got an e-mail from Helen a few weeks ago saying they would love to come to Chigger Lake to have a look at my house in the country, seeing as how they were going to be in the neighborhood. Wichita, Kansas, to be exact. It’s a couple of hours’ drive down to me.

Great, I say. And now it was Friday afternoon and they’d be here soon.

I called them on their cell and made arrangements to have them meet me at the Sonic Drive-In out on Killer Highway 177. They were to follow me because getting to my house for the first time and trying to deal with the signage and the highway are nerve-wracking at best and dangerous at worst. Better I should meet them and bring them in.

The Sonic Drive-In is a perfect place to meet visitors. It’s easy in/easy out due to the rough and rutted parking lot in the back, which is normally used for folks wanting a free place to sell their produce from the back of their pickup truck.

I got there and John and Helen and Chris pulled up alongside me a minute later and we made our happy hellos and I told them the plan and we all climbed back in our cars and proceeded to my house.

We drove the eight miles back to my house, parked, and walked up to the front door and went inside.

It really is a surprise for people, walking in the front door for the first time, and so it was for them. I always enjoy that part. I feel like such a magician. Shed on the outside ... presto! ... groovy pad on the inside. Heh.

So we had a merry get-together and we caught up on each other’s lives and had a martini (I’ve sure had my fill of them the last two or three weeks) and unpacked their car.

Dinner was waiting and ready when we were. A roast chicken and roasted potatoes and Brussels sprouts and a cole slaw salad with slivered apples.

And waddaya know! Rosie stood outside in the dark watching us. I was ecstatic seeing her little face outside so I moved toward the door, but she, being the scaredy-cat that she is, bolted into the night.

But no Che. There was nothing to do about it, so we had an easy evening of talk and then to bed. I knew Rosie was okay. But Che ...

I always have folks sleep in my bed. It’s on the eastern side of the house and mornings there are great. Chris got the fold down couch in the living room and I snuggled in my corner at the far end of the house where I go when there are tornadoes a’poppin’.

It’s just like camping for me and my guests. There is absolutely no privacy because I have no walls so everybody goes to bed at the same time. When it’s lights out, I imagine everyone listening to each to each other’s breathing and rustling sounds.

We were all sleeping when Chris called to his dad, so John sat up in bed and exclaimed that there was a cat sitting outside the sliding glass door. It was Rosie!

But she bolted into the night.

Still no Che.

The next morning French toast and orange juice and coffee and making plans for the day. I had already told them I had a Democratic Club meeting at ten, and if I didn’t show up we wouldn’t have a quorum, so they made plans to go on an adventure somewhere and we’d meet in the afternoon.

I got home from my Democratic meeting (it was fun!) and decided to try again in the woods. This time I took the dogs and kept saying, “Where’s Che?” to them. Angela Davis looked up a tree for a long time. But no, he wasn’t there. Diego looked around, acting like he knew what I was talking about. But he’s no Lassie, let me tell you. I kept saying, “Where’s Che? Where’s Che?”

And then ... there was Che! Just sitting there, in the forest, looking at me. The dogs were VERY good and didn’t lunge at him. I walked up slowly to him, but I could see that he was ill. His third eyelids were halfway across his eyes. He was listless. I picked him up. He hadn’t eaten in two days. He hissed at the dogs but made no move to jump from my arms. I carried him all the way home and put out the most delicious food for him—salmon from a previous dinner and canned cat food—but he’d have none of it. He walked over to the water dish and lapped water slowly.

I thought, “He’s eaten something poisonous, like rat poison or a bad spider.” He lay on the concrete floor and looked somewhat normal. I decided to let him be.

Then I heard John and Helen’s car and I went over to the front door and opened it and Che STREAKED out of the house.

My heart sank.

Well, there was nothing to be done, except to focus on my guests.

They parked the car and before I knew it, John and Chris had unloaded some beautiful thick lumber. To build me a raised garden bed! I was stunned.

(John is particularly fond of gardening and when they lived next door I saw him outside every day, gardener hat on, cigar clenched between his teeth, and a beer nearby. He had that place looking pretty as a picture. Some of us renters definitely add value to rental homes, enriching landlords by repairing things and gardening and putting in new floors. It is very annoying hearing most people speak disparagingly of renters. Just a little heads up, folks.)

So while John pounded rebar into the (luckily!) wet clay and constructed the raised bed , Helen and I chatted about everything and occasionally went out to help here and there.

Spaghetti was simmering. Things were good. I thought it would be fun to walk down to the mailboxes, which is a nice walk. We could drop off our garbage, too. As we walked Helen pointed out to John that there were some Oklahoma rocks off the side of the road, so John made his way to them and brought a couple home. He and Helen said they might be geodes because of their round shapes and veins covering the outside.

When we got home I brought out a heavy hammer and John cracked one open to reveal the beginnings of quartz crystals inside. The crystals were white. They looked sort of like rock salt.

Late in the day father and son took my wheelbarrow back down the road, Chris riding inside, and returned with a slew of them. They cracked open a half dozen, leaving another dozen on the deck.

Spaghetti dinner. More talk. Bedtime. Morning.

We did some laundry, packed up the car, and I waved them off.

I walked back into the house and saw our first geode on my side table and decided to put it into the basket on the front deck. It would be pretty nestled in with the painted rocks Jackson and Kate painted last year, I thought. Yellow and purple and green and magenta-faded-to-pink. They looked like lumpy Easter eggs.

I put the geode into its nest. It sparkled in the sun.

But still ... no cats.

I wonder if I’ll ever see them again.

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