Hey, Diary!
I had fun last Saturday. Mr. Morris took Jimmy and me out to the flying field so Jimmy could try out his new airplane, and it flew really well, and Jimmy did lots of tricks with it. And he brought one of his old planes, too, one that he said was easier to fly ’cause it had a bigger wing and went slower, and they had this second radio thing for me that was hooked up to Jimmy’s radio by a long wire. Mr. Morris started the plane’s engine and Jimmy took off with it. Then he flew it around a few times and showed me how the joysticks worked, how if you pulled back on the right hand one the plane went up, and if you pushed it right or left the plane turned. He didn’t explain about the other joystick, but I could see that when he pushed it forward, the plane made a lot more noise and went faster, and when he pulled it back, it slowed down.
“See how it works?” Jimmy asked me.
“I think so,” I told him.
“It’s your turn then,” he said, and he flipped a switch on his radio. I found out later that the switch made my radio work instead of his. “Pull back a little on the right stick and see what happens.”
I did, and the plane sort of jumped up in the sky and the motor made a whining noise, and then it turned over and started falling, and Jimmy flipped his switch again and did something with his own radio and the plane levelled out again and started flying right.
“What happened?” I said.
“You pulled the stick too far and it stalled, that’s all,” Jimmy said. “Go easy next time.”
He turned the plane around and it started back toward us, and he flipped that switch again and told me to try it. I moved the stick just a little and the plane began to climb.
“Now the other way,” Jimmy said, and when I did the plane came back down again, and when I let go it levelled off.
“Neat!” I told him.
“Now try some turns. Just move the stick a little bit to the right.”
I wiggled it and the plane dipped its right wing and began to turn. When I let go it straightened out, and I tried the other direction and the plane turned left.
“This is fun!” I told him.
We stayed there for more than two hours, and I even got to take off twice, but Jimmy wouldn’t let me land the plane. “Next time,” he said. But I didn’t mind. Mostly I liked watching him fly, so competent, almost as if he was, I don’t know, a whole person like everybody else.
I understand Jimmy a little better now, about his flying and all. His planes aren’t just toys. They’re a whole lot more to him, a way to be in control of something, something powerful, and to do something that not just anybody can do. They’re more than just models. Maybe they’re even a part of him somehow.
Jimmy doesn’t take everything for granted like I do, walking and running and just being a kid. Those are things I never even have to think about, but he must. All the time.
Anyway, about the cat. When I came home from school this afternoon and went up to my room, she was waiting outside the window as usual. I haven’t told you that yet, about what happened later that night after she jumped out the window and went down the tree.
Here’s what happened. I finished all my homework, and Dad still hadn’t come home yet, and Mom and I made some popcorn and watched TV for a while, only there wasn’t much on, so we played cribbage for about half an hour and I won, two games out of three. Then I went to bed, and I was just about asleep when I heard the cat meowing. I got up and looked out the window. See, it was shut on account of there wasn’t any screen, and the bugs would get in, and the cat was sitting on that long branch of the tree and looking in. So I opened the window, and she sort of crept along the branch, right out to the very end, and then she jumped and landed on the windowsill and down to the floor and up on the bed.
“You can’t stay here,” I told her. “If anybody finds you, I’ll be in big trouble.”
But she didn’t pay any attention to me. Okay, I know she didn’t understand what I was saying, but I sounded kind of angry, so she should have gotten the idea, but instead she did that flop-back-and-wash-her-privates thing that cats do, one back foot stuck up in the air. I got into bed, and when she finished washing she went down to the foot of the bed and turned around three or four times, pushing at the comforter with her front paws, kind of making a nest for herself, and when she was done she laid down on her stomach and started washing her front paws. I didn’t see what happened after that, ’cause I was really tired and I guess I fell sleep, but when I woke up the next morning she was still there, all curled up with her eyes closed.
I opened the window in case she wanted to go out and went to the bathroom to take a shower, and when I came back she was still lying on the bed, but she was awake by then. I picked her up and carried her to the windowsill, but instead of going out she jumped down and wandered over to the door. She looked up at me and meowed, and I said “Shush!” ’cause I didn’t want Mom to hear her, or especially Dad, in case he had ever finally come home. Then I went out and closed the door and went downstairs for breakfast.
Mom was there but Dad wasn’t. I didn’t ask where he was. I didn’t really care, and asking might have made Mom sad. I poured myself a glass of orange juice and ate a slice of toast. Then I poured some Rice Krispies into a bowl, about twice as much as I usually eat, and some milk too.
“We’re having an assembly today,” I told her.
“That’s nice, dear,” Mom said, not really listening to me.
“A whole bunch of kids are getting all their hair cut off.”
“Uh, huh.”
I ate some Rice Krispies for a minute or two, and then Mom stopped what she was doing and looked at me strangely. “What did you just say?”
“Some ninth grade kids are getting their hair cut off, right down to the scalp, and we’re all going to the gym to watch.”
“What for?”
“It’s a fund-raiser for cancer. You know, like when kids get cancer they lose all their hair ’cause of the medicine they have to take, so the ninth graders are getting their hair cut off. That way kids with cancer won’t feel like they’re different. And they’re donating the hair to this place in Toronto that makes wigs for kids who don’t have any, so people won’t look at them funny or feel sorry for them. You know how Jimmy hates it when people feel sorry for him. Lots of people are donating money to the Cancer Society, too, just to see all of them get bald.”
“Just the boys?” Mom asked.
“Uh, uh. Girls too. It’ll be in the newspaper and everything.”
“Why would they want to do that?”
“I told you, to help other kids who have cancer.”
Mom just shook her head. “Well, I guess it’s for a good cause. But I wouldn’t want you to look like that. You have such beautiful hair.”
“I’m gonna do it when I’m in ninth grade,” I told her.
“We’ll see.”
When Mom says “We’ll see” like that, it always means she won’t let me, only when the time comes I just won’t tell her about it until it’s all over. Anyway, I bet it would be kind of neat to have all my hair cut off. Maybe then I’d really know what it was like to have cancer and lose all my hair so that people would look at me like they look at Jimmy in his wheelchair.
I wish I knew what it’s like to be Jimmy.
I went back to my cereal and finished half of it. I waited until Mom’s back was turned, and then I slipped out of the chair and took the bowl with me. I held it really close in front of me so she wouldn’t see it and hurried out of the room and ran upstairs as fast as I could. The cat was still there, and I put the bowl down on the floor and she came over right away and started to eat.
Cats like Rice Krispies too, just like me.
It was almost time to leave for school, and I closed the window so the bugs wouldn’t get in and picked up my backpack and went out, shutting the door after me. I thought about asking Mom to stay out of my room, but that wasn’t a good idea, ’cause she’d just wonder why and maybe go snooping, and today wasn’t one of her cleaning days, so I just left the door closed and went downstairs and said goodbye and went to school.
When I came home for lunch, the first thing I did was go upstairs and look for the cat, and when I went into my room she was asleep on the bed, only there was this funny kind of smell. I hunted around and found a yellow puddle in one corner.
Cat pee really stinks!
I got a towel and wiped it up, and then I scrubbed the floor with a washcloth and some soap until the smell disappeared - well, most of it, anyway - and then I washed the towel out in the bathroom sink and hung it up. Finally I opened the window and picked the cat up and carried her to the windowsill, but she didn’t want to go out, so I had to leave the window open and hoped she wouldn’t pee on the floor again, or something worse. After lunch I checked on her again, only she wasn’t there, so I shut the window and went back to school.
Over the next few days we sort of developed a system that worked pretty well. I sneaked food up to my room after breakfast and after supper, and I left the window open while she ate. She seemed to know that I wanted her to go out after that, and most times she jumped up on the windowsill and ran down the tree. You should see her do that. She hangs on with her claws and goes down backwards, just like I do in my elm tree, only I haven’t got any claws, of course, which is why I have boards nailed into the trunk to hang on to.
Once when she didn’t want to go out and I had to leave for school, I had to sneak downstairs with her and put her out the front door when Mom was in the kitchen. She hasn’t peed on the floor again, and I’m really glad about that.
Oh, yeah, and I gave her a name. She’s Maggie now.
So today when I came home Maggie was outside the window as usual, waiting for me to let her in, and I did. I stayed up there and did my homework, and after supper - Dad was home for a change - I offered to clean up and put away the leftovers like I always do ever since Maggie came so I can save some food for her without Mom noticing, and when Dad went into his den and Mom started loading the dishwasher, I took the meat I snitched upstairs and fed her.
While she was eating I had to go to the bathroom, and I shut my bedroom door but I guess the latch didn’t close tight, and when I came back it was standing open and Maggie was gone. I had left the window open and I went over to look out, hoping I’d see her climbing down the tree, only she wasn’t there, and right then I heard Dad holler and I ran to the top of the stairs and found him standing in the middle of the living room. Maggie was halfway down with her ears kind of laid back, and Dad was shouting at her.
“What the hell is a cat doing in here!”
Mom came hurrying out of the kitchen, and I ran halfway down the stairs and picked Maggie up and petted her, but she was all kind of tense from Dad yelling like that, and she dug her claws into my shoulder. It hurt.
“Louise,” Dad hollered, “did you tell this child she could bring a cat into this house?”
“Of course not,” Mom said, and then she said to me, “Where did it come from?”
“Some college kids dropped it off last week,” I said, and I guess I kind of mumbled because Dad said “What did you say?” really loud and kind of mean.
“Don’t yell at her like that,” Mom said. “She said some college students left it here.”
“Here?” He was glaring at me. “In this house?”
“In the vacant lot across the street,” I said.
“So what is it doing in my house?”
“Our house,” Mom said. “Hanna, put the cat outside.”
“I can’t,” I told her.
“Why not?”
“’Cause she’ll just get right back in.”
“Not if we don’t open the door,” Dad said.
“She doesn’t come in the door,” I said, really quiet, and Dad said “What?” really loud, and the cat sank her claws into me again and I let her loose and she ran back upstairs.
“That’s enough!” Dad said, and he pushed past me up the stairs and into my bedroom, only the cat was gone ’cause I’d left the window open. I followed him in, and he stared at the window and then turned around and said, “How long has this been going on?”
Mom came in, and I could tell she was getting mad ’cause I hadn’t told her about the cat. Well, I was getting mad too.
“Somebody has to feed her,” I said. “Those college kids just left her, and so I took her some hamburger and some chicken and she followed me home, and I let her in once, and she wanted to go out and she knocked the screen loose and ran down the tree, only she came back again, and I’ve been feeding her ever since, and I want to keep her.”
“It’s not your responsibility,” Dad said.
“It has to be somebody’s, or she’ll die,” I said. “Paul Gallico says people are always doing that, they keep a pet as long as it’s not too much trouble, but when it becomes too much work for them, they just kick it out. They abandon it.”
“Who’s Paul Gallico?” Dad interrupted.
“And cats that have always lived with people don’t know how to take care of themselves, they can’t catch mice or anything, and unless somebody teaches them, like the way Jennie taught Peter, they starve to death, or get hit by cars, or get beat up by other cats or eaten by wild animals, or… or…” I was sort of running down, and so mad I couldn’t think of what else I wanted to say.
“What is this child talking about?” Dad said.
“It’s in a book she’s been reading,” Mom said. “Hanna, let’s just calm down a minute and think this through. We could take her to the animal shelter downtown.”
“Yeah, right, and if nobody adopts her, sooner or later they’ll just kill her.”
“They don’t kill healthy animals.”
“Mom, they do! They get like hundreds of stray cats, the lady told me so, and when they run out of enough cages they have to kill the ones who’ve been there the longest.”
“What lady?” Mom said.
“At the animal shelter! Aren’t you listening to me?”
“When have you been going to the animal shelter?”
“I go all the time. I help them clean out the cages, and they let me put food in the bowls and pet the cats and stuff. And I know they kill them sometimes, ’cause they disappear, and I know nobody adopts them ’cause almost nobody wants a big cat, only kittens.”
“They euthanize them,” Dad said. “It’s painless.”
“I don’t care how they do it! They end up dead just the same!”
“All right,” Mom said, “since you’ve already started to feed it, even though you know you shouldn’t have, I guess we could…”
“No!” Dad said, and Mom said “Wait a minute!” and all of a sudden they were yelling at each other instead of at me, and Mom was saying how Dad was never home anyway, and it wasn’t his business what went on here, ’cause he was taking his business someplace else. Mom said things like “Hanna lives here too!” and Dad said, “I still pay the bills around here!” They went on like that for a long time, at least it seemed like a long time to me, and Dad got real mad and ran downstairs and got his car keys and went roaring out of the driveway like he always does when they fight.
Mom sat down on my bed and I sat down too. I was pretty upset, and she put her arm around me until I settled down.
“You know what you did was wrong,” she said at last.
“I don’t think so,” I said. I was still mad. “You can’t just let an animal starve to death.”
“What I mean is, it was wrong not to tell me.”
“You wouldn’t have let me feed her.”
“You don’t know that for sure.”
“Yes I do.”
Mom sort of sighed. “Okay, you’re probably right, but the damage is done now. The cat probably thinks it lives here, and…”
“She,” I interrupted. “Her name’s Maggie.”
“Okay, she. Is she trained? Does she mess on the floor?”
“She only did that once, ’cause the window was closed when she had to go. I cleaned it up, and now I always make sure the window is open when I’m not home.”
“That explains why I found it open yesterday,” Mom said. “Okay, here’s how it’s going to be. You can keep her, only she has to stay outdoors most of the time, especially when your father’s home. And you’ll have to train her to use the door. We can’t be leaving the window open all the time.”
“So she can come downstairs?”
“Yes, but only to eat and to go in and out. You can feed her in the kitchen. But you have to take care of her yourself. And if she makes a mess or scratches the furniture, we’ll have to get rid of her.”
“She won’t. And I’ll clean up after her and everything. Thanks, Mom.” I gave her a hug.
“This is probably going to cause a lot of trouble,” she said. Then she smiled at me. “No more leaving the window open, now.”
“But she’s used to it.”
“Okay, the next time she wants to come in, you can let her, but then you have to show her where the door is. The back door. Oh God, I must be out of my mind.”
“Maggie’s a good cat,” I told her. “It’ll be fine.”