Bunny

 

 

JEDAO WOULD RATHER have been doing anything but cleaning the bathroom, but his older brother Rodao had skipped out on the chore in favor of a night out with his boyfriend. Their mother was working late tonight, as usual, so she wouldn’t know or care who did the job as long as it got done. Besides, Jedao considered it useful to have additional blackmail material on Ro. He couldn’t decide whether it was hilarious or annoying that Ro had suddenly become interested in dating. At eleven, Jedao couldn’t see what the fuss was about.

In the meantime, he still couldn’t figure out how those weird purple stains had gotten onto the bathtub. Had his mother been pouring her experiments into the tub instead of disposing of them properly? Except she was always so conscientious about that. Or did it have something to do with her attempts to brew up new and exciting shampoos?

“Jay,” said a soft, snuffling voice from the doorway.

Jedao set down the sponge and sat back on his haunches. His six-year-old sister Nidana was scrubbing her eyes. “What’s the matter?” he asked.

Nidana burst into tears.

Jedao stripped off his rubber gloves, quickly washed his hands, and put his arms around her. “Hey, there,” he said. “I didn’t think the book I gave you to read was that scary.” The book in question featured a bold girl space adventurer who punctured space monsters with her space rapier. Ordinarily Nidana loved that sort of thing.

After the snuffling and wailing had dwindled, Nidana said, “I went outside to look at the tree with the really big icicles.”

“All right,” he said, “did you hurt yourself?” He’d had icicles fall on him before. The big ones were no joke. She didn’t look injured, despite the hair straggling out of her braid, but maybe she’d had a scare.

“Jay,” she said, “I can’t find the cat. I think she got out.”

“I see,” Jedao said, suppressing his alarm. The cat, which Nidana had named Bunny when she was five, had a talent for getting herself stuck up trees. (At five, Nidana’s vocabulary for animals had left something to be desired. The family also had a dog named Bunny, two finches named Bunny, and a snake named Bunny.) Bunny-the-cat tried to escape the house at every opportunity, and while Jedao wouldn’t have worried about her during warmer weather, he didn’t like the thought of her trapped outside in the cold. “Bundle up. Let’s go look for her.”

Jedao helped Nidana with her sweater, coat, mittens, hat, scarf, and boots, then pulled on his own winter clothes. He left a note tacked to the small corkboard next to the door, just in case. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll find Bunny.”

Nidana snuffled some more. “I didn’t mean to, Jay.”

“I know.” It was too bad that Bunny-the-cat hated Bunny-the-dog. The latter was reasonably good at tracking, but his habit of trying to nip at Bunny-the-cat’s tail whenever he could catch her wouldn’t do them any favors here.

The cold air stung Jedao’s eyes and nostrils as they traipsed out onto the path that Jedao and his brother had shoveled that morning. The wind had blown more snow onto the path in feathered drifts, but it was still walkable. Unfortunately, it also meant that any tracks the cat might have left were obscured.

“Show me where you went,” Jedao said.

Nidana led him to the sycamore with its mantle of glistening icicles. He broke one off from a lower branch so that she could suck on it. If nothing else, it would distract her.

“Bunny!” Nidana called in between licking her icicle. But there was no sign of the cat.

Jedao and Nidana checked all the buildings they were allowed into, and some that they weren’t. The cat remained elusive. The sun sank lower and lower in the sky, and Nidana was starting to shiver. Jedao made sure not to walk too quickly for her to keep up, despite his increasing concern for Bunny.

At last, discouraged, they returned to the front door of their home. Bunny-the-dog bounded up and almost bowled Nidana over when they came in, tail wagging frenetically. “Stop that,” Jedao said, and made the dog sit. He and Nidana shed their winter clothes, and Jedao hung them up in the hallway closet. “Nidana,” he said, “entertain the dog. I’ll check around the house.”

The dog’s tail was thumping loudly against the floor, and the dog herself was busy slobbering all over Nidana. Nidana didn’t seem to mind this. At least the dog kept her from bursting into tears again thinking of the cat.

For his part, Jedao systematically searched every room of the house but one. He knew most of the cat’s hiding places. At last he came to his brother’s room and hesitated. Ro had threatened him on pain of being fed to the geese not to barge in, but Jedao had checked everywhere else he could think of.

“The hell with this,” Jedao said, since Nidana wasn’t around to overhear him, and pushed the door open. The first thing he noticed was that one of the dresser drawers was slightly ajar. He pulled it out further: aha. Bunny-the-cat was curled up in a nest of Rodao’s socks, underwear, and... magazines? Jedao eased one of the magazines out from beneath the cat, ignoring her hiss, and flipped it open to a full-color picture of two entwined naked men. Fascinated, Jedao started paging through.

Bunny-the-cat suddenly meowed. Jedao heard Bunny-the-dog woofing as she bounded toward them, and turned around to see Nidana padding after the dog. Hastily, he shoved the magazine back into the drawer. “The cat’s fine, Nidana,” he said. “She was taking a nap.”

“Can I see what you were reading?” Nidana said.

“No,” Jedao said. He scooped the cat up despite her liberal application of claws to his arm and hastened out of his older brother’s room, doing his best (which wasn’t very) to herd Nidana and the dog at the same time. “The cat’s safe, that’s all that matters.”

 

 

Author’s Note

 

I have only been owned by a cat in adulthood, when we settled in Louisiana and I convinced my husband that a cat would be a great addition to the family. Ours is named Cloud and she’s not an outdoors cat; I take her outside for walks but only on a leash and harness so she can’t get away, because despite being affectionate and friendly, she’s not terribly bright. Nevertheless, she longs to show the world that she’s a mighty huntress, and so, yes, I too have known the terror of a cat parent whose cat has gone missing. Fortunately it was only for a couple hours and, after putting LOST CAT posters in my neighbors’ mailboxes and knocking on doors, I returned home, exhausted and afraid, to find her waiting at the door for me to let her back in. At that point I may have said some cuss words before hugging her tight.