The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook (6 page)

“I told you,” I say. “To be continued.”

“But how did they make it rain without Miraculo?”

“Oh, that,” I say. “The Rebusinians hadn't needed Miraculo's drought-busting services for quite a while. They'd taught themselves all about proper water conservation in case of another drought.”

“Like we did.”

“Right,” I say.

here is something wonderful and incredible about people's names. You are given a name when you are born, and some people are even given one
before
they are born. Your parents know nothing about you, except that you are very small, know how to yell, need your diaper changed a lot, and enjoy drinking milk. But right away they have to come up with a name for you. I think it may be a law. People have to call you something besides “Hey, you!” all your life.

The wonderful thing is this: After a while, it becomes clear that your name is the perfect name, the only-name-for-you name. Are parents that smart? I don't think so. That's why it's incredible as well as wonderful.

Take my name, Oona. Two O's = two eyes = “noticer.” See?

Fred, sometimes Freddy = short, sometimes cute.

My friend Riya loves to sing. Her name is an Indian one that actually does mean “singer.” Although it doesn't mean “sings on key,” which is a good thing, because Riya doesn't.

Terri, my mom, RW
merry
, which she usually is, except when she's not. But she does try to look merry all the time. The key thing's the look in the eyes—ever notice? I try to keep my mom's eyes looking merry whenever possible.

Max, my dad's name = big, which he was, in heart and spirit and shoe size. No one will ever fill them.

Gramma Dee's name is easy. Dee RW
bee
= honey = sweet like candy. Gramma Dee likes to make Russian taffy, which she learned from her Russian grandmother, who was born in Russia. Although she doesn't make it as often as she used to, because of her concerns about weight gain. And also for dental reasons. That delicious taffy is murder on the teeth, really gluing them together for a few scary seconds. Seven scary seconds almost exactly, if you're counting, which our family always does. I call it the Seven-Second Meltdown Theory. Just when you think your teeth will remain glued together forever, the taffy begins to melt.

On Sunday, I wake up to the wonderful vanilla and butter and sugar smell of Gramma Dee's taffy. Gramma Dee lives down the hall from us, but she makes the taffy at our house. She says that way she can give us a gift: the smell of dad's childhood in our own home. She is famous in our building for her taffy. Maybe even famous on the whole neighborhood block.

I go into the kitchen and there she is checking the taffy with her candy thermometer, a long, clear string of sweet stuff dangling over the pot. Freddy is already there.

“I want a taste!” he says.

“And the magic word is … ?” Gramma Dee asks.

“Please!” says Freddy. Gramma Dee swirls a big glob of taffy around a spoon for him to lick. Mom wouldn't approve of taffy for breakfast, magic word or no magic word, but Gramma Dee is different that way. A lot of grammas are.

“We have to save the rest for the celebration today,” she says, “at Soma's house.”

Soma is my friend Riya's gramma, or
didu
. It's her backyard camellia tree that hangs over the fence, shading our back alley. It was actually Zook who got us all together, back in the days when I wasn't allowed to go around the block by myself yet. Zook was hanging out under Soma's
camellia tree, yowling his yowl and pretending to be homeless so Soma would feed him. One day my mom saw Zook eating there and told Soma the truth about Zook. We had a good giggle about that. Now Riya and I are best friends, and so are the two grammas. They spend a lot of time drinking tea, and planning the trips they'll take together when they've saved up enough funds. Soma teaches Gramma Dee words in her Indian dialect, Bengali, mostly food words, such as
aloo
(potato) and
dhoi
(yogurt). Gramma Dee does the same for Soma with her second language, Yiddish. Actually, Yiddish isn't really Gramma Dee's second language, because she only knows a few words from her own grandmother. But she knows all the best words, she says.

“Celebration at Soma's?” I say. “It's hard to think of celebrating at a time like this!”

“I'm glad we have something festive to go to, especially now,” says Gramma Dee. “It will take our minds off poor Zook.”

“Why do we have to take our minds off poor Zook?” I ask. “I think our minds should be on him every single second, all alone at the vet.”

I feel guilty because I really want to go to the party. It will be something special, a Hindu rice-feeding ceremony,
called an
annaprasan
, for Riya's baby brother. It will be the first time in his life that he gets to taste solid food.

I go into the hall closet. That's where we keep Zook's litter box. Zook's litter box is the expensive sports car of litter boxes, a real splurge, my mother says. Only the best for our Zook. It has really powerful charcoal odor filters and a cool burgundy trim around its cream-colored body. I pull the chain for the overhead light, close the closet door, and sit on the floor right in front of the litter box. Then I do something really gross. I just can't help myself. I peek inside.

We use special clumping litter for Zook. I see two small clumps near the entrance to the box. Two clumps that poor Zook dragged himself inside to create. I put my cheek against the top of the litter box and think about Zook.

“Where's Oona?” I hear my mother ask.

“In there,” Freddy answers.

“In there?” My mother opens the closet door and looks down on me. “Hey, kiddo, get up off the floor,” she says softly, and lifts me up. She has just washed her hair and it's all puffed up around her head like a big, curly orange halo. She smells good. My mom wears Beau Soleil perfume, which means “beautiful sun” and must be what Paris, France, smells like on a nice, fine day. Better than Zook's litter box, I
have to admit, which stinks. It's my job to clean it, but lately it's hard to throw the clumps away, because they're Zook's.

“I'm not sure I want to go to a party while Zook's in the hospital,” I say.

My mother says, “If you don't want to, you don't have to. I'll stay home, too, even though I know we'd both enjoy going. Why don't you think about it a bit? We still have time.”

So I go into my room and lie down on the bottom bunk. I look up at the ceiling of my bed, which is the bottom of the top bunk, where Fred sleeps. I'd scribbled the name of My Secret Love there in code. No one in a million years will ever decipher it. Actually, I myself forget which code I used at the time, but that doesn't matter. I know it's him.

I admire My Secret Love because he wears bright shirts with cool patterns that hang to his hips, and he walks as if he's listening to music, which he usually is. I know this isn't what true love is based on. But my parents, the true loves of each of their lives, knew each other for years and years before they knew it was love, so maybe I should just be patient. I'm not sure it's true love that I feel for My Secret Love. Actually, I have no idea what true love feels like. I know that I love my family. I know that I love Zook. But you are not supposed to feel the same way about a boy as you feel about a cat. I believe
in true love, just like I believe in magic. Or God. I just haven't had direct experience with true love or magic or God yet.

“Oona?” Fred is knocking softly on the door.

“What?” I say, annoyed, even though it's his room, too.

“I'm wondering what happens next.”

“What do you mean?”

“What happens next after Zook—I mean, Miraculo—gets a new life?”

“Not now, Freddy. I want to think about the present-day Zook for a few minutes.”

“Oh, OK.”

I think about how Zook always knows the exact time we get home at the end of the day, even when clocks are moved backward or forward for the season. There he is at the window, waiting. And I think about how he likes to lap leftover tea from my mother's teacup. And how we snuck him into my dad's hospital room in a basket. That story, especially, keeps playing in my head over and over, like a stuck video.

“Oona?” Fred again.

“What?”

“Are you finished thinking about Zook?”

“Almost.”

“Well, are you coming with us to the party?”

“Maybe,” I say.

“Hope so,” Freddy says.

Freddy really gets inside my heart with those two little words. I know I'm acting like a baby. And all of a sudden, just like that, out of the blue, I get this really good idea: I will donate the secret money we collect from our dancing-in-the-street job to a cat rescue society. I think my good idea is a sign from Zook himself that it's all right to go out and have fun while he recuperates.

I open my bedroom door. My mom is wearing a short lemonade-yellow dress and sandals, but Gramma Dee is wearing the long shimmery blue
sari
that Soma gave her. Some of her stomach is showing. I smile, not because her stomach is funny, but because it's a body part of my gramma I've never seen before.

“OK,” I say. “I'm going with you.”

And of course I'm wearing my Raiders sweatshirt. My dad always liked celebrating special occasions.

e walk around the block to the party, taking it slow because Gramma Dee isn't used to walking in a
sari
.

Soma's house is dark brown wood with green scallops like half-moons around the windows. There's a twisty buttercup-yellow staircase going up to the pink front door. Riya's mom and dad painted the staircase last month. It took them two whole days, with the help of Riya, her brother Kiran, Mario, and me. I myself suggested the yellow, and Riya picked the pink.

My mother calls it a Victorian. If you stare at the house for a few seconds, then blink quickly a couple of times, it resembles a gingerbread house with frosting. And while
you are staring and blinking, what you do is whistle softly or hum under your breath to block out the noise of all the cars going by. You concentrate hard on that scolding squirrel or the squawking hawk high up in the sky. Slowly, slowly you open the iron gate leading to the front walk. The gate creaks nicely. You follow the winding pebbled path to the back of the house and, PRESTO! You are in a magical forest of magnificent old oaks, not someone's backyard near a freeway.