The door pushes open, I look up from my laptop.
"Come on, Wally. Come in."
I delight in this moment, between the time I have to worry and the
time it takes to call him to the bed. "Come here, little man."
Puppylove, Wallster, Walls ...I have other nicknames for him.
I wonder what his would be for me? Mommy, certainly. He looks at me
with those big emerald eyes, imploring to stop worrying.
'I know, I know, little man. I know I have to believe it will all work out.'
He's been tossed around before. Picked him up in Brooklyn one night, taken home
on the subway then transferred to a cab in Manhattan. He was so tiny, no bigger
than the horn on a bicycle.
"You're home!" I told the little grey furball as he waddled across my room. We
were four floors up on the Upper West Side, in a brownstone that looked spectacularly
Woody Allen from the outside, but darkly B Movie Horror inside. I shared
a bathroom with a bipolar man who'd alternately throw up and scream at me.
My step-mom said once on the phone, "Make sure you take lots of pictures!"
I did, I did, and thanked her for reminding me.
Wally looking at me from the side, like a lovestruck Romantic hero or Donny
Osmond if he were a nine-week-old kitten. Wally lying beside my shoe, smaller
than a woman's size 10 flip flop. Wally in my mom's arms when she came
to visit Thanksgiving, 2004. I thought he was "big" that night. Just
three months old, what did I know.
"He'll get to be that big," the Russian breeder had warned me, pointing
to her hefty Persians in the room.
"You've got to be kidding me."
"No. Twenty pounds!" she said with a devious smile.
Wally cost me $350 total. I had paid the deposit then gone back
to pick him up a few weeks later, when he was old enough to leave "the nest."
The breeder said: "I called out 'Wally' and all the kittens would
turn around and look!"
I laughed.
I had chosen him not just because he was the biggest and cutest (in a sea
of cuteness, I might add) but he was the one who reached out to me. As I
was putting him back in the pen (is that what it's called?) and back to
his mother, he suddenly lay his paw on my finger.
I melted.
He must have weighed a pound, if that.
So tiny, but so much love. More love than I'd felt all day, all week,
hell, ever since my last cat had died. I never thought I'd get over
Wendell, but they'd told me at the vet's I should try to find another
furry little friend. I had a gift for such friendships, the sweet
veterinary assistant had said.
And so we began our journey together, Wally and I.
My friend Kelly watched him that first Christmas, traveling all the way from
downtown to 73rd and Broadway, schlepping up four flights of steps at least
three times, while I was in Southern California.
"That's a real friend," my dad had said.
"Yeah, and what's more is Wally's poop sticks to his butt."
Everyone laughed.
I came home and found a mound the size of planet earth following my little guy around the room. He meewed plaintively.
"It's ok, sweetheart. Mommy's here."
And I wiped it away with a smile.
