Mr Fluff Moves Into The Fridge

Part One: Tires


My father was in tires.

We moved around a lot; all across America with a backseat full of grandparents. Papa died in New Jersey. My Step Nana never made it back across the Brooklyn bridge. We left her propped against the bathroom wall in a downtown Dairy Queen. “She’d have wanted it this way,” my father said and bought us each a cheesequake blizzard. “To take the edge of the loneliness,” he said, plastic spoon poised over his cup.

Mama never finished her blizzard. It turned to ice cream water and dribbled all across the dashboard, looking like a river of seagull poop.

No one said anything about the blizzard river. We just kept on driving, state to state, rented room to room; swapping cars when the tires fell off. We left our elderly relatives like signposts all the way back to California. By the time we got good and proper East only four of us remained: my father, my mother, myself and my soon to be smaller brother- still gestating thickly under mama’s smock.

“What say we get ourselves a pet?” I asked my father every time the opportunity arose, (birthdays, Christmas, funeral services.) “What say we get a big dumb dog, or a kitty- a smart, little kitty with green, grey eyes- a rabbit even? It’ll take the edge off the loneliness. It’ll make the backseat seem more like home.” (I was not- for one second- speaking truthfully about the rabbit. While dogs and cats and killer whales roam this planet unloved, no self-respecting child will ever be satisfied with a rabbit.)

“Nope,” said my father, and bought me a tennis racket, “No pets for you, young lady. Pets die and I can’t afford another funeral this year.” The tennis racket did not even hit right. It was the dumbest present I ever got given.

Two weeks after the tennis racket, we left town.

My brother appeared somewhere outside Chicago, struggling to make his presence known in the parking lot of a Ross Dress for Less. “How convenient,” my father said, shaking my mother’s hand wildly, “You can buy yourself a frock to fit your new, flat belly.”

They named my brother Ross. He remained bald as a coot ‘til the day he turned three.

Between the ages of half past seven and eight I lived in Boston, Massachusetts. Though originally promised as permanent, Massachusetts proved to be a ten month holding bay between Wyoming and Nebraska. I never quite managed to grasp the correct spelling. There seemed way too many S’s for such a softly spoken state.

We lived in a house with no upstairs. This house had one bedroom and an extremely large closet, which Ross and I shared. He had not yet turned a year and slept in the bottom drawer of my dead grandmother’s dresser, nestled amongst my father’s balled up socks and my mother’s nylons. Right up until the afternoon he grew large enough to fall out of his drawer Ross smelt faintly of laundry soap and aftershave.

To the left of the house was a warehouse and to the right an enormous storage unit for old folks, known locally as Maureen’s.

Maureen was a formidable lady with candy-striped overalls. No spring chicken herself, she had an almost full beard but no matching mustache, giving her the appearance of a somewhat overweight Lincoln. Maureen presided over the old folks’ home by day, retiring at night to her tiny bungalow on the opposite side of the street. She lived a solitary life, which revolved around the seniors and her Sunday afternoon excursions to the mall. There was no Mr. Maureen. There were no little Maureens. In fact, after closer inspection of the five block square I would come to recognize as my kingdom, there were no little people of any persuasion in our neighborhood.

(It was only twenty years later- as my brother and I considered housing options for our now elderly parents- that I finally came to realize Ross and I had spent ten formative months living in a retirement village. Suddenly everything made sense: the safety rails in the shower, the wheelchair friendly door ramp, the orange emergency buzzers and the smell of Nivea cold cream lingering damply on the wallpaper.

It was a terrible way to spend a year. In other circumstances- heartwarming family movies for example- it might have been magical. But for an overly excitable seven year old with nothing more than a newborn for entertainment, it was a living Hell.

Believe me I’d like to enthuse, to smile fondly and say I was spoilt rotten, fattened up on saltwater taffy and dollar bills by old folks eager for a second helping of youth. But these seniors were not the taffy types. Instead I found myself surrounded by the sort of old men who smoked covertly through the safety gap in the bathroom window and sent me to the liquor store for porn and brown, paper bags of bottles I could not yet read. The elderly ladies- mean little raisins with war paint bleeding into their teeth- were little better. Those who didn’t bite swore loudly, casting their knitting needles at my retreating back. They called me a thief and a liar, a devil of a child with Satan himself smoldering out of both eyes. At every opportunity they paraded these imaginary crimes before Maureen, my parents and the team of sinless white orderlies who kept Maureen’s empire ticking drowsily towards lights out. Eventually, eager not to disappoint, I became a seven year old nightmare tormenting them at every turn. It gave me something to do on weekends.)

I was perpetually bored.

Tennis was a non-starter, but I tried. After dinner each night I’d spend a good ten minutes half-heartedly battering my tennis balls against the back of our station wagon-the closest substitute for a practice wall available- until boredom or the rough edge of my father’s tongue brought my training regime to a halt. Dreams of Wimbledon stalled for the time being, I’d retire to the curb for a half hour session of scab picking or throwing gravel at the curb outside Maureen’s house.

And so it was, on just such a April evening- having recently removed a good three centimeters of black as sin scab from my left knee, hastily applying a wad of bunched up toilet paper to halt the gobbing blood- that I first made the acquaintance of Mr Fluff.

He appeared on the opposite side of the road. We eyeballed each other from our various curbs. Not yet used to conversation I waited an impolite age before speaking up.

I spoke first; I was always the one who spoke first.

“Hey,” I said, “You want some gum?”

Mr Fluff marked his silence.

“You wanna see my scab? It’s a good one.” I unrolled the balled up toilet paper to reveal a small blood stain- roughly the shape of mainland Italy- which was already beginning to blacken, and in the center, rolled like a raisin, my very own knee scab.

Mr Fluff raised his tail, turned and watched me viciously over his right shoulder.

“Oh come on, there’s no one round here except old folk. We should at least try to be friends.”

“Get lost kid,” said Mr Fluff yawning to close our conversation. He spoke with the clipped tone of a talk show host. (I knew exactly what he meant. It was a favorite saying of my father’s.) And with that Mr Fluff spun quickly on all four feet and disappeared back into Maureen’s house.

We were instant enemies. Boy did I hate Mr Fluff with all the muscle in my tennis arm.

That night, while Ross fizzled softly in his sleep drawer, I stayed up plotting new ways to become best friends with Mr Fluff and accidentally push him under one of the old folk’s electric wheelchairs.

Mr Fluff was a cat. An obnoxiously, vain puffball of a cat, with orange splodges running the length and width of his ample belly. He belonged to Maureen. “To take the edge off the loneliness,” she said, every time she had to justify his presence. In the absence of other, more conventional playmates, Mr Fluff became my best friend. He couldn’t play tennis or swear. He never quite mastered a bicycle but boy could that cat spit like a semi-professional.

Our relationship was unsophisticated. Mostly he watched and I played. Sometimes, to spice things up a little, he scratched or licked himself in a most undignified fashion. Once he hacked up an enormous hairball on our front porch. I went through it with a stick, fascinated by the chocolatey mess, wondering how on earth an all over orange cat could cough up brown, brown fur. “Perhaps,” I concluded, “Mr Fluff has been licking other cats or worse still eating the trimmings from the hairdresser’s floor.” Far from disgusted, I deeply respected Mr Fluff for his chocolate-colored vomit.

As the nights grew longer and the good times tighter, we indulged in long conversations, sitting on the curb’s edge until both our butts turned numb. I read aloud from Hans Christian Anderson, the Holy Bible and Agatha Christie, (all stolen from the visitor’s lounge in the old folk’s home.) Mr Fluff had one thing to say, one thing only, “Get lost kid.” At first it was insulting but by Thanksgiving his tone had changed slightly. “Get lost kid,” now sounded like a gentle cuff on the chin, an almost laugh, the punch line to a long forgotten joke.

Mr Fluff and I were fast becoming wonderful. We planned on swapping Christmas gifts: a half pack of stolen cigarettes from me and from Mr Fluff, two dead starlings and whatever he could thieve from the laundry room.

We had not yet arrived at friendship but were definitely, honest to God certainly, past the point of enemies when Mr Fluff disappeared.

He didn’t bother with goodbyes; not so much as a postcard to mark his passing. One morning we were spitting on the front porch, the next morning a moving van and the following, nothing more than a small chocolate-colored stain remained to prove his existence.

Maureen had moved to Colorado. Tempted by an even larger collection of old folks, (rumored to be richer and less taken with dime store porn and whiskey,) she handed in her notice next door, packed a U-Haul and left the very next morning. Against his will Mr Fluff had followed suit. Mr Fluff would never be happy in Colorado. I was sure of this. Granted, Mr Fluff was not the kind of cat prone to happiness but at least in Massachusetts we could be delinquent and miserable together. Colorado was full of mountains and happy people in ski gear. Mr Fluff was bound to be climbing the walls in Colorado. Everyday for a month I expected him to arrive on my doorstep, several pounds lighter with a small section of tail or perhaps ear, sacrificed to the road.

By Christmas I’d given up hope in a second coming. I dug out my tennis racket and did better at school. Massachusetts had lost her charm.


Part Two: Husbands



This Easter I turned twenty eight. I have a husband now. I have a car with four fat tires and a spare in the trunk. I have a job in an office block downtown. I buy things and occasionally sell things. The buying, I’ve discovered, is much more enjoyable than the selling.

We can’t have kids. I mean, we could have kids if we wanted but the chances are they’d turn out funny. Something about my husband’s blood does not mix right with mine. I find this odd, seeing as our hands fit perfectly together.

“Don’t worry darling,” my husband said one evening, when I was sad and crying over the baby thing. “Let’s get a cat for the meantime, something to take the edge off the loneliness.” And with this, he put his hands inside the arms of my sweater so we were joined like two Siamese octopuses squirming at the shoulder.

A cat seemed like a good idea and since I like the buying part best, I was left to buy a cat. I bought an orange one. It came with a collar.

“It’s a girl,” said the guy at the cat place.

“Shit,” I said. “I really wanted a boy cat, an orange, boy cat is what I came for. Don’t you have an orange, boy cat; an obnoxious, fluffy one would be ideal?”

“Sorry Ma’am, it’s Christmas next week. There was a rush on fluffy, orange, boy cats. We only have this one orange cat left and I’m pretty sure it’s a girl.” He turned the cat upside down just to check. Sure enough it was a girl cat.

“Never mind. I’ll take the girl cat anyway. I’ll just pretend it’s a boy.”

I bought the cat for fifteen dollars, which seemed like a bargain to me. I think the cat comes for free, really the fifteen dollars is for the special cardboard box to carry it home in. Fifteen dollars is pretty steep for a cardboard box but if it comes with a free orange cat inside, I’ll call it a damn good deal.

The cat was full grown when we got it. It probably had a name already. I changed its name to Mr Fluff. “Hello,” I said, crouching down to peer through the hole in the special cardboard box, “Your name is Mr Fluff now. Do you need me to write it on the fridge so you can remember?”

The cat said nothing. It wasn’t a speaking cat like the original Mr Fluff. I was a little disappointed but we kept it anyway. You can’t return cats. They’re not the same as toasters.

Even after the prolonged silence I gave this Mr Fluff a second chance, followed by a third and fourth before finally admitting I’d been sold a faulty cat.

This cat was incapable of hacking up hairballs, chocolate colored or otherwise. This cat was terribly pleasant and purred even when the house was empty. It spent its evenings, belly up at the bottom of our bed just waiting to be loved. This cat could not spit for biscuits.

I couldn’t bring myself to like this cat any more than a scatter cushion. Truth be told I didn’t want any old cat. I wanted Mr Fluff or at least a baby, a perfectly serious baby of our own.

“Gosh,” I said to my husband who was still Hell bent on loving the cat, “Can’t we get rid of this damn cat. It’s not as mean as I’d expected. Let’s take it back and swap it for a gecko- you know where you stand with a gecko.”

“Nope,” said my husband, who has always been a better man than me, “We’re stuck with the cat.” Then he slid his feet inside my slippers so there was barely room for my feet. I felt as if we should go dancing round the room, joined at the ankle like a railway arch but I was far too angry about the cat.

The cat stayed and got fat. One Saturday afternoon it ate the curtains and this gave me hope. However the curtains were an anomaly, the only casualty in an otherwise uneventful year.

In August we thought about moving. In September we changed our minds. In October my husband called me into the office, “Look at this, darling,” he said, scrolling through picture after picture of Vermont, “Isn’t it the most beautiful place you ever seen?”

In November we moved to Kansas.

As soon as the For Sale sign appeared in our front yard I started thinking about Mr Fluff, (the original Mr Fluff that is, not the piss poor substitute we’d been lumbered with.)

It had been over twenty years since I last saw Mr Fluff and I still couldn’t bring myself to forgive Massachusetts. Most of the problems I’ve encountered in my adult life, (chronic anxiety, exaggeration, shoplifting, not to mention the deal with the fires,) could all be traced back to the fact that Mr Fluff never bothered to say goodbye. God knows, I’d grown up, I no longer blamed the cat. A cat’s a cat, and capable though he may have been, Mr Fluff lacked the opposable thumbs necessary to send a postcard home. No, I’d long since quit blaming the cat. The bullet belonged to Maureen now.

The closer we got to the U-Haul the more anxious I got about that damn cat. By Thanksgiving I was drinking a quart of whiskey, straight from the bottle, just to get to sleep.

I got to wondering if there might be some kid in our neighborhood who really liked our dumb cat, some kid who’d be gutted if Mr Fluff upped and left without saying goodbye, some kid who’d grow up, get the Hell out of our city and never, not once in their entire lifetime, ever come back.

This was a terrible thought.

I couldn’t sleep properly for wondering about the kids who might never get over our stupid cat. I’d lie there in bed not sleeping and worrying about the cat, wishing my husband, would wake up and lie beside me also not sleeping and worrying about the cat. When I was positively wide-eyed with the worry and all my thoughts were needles and pins, I’d poke my husband in the left bicep and say, “Whatever shall we do about Mr Fluff?” Very rarely did he respond. Very rarely did he even acknowledge my prodding.

I’ve only had one husband so far but should I be fortunate enough to gain a second I’d definitely seek out a lighter sleeper.

Eventually I decided on a plan of action. The only thing to do, I concluded, was to bundle Mr Fluff back into the cardboard box from whence he came and lug him from door to door offering a farewell to every kid on our street.

“That’s ridiculous,” said my husband, “We’ll be the laughing stock of the whole neighborhood. No one needs to say goodbye to a cat. Can’t we send a change of address card instead?”

“Best to do these things in person,” I replied but my husband didn’t understand. He’d never been a lonely kid in a retirement village. He’d been blessed with appropriately aged siblings and two storey homes, non-speaking pets and a tennis racket he’d actually asked for.

“Damn it, sweetheart,” I said, “I’m going anyway.” And thus began our very last and loudest argument.


Part Three: Kids



I have an odd face. It’s an acquired taste and after twenty eight years I’m finally beginning to get used to it. I can look in the mirror now and be objective. I can peel my own thoughts from the roof of my mouth and feel exactly like a private detective.

“Gosh,” I think to myself some days, “You are one odd looking son of a bitch. Who’d have thought to slam one eye so close to the other? From this angle you look exactly like an Amazonian tree frog.” I suck my cheekbones into my teeth and splay both hands against the bathroom sink. It doesn’t upset me at all to look like an Amazonian tree frog.

On other days, when the light crumbles under the bathroom blinds and everything, absolutely everything- from the shampoo bottles stacked in the shower basin to the halo of dust mites settling on my hair- appears driven beyond it’s mortal means, I see myself as something far more exotic. “Good Lord,” I think, on these special days, “My husband is one lucky, lucky man to have pinned me down at the altar. Next week I am certain sure picking up an application for America’s Next Top Model. I am just the sort of hometown wonder they’re bound to go for. Also, when I get on the show I will be a nice person. I will lend other girls my mascara and take compliments with a humble shrug so viewers will be naturally drawn to my personality as well as my tree frog face.”

All this to say; I am not an ordinary face. I am a face like the weather; one moment infinitely approachable, the very next, raging like a mid-town mudslide. My face and I walk a daily line between exotic and ugly. Thankfully my husband- a man blessed with an oatmeal and cardboard visage, averagely American and instantly forgettable- has a real thing for not so ordinary girls.

Still, I’m more than used to people staring in grocery stores. I’ve come to expect it now. After seven years picking scabs by myself, I kind of like the attention.

I take my tree frog face into consideration every time I venture outside. Today, more than most, I wish to work the ordinary angle. I don’t want to be the odd lady with the face and the moving cat. I want to be the all-American neighbor, the cookies and milk girl who lives next door, the woman you might phone in an emergency and say, “Sweetheart, I’m so, so sorry to impose but we’re having an emergency here and I was wondering if you could keep an eye on the kids while John and I nip out for half an hour, no more than half an hour, I promise. I wouldn’t normally leave the kids with just anyone but I know you’ll do great with them. Everyone knows you’re a natural.”

Today I want to dress up as an ordinary lady with very ordinary problems.

I pull my hair into an absolutely average ponytail. I wear a Christmas sweater even though we’re almost five weeks from the big day- I think it makes me seem maternal. I wear glasses to hide my too close eyes. I consider bringing cookies but it takes both hands just to carry Mr Fluff in his cardboard box.

When I am good and ordinary I lift Mr Fluff into his cardboard box, zip myself into a ski jacket and pull the door behind me.

The goodbyes do not go well.

My neighbors on either side are out of town for the holiday weekend. Two doors down, the Mom answers the door.

“Hey,” I say, “We live two doors down with the swing set in the front yard.”

“Oh,” she says, “How old are your kids?”

“We don’t have kids…. I mean, we can’t have kids… I mean, look it’s kind of complicated. The last owners left the swing set behind. We do have a cat though.”

I produce Mr Fluff in his cardboard box. The two doors down Mom looks horrified.

“Ummmm,” I mutter, “We’re moving next week and I kind of thought maybe our cat could say goodbye to your kids so they’re not sad or something when he just disappears.”

“Why would they be sad? They don’t know your cat. We don’t let them play outside the back yard.”

“Oh, well could I possibly see your kids anyway, just to be on the safe side.” I hold Mr Fluff’s cardboard box up, giving him an angle to peer down the hall into two door’s down’s kitchen.

“I don’t think so,” she says and pretty much closes the door on the toe of my very ordinary shoe.

I stand there, mortified, considering the outside of two doors down’s front door and their sign, which reads, “Happy Thanksgiving from the Mastersons.”

This conversation is a rehearsal for a series of very similar conversations all the way down one side of our street and back up the other side. By the time we get to the apartments by the mailbox Mr Fluff and I are just about ready to give up and get drunk.

There are four apartments by the mailbox. The lower two are small studios for elderly folk. I ignore them. I have been purposefully ignoring the elderly for the better part of two decades now. Upstairs, one apartment is obviously empty, (abandoned cardboard boxes are rotting on the front porch, the windows are curtainless and carpeted with yellowing newspaper pages,) the second apartment looks a lot like an invitation.

Every light in this apartment is white, hot and beaming as if to say, “Come in. Have a cup of coffee. Take your shoes off why don’t you? I’m a sock soles sort of home; a put your feet on the sofa, don’t bother calling ahead, stay as long as you want, we have a perfectly comfortable futon in the living room, kind of home. I’ve been waiting all these years just to grow legs and wander round to yours but as luck would have it, you’ve found your way to me.”

I think nothing of the lights. I stand all over the welcome mat. I barely notice when the doorbell winks conspiratorially. It’s been a mile of a morning and I no longer expect success.

“Once more on to the breach,” I mutter and poke the doorbell twice, squarely in the eye with malice, “Once more on to the breach, dear friends.”(It’s a favorite thing of mine to mutter when confronting a necessary evil. It’s a Shakespeare thing of course. I learnt it in High School which means it’s at least twenty years old for me and older still for Shakespeare, who is more than likely dead and well beyond quoting himself on strangers’ doorsteps.)

Mr Fluff says nothing, Shakespearean or otherwise. He stretches out, forcing himself into all four corners of the cardboard carrying box. He looks bored as Hell in there. He may yet spit.

Behind the door I hear feet: one foot first and then a second. Foot, foot, foot, faster foot, foot; gaining momentum as they approach the door. I expect another mother so I hold Mr Fluff in front of my chest: half peace offering, half fur and cardboard shield. “God, help us both,” I am thinking, as I brace myself for the ridicule, “Why am I subjecting us to this again?” The door opens into itself like a nervous smile.

There are no suburban moms waiting behind the door: zero, zilch, nada. No fathers, aunts nor responsible nanny types. Instead there’s this little, home alone Mexican kid standing in the hallway. He’s wearing a full set of Power Rangers pajamas. One hand rests on the door handle while the other clutches a yellow plastic bowl which is boiling over with coco puffs. The milk from his cereal- already turning an over familiar shade of brown- has formed a rivulet from the kid’s open mouth, down the bridge of his chin, to the red Power Ranger who crouches, ready for action, just above his belly button.

“What do you want, lady?” the kid asks.

“Umm,” I stall, “Is your mommy around?”

“Nope. She’s at the office place.” The kid takes a huge, dribbly spoonful of coco puffs, the majority of which abandon ship halfway to his mouth, landing like small, shit mountains at his naked feet.

“What about Daddy? Is he home? Or do you have an older brother or sister or someone looking after you?”

“I’m looking after me,” he says, “It’s ok. I have a gun.” And with this he fishes around on the telephone table, emerging seconds later with a fully loaded plastic rifle.

“Impressive kid,” I say. I have that creeping, fingers on my shoulder feeling I normally get when someone is watching me on close circuit TV. It’s probably best to take Mr Fluff and head West as quickly as possible. “Maybe I should come back another time,” I say hesitantly. Then I step over the welcome mat and into the kid’s apartment

“What’s in the cardboard box, lady?”

I set the cardboard box on the hall carpet, open the flaps and watch helplessly as Mr Fluff jumps out, stretches his back and plants his ample backside on the kid’s feet.

“Margaret,” cries the kid, bending to scratch the back of Mr Fluff’s neck. Bent double and scratching, the kid looks happy as a pickled onion.

“Mr Fluff,” I correct, “His name is Mr Fluff.

“It’s not. It’s Margaret. She told me it was Margaret. Besides Mr Fluff is a stupid name for a girl cat.”

“It’s a boy cat.”

“S’not,” he says, unceremoniously turning Mr Fluff upside down to expose his private parts, or lack thereof.”

“Well I guess you’re right. It is a girl cat. I…. I mean my husband and I, just decided he should be a boy cat because we liked the name Mr Fluff.”

“That’s not very fair. How would you like it if someone told you you had to be a boy and have a stupid name? I bet you’d be really annoyed about it. I bet you would.”

With this the kid pokes me once, hard in the ribs, with the snub end of his plastic rifle. The coco puffs, having made their escape from the bowl, have now formed a muddy, brown river down the leg of the kid’s pajama pants.

I look the kid straight in the eye. I have to kneel down to do this- carefully- to avoid the mini coco puff, mountains all around his feet. He has Mr Fluff draped over one shoulder, the plastic rifle cocked against the other. This kid looks like a pint size Terminator. He may yet spit. I’m beginning to wish he belonged to me: something to take the edge off the loneliness when the cat won’t talk.

“Listen, I don’t have to stand here and be insulted. It’s my cat. His name’s Mr Fluff and tomorrow he’s moving to Kansas. I only brought him round to say goodbye.”

“Margaret’s not moving. She doesn’t like Kansas. I got her a book from the library and she says it looks shit; chock full of flatness and sheep, she said. She said she wants to stay here where it rains all the time and I asked my Mom and she says it cool if Margaret moves in so long as she doesn’t eat the curtains again. She can live in the fridge. Margaret likes it particularly in our fridge.” The kid pauses, draws breath and raises the rifle for impact.

I like this kid a whole Hell of a lot. I’d be quite happy to swap him for the cat, (especially if the rifle came free with the deal,) but as I am now a card carrying, married and mortgaged, twenty eight year old, I feel the pinch of common sense.

“Look here kiddo, I don’t care if you call the cat Mr Fluff or Margaret or Robert Downey Jr., it’s moving to Kansas in the morning so say your goodbyes and let us leave.”

The kid glares at me. I glare at the kid. The kid glares back. The kid wins.

Mr Fluff, bored with the stand off, uncurls himself from the kid’s shoulder, dismounts and wanders nonchalantly into, what I can only presume to be, the kitchen area. It’s my cat so I traipse after Mr Fluff. It’s his apartment, so the kid follows suit.

The kitchen is not so much a kitchen as a living area with aspirations. It contains two fat sofas and a mammoth entertainment system clearly designed for God and all his Friday night buddies. It has a coffee table, several stacks of used television guides and a fake plastic spider plant dominating one entire wall. Against the back, right corner a small cooker, fridge and sink are attempting to escape into the yard. A weary looking microwave oven watches their progress from its fixed position, some sixty centimeters above the cooker.

Mr Fluff has already found the fridge.

The fridge door has been left barely, almost open, revealing- in an intimate sliver of synthetic light- a good half inch of margarine tub and the tip end of Mr Fluff’s tail, curling round the peanut butter jar.

“What sort of freaks keep their peanut butter in the fridge?” I think.

“You can’t keep a cat in a fridge,” I say, somewhat loudly, through clenched teeth.

“Margaret likes it particularly in our fridge. Sometimes she stays the night in there.”

“Bullshit,” I say, though I’m not the kind of lady prone to swearing in front of under tens. On normal afternoons in ordinary circumstances I am a big proponent of good manners and spotless tongues among the younger generations. Right now, however, I am calling, “bullshit,” loudly in the face of a nine year old boy.

“This is ridiculous, the cat can’t live in a fridge. It won’t be able to breathe. It’ll go crazy in there. It’ll freeze or suffocate,” (Truth be told I am not quite sure which certain death would come first, so I mention both for impact.)

“Bollocks lady, Margaret spends most nights in our fridge. She breathes just fine, I expect the air gets in through the ice cube dispenser. She doesn’t mind the cold in there at all. It’s not even freezing in the fridge. Plenty of cats live just fine in Colorado and they’ve got real, honest to God freezing snow all over the place… She likes our fridge a lot, way better than she’d like Colorado. Oh and Margaret says the best bit about living in a fridge is the little, yellow light that comes on when you close the door.”

“That’s back to front kid. The light only comes on when you open the door.”

“Margaret told me there was a yellow, closed door light.”

“It’s an open door light so you can see stuff in your fridge late at night in the dark.”

“Why can’t you just turn the kitchen light on?”

“I dunno, I guess it might be broken….Nevermind the bloody light, the point is, my cat’s not staying in your fridge.”

“Yes, she is.”

“No she isn’t kid. I’m the adult here, and I’m taking Mr Fluff home now.”

“She doesn’t want to go. She likes it in the fridge, every night she draws pictures in the margarine. You don’t even let her draw with crayons on ordinary paper. We give her full license with the margarine tubs.”

Mr Fluff has shifted so I can now see the front of his nose and several whiskers sneaking through the gap in the fridge door. I don’t understand why I am still reasoning with this kid. It’s almost five thirty. My husband will arrive home from work at any second and wonder where Mr Fluff and I have gone to. Knowing kid logic, as I have come to know kid logic, this conversation could easily continue for the next fortnight without ever coming to a satisfactory conclusion. What say I humor the kid, play along with his theory and get the Hell out of the apartment before his mother arrives home?

“Ok,” I say, “You win. Let’s close the fridge door and see how well Mr Fluff likes it in there. If he’s still content after thirty seconds he can move into your apartment and spend the rest of his days drawing in the margarine. But, if he happens to go stir crazy in there, he goes to Kansas in the morning, you say goodbye and never see him again.”

“Can he be called Margaret if I keep him?”

“Sure kid, you can change his name to Jesus if you want. I don’t care.”

The kid considers this proposal for a few seconds, looks at me, examines the outside of the fridge from all angles, and eventually says, “Deal,” closing the door to seal the bargain.

We count to thirty using the old fashioned method, “one thousand, two thousand, three thousand,” all the way up to thirty thousand, plus another three thousands just for good measure. I have two fingers crossed on each hand, hoping the kid’s Mom doesn’t arrive home to find a strange lady has locked a cat in her fridge.

The fridge purrs on; monolithic, competent and surprisingly calm. Around about twenty five thousand I begin to worry that Mr Fluff might be dead in there, or at very least comatose and slumped against the breakfast juices. I am not so very concerned about Mr Fluff whom I have openly detested for the last twelve months. I am more worried about explaining the situation to other less understanding individuals- my husband for one, the boy’s mother and the relevant authorities- who may not understand the need to lock a cat in a fridge for thirty seconds.

“Done,” says the kid, as soon as he gets to thirty three. We open the fridge together, fists grazing momentarily on the handle.

Mr Fluff is more than alive. He has used his fridge time profitably. The margarine tub now plays host to an uncanny likeness of the President himself. “It’s nice in here,” Mr Fluff says, “There’s a little yellow light and everything. It really helps when you’re trying to draw.”

This is the first, last and longest conversation I have with the soon to be former Mr Fluff. The next morning I drive a U-Haul truck all the way to Kansas. My husband follows behind with the car.

Mr Fluff does not bother to say goodbye but the kid is waiting on the corner by the mailbox. He raises a hand to indicate I should stop. I pull the car over, roll the window down and lean across the passenger seat.

“Lady,” the kid says, still toting that enormous, plastic rifle, “Did anyone every tell you, you have a funny face?”


Source: specialfriends7.blogspot.com