My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [87]
But I wondered how we’d take just one kitten out of three. How would we go about deciding who’s going to get spoiled rotten with all the ottomans they can shred and who might perish on the streets? And wouldn’t they miss one another?
While Fletch decided he’d get us another bottle of wine, I decided we’d take all three and sent Gina a tipsy e-mail saying as much. Fletch eventually agreed to my idea, but since I first plied him with liquor, I’m not sure his acquiescence would hold up in court.
My face firmly planted in my pillow, I beg Fletch to call Gina and find out when we can get the kittens because I desperately need something else to occupy my thoughts. We make plans to stop by tomorrow night.
I spend most of the next twenty-four hours hugging my dog and crying. I also Google Canine Mast Cell Disease and almost throw up when I find out the typical life expectancy after diagnosis and with treatment is one to two years, if we’re lucky.
Suddenly, my baby dog, my best friend, the greatest gift I’ve ever gotten other than my husband, comes with an expiration date.
While I’m waiting for Fletch to get home from work so we can pick up the kittens, I furiously start scheduling cultural activities to keep me occupied. I sign up for foreign cooking classes, wine appreciation courses, and cheese seminars. I buy tickets for dance recitals and theater performances and book dinners at molecular gastronomy restaurants. I’m trying to be as show-must-go-on as I can, but I wonder if I’m going to be able to focus on anything in the near future.
Gina greets me with an enormous hug and a million words of encouragement. She’s baked us one of her world-famous pound cakes, too, which really touches me. I’m not close to my family anymore—let’s just say big, fat, thoughtless mouths are a genetic trait—so it feels really good to have friends filling these roles.
Gina leads us down to the basement, where the kittens are currently being kept. “How’d you catch them?” Fletch asks. When we saw her a couple of weeks ago, Gina told us the shelters instructed her not to touch them, as her scent might turn their mother against them. As far as we know, no one’s ever laid a human hand on them.
“I lured them into my gingerbread house,” Gina replies. “I opened a can of Trader Joe’s tuna, set it in the cat carrier, and then shut the door on them. Then I brought them into the basement and essentially dumped them into this.” Gina points at the largest dog carrier I’ve ever seen. Both our old dogs George and Ted could have fit in there together. Nixon, too. Possibly even Spiro Agnew.
“Why do you have this? Did you have a Malamute I didn’t know about? Or a pony?” I asked.
“No, when I brought Bailey in,168 he needed to be separated and contained while the abscess on his leg healed, so I bought this for him to live in. That is, until he took over my whole guest room.”
The plan is for Fletch to reach in the enormous doggie condo, grab the kittens, and deposit them in our more portable cat carrier. Before we do, I want to take my first peek at them. I peer into the doggie condo, which we’ve tipped on its side so the kittens can’t escape through the open door. There are three tiny gray bundles of fur, all hunkered together in the very corner of the carrier. “Oh, my God, they’re adorable!” I squeal.
“I’ve been calling them the Cherubs because they’re so stinking cute,” Gina replies.
“We’re going to call them the Thundercats until we figure out what to name them. Also, that’ll help me not get too attached in case they test positive for feline diseases, you know?”
Gina muses, “I was really surprised to get your note Saturday and then to hear from you, Fletch. I thought when we were at brunch, you made your thoughts on new kittens pretty clear. You’re really behind this?”
With an entirely straight face, he says, “Absolutely. This is the very best idea I’ve heard since you, Lucy and Ethel, got all the cats together for a playdate. I mean, what could possibly