Chapter 2 · Wordsmiths’ Guild

Chapter 2

Here is Chapter 2:

I didn't mean to fall in love.

Not with anyone. Not after the kind of breakup that left me stranded halfway across the world from Tokyo to Boulder, Colorado, with nothing but a cat and a suitcase full of regret.

The master plan—not that I ever planned anything—was never to fall in love. Not again. Not ever.

And most certainly not with Lydia.

Lydia, a blind cat who resembled a dirty dishrag.

Her owner told me that her cat was an albino who had trouble seeing. And, I later discovered, was also hearing impaired and arthritic.

But I've always known that life has its own wry little sense of humor.

I had just moved back to the United States after a long stint in Japan, a move that had been precipitated by a boyfriend, of course. Because the heart, as we know, has its own logic, its indecipherable algorithm. Just like cats.

The timing couldn’t have been worse. There was no real rhyme or reason as to why I had to leave within a month other than that said boyfriend was pining to return to Boulder. Besides, he feared he was running out of options in Japan—after only a year—and I had to accommodate him.

I tossed everything I’d built in Japan like trash, nothing more than a torn, scribbled-on crossword page from yesterday's paper.

Our relationship was equally flimsy. The only thing we had in common was that we had both suffered from severe bouts of depression. Not exactly the stuff of romance. Or a foundation for building a life together.

He wasn’t a bad person. Not really. He wasn’t a drug addict or a serial killer. He had striking features, a soft, gentle demeanor, and, as someone trained in alternative medicine, spoke the language of healing.

My cat Saki tried to point out the incompatibility.

My beloved Saki, my black cat with a kink in her tail whom I adopted from an American couple when she was a couple of months old.

She took a huge dump on a t-shirt that my new beau had happened to leave behind. She had never done that. She was not one of those cats that misread litter box boundaries. It was a pointed message for me.

I chose to ignore it.

In less than a month, I had shipped all the belongings that I could and given away the rest: my hand-crafted mattress, my quirky desk, and a Japanese dresser and wardrobe, to name just a few.

And off I went with my boyfriend on our merry way, with no job prospects, nowhere to stay, and not a seed of a plan.

I had never been to Boulder, much less Colorado. I didn’t know a single soul there.

I wasn’t surprised when everything came unraveled shortly after signing a townhouse lease in Boulder. A ball of tangled-up miscommunications and unmet expectations, our relationship landed in the ditch.

Quite unexpectedly—and hilariously—the ex-boyfriend now pined for Japan and flew back there as quickly as he could.

I couldn't, much as I wanted to. Not after having dismantled everything.

As soon as he was gone, I turned to Saki and said, "It's just you and me now."

Maybe I imagined it, but I thought I saw a shadow flit through her large green eyes.

Months later, I discovered that she had contracted a fatal illness.

The diagnosis came like a trapdoor opening beneath my feet. I rushed her to the regular vet, and then to alternative ones. A neighbor, a loner on a mountain bike who rarely spoke but opened up when it came to cats, gave me the number of Jackson Galaxy, a cat expert. “Call him,” he said. “He's sure to give you some good advice.”

Jackson was extremely sympathetic and suggested some herbs to try out, which I did.

I followed vet recommendations as well: Tried to inject her with subcutaneous fluids. Tried to syringe-feed her with complex, nourishing concoctions. Saki fought off all my attempts, her small body going rigid, her eyes wild with something between fear and resignation.

A holistic vet gave her several sessions of experimental ozone therapy and vitamin C injections. Every day I packed Saki into a backpack left unzipped so she could breathe, and I pedaled her to the vet on my bike, the only transportation I had.

Nothing worked.

I should have saved myself the trouble and the expense, I should have allowed Saki to spend the little time she had in peace. On what turned out to be her last evening on Earth, she still found the strength to balance herself on the bathtub rim to watch me bathe. She still gazed st me, her large green eyes liquid with love. That night, she slept with me under the covers.

On the afternoon of the following day, she wobbled over to my desk where I was working at my computer. One look, and I knew something was wrong.

The normally blue sky turned gray. Storm clouds gathered. I called the vet.

“It’s too late,” they told me. I had booked an in-home euthanasia so she wouldn’t have to spend her last hours at a place she dreaded.

Following their instructions, I laid a towel on my lap and placed Saki on top of it. By then, she was no longer conscious, though she was still breathing.

Slowly, I watched her life ebb away.

She died right there, in my lap.

The skies opened up and dumped torrential rain.

If this were fiction, I’d say the rain is a cliché. I’d consider it a cheesy scene, and I’d cut it as fast as my fingertip could hit “delete.”

But that’s how it happened.

It poured all afternoon and evening. Even as I wept like the sky.

I couldn’t stay in the townhouse anymore. I had to move out immediately. I had been planning to head to California eventually, but I wasn’t ready yet. So, I found a temporary rental with two women who kept to themselves in their basement bedrooms. I was given the top floor, an en suite room with complete privacy.

The house, wider at the bottom than the top, had the slightly shabby air of a place haunted by a Victorian governess—faded wallpaper, creaking stairs, rooms that held their breath.

The perfect arrangement for me.

As I was paying the deposit, a bright-eyed young woman told me, “I’ll be dropping my cat off here soon.” She was the sister of one of my future roommates. “I'll be gone for the summer, and she’ll be in the care of my sister. The cat’s named Lydia.”

An unusual name for a cat, I thought. But the company of a cat without any obligations suited me perfectly. I wasn’t yet ready to get my own, and in any case, I’d have to wait until I moved to California.

After that, I promptly forgot about the guest cat. Little did I realize that the exact moment I set my eyes on Lydia would be etched forever in my mind. Strange, since I have no recollection of the first time I met either of my two housemates. Or, come to think of it, my first date with my ex-boyfriend.

But I had a vivid recollection of my first encounter with Saki. As I would Lydia’s.

The front entryway of the house I was to live in opened out to the living room. When I stepped in through the door, no one was home.

The first thing I saw was a creature with long white fur, muddied and tangled, perched precariously on the back of the couch, walking back and forth like a trapeze artist in training, one that had fallen on hard times. Never have I seen a cat so unkempt.

I walked up to her anyway.

Her eyes were soft blue, hazed by the blur of blindness, like the sky just before it’s decided on the weather.

“My cat just died,” I said quietly.

She butted her head into my arms.

And purred.

And that was it.

Love at first sight for a sightless cat.

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