“How did you cut your wrist?” she asked him.
“It was the cat.”
“Oh. She scratches.”
“No, it was my fault. I was trying to catch her and put her in a bag. She got scared. I can’t really blame her. But if you just let her come to you, she doesn’t scratch. She’s sweet. She wants attention. If she was here—”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Mildred Gutermann said, interrupting him. “However I would handle her if she were here. Because, sorry as I am to say so, she can’t be here. Too bad you can’t train a cat. But you can’t.”
“Not sure what I could teach her to do, anyway,” he said. “Even if you could train a cat. You know, that would keep her out from under your feet.”
“Maybe if you could teach her to make noise all the time. Meow wherever she went. Then I would always know where she is. But you can’t teach that.”
“That’s it!” Raymond cried out.
“No, no, it’s impossible.”
“I could buy her a collar with a bell on it! Then she would make noise wherever she goes!”
“Hmm. Rinse that off now. Turn on the water and rinse it. I’ll get you some tissues to dry it off, and then I have antibiotic ointment, and then we’ll bandage it up.”
“What about what I just said?”
“I am thinking about what you just said.”
“What do you think of it so far?”
“I think so far that I am kicking myself for not having a cat all these years, if it’s as simple as all that. So now I’m thinking . . . is it really? As simple as all that? And I think part of me wants it not to be. So I can stop kicking myself.”
Raymond rinsed his wrist under the cold water and dried it off with the tissues she handed him. He said nothing, because he wanted her to have plenty of time to think.
“You would have to buy a litter box. And litter.”
“Right!” he said. Too loud and anxious. “I would!”
“And cat food.”
“Oh. I guess I didn’t think this out very well. It’s getting expensive, isn’t it?”
“If you would buy the collar with the bell, and the box, and the first bag of litter, I could probably manage the rest.”
“Is that too expensive for you?”
“Not really. I don’t do too badly. I get by. I have my social security, and a little pension from a company where I worked as a seamstress for fifty years. But I’ll need cat food regularly. So you’ll need to come by every few days to walk with me to the store.”
“I would have anyway,” Raymond said. “Cat or no cat. Just because you needed me to.”
“I already know that. And that’s why I want to be able to do this for you if I can. So go get the bell, and we will give this a try, and we shall hope for the best. Yes, Raymond?”
“Yes,” he said. Breathing for what felt like the first time in a long time. “Thank you!”
When Raymond got back from the store, he let himself into her apartment with her keys. She had loaned him her keys so she wouldn’t have to cross to the door until the cat was collared and belled.
She was sitting on the couch, and the cat was sitting with her front end on the old woman’s lap. Purring. Having her ears scratched.
Raymond pulled a deep breath, sighed it out, and felt deeply grateful. He silently thanked the cat for helping him help her.
“I’m back,” he said, locking the door behind him.
“So I hear.”
“I’m putting your keys back on the hook by the door.”
“Thank you.”
“And I’ll set up the litter box in . . . I don’t know. Where do you want me to set it up?”
“In the bathroom. In the corner under the sink. I can’t trip over it there.”
While he set the box in place—removed the labels and filled it with litter—Raymond wondered how you train a cat to use a litter box. Or do they train themselves? It seemed to go without saying that this cat would never have seen one before. Or maybe he was wrong about that. Maybe the cat had been owned by someone. Once upon a time. Maybe that was why she came to him in a reasonable space of time and with not too much effort.
He threw away the litter bag in the kitchen trash and joined the old woman and the cat on the couch.
“Does she have a name, this cat?” Mildred Gutermann asked.
“No.”
“We shall call her Louise,” she said without hesitation.