Only Three Cats

Okay, let’s go back to 2020. Don’t fret, it’s only temporary. I don’t want to be there either.

Around this time a year ago Greskrendtregk’s parents were locked down in their retirement home. I panicked. My uncle was in a short-term recovery facility when it locked down not long before and he passed away after just a couple of days of being denied visitors. He’d had a stroke and was making good progress although he couldn’t really speak yet so phone conversations weren’t a substitute. Without daily encouragement and interaction with siblings, he just gave up. I was still reeling from that when my in-laws were endangered. To protect them, of course, and I wholeheartedly agreed with it and even huffed that they waited as long as they did, but I still worried where this action would lead. My mother-in-law speaks so softly you can barely hear her and my father-in-law is nearly deaf with his hearing aid in. He can’t understand you 90% of the time in person let alone on the phone. So…letters. I wrote so many letters.

Here’s the thing about writing letters to sequestered old people during a pandemic: Every time they turn on the TV they see that people are dying. Every time they pick up their newspaper people are dying. No one knows anything and studies and theories that aren’t peer-reviewed are being put forth as information by a media desperate to keep their attention. There is no good news. They worried about children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren all over North America.

I couldn’t say “Hey, by the way, it turns out your granddaughter has a heart problem so we’re taking her to a cardiologist now. We found out when she got her tonsils out the day before they stopped non-essential surgeries,” or “Oh, by the way, your grandson was exposed and quarantining in his room right now playing video games, so aside from not going to work nothing has really changed there ha, ha,” or “Yeah, looks like I’m in a high-risk category because of my immune system so Greskrendtregk won’t let me leave the house if I don’t absolutely have to,” or any number of other things happening in our lives that were news, but not the kind of news that would keep them calm and happy. I did tell them that their son’s insistence on living the “Always Be Prepared” Boy Scout motto meant that we had plenty of toilet paper. Also Lysol and Clorox wipes.

After dispensing that one bit of calming news, I floundered. The kids did nothing worth mentioning that I could actually mention. They were supremely unhelpful in providing material for their grandparents. Desperate, I wrote a lot about the cats and the garden and my brain turned to mush. As much as I love my cats and like having fresh heirloom vegetables that I grew myself, there’s only so much of that you can write about before your brain packs it in. My life has been about what I can write to my in-laws and what I can’t, and I live looking at everything through that filter. It is possibly worse than the pandemic itself. I started to feel like I was writing children’s books. Seriously, I had nightmares about it, largely because I can’t draw!

Then the unthinkable happened: their newspaper switched from daily to once a week. OMG it was like the world ended. These are 90-year-olds, give and take five years, getting news from the internet wasn’t an option and the news on TV kept upsetting them. Everything seemed so much scarier when it was on TV. So suddenly I kind of had something to write in letters: actual news. Except I couldn’t. Turns out hearing it from me was worse than reading it in the paper. So I printed off a few articles that likely didn’t make their once-a-week paper and ignored the rest of what was happening.

And then I committed a terrible, terrible sin. In my desperation to provide any sort of uplifting stories, I mentioned my daughter’s friend made her their chinchilla’s godmother. I included a picture of the fluffy creature. And I went on to say that she’s getting along well with her boyfriend’s lizard and cat; and the snake, dog, and hamster of her boyfriend’s little sister (who is her coworker and friend). I included pictures of The Girl with these adorable little critters, smiling broadly – The Girl not the critters – and counted that as uplifting.

My in-laws panicked.

I was sitting across the room from Greskrendtregk when he received a frantic call from his father. (Let me remind you this man can’t hear you if you’re in the same room and his hearing aid is in, over the phone he catches maybe one word in ten and makes an assumption on what you said. The assumption is never right.)

“Dad? What’s wrong? No calm down. Slow down. Tell me what’s wrong. Is Mom okay?”

“What?” (Gres made a lot of requests that he repeat himself, so I’m just going to leave these out. Actually, that was the bulk of the conversation.)

“No, Dad, we don’t have a snake.”

“Snakes aren’t actually evil. They’re just –”

“Dad, this snake isn’t dangerous. Also, it isn’t ours. Dad, did you actually read the letter?” (Note: I write these letters in 20-point Courier New to make it super easy to read. I’ll be increasing the font size going forward.)

“Dad, DAD! We only have three cats. No snake, no lizard, no chinchilla.”

“No, Dad we don’t have a dog.” (I’ve told them about our nephew’s dog in its journey from puppyhood to too large to be in an apartment and committed the folly of including pictures. I’ve always been very clear about who the dog belongs to AKA not us.)

“Dad, we’re not getting a dog.”

“No, it’s a chinchilla, and it isn’t ours. It belongs to –”

“Dad, I promise you, only three cats. Three cats, Dad, only three. One, two, three. That’s all.”

“No, she isn’t getting another snake.”

“She’s very good with reptiles, it isn’t dangerous. No, the snake. It isn’t dangerous. It doesn’t matter, we aren’t getting one. The lizard isn’t ours either.” (He glares at me. A snake would by far be the safer companion. A rattlesnake has less venom than my husband at that moment.)

“Dad, only three cats.”

And it continued. Finally Gres got off the phone and glared at me.

“No more mention or pictures of any animals other than our three cats. Not even the strays. Am I absolutely clear?”

“They don’t do enough to write about,” I pointed out.

“You’re a writer, MAKE IT UP!”

“Okay.”

My brain is slowly coming back. Also, I’m pretty sure my in-laws now believe we have the weirdest cats.