I’m worried about Baxter.

Last night I had a terrible dream.

I look out of the window of my kitchen door to find something small and sinister on my porch.

It is a dark mass, so black it’s hard to distinguish. But as I stare I realize it is a cat, a furry black cat lying on its back with its little paws drawn up to its chin, like an otter. And judging by the flies on it, it is dead.

“Kevin!” I shriek. “Baxter died and the neighbors couldn’t bear to tell me so they left him on the porch!”

As you might remember from previous posts, Baxter is my neighbors’ hundred-year-old (in people years) tomcat. He is also the semi-willing recipient of my fawning devotion, like a third nephew.

I love animals, but because I am allergic, I can’t have any of my own. So I try to woo the neighborhood pets who come around into thinking I am their dotty but lovable Auntie Uppity who will pet them, feed them and put them in my will.

This strategy has been most successful with Baxter, who lives next door and is too old to run away. For four years, Baxter has allowed me to spoil him, i.e., feed him every time I walk out my back door. In exchange, Baxter tolerates a few caresses and scritches behind the ears.

Phlegmatic as he is about our relationship, I think somewhere in his kitty soul Baxter knows he is doing me a spiritual service. He knows that letting someone love you is as crucial to life as water. So between the brownie points he’s racking up in the heavenly dimension and the free food in the earthly one, he really can’t lose.

But our rendezvous ceased abruptly this winter. After 17 years of prowling the gardens by day and sleeping in a box in the driveway by night, Baxter has finally withdrawn inside the house, where the warmth soothes his arthritic bones. I’m sure he whiles away the hours curled up on the couch contentedly, watching TV, doing jigsaw puzzles, and reading pulp fiction. I’ve missed his croaky demand for food every day when I get home from work, but I’ve been happy in the knowledge that he’s warm, safe, and…well, alive.

I’m starting to wonder, though.

The last Baxter sighting was on an unseasonably warm January afternoon. Kevin spotted him sitting on our front porch, surveying the lawn like he owned the place. Typical, actually, and thus reassuring. Since then, no Baxter, but I’ve figured surely when the weather warms up, he’ll come trotting around again, expecting, like a Hobbit, his ten or eleven meals a day.

But I haven’t seen Baxter yet this spring, even though the temperatures have been in the 60’s at times. I wouldn’t be too worried, except that a few months ago, I asked the neighbor lady how Baxter was doing and to my alarm, she started to cry.

“He’s not dead yet!” said her husband, in the exasperated tone that indicates they’ve had this conversation before.

“There’s nothing I can do for him,” she mourned. “I just try to make him comfortable.”

As much as I love Baxter, 17 years is damn old for a cat. In just the four years we’ve lived here, he’s gone from being old but spry to ancient and arthritic; from imperiously cantankerous to wearily, resignedly mellow. He’s lost weight, hair, eyesight. And memory, apparently, since he sometimes croaked for food mid-chew.

Kevin and I have made a deal that the first one to see the neighbors will inquire about Baxter and report back immediately. I just want to know so I can stop having dreams and start grieving. I mean, there’s like seven stages of that, isn’t there? I need to get started if I want to have a decent summer.

Baxter’s had a long, happy life brimming with love. In his last years, he let me top off the tank, for a small fee. I would have paid more.

Filed under The Baxter Files |