His name is Wilford Brimley, he is gray and so downy soft and coconut-smelling you'd think he was a doll you won at a carnival. He was a gift to me in May of 2010 when he was just six weeks old. It's been a trying year of love-mauling, 5am feedings and sweater destroying, but there is nothing like coming home, looking up before entering the front door, and seeing his little gray face pressed up against the window watching me come in.
I dropped him off to his new home, via three legs of a bad Delta Airlines travel experience that began at 4am and delayed us an extra 8 hours. Going through security, I was told to take him out of the crate and carry him through the x-ray machine so his crate could be scanned. He wouldn't come out, so I had to unclip the front of the carrier, but he calmly let me carry him through and people ooohed and ahhed at his beauty as he looked them all over with disdain. When the crate came through the conveyor belt, I struggled with one hand to clip it back together so I could get Wilfy in there. The man who came through behind me tried to help, dropped the metal door that latches it together and the noise startled Wilfy enough for him to make a run for it. He leapt out of my arms back toward the x-ray machine and I dove for him. He turned and ran out into the terminal and I went sprinting after him while people all around us screamed and yelled that a cat was loose. He's about 12 pounds and adorable, why were they screaming? He made a break for the gift shop and crawled under a multi-layered t-shirt kiosk. I crawled around on all fours, pushing furniture out of my way, and dug him out. He went back in his box and was quiet for the rest of the day. He was quiet when Delta delayed twice and then ultimately canceled our second flight, making us take two more planes to get to Indiana. I had a meltdown at the service desk and asked for a private room where I could let him out to relieve basic functions and have a bite to eat. The Delta employee said I had a full hour and a half and could go anywhere I wanted outside the airport. Was I supposed to take him on a tour of the White House? Let him poop in Taft's oversize hot tub? She didn't think that was funny and did not seem sympathetic to my distress. Before departing for the journey, I had sprayed Wilfy's crate with a cat pheromone meant to induce calm and squirted some rescue remedy down his throat. I guess it worked. I needed a pheromone myself. At each terminal we were trapped in, I hogged the "family" restroom and opened his crate in case he wanted to poop on the floor (which I planned on leaving there because I was furious). He wasn't interested, even though he had to spend an extra 8 hours in his crate because Delta Airlines is a horrible inefficient organization that gives you food vouchers that you can't even use on wine.
After dropping him at his new home, I could only stay a day before returning on two more delayed then canceled flights via Delta Airlines. The moment I left the last terminal and saw my father standing in the airport waiting for me, the floodgates let loose and I speed-walked sobbing into his arms, watery snot smeared across my upper lip and eye make-up dripping down my cheeks. I cried the whole way back to my apartment and groaned pitifully when I walked up the stairs, glanced at the empty window and opened the door to an empty place. His toys were still all over the floor and his litterbox needed to be packed up and thrown away. One lone turd huddled in the grains of clay and sand and I briefly flirted with the idea of keeping it as a souvenir. Very briefly. Tonight will be the first night in eleven months that I sleep in my own bed without his fuzzy tummy wrapped around my head, his paws draped over my face lovingly suffocating me.
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