pancake

Holding It All Together - Pancake - by Amy McCollom

It seemed like a good idea, as most of mine do to me. My cat was lonely. Reggie, the Bengal, moped around the house and cried loudly for attention all the do-da-day. It was driving us all nuts. Yes, it could have been that he was just a spoiled noisy cat, but Bengals aren't usually that talkative. And believe me, I know a lot about cats.

It was when I saw the ad pinned to the bulletin board at the grocery store that my wild idea became a reality. Free kittens! Of course, why didn't I think of it sooner. We could get a cat, for our cat!

We went out to the farm where the kittens were being kept. The cute little things ran playfully about the garage, and each of the kids grabbed their favorite one. I liked the pretty gray one, but we ended up taking home the ordinary black and white one that let the kids hold him upside down. One of my teenagers came home about that time and said, "Gee, that cat looks just like my friends cat Waffles." Of course it did. It looked like every other ordinary black and white cat I had ever seen. Since the name Waffles was taken, the kids chose to call our new addition Pancake.

Pancake was cute and very tolerant. Reggie took up with him right away, grooming him and generally taking care of his new friend. Pancake seemed to enjoy being dressed in doll clothes, and being put into toy baby carriers. I enjoyed Reggie not wailing for my attention constantly.

But then a strange thing happened. Pancake grew up. Quickly and with a fury, the kitten turned into a huge cat in a few short months. No longer did he cuddle up next to Reggie, but would pummel him, and knock him off his cat tree. He soon took up hissing his way to the food dish, and Reggie resigned to hiding under the bed, and quietly meowing his displeasure from there. It became evident that Pancake was bullying my kitty.

Not only that, Pancake wasn't about to become satisfied as a housecat. He would sneak out anytime someone left the door slightly ajar, which was all the time. I was constantly running here and there looking for Pancake...even going as far as dragging him out of the neighbors tree on two occasions. And then there were the fleas. Reggie never went outside, except twice by accident. For the eight years we had Reggie, he had never gotten fleas. Now our house was being overrun with the pests, thanks to Pancake.

After thinking long and hard about it, I decided that Pancake had to go. Reggie was my cat. He was almost like my child. I couldn't stand seeing him live in fear one more day. So one day when the kids were at school, I took Pancake to the humane society. It was a good thing to do, he would surely be adopted. He was friendly, and good looking. And I'm sure he reminded someone of a cat they once knew.

For three days no one noticed he was gone. Then Rosa began calling him. I didn't say a word. All the kids looked around the house, under beds, out in the yard, and came up with the idea that he must have ran away. I just let them think that. It was easier than explaining he went to the pound, then hearing them cry and blame me for their sorrow. They made up stories about where he was....with Garfield, on a trip to Mexico, visiting their aunt in Texas, and on a cruise. Soon they didn't mention him at all, so I thought I was off the hook.

Until last week. I was cooking breakfast when Rosa yelled, "Pancake!!! I saw him run by the window!!!" And suddenly all the kids were scrambling to put on their shoes, and their coats, and somebody found a leash, and someone else was digging under the lizard's aquarium for the cricket net. They were bound and determined to go after their lost cat.

Did Pancake escape from the pound? Did he find his way home? Oh, this sounded pretty ridiculous. Unless you've lived through something similar like I did when I was a kid. When I was 9, my family adopted a gray poodle from the Champaign County Humane Society. We named him Benji. He got really big, well, because he was a standard poodle, not a miniature one like we thought. Soon he was able to jump our chain-link fence, and became the problem pet everyone dreads. It didn't help that my folks didn't exactly know how to train a dog. So after about two years of living with an unruly curly monster, we took him back to the humane society.

One rainy night five years later, we got a phone call. The man on the other end said he had found our dog. It was Benji! He was lying in the road, and this man ran out in front of a bus to rescue him. Wow. We were amazed that Benji was still wearing the collar and tags that he had when we surrendered him years earlier. We knew fate had knocked on our door, and so we went to pick him up the next day. Benji ran to greet us with sloppy kisses and seemed to remember us. Benji was a good dog, even with his faults. Kind of like a lot of us.

So when the kids yelled that Pancake was back, fear and joy grabbed me by the throat. It was then I realized that the truth might have been easier than letting them make it up themselves. I hadn't told them anything, but I let them believe a lie. Absence of truth, that's the gray area. I should have taken a clue from Pancake, and just kept everything black and white. (Or at least gotten a cat that didn't look like a million other cats in the world.)

If I am going to raise my kids with total disclosure, then Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy are to be exposed as well. I really wish they came with an instruction manual. Raising kids looked so easy in the movies.