Marla Baggs kidnapped Joan Crawford. That’s a fact, even though she wouldn’t admit to it, even if a couple of hard-nosed detectives gave her the bare-light-bulb treatment. Joan Crawford is a cat who showed up at my back door, meowing and hungry. Once inside, after being fed, she proceeded to strut from room to room until finding a proper place on the couch to curl up and fall asleep. My soft spot for all things orphaned sparked a protective kinship. However, Joan Crawford was born to wander. She begged to go outside where she could sit beneath the shade of the trees in the yard, keep an eye on passing beetles, and catch the occasional unlucky mouse. The great outdoors was her promised land.
Joan Crawford was solid grey....not a patch of any discernible markings, sort of like an approaching storm-cloud mixed with a dust bunny. Soon after becoming comfortable around the house, her true colors emerged...giving rise to her name. A bit of a troublesome truck, she developed the habit of using the couch as a scratching post, pulling out stuffing as if a valuable prize was hidden deep inside. And she quickly established a grudge against the living room drapes, taking a run at them, leaping halfway to the top, then hanging for a brief moment before clawing her way down to the floor. After one month, the drapes were a series of tattered streamers, and who knows when that would become a decorating trend, if ever.
Like it or not, Joan Crawford’s indelible signature found its way to our home. We’d given up on ever having a piece of furniture that didn’t look like it’d been hit by a hand grenade, or drapes that didn’t appear like the battle flag of a losing side. We contemplated the life-span of the average cat, fourteen years, maybe twenty. So we unsubscribed to all those decorating magazines and made it a point to drive past the Furniture Corral and the Drapery Depot without even glancing in the direction of the stores. Joan Crawford was our new decorator.
One evening, Joan Crawford failed to return home. The next day, I went out looking for her, ringing doorbells and stapling posters to utility poles. A week went by without the slightest hint of a response. Then, one afternoon, while walking by Marla’s house on the next block, there in the window was Joan Crawford, looking longingly at the outdoors, her Shangri-La. I gave a trepidatious knock on Marla’s door. Marla’s reputation for being a tough-cookie, prompted me to address the escapade with my hazard lights blinking. She works the counter at Greasy Gary’s Auto Parts and is the catcher on their softball team. And as she likes to say, “No one gets by me at home plate, and if they do, they’ll not soon forget it." They call her “The Fireplug,” unmovable in every way. She answered the door, dressed in her faded-red Greasy Gary jersey. Her number is 1.
–Marla: What’s up?
–Me: That cat in the window, I think it’s mine.
–Marla: It’s my cat. I opened the door one night, and it walked right in.
–Me: Her name is Joan Crawford. I had her spayed and everything.
–Marla: That’s no kind of name for a cat. Her name is Gasket, and she’s here to stay.
–Me: She’s my cat.
–Marla: Prove it.
–Me: She’s grey, enjoys spaghetti and watching beetles crawl across the sidewalk.
–Marla: There’s a million grey cats; this one is not yours. Go find another one.
–Me: She’s good at redesigning furniture. Her specialty is draperies.
–Marla: Whatever.
–Me: I’ll be a nuisance.
–Marla: I’m sure you will.
And the door slammed with a whoosh of certainty. Normally, I’d hatch a plan to bust Joan Crawford out of Marla’s house, but when mulling over the entire kettle of fish, the pieces began to unfold into an almost ordained, serendipitous stew-pot. For starters, despite Marla’s surly disposition, she likes animals, and perhaps she and Joan Crawford are suited for one another, two peas in a pod, as they say. The second thing: redecorating our home with furniture that doesn’t look like the aftermath of a Three Stooges’ pillow fight is no longer a distant dream. Surely, the universe cooked-up this outcome on its own, and who am I to mess with the universe’s cooking.
These days, I stroll leisurely past Marla’s house, imagining I’ve been awarded visitation privileges by the Court of the Milky Way. I give a hearty to wave to Joan Crawford and Marla as they take their positions in the picture window. Marla watches. There’s a slow simmer in her stare and she doesn’t return my wave. While I make plans to visit the Drapery Depot.
