The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook Read online

  “You mean he dies and comes back again?”

  “He sort of dies, but not really. He starts a whole new life. Nine lives altogether. Cats are amazing that way.”

  The Cats-Have-Nine-Lives Theory is what people call “an old wives’ tale.” It’s a theory that’s been around since olden times. Everyone who knows cats knows how often they do dumb, death-defying stunts that would kill other living things. How many cats have you noticed snoozing peacefully under a car? Ever seen a dog do that? I rest my case.

  I look around and notice an older woman approaching our bench.

  “See her? I’m going to prove it to you,” I say quietly out of the corner of my mouth, because the woman is coming closer. Sometimes older people have hearing problems, but sometimes they don’t. For instance, Gramma Dee claims she can hear a fly’s little hairy legs touching down onto her kitchen countertop.

  Now the woman sits down on the bench with us. Fred and I squiggle to the side to make more room.

  “But, really, how do you know it’s true?” Fred asks, continuing the conversation.

  “I just know,” I say. “It’s one of those things you learn when you get older.”

  I can feel the woman beside me listening. She smells like mint tea and just-washed laundry. Of course, she can’t help listening, since we’re all squished together on the bench. But often older people do eavesdrop on kids’ conversations, and even jump right in. That’s because they miss the children they used to have, who have all grown up and left home.

  I smile at her. “Nice day,” I say.

  I try to keep a couple of good conversation starters up my sleeve. And it’s usually a nice day in Oakland, except for a couple of months in the winter when it rains. We even love the rain, especially when there’s a drought. But even when there’s lots of rain, we all still try to practice water conservation whenever we can. For example, not running the water while we brush our teeth.

  “Yes, it sure is a pretty day today,” the woman says.

  “My brother and I are talking about cats. How many lives would you say they have?” I ask, hoping she’ll say the right thing.

  “Nine, of course.”

  BINGO!

  “And you wouldn’t believe the scrapes my cats have bounced back from!” the woman says. The bus arrives before she can tell us about those scrapes. She waves from a window of the bus, and we wave back.

  “See?” I say to Fred. “Just ask anyone.”

  ere are some things about me:

  I am a ten-year-old girl. I like to dip my french fries in vinegar. I love when the sun shines through spiderwebs. My best friend is Riya. I love my little brother so much, my heart hurts. I like dancing and drawing.

  I am easily spotted in a crowd because I’m the girl wearing the black Oakland Raiders sweatshirt that’s way too big for her because it used to belong to her dad. I pulled it out of a box of old clothes on its way to Goodwill a few months ago. Everywhere I go, people usually yell out “Go Raiders!” I’m not that up on football, but “Go Raiders” can often be a good conversation starter for other topics.

  Also, I need to wear glasses, but I am a good noticer, as I mentioned. Being a noticer helps you come up with inventions and theories and stories. For instance, I noticed that people use a drinking straw only once and then they throw it away. Very wasteful. So one day I invented the Family Straw. Everyone has their own straw permanently attached to a bigger one which would be hooked up to the pitcher of juice or beverage of the family’s choice. An excellent water-saving idea, because you wouldn’t have to wash all those drinking glasses. And good for the environment because it’s just one big straw that you don’t have to throw away. I’m still working out the details on how to build it, the materials needed, etc., etc.

  My dad used to tell me I have an inventive mind, but I actually prefer thinking up theories and stories rather than inventions. You don’t have to build theories and stories, just make them up.

  For instance, my Rainbow Whopper Theory.

  That’s another important thing about me, and I have to admit it, even though it doesn’t sound so great. I tell whoppers. Whoppers are lies, plain and simple. Some whoppers are worse than other whoppers, and those are nothing to be proud of. But some whoppers are stories. Those are the good kind. Thinking about different kinds of whoppers can get very complicated and make your brain jump around in your skull, so it helps if you attach colors to them. That’s where my Rainbow Whopper Theory comes in.

  BLUE whoppers save your scaredy skin, or someone else’s, to smooth things over for a while. When I told Mom that Fred didn’t flush the goldfish down the toilet (he wanted it to join other fish in the ocean), that was a blue whopper. I told her I did it myself, accidentally.

  RED whoppers are the kind that make other people think you’re greater than you are. For a long time (OK, up until a year ago), I enjoyed telling everyone that Neil Armstrong, the first man to bounce around on the moon, was my father’s second cousin. It just seemed very cool to be related to him.

  BLACK whoppers have only one purpose: They are meant to hurt someone. I don’t think I’ve ever told one of these during my lifetime. WHITE ones do the opposite—they make someone feel better. For instance when I was in second grade, I told Sam that, no, he didn’t smell like pee like everyone said. Telling someone that cats have nine lives (when you’ve just made your cat’s vet angry) is half blue, half white. Sky blue, maybe.

  But then there are the whoppers you don’t tell. The kind when you leave something out and keep the secret all to yourself. Those whoppers are YELLOW.

  Here’s the thing: When we found Zook lying in that geranium pot in the alley on that sunny Saturday two and a half years ago, something else was attached to his collar besides that rectangle with the fake diamond on it. There was also a name tag. The name tag said MUD, 1235 Clover Street, which is around the block from where we live. Here are the reasons I threw that name tag away and never told a living soul about it:

  1. I wanted us to keep that cat as our own pet. We renamed him Zook right away. So it was just convenient (blue whopper) to say he was homeless.

  2. Zook wanted to stay with us, too! He followed us up to our apartment without a backward glance, as if he knew it was his home. And it was.

  3. Only a dork calls their own cat “Mud,” and only someone worse than a dork doesn’t feed their cat properly, or give him flea medicine, or uses him for target practice with a BB gun!!!!!! A villain does all that. No way was that cat going back to 1235 Clover Street.

  I committed that address to memory so I could visit the Villain myself and seek revenge. Not that I had any plans for revenge. Two and a half years ago I wasn’t even allowed to go around the block by myself.

  But now I’m allowed to go lots of places. I pick up Fred from preschool, and I go to Safeway to buy milk and fruit and stuff, and then there’s O’Leary’s Pizzeria, where we hang out a lot because of our job (more about that soon), and the Good Samaritan Veterinary Clinic, and the Bank of the West that I investigate in case of robberies. Man, the places I’ll get to go when I can drive a car! Six long, long years away, even though my mother and Gramma Dee say it’s not anywhere near long enough for them.

  Lately, we’ve been passing by the Villain’s house.

  Today after leaving the bus stop, we actually do more than pass by. We sit on the curb across from the Villain’s house to rest. That’s what Fred thinks we’re doing, anyway. I myself am noticing things.

  Zook’s old home is a small house with shades pulled all the way down and a broken-down front porch. Overgrown lavender plants in the yard sweeten up the air, almost completely covering up the chipped front walk. Sometimes I see a motorcycle parked in the sloped gravel driveway, but we’ve never seen the Villain.

  Fred reaches into his little plastic bag for a fish cracker, his mind still on my whopper.

  “How many lives has Zook lived already?” he asks.

  “Nobody knows for sure. But trust me, less
than nine.”

  Right now I feel like grabbing a sharp pebble, then racing across the street to scratch a big Z for Zook on the shiny hub of that motorcycle’s front wheel.

  “But how many do you think?” Fred asks.

  I brush a crumb from his chin. I look right into his worried brown eyes. “Zook is working on his fifth life,” I say, pulling a number out of the air. Well, not exactly out of the air, because five is Fred’s favorite number, being a proud five-year-old himself.

  Fred nods thoughtfully, then counts on his fingers. “Four left.”

  He eats a bunch of crackers and his mouth is stuffed when he asks the next question. It comes out sounding like “How shoe your snow?” or “Cows moo and blow?” But I’m prepared for the question, so I understand him perfectly.

  “How do I know? I’ll tell you how I know,” I say. “Cats give us ‘clues,’ that’s what they do. If you’re a real good noticer, you pick up those clues, those really important details. Those clues tell you about all the lives before, and maybe even all the lives coming up.”

  “Oh,” says Fred, in a way that means there will be more questions later. “OK. Anyway, let’s go now.” He doesn’t look worried anymore, and stands up.

  I hear a jingle of keys. There he is! The Villain, double-locking his front door. And sure enough, he looks like a pirate. I’ve never actually seen a pirate personally, except in drawings. But I can imagine a pirate like the Villain, handsome and brown-skinned, with a black braid down his back and a red shirt with yellow fringes on it. A pirate wouldn’t be holding a motorcycle helmet, but you get the picture.

  The Villain waves at us. “Hey,” he says.

  “I heart your bike!” says Freddy.

  The Villain grins, flashing his white pirate teeth. “Come over and take a look!”

  His smile looks evil. OK, to be fair, his smile would be an ordinary one on anyone else. But knowing what I know about his BB-gun activities, it looks evil to me. I narrow my eyes at him. I once saw a cop do that on TV.

  “Let’s go,” I say to Freddy, grabbing his arm.

  “Aw, I wanna touch his bike!” Freddy says.

  Freddy is young. He doesn’t understand things about the world. He doesn’t understand about the evil that lurks in some people’s hearts. Riya and I talk about that all the time. You just never know, which is why I wasn’t allowed to go around the block by myself until I was old enough to know certain things. You just don’t make friends with everyone you meet, people who look perfectly fine, but could very well have hearts oozing with evil. At ten, I’ve figured out the difference between a pirate who shoots at cats and a lady at a bus stop who smells like mint tea.

  “No,” I say firmly. The Villain shrugs. He and his braid roar off on that motorcycle, and Freddy and I head to O’Leary’s.

  hen we walk into O’Leary’s Pizzeria, Fred asks everyone about the Cats-Have-Nine-Lives Theory. He asks Manic Moe the dough-maker and dough-tosser, Salvatore the dishwasher, and Vicki the server. He asks most of the Saturday lunch crowd, whose names I don’t know. He also asks My Secret Love, hunched over his cell phone, eating a double slice. (His name I know, but I’m not saying.) And because Fred is little and cute, they don’t think he’s crazy when he asks his question. They all give the right answer, too: nine.

  Except for Mario and Maria, the owners. By the way, nobody knows who O’Leary was, but Mario and Maria have no plans to change the sign. Mario was born in Italy and Maria was born in Mexico. People are curious about Irish pizza, and then they come in and eat the best Italian or Mexican pizza of their lives. Not to mention the famous fried zucchini. The Mexican-style pizza comes with an optional topping of crazy-hot chilis—“Only for the brave of heart and stomach,” according to a sign on the wall.

  “I say seven,” says Mario. “Seven lives.”

  And I say, “What do you mean, seven?” I toss my head in Fred’s direction and wiggle my nose nine times to get Mario to play along.

  But Mario doesn’t notice. “Seven. We even have a saying in Italy. I gatti hanno sette vite. Cats have seven lives. RIGHT, MARIA?” Mario shouts to his wife, who is in the back room.

  “WHAT?” she shouts back.

  “CATS HAVE SEVEN LIVES!”

  Maria pokes her head out, sees me and Fred, and waves. “That’s what they say in Italy,” she says. “In Mexico, I’ve heard it’s eight and a half.”

  “Well,” I say, “Zook lives in the United States. Here, cats have nine.”

  Mario serves us one Daily Slice each, which is always the same, served every day: three-cheese with parsley flecks and fried zook. Fred picks off the parsley because it’s green. “What have you got against green?” we always ask. Fred never knows. You would think brown food or fuchsia food or blue food would be a no-no if the color of food was important to you. Things people like and don’t like don’t always make sense—ever notice? Vicki brings us some extra zucchini. Of course zucchini is also green, but these are covered in batter, then fried. Fred doesn’t eat much of his pizza, but he does eat the zucchini because covered-up green is OK, according to him.

  We get free food and are treated well at O’Leary’s Pizzeria because Fred and I, we’re employees of this establishment. Our job is dressing up in a cardboard triangle of pizza and a little pointed hat (me) and a brown cardboard zucchini circle (Fred). Fred might look like an olive if you didn’t know about O’Leary’s famous fried zucchini, but that doesn’t really matter. Both of our cardboards say O’LEARY’S PIZZERIA on them. We’re supposed to dance around to attract business right outside the door so the other O’Leary’s employees can see us.

  It’s a good feeling to walk in and hear Mario shout, “Hey, serve these kids anything they want! Anything at all! They are employees of this establishment!”

  Of course, there’s not much you can choose from except pizza and fried zook, but who cares? We love our job. Mario and Maria used to serve us teeny cups of espresso with lots of milk and sugar in it, but my mother put a stop to that. They also used to pay us two dollars each per week, but my mother put a stop to that, too. She said Mario and Maria didn’t need to pay us for doing something that was fun. Does that make sense? Lots of people get paid for doing something fun! Circus workers and astronauts, for instance. I even offered to contribute most of it to household expenses, because my mom has a furlough from her job at Sears, which means her hours were cut back.

  “We’re not in dire straits yet,” my mother said. “Payment with pizza is good enough.”

  When we finish our pizza, we start working. Maria hands us a boom box and some water bottles. Then out the door we go.

  We turn up the music real loud. Today Maria and Mario have chosen the Rolling Stones for their future customers’ listening pleasure.

  Then Freddy and I dance. Well, I dance. Fred jumps around a lot and kicks his little legs out in front of him.

  “Don’t forget to point,” I remind him, because that’s the real reason for our job. We are supposed to point up at the big O’Leary’s Pizzeria sign on top of the restaurant to remind people that a slice would really hit the spot right about now.

  It’s hard to remember to point when you’re dancing, but we are doing our best.

  People wave at us from cars and honk their horns. We wave back. A young man goes into O’Leary’s, probably because of Freddy and me. And all of a sudden I realize I haven’t thought about Zook in a while. It’s hard to be worried and sad when you’re dancing and doing a favor for good friends.

  My Secret Love comes out. I call his name. He pulls the earplugs from his ears and raises his eyebrows.

  “IT’S ME! OONA!” I shout above the music of the boom box. I want to really make sure he remembers my name. I take off my little pointed hat in case he doesn’t recognize me.

  “Oh, hi,” he says. “I’m not used to talking to a slice of pizza, but, hey, why not?”

  Why not! That is SO wise. So many things would be possible in this world if you thought Why not? all day lon
g.

  “NICE DAY, HUH?” I shout. I am hoping he’ll walk over and continue our conversation.

  “Sure is. Have a good one!” he says, and keeps on walking. Maybe “Nice day” isn’t the greatest conversation starter because it can lead to “Have a good one,” which is pretty much a conversation ender. I really don’t know how to talk to a boy in junior high who has his own smartphone.

  I watch My Secret Love stroll away. I’m still holding my little pointed hat in front of me. A woman walking by stops and says, “Maybe this will help a bit, dear.” Then she drops a five-dollar bill into my hat!

  Right after that, plink! plink! A man drops in two quarters. Fred is still jumping and pointing and doesn’t notice. He’s young. Five-year-olds mostly notice what’s close up to their noses. Experienced noticers notice the details as well as the big picture. I lean my hat against the boom box just to see what will happen, and I start dancing again. Next thing you know, my hat is halfway filled up with coins and a couple of bills. Soon Fred notices the money and stops dancing.

  “Wow,” he says.

  “Let’s take a break,” I say.

  We take all our stuff and go to the back alley that connects O’Leary’s with our apartment building. The O’Leary’s kitchen opens to the alley, and when Salvatore sees us sitting there, he gets us another plate of zook to share.

  Freddy and I love this alley, and not only because we found Zook here that sunny Saturday, singing his heart out in a pot of geraniums. One of my dreams in life is to have a real backyard, and this alley is a good substitute, even though it’s all concrete. When I take off my glasses to wipe them on my sweatshirt, things look even prettier, in a dreamy sort of way. The branches from a backyard camellia tree hang over the fence, so part of the alley is always shady and cool. Other spots are sunny and great for growing things in pots.