Homer's Odyssey

6 • Don’t Be Happy. Worry.

He might have known that he would not prevail with her, for when the gods have made up their minds they do not change them lightly.

—HOMER, The Odyssey

IT MAY HAVE STARTED WITH THE PLASTIC BAG. THE EXCESSIVE WORRYING, I mean.

Like many a new mom, I found myself growing eyes in the back of my head where Homer was concerned, as well as an extra set of ears and an almost preternatural awareness of where Homer was, what he was doing, and what his needs were at any given time.

This had become doubly true since Homer’s stitches had come out and he’d taken to tearing around the house after Scarlett and Vashti. Soon he wasn’t content to merely cover the ground they did, and he began discovering mischief all on his own. Sometimes I would lose track of him for a few minutes and find him in the most unbelievable places—dangling by his front paws from the middle shelf of a bookcase (how had he even gotten up there?), or wedged in the back corner of the cluttered cabinet beneath my bathroom sink, having managed to prise open the cabinet door.

His new obsession was scaling the floor-to-ceiling drapes that hung in the dining room, like one of those Spider-Man types you read about who hand-over-hand their way up the side of an office building. “Homer!” I would shriek when I found him hanging on the drapes by a single claw, six feet in the air. Homer would swing the slight weight of his nine or ten ounces around until all four claws clung to the drapes once again, climbing as quickly as he could to put himself above my reach.

Look, Ma! I always imagined him thinking. No eyes!

In contemplative moments, I would reflect that there was something inspirational in the way Homer was willing to climb and climb anything at all without any idea as to how high he was going, or any plan for safely regaining the ground once he’d reached the top. There was something to be said for that level of fearlessness.

For all that it was inspirational, however, it was also terrifying.

Every parent knows those moments—the ones when you suddenly realize you haven’t seen your child for at least fifteen minutes. You curse yourself for having become so occupied with something else that you lost track of his whereabouts. Where is he? What if something happened to him? Why wasn’t I paying attention?

It had already become a point of pride with me to insist that Homer was a perfectly normal kitten. Better than normal, even. I would have taken the head off of anybody who suggested that Homer needed “special” care because of his “special needs,” angrily insisting that Homer was just as capable of taking care of himself as either of my other two cats, or as any “normal” cat out there. When people asked whether and how a blind kitten could find his litter box, I would reply that Homer could not only find his litter, he could find his way to the top of the kitchen counter and into the cabinet where the canned tuna was kept, distinguishing the difference between a can of tuna (which he loved) and a can of tomato soup (to which he was indifferent), while both were still in their sealed cans. He’d root around in the cabinet, shoving all other canned goods out of his way, until he identified the can of tuna fish, using paws and nose to push it from the cabinet and onto the counter. Feed me this!

Beneath all that righteous indignation, however, and my insistence that I didn’t need to worry about Homer any more than I worried about Scarlett and Vashti, was the truth: Homer wasn’t like other cats, and I did worry about him more than I worried about my other two.

This fear was all my own, and Homer shared none of it. It had been predicted that his blindness would make him more hesitant and less independent than a typical cat. But if anything, the opposite was true. Because Homer was unable to see the hazards in the world around him, he lived in blissful unawareness of their existence. What was the difference between climbing to the top of a three-foot-high sofa and nine-foot-high drapes if you couldn’t see how high you were going anyway? And what was the difference between jumping down from either one when every leap you ever took was a leap into uncertain outcomes, based on nothing but blind faith in invisible landing points?

In the Daredevil comic books, occasional story lines find Daredevil regaining his vision. Although he retains the rest of his superpowers, he suddenly finds himself incapacitated, afraid to attempt the daring stunts he normally undertakes when blind. Are you crazy?! he seems to ask the reader. I’m not jumping off that! Look at how high it is!

But there was no omnipotent writer who, with the stroke of a pen, could restore Homer’s eyes to him. The only absolute fear Homer knew was that of being alone. As long as somebody was with him—whether it was me or one of his feline sisters—Homer had no notion that there were other things in the world that could harm him.

Which brings us back to the plastic bag.

It was a late-fall afternoon, and Homer was now about four months old. He had lost his kittenish bandy-legged gait, and both his walk and his coat were decidedly sleeker than they’d been when he was only a few weeks of age. Every hair on his body, down to the lush whiskers that now exceeded the width of his body by a good three inches on each side, remained a luxurious onyx black. He was growing, although not as quickly as my other two cats had grown—and this, in itself, was something I worried about. Patty assured me, however, that kittens, like children, grow at different rates. And it was also clear that Homer was destined to be a petite, fine-boned cat, one who would undoubtedly remain smaller than average into his adult life.

It was a Sunday and I had decided to enjoy my day off by immersing myself in a novel. I had been concentrating deeply when I realized, on a level that hadn’t yet risen to fully conscious thought, that it had been some time since I’d last seen Homer.

Homer liked to curl up in my lap while I read, but the fact that he hadn’t this time wasn’t something that, in and of itself, would have alarmed me. It wasn’t unusual for him to prowl around for mischief and mayhem while I was distracted with something else.

Then I heard the sound of a plastic grocery bag rustling in the kitchen. I had been shopping that morning, and I’d left a plastic bag on the kitchen counter for the small refuse items we didn’t like to leave in the larger trash can that was emptied once a week. Homer—who had by now climbed up my leg to reach the counter often enough to gauge its height on his own—was clearly up there playing with the bag. Happy that I knew where Homer was and what he was doing, I settled back into my book. A few minutes later, however, I heard a panicky and repetitive Mew! Mew! Mew!—the kind of cry that, previously, Homer had only uttered when he’d been locked up alone in the bathroom.

I tossed my book aside and raced into the kitchen, where I found Homer entangled in the plastic bag. He had stuck his head through one of the handles and twisted it up somehow, so that it was slowly tightening around his neck. His head was buried in the bag itself, and his back claws worked helplessly to free his head and upper body. It looked as through he’d crawled into the bag but, unable to see how to get back out, he had mistaken the opening of the handle for an exit, which was why he had snared himself so far into it.

“It’s okay, Homer,” I said. I tried to sound calm, for his sake as well as my own. It was difficult to tell exactly how tightly the bag’s handle was pressing into his neck, but I was as terrified as he was—afraid he would suffocate or strangle himself before I was able to rescue him.

I lifted both kitten and bag from the counter, slipping a finger between the handle and Homer’s neck—to keep it from tightening any further—and murmuring, It’s okay, little boy, it’s okay. Homer was still struggling fiercely, but I was able to quiet him enough that I could work his neck and head free of the bag.

What kind of a moron leaves a plastic bag lying around with a blind kitten in the house? I berated myself. What would have happened if you hadn’t been home? Homer would have died and it would have been ALL YOUR FAULT!

For all that I worried over the perils of Homer’s climbing and jumping and running around recklessly and leaping wildly, headfirst, from some six-foot perch and falling off backward from God only knew what, this was what had finally felled him: a plastic bag. I had thought that maybe I worried about Homer too much—but apparently, I hadn’t been worried enough. For all the foresight I tried to command in keeping his home environment safe, there were dangers lurking that neither of us had foreseen.

Homer quickly bounced back from his near-death experience. After half an hour of burrowing his face so far into my chest that it was like he was trying to find a way inside my body, he fell into a deep sleep and woke up refreshed and ready for more trouble. Vashti was in the other room nosing around a bottle cap she’d found, and Homer bounded to her side, hoping to get in on the action. The plastic bag, and its attendant moments of terror, seemed completely forgotten.

But it stuck with me for a long time. I kept a much closer eye on Homer after that, unwilling to let him do much more than walk in a straight line across the floor. Anything more daring earned him a swift and unarguable “No, Homer!”

EVEN AS A kitten Homer was far more verbal than most cats, and more sensitively attuned to the sound of my voice. If it had been too long since I’d last spoken to him, Homer would paw at my leg and mew insistently. When I did talk, he would sit in front of me with a very serious expression on his face, cocking his head from side to side as if attempting to decipher the meaning of my words. Cats are notorious for being untrainable, but Homer knew his name and responded to simple commands. The sound of my “No!” always brought him to an immediate halt, no matter how clear it was that he wanted to continue whatever he was doing.

After weeks of my reprimanding Homer whenever he attempted anything more adventurous than playing with his favorite toy, a small stuffed worm with a bell in its tail that had first belonged to Scarlett, a new meow was added to his vocabulary. I thought of this as his “checking in” meow. If he wanted to climb a tall piece of furniture, or forage in the bottom recesses of a closet, he would check in with me first. Mew? Can I?

“No, Homer” was the almost invariable response.

Can I follow Scarlett and Vashti onto the screened-in porch? “No, Homer.” Can I climb up to that small empty shelf on the entertainment center? “No, Homer.” Can I bat around these cords on the Venetian blinds? “Good God, Homer! Do you know how quickly those cords could wrap around your neck and strangle you?”

I could tell that Homer was becoming anxious and frustrated. To act boldly, to investigate every intriguing sound or smell he came across, was in his nature. Holding himself back was not. But if an errant plastic bag could be the cause of a near household tragedy, who knew where else perils were hiding? As much as I hated myself for constantly thwarting him, I was sure I was doing the right thing.

Sure, that is, until one day when Melissa observed me forbidding Homer from climbing up a ladder-back chair. He’s so little! I thought. And that chair looks so high! “You know,” Melissa said, “I think you may be over-parenting him.” When I didn’t respond, she added, “Come on, Gwen, give him some space. You’ll end up raising him all stunted and nervous.”

That was easy for Melissa to say. Melissa wasn’t the one who was responsible for Homer. The world was a dangerous place for a blind kitten, and I had made a promise to Patty, to Homer, and to myself—not a promise spoken aloud, but certainly there’d been an understanding—that I would make the world safe for Homer. Even if “the world” that Homer occupied was confined to the square footage of our home.

But did I want to do that at the expense of Homer’s high spirits and sense of adventure?

You don’t normally think about how you’re going to “raise” a pet. You bring him home, train him as necessary, teach him a few tricks or commands, and then simply enjoy each other’s presence.

I was twenty-five at the time, and not accustomed to thinking about how I wanted anybody’s life to turn out other than my own. But now I found myself thinking about Homer’s life and how I wanted to raise him—what kind of, for lack of a better way of putting it, person I wanted him to grow up to be.

When I put it to myself that way, the answer was simple. I didn’t want him to be crippled by fear and self-doubt. I wanted him to be as independent and “normal” as I already made a point of telling everybody he was.

AFTER A HARD day at work a few nights later, I decided to relax in a warm bath. Homer followed me into the bathroom, greeting me with the high-pitched mew? that meant he was asking permission to jump onto the ledge of the tub so I could pet him while I bathed.

My first impulse was to refuse, afraid he might lose his balance and fall into the tub. But I found myself wondering … why shouldn’t I let him? The water wasn’t especially hot. It wasn’t like he was going to get soap in his eyes, and he wouldn’t drown as long as I was there to catch him. So I said, in a tone I knew Homer would recognize as encouraging, “Okay, Homer-Bear, you can come up if you want to.”

Homer scrabbled his way onto the ledge of the tub, and it was all of about thirty seconds before he slipped on the tile and fell into the water. He flailed around for half a second, but by the time I had reached over to assist him, his front legs had found the side of the tub and he was already lifting himself out.

I climbed out also. If there’s one thing that’s the stuff of cats’ nightmares, it’s sudden and total immersion in water. I would have thought the experience would be even more nightmarish for Homer, who had probably had no idea that water existed in larger quantities than what could be found in his water bowl. I picked him up in one hand, expecting him to be scared stiff. But the rhythm of his heart was as steady and untroubled as if he were lying on my chest at night, waiting to fall asleep.

Homer’s thoroughly drenched fur stuck out from his body at crazy angles that would have been comical under different circumstances. I reached for a towel to dry him off. As soon as he felt the stroke of the cloth, however, he squirmed and struggled until I put him down on the ground, where he promptly began to lick himself clean. Water-rumpled though he was, there was dignity in his posture. I can do it myself!

“Okay, Homer,” I said quietly. I opened the bathroom door a crack so that Homer could leave if he wanted to and stepped back into the tub.

I assumed that Homer would bolt as quickly as he could from what had proven to be an aquatic chamber of horrors. But there was an overhead heat lamp in the bathroom. It was, I suppose, as good a place to dry off as any.

Homer leapt back onto the ledge of the tub, stepping carefully for a moment or two until he found a spot that was still dry. Then, with an enormous yawn, he settled down to doze peacefully while I bathed.