A Brief Intermission

As wonderful as this period of my life with Adina was, it also gets much more painful.  I’m struggling to write these entries and I’m forgetting to include some things that are important.

The first thing that I forgot to include is that not long after Adina moved in with me, I’d gotten a job teaching a couple of classes at an all-girl Catholic High School.  It just happened to work out that the days I would need to be at St. Magdalene’s were all but the one day that I had to be at the distance learning center to teach my televised class.

I also wasn’t completely truthful about the order of events.  Chance moved to Sacramento before Adina got the job offer down south.  He was at our apartment all the time.  I suspect that had a lot to do with why she was so quick to take the job down south.

I also forgot to tell the story of Parfait:

Sweetness used to sit up on the shelf on my desk because it allowed her to look out my bedroom window.  One day, I was laying down and I heard Sweetness purring loudly and I heard other sounds that I couldn’t quite make out.  I looked up and saw a large grey cat, hanging from my screen directly in front of Sweetness.  He was singing to her.

I was afraid he’d tear up my screen, so I shooed him away, but I began to see him around the complex now and then.  One day, I was running out the door to work, and he limped toward me and meowed.  I called to him, “Here kitty, kitty.”  And he walked right up to me.  I looked at the paw that seemed to be troubling him.  There was a wound on the bottom.  I grabbed some first aid supplies and cleaned him up the best I could.  He was so patient and easy to handle.  I wanted to take better care of him but I had to get to work and I couldn’t put him in the house with Sweetness and Adina’s cat Lucy (who was very non-social).

When Adina got home that night, I told her about the cat and that I’d looked for him after work but hadn’t seen him.    Several days passed with no sign of him.  Then one morning we were watching TV and that cat was standing at our sliding glass door, meowing.

He looked terrible.  Adina grabbed her purse while I grabbed the cat carrier and put the cat in it.  We rushed him to the closest vet and happily learned that the closest vet was the best veterinarian ever (except maybe Dr. Pol).  He wore a turban and had a thick Indian accent.  He asked us what we wanted to do with the cat.  We told him that we just wanted his paw looked after.  He asked if we were going to keep him.  Adina and I exchanged looks and both of us knew we wanted to keep him.  The vet offered to treat the foot and neuter him and give him all of his vaccinations for the cost of the materials.  He was moved that we were just trying to do something good for a stray.  We told him about our other cats and that we were worried about him bringing home fleas.  He gave him a flea treatment that would kill the fleas in 24 hours and told us to come to pick him up in 24 hours.

When we brought him home, we found out that he was a lover.  He walked in like he owned the place and immediately curled up in Sweetness’s bed.  He and Sweetness fought a lot for the first two weeks, but the vet said that was normal.  As long as there’s no blood, let them be.  So we did.

In the meantime, I was trying to think of a name for him.  He was mostly grey but had white paws.  It looked like he’d just dipped his paws in some whipped cream.  I don’t know why, but that reminded me of a scene in Shrek where Shrek tells Donkey that ogres are like onions, they have layers (which is where my username comes from, by the way).  Donkey says, “Parfait’s got layers.  Everybody loves Parfait.”  So that became his name.

Sweetness and Parfait finally got past the fighting and became cuddle buddies.  They were practically inseparable.  But despite how unsociable Lucy could be, he could go hang out with her, too.  We used to joke that we were all just Parfait’s harem.  He’d give each of us at least a little bit of his attention every day.