It's like this, cat Part 22

We get home pretty fast and I introduce Mary to Mom and Pop. She sinks into the nearest chair and takes off her shoes.

"Excuse me," she says. "I just bought these heels, and it's awful wearing them!"

She wiggles her toes and begins to look better. Mom offers her a pair of slippers and Pop pa.s.ses some potato chips.

Mom says, "Poor child, did you try to do all your Christmas shopping at once?"

"Well, actually, I was having fun just looking for a long while. I have two little cousins that I don't really have to get much for, but I love looking at all the toys. I spent quite a while there. Then I did the rest of my shopping in a rush, and everything is so crowded, and I got mixed up on my money or the sales tax and only had a dime left, and I missed my mother or she forgot."

She stretches out her toes to touch Cat, who is sitting in front of her.

"I couldn't think what to do. It's so hard to think when your feet hurt."

"It certainly is," agrees Mom. She goes out to the kitchen to finish fixing dinner, and Pop suggests Mary better phone her home. She gets her father, and her mother has left a message that she was delayed and figured Mary would go home alone. Mary gives her father our address and tells him she'll be home by nine.

We must have hit a lucky day because we have a real good dinner: slices of good whole meat, not mushed up stuff, and potatoes cooked with cheese in them, and salad, and a lemon meringue pie from the bakery, even.

After dinner we sit around a little while, and Pop says I better take Mary home, and he gives me money for a cab at the end of the subway. When Mary gives the driver her home address, I say it over to myself a few times so I'll remember.

Suddenly I wonder about something. "Say, how'd you know _my_ phone number?"

"I looked it up," she says simply. "There's about twenty-eleven Mitch.e.l.ls in the Manhattan phone book, but only one in the East Twenties, so I figured that must be you."

"Gee, that's true. You must have had an awful time, though, standing in the phone booth with your feet hurting, going through all those Mitch.e.l.ls."

Says Mary, "Oh, no. I did it one rainy afternoon at home, weeks ago."

Well, what do you know.

18

[Ill.u.s.tration: Raised champagne gla.s.ses toasting Cat.]

"HERE'S TO CAT!"

The two stray kittens gradually make themselves at home. Somehow or other Cat has taught them that he's in charge here, and he just chases them for fun now and again, when he's not busy sleeping.

As for keeping cats in my room, that's pretty well forgotten. For one thing, Mom really likes them. She sneaks the kittens saucers of cream and bits of real hamburger when no one's looking, and she likes talking to them in the kitchen. She doesn't pick them up, but just having them in the room sure doesn't give her asthma.

The only time we have any trouble from the cats is one evening when Pop comes home and the two kittens skid down the hall between his legs, with Cat after them. He scales his hat at the lot of them and roars down the hall to me, "Hey, Davey! When are you getting rid of these cats? I'm not fixing to start an annex to Kate's cat home!"

"I'm sure Davey will find homes for them," Mom says soothingly, but getting a little short of breath, the way she does any time she's afraid one of us is losing his temper.

In fact, one thing this cat business seems to have established is that me and Pop fighting is the main cause of Mom's asthma. So we both try to do a little better, and a lot of things we used to argue and fight about, like my jazz records, we just kid each other about now. But now and then we still work up to a real ha.s.sle.

I've been taking a history course the first semester at school. It's a real lemon-just a lot of preaching about government and citizenship. The second semester I switch to a music course. This is O.K. with the school-but not with Pop. Right away when I bring home my new program, he says, "How come you're taking one less course this half?"

I explain that I'm taking music, and also biology, algebra, English, and French.

"Music!" he snorts. "That's recreation, not a course. Do it on your own time!"

"Pop, it's a course. You think the school signs me up for an hour of home record playing?"

"They might," he grunts. "You're not going to loaf your way through school if I have anything to say about it."

"Loaf!" I yelp. "Four major academic subjects is more than lots of the guys take."

Mom comes and suggests that Pop better go over to school with me and talk it over at the school office. He does, and for once I win a round-I keep music for this semester. But he makes sure that next year I'm signed up all year for five majors: English, French, math, chemistry, and European history. I'll be lucky if I have time to breathe.

I go down to the flower shop to grouse to Tom. It's after Valentine's Day, and business is slack and the boss is out.

"Why does Pop have to come b.u.t.ting into my business at school? Doesn't he even think the school knows what it's doing?"

"Aw, heck," says Tom, "your father's the one has to see you get into college or get a job. Sometimes schools do let kids take a lot of soft courses, and then they're out on a limb later."

"Huh. He just likes to boss everything I do."

"So-he cares."

"Huh." I'm not very ready to buy this, but then I remember Tom's father, who _doesn't_ care. It makes me think.

"Besides," says Tom, "half the reason you and your father are always bickering is that you're so much alike."

"Me? Like _him_?"

"Sure. You're both impatient and curious, got to poke into everything. As long as there's a bone on the floor, the two of you worry it."

Mr. Palumbo comes back to the shop then, and Tom gets busy with the plants. I go home, wondering if I really am at all like Pop. I never thought of it before.

It's funny about fights. Pop and I can go along real smooth and easy for a while, and I think: Well, he really isn't a bad guy, and I'm growing up, we can see eye to eye-all that stuff. Then, whoosh! I hardly know what starts it, but a fight boils up, and we're both breathing fire like dragons on the loose.

We get a holiday Washington's Birthday, which is good because there's a TV program on Tuesday, the night before the holiday, that I hardly ever get to watch. It's called _Out Beyond_, and the people in it are very real, not just good guys and bad guys. There's always one character moving around, keeping you on the edge of your chair, and by the time it all winds up in a surprise ending, you find this character is not a real person, he's supernatural. The program goes on till eleven o'clock, and Mom won't let me watch it on school nights.

I get the pillows comfortably arranged on the floor, with a big bottle of soda and a bag of popcorn within easy reach. The story starts off with some nature shots of a farm and mountains in the background and this little kid playing with his grandfather. There's a lot of people in it, but gradually you get more and more suspicious of dear old grandpa. He's taking the kid for a walk when a thunderstorm blows up.

Right then, of course, we have to have the alternate sponsor. He signs off, finally, and up comes Pop.

"Here, Davey old boy, we can do better than that tonight. The Governor and the Mayor are on a TV debate about New York City school reorganization."

At first I figure he's kidding, so I just growl, "Who cares?"