I love dogs. We had dogs when I grew up; my kids did too. The trouble now is that they require multiple daily walks, and boarding if you travel. So I don’t have one. But I enjoy the belt grabbing front paws, the joyous licking, the lovingly wagging tail when my son and his dog visit with his. Thank goodness I never had the opportunity, even in my youth, to bond with cats. Thanks too that my wife is allergic to felines.
Bootsie the cat and I met me when I courted my first wife Fran. We developed a strong mutual enmity soon after. Fran’s parents, her brother Wally, and Bootsie lived in the apartment above their drug store, Gold’s pharmacy, in Brooklyn. They all apparently adored the beast. She had the run of the house and then some.
The apartment had wooden venetian blinds. Bootsie used them as climbing wall before such gymnastic challenges had been devised for humans. She also entertained the neighborhood by tight walking along the pharmacy sign that jutted out from the Gold apartment window just above the store entrance.
It wasn’t long after falling madly in love with Fran that I came to adore her family too. Expatriate Russian revolutionaries, her father was a gentle man with a wide grin and protruding ears who loved opera and was cherished for his knowledge and sympathetic advice by the drugstore patrons. Fran’s mother Esther, a tiny woman with frizzly curled hair, was a devout atheist. One of my favorites was her blessing when someone sneezed. She would say, in that plump Russian accent, “God bless you,” followed guiltily after a short pause by “I don’t mean it.” She loved reading as much as she resisted cooking and installed a wire rack lending library in the store because it was continually replenished with books affording her the opportunity to avoid the stove by burying herself in the latest best seller.
Both parents, and Fran’s brother Wally, worked the store. Wally, a budding physicist was, like his father, a licensed pharmacist. His parents found it difficult to visualize a physicist making a living and had insisted he become a druggist just in case. He divided his time between adjunct teaching at NYU and tending the store. He detested the store stints but did them to please his parents.
Sunday’s were special in the Gold household, the day the store was closed. Soon after Fran and I began "seeing each other" I began joining them for midday dinner every Sunday. The Golds were great company. Esther was proud of her apple pie and had no idea its excessively thick crust was the source of amusement for Wally, Fran and me as we two-facedly admired it in her presence. The main parts of the meals were generally bland, overcooked and unappetizing.
Esther’s culinary ineptitude led to my first disagreement with Bootsie the cat. Having learned of my love for steak Mrs. Gold bought and prepared a sirloin dinner for us one Sunday afternoon. Sadly but not surprisingly, the steak was badly burned. Responding to her crestfallen defeat I volunteered to broil another batch the following week. I sliced in chunks of garlic and left the inside rare. Then basked in the lip-smacking response as we sat and gobbled.
Bootsie must have felt displaced by the accolades directed my way. Suddenly the family saw a distressed me jump from my seat yelling in pain. Bootsie had attached her front claws to my knee and, I was certain, hung there with her rear paws off the ground. Henceforth I kept my distance from her. She sometimes clawed at me if I was too close or she wanted the back of a seat I was in.
Time moved on. Fran and I were married. Despite Fran’s great attachment for the beast she agreed to leave Bootsie with her parents.
Several years passed with Bootsie aging gracefully with Esther. The cat and I never embraced.
There’s a gallows-humor side to Bootsie’s eventual demise. I confess to gloating at a time when I knew no glee. Fran had borne our beautiful child Stephanie, but was now deadly ill. Soon after the child learned to crawl, Fran hospitalized, I needed to deposit Stephanie with her grandmother for a few days. Bootsie apparently resented the intrusion onto her turf. Or perhaps she scented me.
Esther sat and enjoyed with grandmotherly pleasure, watching Stephanie crawl across the living room floor. Suddenly there was Bootsie hissing before the creeping child, paw outstretched.
A woman of swift and decisive action Esther immediately had the cat removed; as they say, “put to sleep.” I admit to being pleased. One vindictive joy for a man draped in sorrow.
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