Cake, Crying, Cat

We punctuate the gapers’ block of our adult life with food. Our anniversary came: take out, from the new greasy spoon soul food place near the strip mall. Our pool passes required a trip downtown to the Park District office: dine-in, from the local-food restaurant inside the botanical gardens. Our oldest kid’s wednesday karate class recurs: cakes from the bakery with the homey domestic name. Food costs money, though, and money’s been extra in demand this spring - some medical bills, a suddenly dead car, a leak in the roof - so we flirted with not getting the cakes this time. Like most flirting at this life stage there was no follow-through; we opted to stay the course. Cakes again.

They are something like the person pan pizza of cake. Each is about as big around as a softball. My wife wanted a change of pace (who doesn’t, really?), said “no cake for me this time.” I got her a whoopee pie, richer but smaller, less softball than tennis ball. My oldest kid chose chocolate. I got a lemon cake and a pink cake they call champagne, both flavors approved of by my middle kid.

I walked in and the baby said “dada!” running toward me with arms outstretched - she runs now; babyhood is not going to last much longer, a thought that brings feelings in a strange kind of emotional tense, the future anterior I believe it’s called, I will have been both relieved and nostalgic - and as I lean down to pick her up she ducks under my arm and grabs the plastic bag with the cakes. “Ma!” - mine! - she says, pointing to her chest. The middle child leans over the baby’s shoulder, looks at me, “you got cakes!”

“I did!” I smile, good father and smug.

“What kind?”

“Your sister got chocolate, and I got a lemon and a pink and you can have whichever you like,” I look at my wife, “and I got you a whoopee pie.”

“Oh cool, that sounds great,” my wife replies. I lean down again, gently pulling the plastic bag from the baby’s hands. The middle child is no longer smiling, but that doesn’t register yet, as I am still too pleased with myself to process others’ reactions.

“So which of the cakes are you thinking?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, take your time. I’ll get you a glass of milk while you’re thinking about it.”

“I don’t - I - I want - I - I - Idon’treallywanteitherofthem.”

“You’ve had them both, you like both kinds.”

“They don’t, I wanted - it’s - I don’t know.” She makes a loud, aggravated and aggravating sighing noise, somewhere between a growl and “huh!” said very slowly.

“You told me last time that you like those better than the chocolate cake.”

“It’s not the chocolate cake.” Her lower lip sticks out now.

“What’s wrong sweetie?”

“I like to try new treats.”

“They didn’t have new treats. They just had these cakes.”

“I haven’t had the thing you got for Mama.”

“You want Mama’s whoopee pie?”

“Yeah.”

“Well… talk to Mama about it.” My wife has walked into another room of the house, callously leaving me to actually parent one of my actual children for a moment. Notice I here attempted to return that favor. One good turn.

“I also want the regular cake.”

“You can’t have Mama’s treat and another treat.”

“But but but - “

“Don’t call me a butt.”

“But I - I - but,” she is nearly in tears now.

“I’ll split the whoopee pie with you,” my wife says, walking back into the room, “you can have half of it and half of a cake.”

“But it’s a lot smaller than the cakes though!”

“I don’t know what to tell you sweetie,” I say, experiencing a hint of buyer’s remorse.

“I can’t deciiiiide!” she’s crying full on now.

I try to keep my sigh inaudible. My wife meets my eye and makes a small shrug gesture with her hands.

“I’m going to put on some water to make tea.” I walk to the kitchen partly just to get out of the room. My wife follows me in, “she’s been really difficult this afternoon, I don’t know what’s going on.”

“I mean, I get it, it’s hard to have two things and you want both and only get one, but…”

“… but it’s annoying that you bought cakes and the result is she’s crying…”

“… crying not being the response I anticipated when I bought the treats, no, you’re right.” We’ve been married so long we often finish each others sentences. Maybe it means we’re in a hurry to finish talking?

I pour water into the kettle and begin rummaging in the cupboard for tea cups as the middle child walks in to the kitchen, “maybe you can take the treats back to the store?”

“I’m not going to do that. If you don’t want a treat, don’t have one.”

“I do want one!” Tears again. “I just wish you didn’t get a different one for Mama!” Shouting now and more tears, then she retires to our reading spot in the living room, curls up on a cushion, leans on the wall. She just needs some time to take it all in. I know this about her now. Big feelings come and go. Mine too! Food caused the gaper’s block this time. Fucked if I’m fucking buying fucking cakes like this again. I’m probably clenching my jaw again.

My wife puts shoes on the baby. “We were just talking about going outside before you got home.”

“Okay.”

She talks the sulking middle child into joining her. Biggest kid decides to go too.

I need a moment. “I’ll be out in a bit.”

I go back into the kitchen. The kettle has boiled. I pour the water into the mugs over the teabags, sigh again, mutter “oh god.” (When did that sentence become a daily routine? I can’t remember. Have I always been a frog? Have I always lived at the bottom of this well? Why did we have so many tadpoles?) If they’re hanging out in the yard I might as well weed the garden a bit. I grab the muddy yard work jeans from the laundry room, start to take off the clean pair, hear yelling through the kitchen window.

“Daddy! Daddy!” I walk over, lean over the sink, my face in close to the window screen.

“Everything okay?”

Both the big kids are standing below the window.

“There’s -“

“- the sparrow -”

“ - in the peonies -”

“ - baby -“

“I’m worried!”

“Is everyone okay?”

“Yes, we just -

“ - it’s the sparrow -”

“ - wanted to tell you -”

“ - It’s a baby fledgling -”

“I just want to change my jean before I come outside, can you wait to tell me until I come outside?”

“Yes.”

“You’re okay? Mama’s with you?”

“Yes. She’s in the front yard.”

“Go back by her, okay? And I’ll be right out.”

“Okay.”

I’m picturing a fledgling fallen from a tree, neck broken, me having to decide whether to let it die slowly in from of my crying children, stomp on it - I am sure it will feel rubbery, like stomping on a child’s toy ball and also sure that it will crunch - this too before my crying children, or to scoop it up, once again before the tear-streaked open mouthed faces of my children who will talk about this with their therapist, and let it die slowly in the garbage can. This will be even worse than when I was scooping up leaves to pile up to kill the grass in the lawn and grabbed a roadkill squirrel; at least I endured that without the moral judgment of emotionally fragile witnesses.

I change into my yard work jeans and a beat up tshirt, slip on my shoes, walk out the front door. Both the big girls run toward me.

“Daddy there’s a sparrow -“

“- it’s in the peonies - ”

“- a fledge-“

“ - I want to-”

“- ling -“

“- tell him!”

“I’ll let her tell you.” The biggest one runs back to the backyard, I assume to climb the chain link fence.

“So what’s going on?”

“There’s a sparrow fledgling and it’s in the peonies, I think the birds might have a nest in the bush.”

“Oh cool!” Relief. No killing. No scarring my children. Just cutesy children’s television nature. (Speaking of killing, as I type this I hear a skittering in above my head in the ceiling of the kitchen - for some reason I have taken to typing with the laptop set on the burners of the stove; I sometimes imagine setting it on fire, always on accident and to my great horror. I must remember to call an exterminator to find and kill whatever is alive above me, like the problem of evil did for the religious beliefs I was raised into.)

“I’m worried about it.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.”

“No, there’s a CAT!”

“It’ll be fine!”

“No the cat knows it’s there I think, it’s looking and sniffing around the bush and the sparrow CAN’T FLY because its a BABY and when the cat came around the bush the baby bird’s parents flew away so it’s ALL ALONE and I’m REALLY WORRIED!” She looks like she might cry again. “Can you get some water and throw water on it?”

“Yes.”

“Cat’s don’t like water, they can smell it, water has a smell you know, humans just can’t smell it, but cats can, they said on Wild Kratts that -”

“I’ll go get the water.“

I go back in the house, where it is quiet and empty and no one is making any demands on me and no one is trying to tell me anything, and I fill two former peanut butter jars with water - we drink exclusively from peanut butter jars, jam jars, coffee mugs, and the odd shot glass, because nothing else seems to survive the combination of my clumsy fingers and slippery dish soap. I glance at the cooling cups of tea then walk back outside without even a sip, the kind of self-sacrifice that made Jesus famous, but which I do solely for the good of my children and the children of feathered strangers.

“The cat’s there! Hurry!”

It’s the calico cat, a neighbor cat, really quite lovely to be honest, an indoor-outdoor cat, looks young, barely older than a kitten. It’s been hanging out in our yard a lot. It’s skittish about people. It likes to stalk the birds at the feeder out the window of our dining room. We like to watch the birds while we eat breakfast. It gives us something to talk about, and it is good for all to see something fly away.

Lately grackles and their fledglings have been coming. The fledglings are as big as their parents. They stand near the feeder with their mouths open and the parents fly back and forth with bits of seed to the fledglings. (This is how the right imagines millenials.) Sometimes while their children stand open mouthed the parents pause to gulp down a bit of food for themselves before grabbing a bit more to take back to the fledglings, and I relate so hard.

The calico sometimes tries to climb up next to the bird feeder, but the birds see it coming and leave. Mostly it sits beneath the feeder and meows, crying about something it doesn’t know how to achieve, and I relate so hard. I’m not worried about it catching a bird, and I wouldn’t much care really except that the sight of that would upset my eminently upsettable children and they would remain upset for a long time because they are eminently not calmdownable. Mostly I’m worried that birds will begin to avoid the feeder if they see a predator slumped incompetently and crying at the bottom of the post, as eating in the presence of that kind of sad sack must be quite challenging. (I assume a similar reason explains why my wife and children eat so little and stay so thin.)

The calico has previously worried my eminently worriable children on prior days for automobilic rather than avian reasons. Specifically they don’t like the thought of the cat crossing the busy street at the end of our block. It lives in a house on just the other side. They also don’t like the thought of the cat walking up the alley behind our house, down which cars drive far too fast and frequently. They like this thought even less after a few days ago when the cat wandered up the alley and when they said they were worried I said “it’s afraid of cars, it will hear any cars coming down the alley and run and hide.” And to be fair, it tried to. It ran straight down the alley in front of a car, in effect racing the car, instead of running sideways out of the alley. Dumbfuck cat.

The driver may have seen it and slowed down a little. I’m unsure. The car was distressingly close to the cat none the less. I felt sure my kids were about to learn a life lesson about death, a bit of parenting I was decidedly unprepared for, being in the backyard at that moment, once again, largely just in order to pull weeds (itself, I suppose, a lesson in death, as is gardening generally, or rather, gardeners, spiritually speaking).

The other day I threw water at the cat out a window, trying to drive it away from our feeder, and rationalizing that doing so might make it more likely to stay home and so less likely to get hit by a car. I’m doing it a favor, really, I tried to tell myself, but I am far too smart to fall for any self-serving bullshit from the likes of me. I saw clear through my little ruse and called myself on it.

That means that this time with the peonies and the fledgling was not my first rodeo with the calico, oh no. I’ve learned a lesson here, while the dumbfuck car racing calico appears not to have. As it skulked - a term befitting its cowardice and ill intentions - up to the peony I skulked around the side and splashed a jar of water at it. It ran under my next door neighbor’s rusting grey minivan, and crouched, cowering. I, a bully, knelt next to the van and threw the second jar of water, shouting something like “the fuck out of here!” while my six year old cheered me on, learning, I assume, the important life lesson that you can get people to cheer you on while you attack those weaker than you if you invoke protecting the even weaker still in the process. I hope she never ends up in elected office.

I went back in the house to refill my jars - be prepared, as the saying, immortalized in song by Shellac, goes - then came back out to shouts from my middle child of “it’s back! It’s already back!” I skulked with attention to stealth equal to or greater than (≥) I displayed the time prior, and this time caught the cat full on with a jarful of water. It jumped and ran back under the neighbor’s car. I attempted a second dousing, accompanied by another “fuck outta here!” or cognate shout, and it ran out, fast, toward the back fence.

Am I a hero, saving a poor baby bird? That is not for me to say, but for you to decide. Were there costs, even if reasonable to incur, to what you will, if right thinking, undoubtedly conclude was my gallant protectoring? Of course, but that is part of what heroes have to live with. And truly magnanimous, I felt for that cat. I would do what I did again, for I did what I must to protect the weakest, and to avoid hearing my child whine and cry yet another time, but I also know that what I did had its effects on another party, and that party and I, well, while that calico party and I are at odds, I know it is not unlike myself, among other things having had a tasty treat nearly to hand only to be interrupted by shouting, and ending up unpleasantly damp at the end, though in my case the dousing was not a jar of water so much as sour sweat.

We went back inside then, having forced a stranger from our home and practically torn food from that stranger’s mouth, and, the excitement of our little episode having turned down the volume on my middle daughter’s pastry-related big feelings, we had cake. She had half the whoopee pie and a quarter of the pink and yellow cakes.

I like to think the cat went home and had dessert as well. Maybe the neighbors also own a parakeet, or a pet mouse. It would serve them right, is a thing I am not proud of thinking.

The cake? It was okay. A bit too warm out for cake, really, and as usual gone too quickly and leaving us far too much the same as we already were.