On Christmas Eve three years before, Noelle had found a tiny kitten huddled against the back door, shivering, bedraggled, and mewing piteously. Noelle scooped up the kitten and cuddled it to her cheek. Nick sneezed.
“Ooh, look, Nicky,” she said. “Isn’t he cute? Poor thing, he must be so cold and hungry.” She shoved the kitten in his face for closer inspection.
Nick sneezed again, a sneeze that shook his whole frame.
“We can’t keep it, Noelle,” he’d said. “You know I’m–” he paused as another sneeze threatened and then subsided, “allergic.”
“Oh, pooh,” she said. “Just get your allergy shots like the doctor recommended.”
“I. Don’t. Like. Shots,” Nick said through gritted teeth. “We are not keeping that cat.”
“We can’t turn him out,” Noelle protested. “It’s Christmas Eve.”
“It goes to the shelter the day after Christmas,” Nick told her firmly.
But of course, it didn’t. The kitten flourished under Noelle’s tender loving care, quickly losing its pitiful scruffiness and filling out into a sleek, self-satisfied calico with luminescent green eyes. Noelle named him Baby. In Nick’s opinion, Noelle might as well have gone whole hog and named the cat Baby Jesus, the way she doted on it.
“Poor Baby,” Noelle would croon as she shut the cat in the laundry room when Nick came home from work. “All because Daddy won’t get his allergy shots.”
There was cat hair everywhere in the house. Nick suspected Noelle of letting the cat up on the bed, as some nights he could hardly get to sleep for all the sneezing. He had to thoroughly brush his suits in the morning to keep from sneezing at the office.
Baby did not stay sleek for long. Noelle couldn’t resist the way Baby wound around her ankles and them walked right over to the cabinet where she kept the cat treats.
“Oh, you sweet, smart kitty,” she’d say. “How can I say no?”
Noelle had said yes so many times that, now, three years later, Baby weighed twenty-two pounds. His stomach swayed as he trotted into the kitchen to ask for yet another treat. Nick took to calling him Baby Huey.
“Don’t listen to him,” Noelle would tell the cat. “you’re beautiful just the way you are.” Then she’d give him another cat snack.
Nick took comfort in the thought that eventually Baby would be too fat to jump onto the bed while he was at work. Sometimes he would even slip the cat a treat or two to hasten the process.
Noelle caught him at it once. “Aww, how sweet! Daddy really does love you, Baby,” she crooned to the lardy lump of fur that had retreated to a corner of the kitchen to crunch crumbs onto the floor.
Nothing could be further from the truth, especially after what happened while Nick was decorating the seventeenth Christmas tree. Baby was supposed to be in the laundry room, as he tended to wreck havoc on the decorations, tangling himself in garland while Nick tried to put it up and batting ornaments across the floor. He’d even broken a few, but Noelle would just carry him back to the laundry room, assuring Baby that she knew he didn’t mean to.
On this particular November Saturday, Nick was rooting around in a tote, looking for more of the turquoise balls Noelle wanted for the tree on the steps that led down to the sunken living room. Somehow liberated from the laundry room, Baby came streaking across the front hall and swarmed up Number Seventeen, a seven-foot tall artificial Douglas Fir. Nick heard the jangle of swinging ornaments and turned to see the tree rocking dangerously.
“Get out of there, you mangy cat,” Nick growled. Baby simply stared at him from between two branches near the top while the tree continued to sway. As Nick reached out to steady the tree, Baby scrambled yet higher. For a split second, Nick watched in horrified fascination as the tree fell forward, straight at him. Time stood still as he imagined being crushed under the combined weight of the tree, the countless ornaments, the lead crystal star at the top–and the cat. Then his reflexes and sense of self-preservation took over. He caught the metal “tree trunk” in the nick of time. As he righted the tree, Baby leapt down, pushing powerfully off the crystal star with his back paws. The star went flying, but Nick managed to catch it before it hit the marble steps and smashed to smithereens.
Baby landed with a thud. Nick was surprised the floor didn’t shake from the impact.
“You nearly killed me!” Nick spluttered. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Then you’d have the run of the house and Noelle all to yourself. She’d probably even let you sleep on the bed at night. I know she lets you do it during the day, no matter what she says. Now get out of here. Go on, now. Scat!”
Baby sat down and raised a back leg to give it a thorough wash.
“You heard me! Get out!” Nick advanced on the cat, ready to grab Baby and carry him bodily back to the laundry room, even if it meant sneezing the whole way. At that, Baby lowered his leg, lumbered to his feet, and sauntered from the room, stomach swaying majestically.
“Noelle!” Nick called out. “Put that cat back, will you?”
His wife appeared in the hall. “What is it now, dear?” she said, as if he’d been annoying her all morning.
“I’ve told you to keep that cat shut up when I’m putting up the trees. He gets in the way.” Nick considered telling Noelle about his near-death experience, but decided against it. He strongly suspected she would side with the cat.
True to form, she replied, “He’s just playing, Nicky, doing what cats do.”
“Well, I can’t have him in here doing what cats do and still do what I’m supposed to do. Do you want these trees put up or not?”
“Oh, all right,” Noelle said. “You don’t have to be such a grump about it.” She scooped up the cat, who was winding himself around her ankles in signature style. “Let’s get you a treat before you have to go in that pokey old laundry room,” she told Baby as he rubbed his head along her jaw and purred.
Nick stood and watched her retreating back. He heard the treat cabinet open and close. He could just make out the crunch, crunch of Baby devouring his reward for nearly killing the master of the house. Nick snorted. Master of the house? If only. He let himself imagine what it would be like to just leave it all behind, to walk off into a peaceful sunset. Somewhere over the rainbow, where there was a table-top Christmas tree and a couple of red candles on the mantelpiece. In his mind’s eye, a fire crackled in the fireplace while he sat in a comfortable wing chair, his slippered feet propped on a footstool. He had a book in one hand and a Scotch and soda in the other.
Nick shook his head. Why should he have to be the one to leave? It was his house, the one he’d worked hard to provide. He hadn’t done it just so she could run right over him. His heart beat faster at the thought of standing up to her, demanding she either stop this craziness or leave. He shook his head. Who was he kidding? She would never leave. This house had become not only her plaything, a giant dollhouse, but her reason for living. Stop decorating it? She’d die first.