GOLDEN

I walk into the bathroom to take a shower and close the door behind me. Before I have time to turn on the water, there's a scratching at the door, fast and repeated, familiar and welcome. Because I'm already undressed, I stand behind the door and crack it just wide enough for a small orange cat to slip through. He stops to look up at me, then crosses the floor and springs onto the counter. He turns, then stares intently at me with two golden eyes. I understand immediately what he wants. His name is Fireball.

In the fall of 2022, I loaded four of my children into a truck and set out for the American West, pulling a camper I’d built myself. Our family had spent years wandering among trees and along trails, though never far from Baltimore. I wanted the children to see Yellowstone, where steam rises from the earth, Glacier, where the mountains bear their histories in stripes of stone, and Olympic, where rainforests descend toward the sea beneath heavy garments of moss. In my family of eight, we’d found a comfortable familiarity living together in a rowhome twelve feet wide and thirty-five feet long. A conventional camper to hold us would have been equally as large, so I converted a seven-by-fourteen-foot cargo trailer into something resembling a tiny traveling house. Within the small space, I fit six beds, a bathroom, and an air conditioner. I cut a window-sized hole in the side to allow light in and to let our eyes see out. It was a considerable improvement over the tents I’d slept in as a boy, with their hard dirt floors and roots that seemed to find their way beneath my back no matter where I lay. 

We’d been gone for three weeks when Kelly called to tell me Pete was sick. He was a black cat, twenty-two years old, and the particular favorite of our youngest daughter, Jana-Klaire. He had a habit of reaching for people as they passed by. He would sit on a counter or the back of a chair and extend his right paw, catching a sleeve with the tips of his claws, sometimes piercing the skin beneath. It was his way of asking to be touched. He could be tender with his demands, and equally emphatic with his refusals. If you stroked his fur when he didn’t want it, the same paw would rise to meet your hand, claws first. Kelly said Pete wasn’t doing well. I suggested a few things she might try, small measures that seemed reasonable from a thousand miles away. 

Throughout my life, I've had a too-soft affection for animals. On one occasion, I begged my parents to bring home a stray dog from the park where I played baseball. They refused, but I continued making my case, as thorough and impassioned as I could manage. The next morning, I fed Buttons along with our other dogs.

Not long after Kelly and I were married, I brought Pete home from an animal shelter. I often found my way there on my lunch break. It was only a few miles from the church where I worked, and Kelly repeatedly told me not to go. I never promised her I wouldn't, but I did promise her I'd try. Somehow, I always went. I guess if you're going to have a vice, there are worse ones than the compulsion to pet lonely animals locked in cages.

I’d last visited in the summer and stayed away until October. As I wove through the corridor of cages, a black cat reached for me through the bars. I stopped. The tag on the cage said male, one year old, stray, not available. The name on the card was Whiskas. When I asked about him, the attendant said he was picked up as a stray kitten. She explained that, after so much time in a cage, most cats begin to deteriorate, physically, but even more, mentally. This black cat had been a remarkable exception. 

But when I asked to visit with him in the interaction room just off the main space, I learned something I'd never considered. Black cats were off limits in the weeks leading up to Halloween. Apparently, ordinary people with a cruel streak would adopt black cats as props for holiday jokes or rituals. There seemed little so unholy as the suffering of a living creature, and I felt a churning low in my belly. As I considered why anyone might do such a thing, I also wondered why the cat was on display.  

I always kept business cards in my pocket: Jeff Belcher, Worship Leader. Beneath my name was the name of our church, well-respected and familiar to everyone in town. I handed one to the girl and assured her I would be participating in no rituals involving harm to animals. With some hesitation, she agreed to let me visit with the cat. Bad choices were made—by her, and by me. A half-hour later, I'd finished the paperwork, I'd bought a new carrier, and the black cat was in the seat next to me. I called the office to tell them I’d be a little late. I needed to swing by the house first. And I knew the cat would need a new name. Whiskas wasn’t right. We chose Rambo Pete, and called him Pete, for short. He had golden eyes. 

I received the call from Kelly twenty-one years later. The one bearing news that Pete was sick. The next day, after she’d tried my recommendations, Kelly called again to say he was not better, but worse. We agreed he should go to the vet. Kelly made an appointment, and the vet, who had seen Pete many times before, shared that, this time, a recovery was not likely. There were options we could try, but the measures were desperate and costly. And even with all the effort and dollars, she could offer no guarantee that Pete would recover.

As a younger animal, Pete was uniquely athletic. Among our cats’ toys was a laser pointer. When our other cats chased the red dot, we’d run it up the wall, and they would leap the height of a grown man. Three or four times their own length. We learned, though, that with Pete, walls weren’t enough. Walls were boring. He preferred that we run the dot up onto the ceiling. He’d leap toward the wall, his momentum carrying him through one or two vertical bounds, then he’d make his attack on the ceiling.

But he hadn’t been this athletic in a long time. Over the past five or six years, there were times we were sure Pete wouldn't make it. At one point, his back legs stopped working. We'd carry him to his food and water bowls, laying him in a position that all he needed to do was raise his head over the edge. He'd nibble a few times, lap the slightest amount of water, then after a time, we'd carry him to the litter box, placing him gently inside. This went on for a few days, then he recovered completely. There were several similar episodes, and the cat became the subject of nine-lives jokes, too silly to repeat here. Later, the jokes transformed into family lore. The cat may be indestructible. But he wasn't, and we couldn't justify thousands of dollars for the chance at a life that, by all measures, should have ended years before. 

Kelly pet the cat’s head as he closed his eyes. We’d lost several pets in the past, and every time, I’d been the one holding them close as breaths slowed and sleep crept close. This time, I wasn’t there. Kelly called to let us know. The four kids and I were driving through California, and Jana-Klaire, sitting in the back seat, passenger side, didn’t say a word. I heard quiet sobs.  

A week later, we were home, and I walked into another shelter with my daughter, years removed from the shelter with the black cat. My wife had said that we could get our daughter a new cat. I thought she meant now. I’d later learn that she meant sometime. Our daughter chose the little orange one, two years old, a stray. He was, generically, a DMH. Domestic Medium Hair. A dog is described as a “mutt.” With cats, society has somehow chosen language that sounds much more sophisticated. But the cat’s orange fur wasn't particularly medium. Having spent two years scraping by on city streets, he was ragged and patchy. Goldfishman was the name chosen by the shelter workers. We liked it. So much that we thought of keeping it. But we ultimately chose Fireball. His eyes were like two little suns. And this cat is now standing on the bathroom counter, looking at me with that golden stare.

I step toward him and grab the handle that turns on the water. Our home was built in an era where gold faucets with crystal-plastic knobs were the fixtures of choice. From years of use, the handle has become loose. It moves with the resistance of a functioning faucet, but the valve doesn't open immediately. I move it as little as possible. Nothing. A little more, and it’s beyond the point of the drip-drip I desire. I go back, closing the valve, and start over. I move the handle as little as possible, just beyond the point where no water moves, releasing the slightest trickle. Before I can step away, the orange cat is nudging my hand with his head, rooting toward the position where, turning his mouth sideways, he laps frantically, catching water with his tongue every third or fourth flick. I step into the shower, wash myself, and when I’m finished, the cat is gone.

People say you can’t train cats. That they’re not capable of learning, or knowing, or loving. People have joked, mockingly, that cat owners are the ones who have been trained, and I wouldn’t argue against it, given the daily water ritual. With only a stare, I’m moved to obeying the familiar command. Water, servant. I gladly serve. 

Maybe the orange cat hasn’t been trained, but he has learned, and he knows me as he sees me. At times, I think he knows me better than I know myself. Maybe he sees me more clearly. What he asks, I do. And the things I ask of myself, well…I often struggle to follow through. I have a few strengths, and some know me as a man who can do many things. I earned a PhD with high distinction, and people applauded. I installed a stained glass window in the front of our Baltimore rowhome, and people spoke of its multicolored beauty. I recorded songs I wrote, and people paid to hear them played live and bought a hundred thousand records. I enjoy seeing these things and understanding myself in these terms. But for my few strengths, I have more weaknesses. And I resist seeing them, because to see would be to acknowledge a weight I prefer not to bear.

I'm a performer in a world of performers. I’ve learned to set the stage, to sing and strum when the lights are on. But there are other things, smaller things, that aren’t witnessed. The little repeated acts that give shape to a life. Sometimes I neglect these things. Often, I do. Sometimes it's as small as a wisp of irritation leaking out the corner of my mouth. Or a joke that edges too far and, people laugh, but the laughter feels slightly unnatural. Not egregious wrongs. Just tiny careless choices that wear on a life, on a relationship. I’ve sworn to do better. But I repeat past-made errors, robbing both myself and others. How, each morning, do I choose to be present with a cat while I’m so often unfaithful with others? With myself? No one ever mentions these things. Maybe they don’t notice. Sometimes, I choose to look away. 

I’ll soon again live temporarily in the camper I built with capable hands. The kids and I will sleep on its too-thin mattresses and enjoy views, this time of Sequoia’s tree-giants reaching into the clouds and Yosemite’s hooded stone priest breaking from the mountain that’s held it. We’ll laugh together, endure cans of soup and stale sandwiches, and do our best to appreciate what’s before us. When we travel, I often remind my children to slow down, to take it all in. Guys, this is the last time you’ll experience this for the first time. I’ve told them a thousand times. And I’ll remember Pete, our daily interactions, and the call I received while driving along California’s coast. I’ll look forward to returning to Fireball’s daily water ritual. In the meantime, I’ll do my best, really, to choose to see what’s before me. This moment. Now.

And the cat sees me. I buy him food, and stroke his fur, and hold him as if he were a baby lying on his back. He doesn’t protest. For what the cat needs, and for much of what he wants, I show up. I just show up. Including, each morning, slowing down and finding exactly the right position for the gold-and-crystal faucet, with the finish wearing off, to produce the slow drip that he’s come to expect. Before the orange cat took up the ritual, I turned on the water each morning for the black cat. The orange one learned. Maybe he knows.