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“Ah, shit, Lucas, I don’t have any makeup on!” she groaned, scrambling for her bag. Reaching over, I grabbed her hand, pulling it close.
“Don’t start fussing,” I said, kissing the back of her hand before I held it in my lap. “Trust me, they’re not going to care if you have makeup on, or what your hair looks like, or what you’re wearing...although I like what you’re wearing.” I was such a sucker for her in a skirt. It made me want to push it up her thighs and bury my face in her. It was yellow plaid and her shirt was white, hugging her chest like a corset. “You look sexy as hell.”
I leaned over and kissed her, and she cried out that I was going to get us into an accident, but I wasn’t worried.
I hated this town, but I knew its roads like the back of my hand; even the old rutted ones that led through the unsavory parts of Wickeston.
“You used to live there, didn’t you?” she said, pointing to Montgomery Park as we passed it.
The trailer park used to be nice, back in the 70s when it was mostly full of retired seniors. But many people had come and gone over the years and worn the place down. The paint had peeled off the old sign in front of it, and water stains leaked through the wood.
“Yep, home sweet home,” I said. The trailer park was backed up to a drainage ditch, where people had been dumping their trash for years. Old mattresses, broken furniture, glass bottles, and other pieces of refuse were scattered all over the area.
Turning down the narrow dirt service road alongside the ditch, I parked and turned off the engine. After several seconds of silence, curious little faces poked out from beneath the trash.
“This is it?” Jess said.
Nodding, I put my finger to my lips. “They’re a little shy, so try to keep your voice down.”
She looked confused, but she got out of the car after me. A few little faces darted back into hiding as I reached into the bed and pulled out the supplies I’d brought.
As she watched me open up a box of Friskies, Jess said, “Lucas...why do you have all this cat food?”
“For my friends,” I said, keeping my voice low as I motioned for her to follow me. There were several metal baking trays I’d hidden in the shade of the trees nearby, and I ripped open a bag of kibble to pour out on the trays. Clicking my tongue to encourage them to come out, I stood back from the trays for a moment and waited.
Cats, at least a dozen of them, came running out from hiding. Jess gasped as they rushed around us, tails in the air, meowing loudly for food. Some were brave enough to rub around my legs, but others held back, too wary to come close.
“Oh my God, are these all strays?” she said. She kept her voice down, but I could see how badly she wanted to reach down and pet them. The cats began to chow down, even before I added several cans of wet food on top of the kibble.
“They’re strays,” I said. “Most of them are feral and have been out here their whole lives. This colony has been here for years.” I stepped back, giving the more frightened cats a chance to feed. “I used to come back here to smoke so my dad wouldn’t give me shit about it. That’s how I found out they were here. They were hungry and no one was feeding them, so I started bringing them food. And I’ve been feeding them ever since. I try to come out once a week. But if the weather is rough, I’ll come more often to check on them. I used to have shelters out here for them, but people kept breaking shit.”
People were fucking cruel, especially to cats. When I discovered some teenage assholes were bringing firecrackers back here and trying to catch the cats, I almost went ballistic. But they never came back after they showed up one day and found me waiting for them.
“I’ve managed to trap most of them and take them to the vet,” I said. “The local shelter has a program to get strays spayed or neutered for free. But there’s some I’ve never been able to catch, so...” I motioned toward a tiny orange kitten that toddled out from the weeds. Jess squealed in delight, quickly covering her mouth to muffle the sound.
“It’s so tiny!” she gasped, watching the kitten get into the food. I’d suspected another litter was born recently, but with only one kitten making an appearance and no mother near her, I had a bad feeling they hadn’t made it.
Life was rough out here, and I couldn’t save them all.
Moving slowly, I plucked the kitten out of the bunch. She was immediately feisty, twisting in my grasp and giving me a vicious, spitting hiss. She put her little paws up and stuck out her claws. She fit in my palm, and I held her close against my chest, forming a cocoon with my hands for her to hide in while Jess gently stroked her back.
She felt too thin, too fragile in my grasp. She was obviously malnourished, too young to be weaned.
“No one else knows about this,” I said, and she looked up at me in surprise. “It’s not that I think it needs to be a secret. It’s just always beenmything. It makes me feel like I’m doing some good. If I can make their lives a little better, then it...it means something. But I never wanted to brag about it, or make some big show of it...”
I wasn’t sure why I’d suddenly brought her here. As I’d bought the food yesterday, the thought had come into my mind and never left. Something I’d never shared with anyone, that had only ever been for me, I wanted to share with her. No...Ineededto share it.
So gently, she took the kitten in her hands. The baby looked at her with wide blue eyes, still milky with youth. But she didn’t hiss again as Jess held her close under her chin, talking to her softly.
“I think she likes you,” I said.
“She’s so soft.” Jess kept her voice a whisper. Opening another can of wet food, I set it down in the bed so the kitten could eat without competing with the adults. She had a massive appetite, and growled as she dug into the food, taking the largest bites she could fit in her tiny jaws.
“She’s a little fighter,” I said. She growled even more as I stroked my finger down her spine, her entire face messy with food. When I looked up, Jess was watching me.
“I think that’s the biggest smile I’ve ever seen on your face,” she said. “I had no idea you liked cats. Why don’t you have one at the house?”
There wasn’t an easy answer. It wasn’t the dogs I was worried about; Jojo was a softy who wouldn’t hurt a fly, and Bo might act tough but one whack from a cat and he’d learn to respect them.
