Dead. The summer was completely dead. Dry grass hanging limply in the yard, scorpions scavenging for remains in the dust of the road, trees too limp to hold baby birds. And hot, so hot we couldn't move, sitting on the porch with tall dripping glasses of iced tea. There was wind, sure, it would rustle through the desert shrubs every so often, blowing up my skirt like a welcome stranger.
The cat sat with us too, up on the steps. No one ever knew where that thing came from. A tabby, orange and white, not uncommon in Haifa, but we never had a cat and had never planned to. But there it was. Me, my two boys and the cat, spending sweaty day listening to gunshots over the radio.
It wasn't too bad, the fighting, but that's like saying the ocean's not too wet. It's always there, in the background. There's always new press releases, casualty updates, terrorist bombings, civilian attacks. Here a husband, there a daughter, there's always someone. I've got two kids in the army, with two waiting to be old enough. Next door's got three in the ground. But these are old, tired stories, cleaned away and ignored.
We're not sure where the cat came from. It had just wandered down the road and wrapped its little body around my son's legs, the day their daddy left home. Next day there was a bowl of milk on the step, until I explained to Isaac and Jordon that cats shouldn't drink milk, water was better with some cheese.
He stayed with us for a few weeks. He liked us, I guess, and would sit there for hours, tail swinging back and forth. No reason why he shouldn't, Isaac and Jordon were thrilled to have a living toy. The boys took turns feeding him, combing, playing, dressing him up. They would stroke his ears and he'd purr softly. I said I wasn't getting involved-I needed a cat with fleas like I needed the mice in the basement eating through bags of rice.
He would saunter around the porch, a master of his domain followed by his troops, my sons, who tried to pet him and teach him tricks. But he couldn't be bothered with that, just as he couldn't care less about chasing the mouse that would brazenly dart by his front paws. He would just have to lift one up and smash it down, but no, not the cat that drank bottled water.
He was militant, though, clearly a cat of the streets. When he wasn't fanning himself with his tail, he'd march over to his water bowl or sit by the front door waiting for the day we'd let him in. It was one of these days when he posed by the screen door, perhaps the radio gunshots where too loud for his fine-tuned ears, that he darted down the wooden stairs and disappeared in the shrubs by the side of the road. Isaac and Jordon were playing with their action figures, trying to lure the cat into being Arab soldier and knock down the barricade they had constructed out of popsicle sticks. He ignored them, as always, looked bored. Then just ran away, didn't come back for three days.
Isaac and Jordon ran off after him, actually tried to find him along the road, maybe even of the road, splattered.
"But he's not eating the food. He's gonna die, Mameh. We need to feed him."
"He's been living most of his life without you to give him food, Isaac, I'm sure he'll do fine on his own."
He was a militant cat, that one, it was in his tail. The way it would whip through the air, rigid straight, not the snaky twirl of most cats. He was an Israeli, no doubt about that, and I can't say that I was surprised when he came back bloody.
He walked up the porch, looked for his water bowl, sat down and waited by the front door. Jordon ran in to get the water and cheese, yelling and crying unintelligibly. Isaac peered from his watergun and walked over to inspect the cat. He started trembling.
"Mameh, why is he missing a leg?"
"The cat doesn't mind, so why should you?"
It was a clean injury, just pulled right out of the socket, so I didn't pay him any mind. He got around just fine too, like he'd never had four legs to use. But the boys were scared he'd leave again, and put up wooden slats in front of the stairs to keep him in. I wasn't going to tell them that it wouldn't stop an Israeli cat.
It was the same as it had always been, the cat lapping up water, lying by my chair. But the boys kept their distance, playing with their toys on the other side of the porch. They took up trying to climb the olive trees, see how high they could get. They even tried to build a bomb shelter up there, though they knew a treetop would be the worst place to go for protection. But with the placement of the first little foot, the trees would bend over, hanging in space like ragdolls.
It was just another summer day when the cat jumped down the stairs again, cleared the wood by a few feet, and disappeared for week. The boys were pulling down the trees, to see if they would touch the ground like soldiers touching their toes. They called after him, when he darted off, but he didn't seem to hear. By this time, I was getting used to his company, I'd even talk to him when the heat wasn't too bad. He wouldn't answer, of course, just sat there quietly, at attention.
The wounds were clean, no blood even, but we could see the muscles twitching, trying to move the little satellites that could turn full circles. But he wasn't in pain, didn't seem to notice. Isaac and Jordon wouldn't pet him, though, positively refused.
The barricade became bigger this time, up to my thighs, yet he still managed to vault over it, landing cleanly on three paws. The boys ran down the stairs after him, yelling for him to come back, but fell over the wood and scratched their knees.
Isaac dragged out his tent and he and Jordon slept out on the porch for twelve days, waiting for the cat. The tent was pointless, he returned during the day when I was on the porch, but this time he had no head. He darted up the stairs, lay by my feet and didn't get up again. The boys hysterical, crying and shaking, they refused to come out of the tent. "Get the flag, Jordan."
He peered out from the tent door, and quietly asked, "Why?"
"Because he's dead. I need the flag."
Jordon stood inside the tent and refused to move, staring in fear at the cat. I was forced to get up off my chair, grab and Israeli flag from inside the house and cover the little body.
Isaac peeked his head out, and the two of them looked like Siamese twins. He sniffled. Watched me drag the cat by his three legs down the stairs and out to the road. I dug a small hole at the bottom of one of the boys' collapsed trenches and laid the little body inside, twirling his tail around his neck to fit in the grave. I squatted down by the dirt hole, and the boys ran inside the house, letting the screen door close with a wooden thwack. The sun fell behind the mountains with vague blasts of red and orange, and the wind dropped off, no longer whipping dust around my bare feet. Even the radio was quiet, at least for a while.