I Was Minutes From Euthanizing the Cat Who Saved Me After My Wife Died—Then He Heard Me Scream From the ICU

We stayed in Room B for three more days, but it wasn't an intensive care unit anymore; it was a rehabilitation ward for two old, broken wrecks who refused to stay down.

Dr. Vance removed the feeding tube on Thursday morning. By Thursday afternoon, Buster had eaten half a saucer of warm chicken broth and three spoonfuls of strained baby food straight from my fingers.

His left side was weak. When he walked across the examination room floor, his rear leg dragged in a small, semi-circular arc, and his head leaned about five degrees to the left where the skull fracture had healed into a thick ridge of bone.

He looked even more battered than he had the day he showed up on Ellen's porch swing. He had lost three pounds; his coat was thin around his neck where the IV lines had been taped; and his voice had permanently lost its high register, reduced to a low, dry rasp like two dry leaves rubbing together in a winter gutter.

"He's going to have permanent neurological deficits," Vance told me on Friday morning as he filled out the discharge paperwork. "He'll probably have a mild head tilt for the rest of his life. He might have focal seizures if he gets too cold or too stressed. He'll need daily anti-inflammatory medication for his spine."

"So will I," I said, leaning on my new aluminum cane.

Vance smiled, setting down his pen. "I'm voiding the ICU bill, Walter."

I frowned, reaching for my pocketbook. "We had a deal, Doctor. I told you I'd pay every cent—"

"The Purdue Veterinary School is paying for his case history," Vance interrupted, sliding my checkbook back across the desk to me. "They're calling it an anomalous survival event driven by external acoustic stimulation. They want to write a paper on his recovery for the Journal of Veterinary Neurology."

He looked at Buster, who was currently sitting on top of my sheepskin coat on the office chair, staring intently at a fly buzzing against the window pane.

"They can call it whatever scientific gibberish they want," Vance said softly. "The truth is, that cat stayed alive because he knew you needed him. Don't let him down, Walter."

"I won't," I said.

My daughter Sarah drove us home in her station wagon.

The snow had cleared off the dirt lane, leaving deep, frozen ruts that bounced the car as we pulled up the long driveway toward the farmhouse.

The place looked different.

For two years, every time I had turned into that driveway, I had seen a house where Ellen used to live—a white frame monument to forty-eight years of memories that were slowly rotting into the ground like old fence posts.

Today, as the station wagon stopped by the back porch, I looked at the weathered cypress siding, the cold brick chimney, and the empty porch swing hanging from its iron chains in the winter wind.

It wasn't an empty house anymore.

It was just a place that needed its roof patched, its wood stove stoked, and its kitchen floor swept.

I opened the car door, lifted Buster off the fleece blanket on the back seat, and tucked him inside my heavy canvas work coat, holding his warm body tight against my ribs.

I walked up the porch steps on my cane, unlocked the heavy wooden door, and stepped into the mudroom.

The air inside was cold—maybe forty degrees—and smelled of stale coal smoke and dry pine needles.

I set Buster down on the braided rug in front of the cold cast-iron stove.

He stood there for a moment, his head tilted five degrees to the left, his yellow eyes surveying the dark kitchen, the empty oak chairs at the Formica table, and the quiet hallway leading back toward the bedroom.

He took three slow, limping steps forward.

He didn't go to the armchair in the living room.

He didn't go to his food dish by the refrigerator.

He turned toward the dark hallway, his rear left leg dragging slightly against the floorboards, and walked straight into the back bedroom.

I followed him on my cane, standing in the doorway.

Buster stopped at the side of the big cherry-wood bed—the side where Ellen had slept for forty-eight years, the side I hadn't been able to look at without a sickness in my throat for twenty-four months.

He lowered his head, backed up two inches, and then—with a sudden, awkward, straining leap that took every ounce of strength in his battered shoulders—he launched himself up onto the mattress.

He didn't sit on the edge.

He walked directly to the hollow in Ellen's old down pillow, turned around three times, collapsed onto his side with a long, rattling sigh, and closed his eyes.

I stood in the quiet room, watching the orange fur rise and fall against the white linen pillowcase.

I laid my cane against the nightstand, pulled off my heavy work boots, and for the first time in two years, I climbed into the left side of the bed.

I didn't turn toward the wall.