Molly & Milty - A Love Story (installment seven)

First stop, of course, was the family room off the kitchen. I pointed my nose toward the TV and pawed open a cabinet to show him board games and toys left over from years before when Fred and Betty’s son Bruce was small.  When I glanced back, Milty was staring out the window watching snowflakes fall. Even my “meow” didn’t change Milty’s focus. 

 

He was only a step behind when I entered the dining room. I made a graceful leap onto the table and immediately went to the silver candlestick holders. I figured that by now, having seen Fred eat at the kitchen table a ton of times, he knew what a table was for. I wanted Milty to see that this table with silver candlesticks was for special occasions. Sadly, he couldn’t see my point because he was under the table, woofing and gnawing on his leather bone. I was losing patience. I didn’t see a reason for going into the den since Milty had just about made it his second sleeping chamber, sprawled on the sofa or an armchair or lapping up whatever crumbs he found on the coffee table. Instead, with a sweet purr and jerk of my head I started for the laundry room. Milty dropped the bone from his mouth, crawled out from under the table and followed me. 

 

This was going to be a slam dunk. A basket of Fred’s dirty clothes was parked in one corner, a box of soap sat on top of the shiny white washer and a few rags hung from a rope over the big sink. When I looked over to Milty, he was pulling a flowery bed sheet with his teeth out of the room. That was it. He had paid absolutely no attention to the family room, the dining room and now the easiest mark of all, the laundry room. There was no point in taking him upstairs. I, frankly, was furious. I jumped off the dryer and streaked past him straight to the kitchen, barreled out the doggy door and tried too cool myself down in a big snow bank.

 

I was still ranting when Fred walked into the house, sneezing, coughing  and wiping his nose. “I tried!” I yelled, racing into the living room. “I tried to be a guide, I tried to be a friend, I tried to educate Milty to the functions of this fake Tudor house! He doesn’t learn, Fred. He just can’t stay on point!” Fred tossed his briefcase down on his chair and sneezed. “And look at you,” I said. “You’re sneezing, coughing, in the grips of walking pneumonia! Why?” I hurtled onto the couch to a more oratorical position. “Because you’re outside walking that hound in the middle of a winter storm! You don’t walk me. I dob’t have a leash with a collar around my neck! I don’t even have a jeweled collar, let me remind you. No sir. I’ve got a box, a nice, perfumed box in the laundry room. I’ve got brains enough to do my toilet business indoors. You don’t have to get a sunburned nose walking me in the summer or risk death taking me outdoors in the middle of an ice storm!”

 

“You’re getting overly dramatic again, Molly. Milton just needs time. You know he was abused.”

 

“I don’t want to hear that word again, Fred!” 

 

I was through trying to be a good sport.  When I told Chester and Gabriella the Princess, they couldn’t believe Milty’s indifference or Fred’s displeasure with me. I won’t say I sulked. Cats aren’t sulkers. I hate to say this, but, honestly, cats don’t have the attention span for sulking. But I stayed in the top compartment of my scratching tree for several days. 

 

Fortunately, Fred had decided to renovate the breakfast nook. He hired two workers to make the window looking out on the backyard larger, strip the old wallpaper and paint the walls a bright, cheery yellow. I would have gone with a mellower peach. But the good thing was that Milty was busy bothering the workers every day and I ddin’t have to deal with his drooling and gnawing and woofing. I wasn’t even jealous when one of the workers brought Milty a steak!

 

The only thing that bothered me now was that the winter nights came early. It was already dark when the workers left for the day and Fred still wasn’t home from work. He had installed a timer that turned on a living room lamp and a kitchen light but, still, it was ghostly. Milty didn’t seem to mind. When you’re under a table gnawing a leather bone, how much light do you need?

 

I was the one who saw the lamp chord fizz. I was the first to hear the hiss.

 

Then I saw sparks. 

 

Smoke was curling up from the floor. I started to blink. My nose twitched. I’m not what some people call a scaredy-cat, but I’m smart enough to know the signs of fire. Small yellow flames growing bigger were shooting across the rug towards the drapes. I started to yowl. My house, Miss Betty’s house she had put so much time and love into decorating, Fred’s house with a paid off mortgage was being threatened! The fake Tudor was going to go up in flames! I shot a look towards the living room arch. Milty had scampered into the room, probably attracted by my desperate yowls. He looked over to the leaping flames. “Do something!” I screeched. Milty spun around and charged from the room. “Scaredy-cat!” I yowled. “I knew you didn’t care about the house. You never gave a hoot about the rooms I showed you!”  I jumped from the Lazy Boy and leaped to the safety of a China cabinet. 

 

That’s when I saw Milty. He had the wire handle of one of the worker’s plastic buckets between his teeth. From my perch I could see it was filled with water. He lugged it step by step, dropped the bucket at the edge of the flames, and butted it over with his head. The water splashed across the flames. I couldn’t believe it. My eyes were fluttering. Milty raced from the room. Seconds later he was back. The second bucket was heavier. He was yanking it between his teeth, grunting with each step as he dragged it toward the fire. It was the bucket of sand he had been sniffing at when we went room by room through the house. He reached the flames just as they caught the bottom of the drapes. Again, he knocked the pail over smothering the flames, kicking the sand with his giant paws. He grabbed the base of the burning drape with his teeth and pulled it down into the soaking wet sand.

 

I saw him through the smoke. He was facing me, panting. Limping towards me on his burnt paws.

 

I told you I have a heart. It dropped a thousand miles.

 

I explained everything to Fred when he got home. I didn’t hold back on the tears in my eyes or my praise for Milty. “He’s my hero,” I whimpered. Fred listened but I could see his mind was on getting Milty to the vet. I wanted to go along. While they were gone, I sat like a statue in the front window waiting for them. Hours passed, in what seemed like endless moons, until they finally returned. Milty’s front paws were wrapped in white gauzy bandages. Fred cooked him a huge burger for his evening meal. Again, I wasn’t jealous. I would have cooked it for him and smothered it with a fancy cheese if I knew how to cook. 

 

That night, from my perch on the scratching post, I watched Milty circle his bed a hundred times on his bandaged paws before he flopped down. I waited until I heard his snoozing breath. Then I climbed down from my post and curled onto the plaid  covered bed with the star in the middle, beside my hero.

 

And to this day that’s the way Milty and I sleep each night. I still see Chester and Gabriella the Princess on the fake Tudor roof, but now I spend most of my time hanging out with Milty. I know Miss Betty would be very proud of me.

 

Like I said, I’m seven. Sages and even ordinary people think seven is a very lucky number. It only came once in this cat’s life. The year I met Milty.

 

 

END