Hate is a Strong Word
By Mike Oppenheim
It would be quite an understatement to say that I am not a big fan of cats, but it would also be unfair to say that I hate cats; my feelings for felines lies somewhere in between these two emotions. But it is more than fair to say that I do hate the smell of cat urine. It is not just a bad smell, but I find that it actually pierces my lungs, and I liken it to stale second hand tobacco smoke, in so far as its ability to cause permanent damage to the human body.
The first thing I noticed upon my entry into the preacher’s apartment was the single most wretchedly suffocating stench of cat urine that I have ever encountered.
The second thing I noticed was the preacher himself, sitting in a wheelchair and smiling. I didn’t know a whole lot about the preacher. Actually, I knew four things about the preacher. I knew that he was an ordained Methodist preacher; I knew that he had lost the ability to walk (but I did not know how); I knew that his wife had a malignant brain tumor; and I knew that my friend was screwing his wife behind his back.
The preacher seemed like a really nice guy, which made me feel extra bad about the fact that for months on end now, my friend had been taking his wife to cheap motel rooms in the seediest sections of town in order to screw her cancer-ridden brains out.
The preacher’s wife had recently flown to Philadelphia to seek medical attention in a last chance effort to rid her of the malignant tumor. The preacher had finally grown tired of the separation, and booked a flight to Philadelphia to comfort his wife.
My role in the operation was simple. My friend was dirt broke, and loved the preacher’s wife, so he had agreed to help her paraplegic husband move out of their decrepit apartment, and to give him a ride to the airport. My friend had no car, and so he had enlisted me to drive the preacher to the airport.
Prior to my arrival at the preacher’s apartment, my understanding was that the preacher had already packed up as many of his belongings as he could manage to do from his wheelchair, and all that was supposedly left for me to do was to put his bags, his wheelchair, and his two sedated cats into my trunk, and then to drive him to the airport.
The preacher’s apartment was intolerably dirty. Flakes of dried paint seemed to float about in the air like snowflakes, and the carpet was stained with cat piss, dried catsup, and soy sauce and they combined to create a disorienting pattern that resembled art from the abstract expressionism movement. But the aesthetic dilapidation of the apartment was not nearly as unnerving as my visceral reaction to the stench of cat urine.
Even in some parallel universe wherein the free market had dictated a profit to be made from producing and bottling cat urine, I somehow doubt that any sort of cat urine factory could have manufactured a smell as powerful as the scent of the preacher’s apartment.
My best theory in regards to how the preacher’s apartment could smell so awful was that it was due to a perfect combination of the preacher’s inability to raise himself out of a wheelchair to do any rudimentary housekeeping, the fact that the apartment was air tight with nary a window opened, and the fact that the apartment was barely large enough to fit one human being, let alone two adults and two cats.
As my nostrils flared from the assault of the ammonia odor, I looked around the apartment and was surprised to see two cats darting around the apartment, un-sedated and unpacked. These two animals seemed to be playing a game that involved a dried-out cat turd and a long string of used dental floss.
I realized then and there that I had been deceived by my friend; I had not just been summoned to drive the preacher and his two drugged cats to the airport, I had unwillingly been enlisted to help prepare the two cats for airline travel.
Another thing that I do not like about most pet cats is the fact that they are fiercely independent, and I therefore see no point in attempting to domesticate them. It has always seemed quite apt to me that cats are relatives of the mighty lion, and they therefore have no interest in being ruled by any other animal in our kingdom, and this includes us human folk.
The preacher’s two cats were no exception to this feline stereotype of mine. The preacher pointed at one of the cats—the black one—and he called it some name that I do not remember. The preacher grinned and said, “He’s going to be the more difficult one to drug.” I decided then and there to drug that cat first, because I’ve always been a big fan of frontloading hard work.
I could tell by the preacher’s instruction that he assumed that my friend had told me that I was going to be helping the preacher to drug his two cats. Like I said, the preacher seemed like a really nice guy, so I didn’t have it in me to tell him what I thought about cats, or the idea of having to do anything interactive with either of his cats.
Breathing heavily through my mouth, I approached the task of holding the cat down with the same will power that I use to convince myself to wake up on time for work each morning.
Despite my dislike for cats, I appreciate all living things, and I don’t have a cruel bone in my body. This trait of mine made it quite hard for me to get into the idea of attempting to pin a cat in place in order for someone else to inject it in the neck with a man-made sedative.
Glancing at my wrist watch, I realized that the three of us had less than half an hour to put down the two cats, pack them in their bags, and get the preacher to the airport in order for him to make his flight.
The black cat squirmed and wriggled with great force as I attempted to hold it in place. It hissed and moaned and threw its claws at me, and even though I think it’s unnatural and somewhat cruel to ‘de-claw’ a cat, I was okay with the idea of ‘de-clawing’ after the damn thing drew blood from my left wrist as my friend successfully squeezed the syringe into the cat’s neck.
The preacher took his thick glasses from his face and wiped them in his shirt, but the effort did very little to remove the thick crusty film that seemed to cover the lenses. I noticed that without his glasses on, he looked a lot younger. The preacher caught me staring at him, and he made a face that conveyed to me that he had felt some sort of intense, empathetic moment of despair with his cat.
I wanted to explain to the preacher that this was no fun for me either, so I held up my bleeding wrist and asked the preacher if he had any paper towels.
“Oh, man, that’s a zinger!” he exclaimed. “There might be some towels in the kitchen.”
I walked into the kitchen and was assaulted by a new odor; the mixture of cat urine, cat feces from an over-filled litter box, and the not-so-faint odor of six trash bags full of rotting food. I doubled over from the sickening, gaseous stench, and I forgot all about my quest for paper towels as I quickly rushed out of the kitchen to return to the living room.
The second cat, the so-called “friendlier one,” was smaller than the black cat. It was mostly white, but it also had some odd splotches of orange hair mixed in. This cat was thinner than the other one, with well defined ribs. It made me wonder if the other cat was eating its portion of their shared meals. The “friendly cat” was now hiding underneath a plush armchair in the far corner of the living room, hissing at my friend, who was bent over on the floor, making odd noises and calling for the “kitty” to come out and play.
Another reason I think that cats make for lousy pets is that they are far from stupid, which means that they cannot be trained very well. I don’t think that cats cannot learn their own name, nor do I think that they are incapable of following directions and taking orders. I think that they actually understand all of these things, and that they are smart enough to realize that if they don’t let on to us humans of their cognizance, then they won’t lose any of their autonomy, and they won’t end up doing stupid tricks for our amusement, like most dogs do.
My friend remained in the prone position, calling out to the second kitty. I turned my attention to the black cat, which had obviously been overpowered by the sedatives, for he had curled himself up on a spot not too far from the preacher’s wheelchair to take a nap. The preacher noticed my appreciation for the sleeping cat, and smiled at me.
“So, uh, you’re a preacher?” I figured that this was a good time for small talk, for small talk could perhaps enable me to build up enough rapport with the preacher to ask him a few of the burning questions in my mind; namely: if you are moving out of the apartment, for good, then why is the place a total mess, why do you not have any boxes packed, and why is the room still full of furniture?
“Oh yes I am, indeed!” He replied. “I graduated from seminary school nearly five years ago.” His smile was authentic, but it also seemed dull and unintelligent. He seemed like the kind of guy that a woman could easily cuckold. This made me feel even worse for him.
“Well, that’s cool. Where do you, um, like, preach?” I had never in my life been to a church, and I had absolutely no clue what a preacher really did. I figured that they probably preached, which is a verb that means to deliver, advocate, or conduct a sermon. I wasn’t even sure what the difference was between a priest and a preacher. I only knew that my friend had referred to him as a preacher, and not a priest.
“Oh, I don’t actually work as a preacher. I just got the degree. When Eleanor and I were married, I was working as a video store manager. But then when God took away the use of my legs, I figured that I would devote my life to God. So we moved to Houston, where I got the seminary degree. But then we moved up here to Portland because Eleanor was offered a job that could support the two of us. After we moved here, I applied to a few church placement programs, but they didn’t hire me.” He told stories like Forrest Gump; straightforward, without a sense of irony, and they always ended with a smile and a nod of the head.
While the preacher had turned to face me and answer my question, my friend had managed to grab the second cat by its paws and forcibly drag it along the rug and out from underneath the armchair. The cat had scowled and shrieked during this last move, but the preacher had failed to notice, and now my friend was pressing the cat’s left ear into the ground, quite hard, and forcing the syringe into its neck. I felt pretty bad at the blatant animal abuse, but I was also happy to see that the task had been successfully completed without my help.
Now that the two cats had been successfully sedated, my friend and I had to pick them up and put them in their “traveler’s bag” for the trip on the airplane. I felt pretty bad about tossing two sleeping mammals into a black duffel bag with a few air holes.
I began to hum out loud—which is what I do whenever I’m nervous—and I think my nervousness was arising from the fact that I was privy to the knowledge that my own friend had been screwing this kind preacher’s wife behind his back. I mean, the poor guy was a paraplegic who had devoted his life to God, and so my sense of guilt began to fester.
I noticed that my forehead was beginning to ache, and I was starting to feel dizzy, and whether or not these were symptoms of my guilt, or symptoms of the choking aroma of cat urine, I couldn’t be sure. All I knew was that I needed to get the hell out of that house.
I stopped humming and said, “Okay, well, the cats are packed, and your plane leaves really soon…so…everyone ready to go?” I was trying to sound casual, but I think the tone of my voice was clear: I was ready to leave, and I wanted to leave now.
“Oh, gosh,” the preacher said, “I guess we just need to grab my two bags from the back room, and then get everything into your car!”
Without a word my friend jogged into the back room and returned with two gigantic duffel bags that were long enough to carry a set of skis. They looked extremely heavy, and they seemed to be larger than my trunk.
My sense of dizziness returned. There was simply no way that the three of us, those two bags, the wheelchair, and the two cats were going to fit in my two-door Hyundai. I shot my friend a look that tried to communicate, “Hate is a strong word, and I think that I may hate you after this.”
My friend pretended not to notice my look, and instead he asked me for the keys to my car. Feeling utterly defeated at this point, I tossed him my keys, and I watched him lumber towards the front door with the two gigantic duffel bags.
I looked back at the preacher, in order to suggest that he grab “the cat bag” and we follow my friend.
But before I could speak, the preacher looked me in my eyes, and with a sense of candid kindness said, “Hey, I really want to thank you for all of your help. I’ve never met you before and you took the time out of your life to help a total stranger during a time of crisis. You are obviously a good person, and you have made my life easier through the kindness of your actions. I have no money to offer you for your time and trouble, but I’d like to offer you anything from my home that I am not taking with me to Philadelphia.”
“Oh, no, really, I am fine, I am just…” I was trying to politely refuse his offer, but just as I had begun to stammer a denial, I noticed a beautiful painting hanging in the corner of the apartment. The painting was a barren tree, set against a pale yellow sunset. The painting was simple and unremarkable, and those very traits made the painting remarkable to me.
The preacher smiled, and turned his chair around to face the painting. “Do you like that painting?” he asked. “I got it at a garage sale, the same day I found out that Eleanor was screwing some asshole behind my crippled back.” The painting suddenly became even more remarkable to me.
The preacher did not turn back around to face me, and continued to stare at the painting. “I never did find out who the asshole is, but I know for a fact that Eleanor was screwing him up until her very last day here in Portland, and I know for a fact that he is someone I’ve met, because when I confronted her about it, and asked her who it was, she refused to tell me, which she would only do if I knew the asshole.”
I felt like the preacher wanted me to respond to his sermon, so I asked him, “So do you want to know who is screwing your wife, or do you simply wish to leave town, and leave it all behind you?”
The preacher wheeled himself over to the painting, and removed it from the wall. He then spun around and wheeled his way over to me, and handed me the painting. Our eyes locked for the third time that evening, only now, his expression was not one of candor, or kindness, nor one of dull, unintelligence. Forrest Gump had turned into Dirty Harry.
“You know him?” he asked.
Before I could answer, the front door flew open, and my friend came back into the house. The preacher’s face reverted back to a portrait of innocence, and he smiled at my friend. “Did you get the bags in the car?”
My friend returned the smile, “Yep! And we still got plenty of room for you, the wheelchair, and the cats!” He then grabbed the bag full of cats, and once again left out through the front door.
The preacher made no delay in returning to our conversation. “It matters not if I know who the man is. It only matters to me that if Eleanor survives this bout with cancer, that she either asks me for a divorce, or that she promises never to commit adultery again. I am not a fool. I understand that when the two of us agreed to stay together in sickness and in health, that the thought of lower paralysis never really entered her mind. While I am still a man, genetically, physically, I can no longer perform one of my manly roles in the context of a marriage, and this is probably very difficult for Eleanor to bear. But I expect someone who loves me to be honest, and I therefore remain angered by the fact that she waited until I confronted her to admit her infidelity.”
I nodded in agreement, and in an attempt to change the subject, I thanked the preacher for the “interesting” painting.
A smile returned to his face. “Don’t mention it,” he said. “Like I said, you are a good person, and you deserve something in return for your help. It was especiallykind of you to help out with the cats, given your obvious distaste for them.”
Before I had time to open my mouth and compose a lie about how I really liked cats, and about how his impression could not have been further from the truth, the door reopened, and my friend motioned for the two of us to follow him back to the car.
It took about five minutes for us to lift the preacher’s limp body out of the chair and to fix him into place in the front seat of my car, and then it took another ten minutes to figure out how to successfully fold up his chair and maneuver it like a Tetris block into the back of the car. Somehow, though, we did manage to fit everything in my car, and as I turned on the car, I noticed that we were leaving the house with just barely enough time to get the preacher and his bags to the airport curb, where I was informed that some airline professional would meet him in order to assist him to his flight.
I drove us as quickly as I could to the airport, making sure to take the turns slowly, just to be sure that the cats weren’t moving around and hitting each other in their duffel bag. Unfortunately for me, my friend is a total idiot, and he had mistakenly only given half the recommended dose to each of the cats, and so while they were groggy, they were not fully unconscious, and both of them managed to piss all over the bag, which in turn soaked into the left rear car seat.
After we dumped the preacher and his bags at the curb, my friend moved back into the front seat and lit a cigarette. I was surprised to discover that I did, indeed, prefer the stench of his second hand tobacco smoke to the poignant odor of cat urine.
As we drove, my friend thanked me several times for all of my help. I told him about the gift of the painting, but I left out the conversation about infidelity. My friend had no morals and could not have cared any less about the preacher or the preacher’s feelings. All he cared about was his love for Eleanor, smoking cigarettes, and having a good time in life.
I dropped my friend off at his apartment, and I could barely make eye contact with him as he thanked me one more time, and said goodnight. As I drove home, alone for the first time that evening, I noticed that my hands were trembling.
I was upset by the fact that I was friends with the kind of person who could screw the cancer-ridden wife of a paraplegic preacher. I was further pissed off that this same friend could then quite duplicitously help said preacher move across the country to be with his sick wife. But most of all, I was irate at the seemingly unfair fact that it was I, and not my friend, who had been punished during this operation with the powerful, lingering stench of cat urine in my car.
Years later, I can now find some humorous elements in this story when I tell it, and this is mostly due to the facts that Eleanor survived her bout with cancer, the Preacher eventually filed for a divorce, and my friend ended up renewing his love affair with the Eleanor, therein proving some sort of genuine affection for the woman, which somehow helps me to validate his end of the adultery.
But the one thing that amazes me the most about this ordeal is that while those three people have moved on completely, and have no scars to bear, I, the innocent bystander who was simply asked to drive some preacher to an airport, I still own that same, shitty Hyundai, and no matter how many times I have tried, I cannot rid the car of the pungent, sickening scent of cat urine. But I still can’t say that I hate cats.