Pedro the Kangaroo

Pedro was black with a white chin. He had flanks that were large, and his posture was like that of a leopard. His back was arched downward in a rocker, and his shoulder blades reciprocated like cylinders in an engine when he walked. Pedro was a good hunter. His first game prize was a small mouse that with a family was living upstairs underneath our bathroom floor. With valor he dropped the mouse at the top of the stairs leading to the basement. I thought to myself, “What better pet could their be than a cat that catches mice like a cartoon?” Melanie insisted that Pedro go outside. Since we adopted him from Cat Welfare a few blocks from our house, Pedro had been an inside cat. He slept with me in my big, green, double bed. He hung around when I was programming music on the computer. He liked to sit on the third tier of my keyboard stand, where I had put a blanket for him. After Pedro did go outside, he changed. The awe of Mother Nature was grandiose and complex. There were baby rabbits in the yard. There were birds, and there were other cats. This became Pedro’s new home, and he wasn’t interested in being an inside cat anymore. In winter with snow on the ground, Pedro slipped out the front door as Melanie came in from work. We didn’t know he had escaped, until he didn’t appear for a few days. It was below freezing outside, and we were worried about him. Melanie was the one who speculated he had slipped out beneath her feet at the front door. On the third day he was missing, I discovered his paw prints in the snow on the front porch. I followed them to the back of the house where they disappeared underneath our large wooden deck. Without a thought Melanie dove underneath that porch and retrieved a dirt covered Pedro. The dirt had acted as insulation against the cold. It took several baths to get him clean again. On the second occasion he disappeared again for several days. Melanie was the one that found him trapped in our neighbor’s garage a few doors down. The third time I found him in a tree next door in Mabel’s backyard. I had to climb up and rescue him. How could this cat be so curious? Letting him outside created emotional angst for me every time he would disappear. This was what I did not enjoy about having a cat. I liked it when he was an indoor pet. When we first adopted him the muscles in his back legs were atrophied from lack of use in the steel cage in which he lived. As he emerged from the cat carrier, he stumbled. He felt at home almost immediately. I taught him how to jump and use his haunches. Spontaneously he would jump into the air like a kangaroo often landing on a nearby wall. It never phased him one bit. He liked the little toy mice I bought at the grocery store and happily would chase them around the living room. I put one on a fishing pole and after this he would jump like a pogo stick our of his own control. One time when I had over 900 pages of music manuscript sitting at the top of the staircase, he jumped onto them sending them cascading down the steps like a log jam. There he sat, dazed and confused, but happy with his achievement. I on the other hand had to re-alphabetize the whole stack. Pedro like to catch birds, and he would drop them off on the back porch as presents. The baby rabbits were a problem, because they lived in a burrow underneath the soft mounds of grass in the backyard. How could they escape his clever eye and scent? I had to pull them out of his mouth. When I left Columbus I took Pedro with me. We had a cat at home, but Rodney did not mind Pedro’s presence. It was Tybalt, the cat next door, that took offense to Pedro. Appropriately like Romeo's foe Tybalt used his claws as his swords. He scratched scratched Pedro several times. The second time he caught him under the chin, and Pedro’s head swelled up like a pumpkin. He was not happy, and roaring like a wounded tiger he stalked our den floor in search of relief from the pain. I had to take him to the Urgent Care Center, where magically overnight they cured his swollen head. Pedro was never happier upon realizing this was not a permanent condition. I guess if you are a stray, as Pedro probably was, an injury like this could last. He was elated that I took him to be healed. Although I kept him locked up in my mother’s sewing room for a week after that, he rolled around on the cool carpet with not a care in the world. I had to make a permanent decision about Pedro, and it didn’t seem like he was going to be able to stay here. Two trips to the doctor in only a few short weeks? What was to come? I loaded him back into my green Nissan pick up and drove him nine hours back up to Columbus, Ohio where Melanie was waiting. Reluctantly she agreed to keep him. On the trip Pedro patiently sat in the passenger seat, but most often enjoyed lying directly on the dashboard where I held him steady with my free hand. Several times he tired to crawl underneath my legs, but I had to coach him control of the vehicle was more important. He was extremely well-behaved on that trip, unlike his subsequent one to Cleveland. After I had left Melanie had to make the decision to find a new home for Pedro. She worked long hours and didn’t feel good about him being stuck inside the house all day alone. Her sister and neice lived n Cleveland, and they agreed to take Pedro. She unhappily relayed to me that he cried the whole way there from the backseat. The trip to Cleveland is not a pleasant one. It is mostly interstate, and there is road construction. Cats instinctively know when they are going to get ditched. The trip was painful for Melanie, but Pedro adjusted to his new home quickly like he did with us. Although he immediately crawled out a second floor window into the woods, he came back later for dinner. He was quite adept living in different places. We had no choice in the decision about Pedro, because I began working cruise ships and Melanie lived alone. I think about Pedro from time to time and wonder if he is doing okay.