My little sister weighed almost twelve pounds at the time of her birth. Her name was Phelan and she infringed on the bulk of the attention I was getting from my parents at the time. They had enough going on without having to worry about carrying this round and noisy creature from place to place. They had just opened a store in the Empire Mall and often had to take Phelan and me to work with them. I was left to my own devices, which were few. I could either go see Ghostbusters for the thirteenth time or just have another roast beef sandwich from Hardee’s.
Shopping mall life had made me soft to the point where you could easily locate my cavernous belly button through my tight-fitting shirt.
Phelan developed greater mobility over the next two years. And while pets weren’t allowed at the Westbrooke Apartments, having Phelan around was almost like keeping an animal. Still substantially sized, she would make her way around on all fours and sometimes bite you.
Short shorts were standard issue eighties’ apparel. Mine were blue with white piping and cut high to expose my fleshy white thigh. The temptation of using her newfound teeth on such a supple canvas was impossible for Phelan to resist. She approached on all fours and propped herself up on the side of the curvy, black chair. Without warning, she dug her tiny teeth into my soft skin, breaking the surface. What was left was circular bruise marked with a bloody incision where her incisors had busted through. I was seven years her senior but that day I wailed louder than Phelan before her noon feeding.
As a family, we started to outgrow the Westbrooke Apartments. Phelan was now bipedal and I was a chubby and depressed nine-year-old. My parents rented a house on 34th Street. There were no miracles, just shag carpeting and a backyard that consisted of a cornfield for as far as my bespectacled eyes could see.
One cold afternoon I decided to explore the ditch adjacent to the cornfield to make sure it didn’t lead to a magic castle or an undiscovered murder scene. Instead of treasure, I stumbled upon two older boys I recognized from school laughing and smoking cigarettes. They were mean and asked me what I was doing in their ditch.
“Exploring,” I said, stupidly.
They laughed, then promptly picked up sticks and described exactly how they were going to beat me up. I ran home just as fast as my plump white thighs would carry me—blubbering harder than a toddler after hitting her head on the corner of a table.
In an effort to make me seem a little bit cooler, my parents brought home a cat for me to spend all my time with. He was young, but older than a kitten. He had long black hair and was abnormally large for a cat his age. In fact, he was pretty much the biggest cat I had ever seen. I named him Prowler, as in, one who prowls. And he did. Prowler would take off into the cornfields every evening and return in the morning. We would wake to find dead critters on the kitchen floor. Mice, moles, and snakes, Prowler almost always presented them to us without heads. It was as if he was giving us gifts, thanking us for our generosity.
My parents’ plan to make me cooler completely backfired. The fat kid/black cat combo was repellant to potential friends and playmates. Which was fine. I didn’t need any friends—just Prowler and a pad of paper. I became obsessed, recording his evening prowls in the form of pencil drawings. I theorized that at night, the cornfield became home to a population of zombie cats. My drawings depicted Prowler beating up on the undead and gashing into their gray flesh with his half-inch fangs. His teeth actually were a half-inch in length. I know this because I had a ruler and an empty social calendar.
My parents had begun building a new house in a nicer area of Sioux Falls. This would be the first house our family would actually own, and the excitement of having a say when it came to stuff like the layout of my bedroom made me feel rich, like Ricky Stratton. For the most part, things were looking up. But it was hard to be overly enthused.
In the months leading up to the completion of the new house, Prowler’s headless gifts stopped appearing on the kitchen floor. He was losing weight and becoming lethargic. At times, he would even opt not to go on his nightly prowls. This behavior was obvious to me, but maybe only slightly suspicious to my parents or anybody else who didn’t spend all their time with Prowler.
The new house smelled like paint. But what really struck me is that it didn’t smell like a combination of all the previous families who had lived there before us, as was the case with the house on 34th Street. It was ours to create the initial family scent. Another plus—I was now within walking distance to my school, Oscar Howe Elementary. There are certain freedoms for a kid who walks himself to school. The most important is that he can decide when he comes home. I was free to run errands or go to a friend’s house to play ping-pong or backgammon.
Thing was, I didn’t have any friends to play with and didn’t have any errands that needed running. I just had Prowler. Each day after school I would fast-walk directly home to maximize our time together. Each day he would be waiting at the top of the stairs.
Even though our house no longer backed up to the cornfield, his adventures continued in illustrations. Prowler, now skinny and pot-bellied, would lie on the floor of my new room while I sketched him starring in dozens of cat-ventures. The door would remain closed to protect us from Phelan, who had just started to verbally express her desire to ruin my life.
Prowler’s death came without warning. In fact, I knew nothing of it until it was all over. I came home from school expecting to find Prowler casually sprawled out at the top of the stairs like he always was. But both my parents were there instead. It was a rare sight to see them both at home that early in the day. I knew something was wrong.
They told me Prowler had been very sick. He had something called feline infectious peritonitis, or FIP. The disease was almost always fatal. While no death is pleasant, death by FIP is notoriously not so. The veterinarian recommended euthanasia and my parents agreed. Our family was once again cat-less, and I was appropriately friendless.
What followed was a symphony of the most pathetic, snot-mixed-with-tears bawling ever performed by a child over the age of five. It was so bad even I knew how ridiculous it was. But my parents remained empathetic to my suffering. My mother had experienced a similar pain giving birth to Phelan. And my father insisted that he also cried as a result of what had happened to Prowler.
“When?” I asked, taking a break from sobbing.
“When I was getting ready for work this morning.” He seemed sincere. Then I imagined my father wearing a nothing but a dress shirt and underwear. This was a common sight in our household in the mornings. In my head, he was grooming his moustache while crying at the thought of Prowler losing his battle with kitty peritonitis. It didn’t seem plausible. In fact, I almost laughed at the thought of it. He was lying to make me feel better about sobbing like a little girl. And even though I didn’t believe him, I genuinely appreciated the effort.
