[1949 words]
I steal cats for money. That’s right. I select a satisfactory feline, wait for night to fall, and pick it up like other people pick up a penny they find on the street. I was never fortunate enough to find pennies randomly resting on sidewalks, but that’s fine. Cats are my lucky penny. You’d be surprised how much dough you can make by being the hero who returns the naughty rascal to its rightful home.
“Oh, bless you for bringing back my so-and-so,” their owners will tell me. “Here’s a finder’s fee. Won’t take it? But sir, you saved my baby. No, really, I insist.”
Not every cat’s suited for my little scheme. When selecting my furry accomplice, I apply three criteria. First, the cat ought to be tame. Quick and quiet; that’s my motto, so I can’t have it resist. Second, I prefer moggies. Unlike pedigrees, mixed breeds are pretty much worthless. I don’t want people to pay me because I’ve returned one of their luxury goods. I want them to pay me because my good deed bandages their bleeding hearts.
Which brings me to my third criterion: the owner must love their pet. No, not love. Adore. Treasure. Worship. Ladies are fine. Old ladies are better. Kids are the best.
I’m strolling around the neighborhood—not my neighborhood, of course, never my neighborhood—when I come across an ugly one-story bungalow with cracks so deep it looks like it might collapse any second. Every other house on the street has a picket fence, manicured bushes, and a spotless entryway, while this one seems to silently beg for a bulldozer to finish the job.
On the house’s unmown front lawn sits a boy of seven or eight years perhaps (what do I care?), playing with a cat. The boy skitters his fingers through the grass while the cat wiggles in place, then pounces into action. It’s a brown-striped tabby cat. The most common and boring of all cats. In other words: bingo.
I wait in my car until the moon is high and the lights inside the house turn off. It’s late October, so I don’t have to wait too long. We have a full moon tonight, and I nod at the sky, acknowledging my companion. As usual, I brought a pack of treat sticks. The good kind, not the mystery-meat crap, but made with real chicken and laced with catnip. I rustle the wrapping. Within a minute, the cat emerges from a hedge and strolls up to me like I’m an old friend. It winds around my legs, purring. I pick it up, place it inside the cat carrier, and take it back to the car. This one’s particularly docile. It doesn’t even meow as I drive it home. Better company than most people.
Now all I need to do is wait for the kid to notice his friend gone and the parents to pull out their wallets. Kids make the perfect targets because they weep more for their pets than any widow wails over her dead husband. And their parents—no matter how drained their accounts—get desperate to play savior, ready to bankrupt themselves just to see their little ones smile again.
Not all parents, naturally.
“What did you want with that thing anyway?” my own father had asked when I told him I hadn’t seen my cat in three days. “It got hair everywhere and stank like rat piss.”
“He didn’t stink,” I said, though I couldn’t be sure it was a he. The cat had simply appeared one day, waltzed across the lawn, and settled into my lap, which became his favorite resting place for the next eight weeks—until, like a coin in a magician’s hand, he wondrously vanished.
I searched everywhere—in our neighbors’ garages, sheds, even their trash cans—but my cat was nowhere to be found. Sometimes, I thought I spotted him. He was a brown-striped tabby cat, the most common of all cats. Whenever I saw one, I’d run up shouting, “Hey, I finally found you!” More often than not, the cat would dart off, and I’d know it wasn’t mine. But once in a while, one would stay put, its whiskers twitching with mild curiosity at the strange boy heading its way. I’d stroke the cat behind the ears to keep it calm, then gently lift its front paw and press to reveal its claws. One by one, I counted. Five. Then the other. Five again. Ten in total, always. As if sensing my disappointment, the cat would rise and leave me alone on the sidewalk. The cat I was looking for—my cat—had one front paw with only four claws, having lost the outer one, though I couldn’t remember which paw it was. That was his distinguishing feature and the way I’d recognize him always. A cat with nine front claws.
I spent all my pocket money printing pictures and taped one to every tree trunk, lamppost, and mailbox within a one-mile radius. I did it all by myself, and it took me two full days. “LOST,” I wrote in my childish handwriting above the photo, because I’d never gotten to name my cat. Worried that people would think “LOST” was his name, I added: “Please help me find my friend.”
“LOST” is what the posters say now, too, once they go up on missing pet databases. The picture shows the face of the tabby cat currently purring in my lap.
“You’re a superstar,” I tell the cat as I stroke the area behind its ears. It leans into my hand, pressing his head against my fingers the way cats do when you find their favorite spot. Felines tend to act all high and mighty, when really, all they want is a little affection.
Too bad affection doesn’t pay the bills, and the posters don’t mention a finder’s fee, not even an embarrassingly small sum. That’s a problem. No cash, no cat. Another of my mottos.
“No cash, no cat,” I had explained to my dad when I begged him for money so I could offer a finder’s fee. My friend had already been missing for three days, and I was convinced he would return if I only proved I cared enough.
My dad said I could offer a finder’s fee when I made my own money. I said by the time I made my own money, the cat would be dead, or very, very old. My dad said that’s too bad.
Some people are stingy like that. They think they’ll get their cat back for free.
The cat in my lap yawns. “You’re not even worth five bucks,” I say. It looks at me and tilts its head as if it understands. “In fact, not even a single penny. Not yet anyway.” It’s only a matter of time until people realize everything comes at a price.
But a week passes, then ten days. A bunch of cats go missing; some are found, others aren’t, but the missing report for the brown-striped tabby is not updated to include a finder’s fee.
Whenever I get home from another shift at the gas station, where the only thing I steal is the coffee meant for customers, the cat’s there, waiting for me by the door. I almost think it’s nice, coming back to the same face every night, even if it isn’t human. The cat doesn’t stink like my father claimed, but it does get its hair everywhere. It claws the furniture, too, and every now and then I’m tempted to return it without demanding a finder’s fee. Of course, I don’t.
I’m mid-scoop cleaning the cat’s litter box, when I hear the scrape of claws tearing through fabric. I rush into the office, where the cat sits on my chair, gazing up at me with wide-eyed innocence. At first, I can’t spot the damage. Then the cat jumps to the floor, revealing what used to be the leather backrest, now reduced to a patchwork of torn fragments and exposed foam padding, and stretching down the backrest—nine long scratches.
Shortly after my cat disappeared, we got evicted from our house because my dad couldn’t pay the rent. It wasn’t the first time. But now it was different because I had made a friend, and moving would mean I’d never see him again. Moving houses meant changing phone numbers. Even if someone saw the missing posters, they’d have no way of reaching me. I begged my father to ask the landlady if there was truly nothing to be done. Only a week more, or even just a few days, for my cat to make his way back to me. My dad only scoffed, saying beggars can’t be choosers.
To comfort myself, I made up a story about what happened to my friend. In my mind, he had lost his way. For a long while, he had to fend for himself, which, since he was missing the outer claw on his front paw, wasn’t exactly easy. Eventually, though, he found a home. A real home with an owner who let him sleep inside, which my father never did, fed him his favorite treat sticks every day, and took him to the vet to check his claws.
After counting and recounting the scratches in the back of my chair—nine; my eyes hadn’t tricked me—I grab the cat, put it in the carrier, and get in the car. The sun’s about to set when I arrive in the neighborhood. The missing posters greet me from a block away. The cat’s moon-shaped face stares back at me from every tree trunk, lamppost, trash can. “LOST,” they say. “Please help me find my friend.”
I step closer and, for the first time, read the short text below. The cat went missing last Sunday, October 21. The same day mine did, all those years ago. Same month, too. I study the handwriting. It’s obviously a child’s, blurred and sloppy. I haven’t written anything by hand in years, but I suddenly remember my elementary school teacher scolding me for how my lowercase “r” always looked like a “v.” I stare at that word on the poster—fviend.
My wrist aches. I must return this cat. Now.
When I pull up in front of the bungalow, I sigh in relief because it’s still there, in all its chaos and disarray. I cross the unmown lawn and knock several times on the weathered wood. Nobody opens. I peek through the window, but the lights are off. I decide to wait in the car, the cat silent in its carrier on the passenger seat. I wait the entire night; nobody comes home.
Every evening for three days, I return. There’s no trace of the boy. The house appears empty. The family must have moved away. It’s the only explanation. I try dialing the number on the missing posters, but it never goes through. Beep. Beep. Beep. Then silence.
I take long walks through the neighborhood, and through other neighborhoods, too, places we used to live when I was a child. I hope to run into the boy. Sometimes I think I do. I run up to him, shouting, “Hey, I found your cat,” but he only looks at me in bewilderment and turns away.
Every night, when I come home and settle down on the couch, the cat jumps into my lap. I can’t give up my search just yet, but I know I’ll have to eventually.
“How do you feel about staying?” I ask the cat, just hypothetically. He purrs, which I take to mean he wouldn’t mind.
“You’ll need a name,” I say, though I have one in mind already.
I think I’ll name him Found.
Lara Waas is a NYC-based writer currently pursuing her MFA in Creative Writing at Columbia University. Her novella Miss Do-Gooder won the 2023 Story. One Book Award, and her work has appeared in various anthologies and magazines. A short story of hers is forthcoming in Narrative Magazine.
