Southern Living Read Online Free Page B

uth and Margaret Pinaldi first found Susan B., emaciated and nearly unconscious, under the juniper bushes behind Ruth’s practice on Shornwood Avenue. Short-haired and all white, she appeared to be a ghost even though alive. Though Ruth had strong opinions about dogs—“They lack courage and individuality, and they run in packs because they don’t have the skills or confidence needed for solitary journeys”—she had no life experience with cats. Ruth assumed the animal was female; she had no idea that a cat’s testicles were neatly tucked up close to the body, discreetly covered in fur. She named their cat after the famous suffragist and decided to keep the name even after the true gender was revealed when she brought him in to be spayed.
    Susan B. loved to climb trees. Often, when the back door was opened, he would dart outside, leap onto the nearest cylinder ofbark, and pull himself skyward, his claws clicking and crackling like static electricity all the way up.
    Sometimes he would stay up there for two or three days. This time he had climbed higher, at nearly fifty feet now, and since it was the first time he had gotten stuck in a Georgia tree, in a backyard still unfamiliar, Margaret was more concerned than usual.
    After four days she opened a can of Friskies Elegant Entrée and smeared it on the bark of the tree, hoping the aroma would tempt him downward, but the food just developed a dark crust and attracted yellow jackets. Margaret wondered how he could survive. She guessed he was licking the dew off the leaves, but when had he slept? And how could he just shut down his bowels like that?
    On the eighth day, she took Harriet’s advice and called the fire department. Margaret was standing beneath the tree, trying to coax Susan B. down, when two firefighters with postlunch toothpicks in their mouths walked up to her. Their ample bellies pushed at the blue material of their shirts, reminding Margaret of newly upholstered easy chairs. She’d never seen overweight firefighters. The ones back home, in Buffalo, were known for their buff, tough appearance, and the
Buffalo News
had even published a beefcake calendar featuring the finest twelve specimens as they posed half-naked. Margaret looked at the men before her now and wondered: How could these guys climb ladders or shimmy across a floor on their stomachs?
    The older man, with curly brown hair and a mustache with a few gray invaders, appeared to be in charge. He looked skyward, using his hand to shield the sun from his eyes.
    “That cat’s pretty high,” he said. “We ain’t got a ladder that goes up that high, not one that’ll fit back here in these trees.”
    “He’s been up there eight days,” Margaret said.
    The man looked at his silent partner, who was younger, about Margaret’s age, with ruddy cheeks and blue eyes shaded by longlashes. His stomach, she realized now, was not nearly as robust as his partner’s.
    “Eight days?” the older firefighter asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Nah—that cat’s been down and gone back up.”
    “I can assure you he hasn’t been down,” Margaret said.
    The firefighter looked at the dried cat food on the tree trunk, then down at the blue plastic bowl of water and the folding beach chair Margaret had been sitting in for occasional vigils.
    “You’re payin’ too much attention to that cat. You just forget that cat and he’ll come on down.”
    “How do you mean?” she asked.
    Again, he looked at his partner, wiggled his toothpick with his tongue then smiled.
    “Ma’am, there ain’t no cat that’s ever not got down from a tree.”
    “You’re sure?”
    “You know how I know that?” he asked.
    “How?”
    “You ever see any cat skeletons up in a tree?”
    Margaret shook her head.
    “Well, there you go.”
    “Okay …”
    “You a Bills fan?” he asked.
    “Excuse me?”
    “Your jacket. Buffalo Bills.”
    Margaret looked down at her chest.
    “Oh, no. I don’t watch football. I won it in a radio