A  FAILED  ADOPTION

                                                                                                                      By Lisa Ploch Swope

      It was Mother’s Day, and Emma’s mother-in-law was wearing a yellow tee shirt decorated with a craft show variety of birdhouses and the word “Grandmother,” a title she had adopted upon learning of another daughter-in law’s pregnancy. The baby was not due for another four months.

     “I had a dream you two got a white kitten, and you told me his name was Clyde,” said Emma’s mother-in-law Bev. “I don’t know why you named him Clyde.”    

     The pet subject had been a sore one for Emma and her husband Kevin. Although Emma had never had an inside pet, she always had considered herself a cat lover. Living in the country as a child, she had adopted several strays that came around, luring them with hot dogs and milk and then naming them, loving them and mourning their eventual deaths or mysterious disappearances.

     For as long as she had known him, Kevin had been reminding Emma that cats were sneaky and disobedient. A dog, he said, truly was man’s best friend.

     Emma had come to acknowledge that she would never have a cat, but she still fantasized about curling up on the couch after work with a gray striped cat, or maybe a black or even a soft calico cat and rubbing its back while it purred.

     She knew she should banish the cat thoughts from her mind. But her mother-in-law persisted that Mother’s Day, trying to convince Kevin that he would grow to love a cat if he and Emma had one. Her sister’s cat had just had a batch of yellow kittens, Bev said, and they were adorable.

     Emma could only make whimpering sounds as she thought about the kittens, knowing she could not have one; Kevin could only talk about the enormous squirt gun with which he would enjoy dousing any cat that dared jump onto his kitchen counter.

     Eventually, Bev’s focus shifted from kittens to grandchildren. Emma’s new sister-in-law’s “symptoms,” were of great delight to Bev, who found every opportunity to nudge in Emma’s direction and tell Kevin, “You’ll find out when she’s pregnant.”

     Such words of advice had become all too common in the past few months. Emma and Kevin had just celebrated their first wedding anniversary and, suddenly, it seemed their own family could see them only as the pregnant couple they were destined to someday become.

     A 19-year-old with morning sickness had set the tone; the in-laws were in grandparent mode.

     That night, Emma awoke startled and sweaty.  It took a moment to realize that the vicious kitten trying with all its might to attack her was only a dream. In the nightmare, she had been wearing thick yellow leather gardening gloves onto which a small white kitten clung tightly with its tiny claws. She had tried to shake it loose but it clung and crawled, digging its baby claws in as deeply as it could, biting into the gloves with pointy little teeth.

     From then on, Emma swallowed a painful truth: she was not meant to adopt a cat.    

     As the weeks passed, Emma came to peace with her new decision to remain cat-less. She looked forward to the family outing Bev had planned: a weekend of camping and visiting an amusement park. The Friday of the excursion, they all were to meet at the campground, but the in-laws’ home was on Emma and Kevin’s route, and they stopped to see if they could travel together.

     Bev came out of the house to greet Emma and Kevin.  

    “Stand there and close your eyes,” she instructed Emma. “I’m going to give you your birthday present now.”

     As soon as his mother was inside, Kevin said, “It better not be a cat.”

     “Oh, it won’t be,” Emma told him, not completely believing her own words. “She wouldn’t do that.”

     But something told her Bev would do it, and while part of her was hoping her birthday gift was something as uncontroversial and easy to care for as a new blouse, part of her wanted Bev to come outside and give her the kitten she had not dared get for herself.

     Emma and Kevin waited.

     Bev came outside.

     “Are your eyes closed?” Bev asked Emma.

      “Yes.”

     Emma heard the little squeal of a kitten.

     “My eyes are closed, and I hear it!” Emma exclaimed, feeling like a little kid, hopping from one foot to the other. She was anxious to see and to hold her new bundle of joy.

     She opened her eyes and there he was: a small yellow-orange kitten wearing a red bow around his neck.

     The following actions all seemed to happen at once: Emma took the kitten in her hands while her husband wordlessly went inside and his mother gave Emma instructions on getting the kitten’s shots and having his claws removed. His temporary name was Kitty, she said, and Emma could name him whatever she wanted.

     Kitty cried and squirmed; Emma thought his back feet looked like they were powering a miniature bicycle.

     “What’s wrong?” Emma asked her new baby.

     “He just wants to be close to you,” Bev said.

     Emma pulled the warm, silky smooth kitten to her chest and let him grip at her shirt. She was struck by how small and delicate he felt, and she hoped she was not crushing his trembling body. She looked into round blue-green eyes and felt love mixed with anxiety about her new role as parent of this helpless creature.

     Emma and Bev moved inside, where Kevin sat, petting his parents’ new dog and ignoring his wife and kitten. Emma pulled a string along the kitchen floor and into the air, looping it this way and that, laughing at Kitty’s animated pursuit of the simple toy, all the while aware of her husband’s unhappiness. She had to do something. She somehow coaxed Kevin outside to play with the kitten.

     “What do we do?” she asked him as soon as they were alone.

     Emma knew she couldn’t keep the kitten, which suddenly had become hers and Kevin’s responsibility at the start of a weekend camping trip. What will I do with the kitten while I run off to ride roller coasters? She wondered. And after that, when we get home and it starts clawing at the furniture and chewing on our dress shoes? She knew would have to decide immediately, before she became unreasonably attached.

     She and Kitty trailed behind Kevin as he went to break the news to his mother.

     After Kevin told his mother they had to refuse the birthday gift, he sat outside with Emma while she cried. Bev was taking the kitten to town to see if anyone wanted him. Emma tried to keep quiet as tears tolled down her cheeks and Kevin asked, “Are you sure you want to do this?”

     What choice do I have, Emma asked herself, really?

     Aloud, she said, “Yes.”

     Upon her return from town, Bev said the kitten had gone home with an old man who had another kitten at home just like Kitty. He had held Kitty lovingly and told Bev his kitten needed just such a friend.  

     The family packed their final camping items and went to the amusement park, where Bev pointed out children she thought looked like they could belong to Emma and Kevin. She offered parenting advice.

     Sitting on a bench and watching the families, Emma felt a wave of helplessness, not only at being unable to escape the bombardment of suggestions as to how to manage a toddler at an amusement park, but also at the thought of caring for a child, who would need more than a litter box and a toy on a string to flourish.

     Not far from them, a little girl with strawberry blond pigtails was receiving a spanking from her mother. The girl’s face was covered in ice cream and she was stomping her feet, wailing. Emma and Kevin looked at each other.

     How on earth, Emma wondered as she wrapped both her arms around one of her husband’s sturdy ones, does Bev feel Kevin and I are ready for children when we couldn’t even take responsibility for a kitten?

     “Thank heavens,” she whispered to Kevin, “when the time comes, we’ll have nine months to prepare.”