Cats and Bunnies

Brandi Spring

Upon walking through the vestibule of Uncle Frank’s house, you were met with a combination of competing stenches –cat piss and shit, dried wet food and adult diapers. The walls still hung pictures from the seventies; the permed and now-regretted hair-dos of my mother and her sister’s high school photos, and the permed-do my other uncle wishes he could still achieve. When Uncle Frank died, I took them with me. His living room looked the same–stains on the wood from where litter boxes sat for years– minus the hospital bed that used to sit by the window.

Grandma had seven siblings. Aunt Mary and Uncle Frank never married, and so they both continued to live in their parents home until it became theirs. Mary was considerably older and eventually, Frank cared for her completely. She turned 86 on a few consecutive birthdays, but for the first, Aunt Mary complained of being bored. It was unusual, according to my grandmother, who said her sister normally hated her birthday, rarely even wanting a cake. What would you like me to do, my mother teased, dance on the table for you? Aunt Mary shrugged in her pink housecoat and said through gums, If ya like…

Not long after that, Aunt Mary spoke much less. Grandma and I would visit on occasion, and once stayed there while Uncle Frank needed surgery for a clogged artery. We slept together on a recliner–or rather, grandma snored as I read Baby Sitters Club–with a backing track of Aunt Mary repeating the only thing she could remember or want to say–God in the high high heavens. In the morning, grandma would make her sister’s eggs as per their brother’s instructions. Leave the egg beaters for me. I need those–Mary’s healthier than I am! Aunt Mary was not able to communicate for the most part, but we believed her to still be bright, as she could still feed herself–at that point–and have enough wits to hide her pills under her dish.

The living room and the rest of the house looked relatively the same, but as if someone ransacked it, which they had. My mother’s cousin–whom I had never met because the family never trusted or liked him–was still in Uncle Frank’s life, charging him to do errands and offering to take him out for holidays only to have Uncle Frank foot the bill. Or worse, he would never show, leaving my uncle sitting in his living room next to the litter box, in his Sunday’s best, for hours. Upon my last visit to the house, I knew he had already been there. Most electronics were gone, besides the cameras my uncle had bolted into the walls. Papers were gone, photo albums were nowhere, things were turned over.
Time in the house had to be fast, because of the smell. It was always the way but got worse over time. Even I, in trying to gather what I could for the last time, could only save so much because of the lack of breathable air. Uncle Frank welcomed any and all stray cats, having a constant rotation of at least ten. Many, like Fat George, had diabetes and were administered insulin. But late in his life, Uncle Frank’s favorite became No Tail, a cat he named for obvious reasons. It was strange walking through his house to find no cats, but still see their old cookie tin food plates still on the floor by the kitchen table.

A few years before he passed, Uncle Frank would only speak to me–if anyone–at holiday dinners. He gave one word answers and lackluster grunt replies, but to me, he vented. An old lover of his died and left him a car which he said her children refused to fork over. We all knew of the two Dorothy’s, the women he dated simultaneously for years, knowing he’d never mix up their names. I only really knew the one, and have fond memories of her falling asleep at the dinner to wake up and shout, HOCKEY PLAYERS! Through all this, Uncle Frank wanted me to promise him that if he were to die, I had to take care of all of his cats, keeping them together.

According to the cousin no one liked, the cats were taken care of. He said he brought them somewhere, not sure if it was a shelter or what. I didn’t care to learn the fake story because I knew from not even knowing him, that all he did was hold the door open. It was eerie, being there without the cats but their essence still remained. Some of the wooden steps leading to the basement were soft and warped, completely rotten from years of cat piss. Walking around the three bedroom house, it was impossible to imagine ten people living there. My grandmother used to sleep on a cot at the foot of her parents bed as a small child, but her siblings slept at least three in a room each the size of a small bathroom. “A lot of my siblings were older,” Grandma said, when I asked her about it. “And they moved out one by one so eventually I didn’t share a room with my parents.” I’m sure at one point or another, a few of them might have been stuck in the basement, which by my point of existence was finished with wood panelling.

The upstairs of the house versus the basement, represented two separate aspects of Uncle Frank’s life. The upstairs showed he was a caregiver, once of another human and always of a herd of cats. The downstairs was always decorated with cameras, reels of film, Tae-Kwon-Do belts and various VHS tapes of home movies. But going down there for a final time, as an adult tall enough to see more details in the decor, I saw the rest. I always heard of his bachelor life, but seeing it was another level. There was Playboy Bunny paraphernalia–or rather, keepsakes–everywhere, from a tin of stirrers with the bunny logo, to a datebook, to photos with PlayBoy Bunnies themselves. My favorite unfortunately features him in a speedo on a diving board, his arm around a woman in a palm-tree print, high-waisted bathing suit.

I tried to take as many home movies as I could, knowing very well that most show close-ups of butts and centerpieces at family reunions–when he would pass the camera off to someone else. In the distance, you’d see Uncle Frank turn red and serious, refusing to be in the frame. I was hesitant to watch some of them because he often retaped over them but would not scratch out the former name completely. One read, “SnowBunnies Family Reunion ‘96.” In my search of the basement, I also found two hidden cabinets within the wall panelling. I later told my grandmother, Ya know.. Your brother was a little risque. I said. She agreed, oh I know. I was eager to find more home movies but was not surprised to find homemade pornos. I left them in their spots but somehow took home a box of slides tited “Sandy.” If you hold them to the light, you can see Sandy sitting fully clothed on the bed. Then topless. Then topless with Uncle Frank beside her. Then the bottoms go and she is fully naked, emotionless, as he is fully clothed, also emotionless. I haven’t dug deeper in the set. I keep them on a high shelf because to throw them away is to picture Sandy topless in a landfill, forever.

A few weeks after our last visit, the realtor–a friend of my mom’s–was helping to sell it when he found one lone stray cat, weak and deteriorating at his feet. One was left and must’ve hid anytime someone went over. I should have known–we all should have–that my mother’s cousin would not have counted the cats. It was probably the worst Uncle Frank could fear. He made me make him that promise, but I did nothing, partly due to being at school in New York when most things were being handled. It is no excuse and of course not an intentional fault, but perhaps it is why I feel compelled to hang his photos around my small apartment, along with the handwritten sign from his fridge, that reads in red marker, “DONT LET MY CAT’S NEAR THE DOORS THEY WILL RUN OUT. B CARE-FULL WHEN YOU OPEN ANY DOORS.” I have hung the flowers that one of the Dorothy’s have painted, which I found tucked away in a closet. I am holding onto all that I was able to grab in the span of twenty minutes, and realize I’m not too much better than the cousin that no one likes.

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