The Fourth Magi

Elmer nodded curtly and headed toward the back of the store. Fred thought that was odd, because Elmer normally walked directly up to the front counter with a complaint and receipt in hand for some previous purchase. The last had been about a galvanized bucket that rusted after putting water in it, “because it says ‘Made in Mexico,’ and maybe next time you’ll think twice about selling buckets that ain’t made in the good ol’ US of A!” Instead, Elmer marched past the hardware and plumbing section, past the cattle and equine supplies, and all the way back to the pet section. He stood there with his arms crossed, not moving, until Fred finally went back to see what he needed.

“This a good cat food?” Elmer asked and pointed to the top shelf.

“Well, yeah, I guess – we sell a lot of it,” Fred replied.

“Ain’t made in Mexico is it?” Elmer asked, picking up a can and turning it over to read the label.

“Nope, made in America,” Fred said. “And that’s all Miss Bridgewater buys.”

“Who the hell is Miss Bridgewater?” Fred asked with suspicion.

“That’s the retired schoolteacher over by Shadygrove, who rescues all the cats and finds them homes. Got dozens of them. Had a write-up in the paper recently. Nice lady – probably spends her whole pension on those animals. Anyway, that’s all she buys, the canned and the dry chow, too.”

“Cats need two kinds of food?” Elmer asked, even more suspiciously, anticipating some sort of a sales ploy.

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“Well, most cats like both. The dry is good for their teeth. What kind of a cat do you have, Elmer?”

“Ain’t got a cat,” Elmer said emphatically. “Was just asking. You can go back to whatever you was doing, I’m just lookin’ around.”

Fred shrugged his shoulders and returned to the front of the store. Elmer showed up a few minutes later with two five-pound bags of dry cat chow, two different flavors, and a dozen cans of cat food.

“Put ’em on my account,” he said, not even waiting for the goods to be bagged, and Fred hurriedly jotted down the total. Elmer might never find out that that was probably how the rumor got started, that he, the ornery old cuss who was too proud to ask anyone for help, was now so dirt poor that he’d taken to eating cat food.

Elmer slammed in through his kitchen door, took one look, and subconsciously decided to drop some of the cans of cat food rather than the six-pack of beer he was also carrying. The damn cat was sitting in the middle of his kitchen table!

“Get your mangy, dirty butt off my table, you damn cat!” he yelled.

The cat didn’t flinch. Typical Communist behavior, Elmer decided, and he plunked down his armload on the kitchen counter. One of the cans of cat food rolled across the kitchen floor and down the cellar stairs. The cat chased it.

“Good!” Elmer yelled again. “‘Cause that’s where you’re eating. I ain’t having that stinky stuff in my kitchen.”

Elmer opened a drawer next to the sink and grabbed a plastic fork, he opened the cabinet above the sink and withdrew a paper plate from an enormous stack of them, and then he turned and went down the cellar stairs. The cat waited on top of the washer as Elmer popped the lid off the can of cat food and then pounded the can’s contents onto the plate. The cat sniffed the food and began to eat ravenously. Elmer glared at the cat first, then at the fork in his hand and shoved it into his shirt pocket.
Elmer was halfway up the cellar stairs when he turned around and addressed the cat.

“I didn’t say you was staying, just remember that.”

Elmer learned later that day that the logical conclusion for a well-fed cat is a litterbox. He swore all the way to the Wal-Mart on the other side of Shadygrove, because he wasn’t going to give Fred Fields any more reason to gossip than he already had.

It had been many years since any living being had dared to test Elmer’s patience. The cat made up for those years in the first week. When Elmer pulled out his chair from the kitchen table to sit down, the cat was sitting on it. When Elmer took his paper-plated dinner and plastic utensils into the living room, to sit in his recliner and watch the evening news, the cat was nestled in it and only grudgingly moved to the end table. When Elmer twisted the top off a beer bottle, the cat stole the cap and batted it around the kitchen floor until it eventually rolled under the refrigerator. When Elmer wasn’t busy writing letters to soldiers, or paying his utility bills while cursing the oil barons, he spent most of his free time hating the cat. When the cat tired of toying with Elmer’s patience, he retreated to his laundry basket in the cellar. One week dragged into two, until the cat’s greatest impudence.

Elmer awoke in the middle of the night and felt pressure on his chest and had difficulty in breathing. Not even the aspirin per day he’d been taking after that liberal Peter Jennings had recommended it on a TV “healthcast” could save him now. He slowly raised his right hand to place it on his heart and instead of feeling the pounding in his chest, he felt a warm, purring cat! Elmer nearly choked on his own tongue in an apoplectic, sputtering rage, before he managed to turn on the bedside reading lamp.
“Get off me, you damn ugly cat!” he screeched.

The cat blinked a few times, stepped down from his perch on Elmer’s chest, and moved to the foot of the bed. Elmer sat up in bed for a long time, arms crossed and glowering, before he let out a disgusted sigh and turned out the light. He angrily rolled over and pounded his fist into the mattress.

“I know one thing,” he addressed the cat in the dark, “if I do start to die, you just get your ugly butt back to the cellar ’cause I sure as hell don’t want anyone finding me with you in my bed!”