both sides of the family
by Angela Townsend
I have two families, and they are both real.
The family with my earlobes and dimples loved me before I did one noble deed. They are a marinara river that runs from Sicily through Brooklyn and pools in Pennsylvania suburbs. They have mandolins and MBAs and use a separate spoon for my sauce, since it looks like this whole vegetarian thing is not just a phase after all.
They have been to Nordstrom more than once and know which wine goes with which cheese. They cancel out my vote. They ask me to give the blessing every Thanksgiving, even after the year I quoted Jesus’ full discourse on welcoming the stranger while the mashed potatoes congealed. Their shirts button down, and they light up when I arrive. They pretend I am funny, and they ask if I am going to start dating again maybe someday, and they ask if I am still working at that cat place, wow, huh, eighteen years is a long time.
After eighteen years, I am felid at the molecular level. That cat place is my other family, and they love me, and they like me. They hired me to do the fundraising, even though my only qualification was enthusiasm. They kept me, because I tell all the cats and all the people that they are splendid, and also because they are a sanctuary for animals no one else can handle.
They take graceless cats and paraplegic cats and diabetic cats and cats who will comfort you and spurn you and resurrect you and spit at you and stare at you with eyes as big as Al Pacino’s until you see your reflection. The cat place’s volunteers come in ages twelve to ninety. They have plastic butterflies in their hair and freeze-dried chicken in their pockets and the names of ancestors like Biscuit and Tigger tattooed on their ankles.
They paint Dungeons & Dragons figurines to resemble our three-legged cats if our three-legged cats were powerful mages, and they wear more purple than is usually recommended. They put their heads on each other’s shoulders, and they save you a seat. They have stains on their sweatshirts and rose quartz in their purses.
They stop what they are doing to read your poetry right there in the hallway, and they call you a powerhouse when you feel like a wet orphan. They will not judge you lest they be judged, because they have all been judged, my sweet Lord Jesus how they have been judged. They tell the other high school kids that this is the place to volunteer if you are trans or fat or disfigured or determined to like yourself.
I was a stray, and they took me in, excess exclamation points and all. They handled me with care, so I have been mewling their praises ever since. Ferals lather themselves in my too-many words, glistening with worth. I am some kind of mother here, though I am not dating anyone, and half of my children are elderly, and I don’t know how to change a diaper, but I am good at putting a onesie on a paraplegic cat. We all take turns being each other’s pets and grandparents at the cat place.
My first family has some concerns. It is not safe to go around gushing like an open wound of wonderment, lauding animals and adolescents as though they were the Holy Ghost. Do we conduct a proper quarantine? Don’t strays carry rabies? Yes, and roundworms too, and one volunteer who mops the kitten room has a bite like a cobra.
Couldn’t I make more money fundraising for the Red Cross or the orchestra? I could, and if they offered me a salary of one billion dollars, I would leave for a year and then come back and donate it to the cat place.
Finally, the family with my ears stops asking questions, and they kiss me on the center of my forehead. They show me my special sauce. Next year, they will ask if I am still at the cat place, wow, huh, nineteen years is a long time. I will keep giving the blessing as long as they ask.
Angela Townsend is an eleven-time Pushcart Prize nominee, twenty-one time Best of the Net nominee, five-time Best Small Fictions nominee, and the winner of The Iowa Review’s Tim McGinnis Award and West Trade Review's 704 Prize for Flash Fiction. Her work appears or is forthcoming in Arts & Letters, Blackbird, Five Points, Fourth Genre, JMWW, The Offing, SmokeLong Quarterly, trampset, and Witness.