Created in recognition of World Mental Health Day, Nine Lives, Many Stories is a new Tree House storytelling series that explores the many ways cats become part of our lives and what those relationships can teach us about connection, resilience, healing, and belonging. In collaboration with Line of Advance, a literary journal featuring the work of veterans, active-duty service members, and military families, this collection of poems and short stories reflects on the intimate relationships between cats and people and the often-unexpected impact these connects can make.
Read Stories of Service and Cats
Maybe It’s the Cat by Elvis Leighton
British Tan by Evan Young Weaver
Boogie Gone Wild by Brandon Praniewicz
A Harmless, Necessary Cat by Madeline Dougherty
Prince of Cats by Benjamin Inks
Stray Kitten
Thin-legged, street-skinny,
you happened upon life
beneath a minivan in the rain.
Flea-bitten, flea-jumping,
the weakness of your purr
told us you were starving.
Standing on our palms,
we carried you to a sink,
picking specs off of you
like a chimpanzee mom.
Stray kitten, given warm
milk and warmer kisses,
making smitten women
out of us. Tuna-fed, tuna-
stuffed, your stomach
ballooned like a blowfish.
The air began to ease
from your pink nostrils
while you slept. We kept
dutiful watch. What can
make grown men learn love?
The kinship of lost animals.
Jimmy Saekki was born in Seoul, South Korea. Of mixed background and nomadic from a young age, he has lived in over a dozen places across three continents. He is the son and sibling of past and current members of the U.S. Army. Recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Metaworker, Metachrosis, Havik, and Dead of Winter IV (Milk & Cake Press).
Maybe It’s the Cat
I’ve been lying here for thirty minutes building my case.
It started small, the way these things do. A comment at dinner that landed wrong, or maybe I swallowed it wrong — I can’t remember anymore, which is probably the point. What I remember is the silence after, and how Mary turned back to her book like I was a spring storm; she’d decided to wait out. I said goodnight. She said goodnight. We turned our backs to one another in the dark, and that was that.
Except it wasn’t. She had slipped out of bed. I must’ve half-heard it—the soft creak of the frame, the hush of feet on the carpet—but I folded it into a dream. I’ve been cataloguing her crimes in the dark ever since waking alone. The way she interrupts me. The way she reorganized my bookshelves by shape and color instead of the subject or author, like she was decorating a waiting room. The way she says “fine” when she is anything but. Thirty minutes of this mindless churn, and I’ve worked myself into something righteous and clean. I throw the sheets off and stomp into the living room with the full intention of giving her a piece of my mind.
Mary is asleep on the couch. The lamp is still on. A paperback lies splayed on her chest; the spine bent, as if the book fainted before she did. A mug with a ring of dried tea sits beside her. She looks smaller like this—defended only by exhaustion, not by a wall of silence or a misinterpreted word. She didn’t flee the bedroom. She drifted here. I barely have time to absorb this before she wakes. She sits up fast — startled, disoriented — and the motion sends Horatio catapulting off her stomach and through the air like an out-of-control gymnast launched from a faulty apparatus.
Horatio is a cat. He showed up uninvited at our patio door fourteen months ago, wet and indignant, and Mary took one look at him and said, “Oh, you poor thing,” and that was the end of my household order. He is gray, enormous, and profoundly convinced of his own nobility — a conviction Mary has carefully nurtured by treating him like a fragile child rather than a stray animal. Which is probably why, instead of twisting in midair and landing his feet like a self-respecting feline, Horatio lands headfirst on the hardwood with a dull, humiliating thud.
There is a moment of total silence.
A normal cat would slink behind the couch and refuse to come out until the shame had passed. Any other cat would have the self-preservation instinct to simply pretend this had not happened. But Horatio is not any other cat. Horatio is a performer with an audience.
He rises slowly from the floor, gathering himself with enormous, wounded dignity. Then he begins to limp. Not a subtle limp — a dramatic limp, each step more labored than the last, his whole-body listing to one side like a sailor in a gale. He makes a full circuit of the living room, pausing once near the bookshelf to look back at us over his shoulder, as if to say: You see what he has done to me.
My righteous anger, thirty minutes in the making, dissolves so fast I almost hear it go. I’m laughing before I can stop myself. Not a polite laugh — the kind that bends you over.
Mary, blue eyes still narrowed from sleep, watches Horatio complete his circuit and says, with complete sincerity, “I love him. He’s so noble.”
She scoops him up. She starts talking to him in a voice I have never heard her use, soft and nonsensical, and within seconds Horatio is purring with the satisfaction of a man who has just found true love. He closes his eyes. His tail curls. He’s asleep.
I stand in the doorway between the living room and the bedroom — between the fight I came out to have and the bed I can’t sleep in — and I look at the two of them on the couch.
What I think is this: I have a graduate degree. I have opinions about Chekhov. I manage a branch library with four employees and a boiler that hasn’t worked right in three years. I am a person of substance and quiet accomplishment. And I would trade every bit of it, right now, to be a fat, fuzzy, gray cat who knows how to fall.
Elvis Leighton is an author and U.S. Army veteran who served with Delta Battery 216th ADA in Baghdad from 2004–2005. He is the Program Manager of the Credentialing and Privileging Office at the Minneapolis VA, where he has worked for two decades. His writing appears in These Fought in Any Case, The Line Literary Review, As You Were, and the Minnesota Digital Library.
British Tan
She was cartoonishly stark in the sandy shade of a scrapy,
thin pine,
yet sitting up, strong and tall, a princess at court.
She was a miniature, formal lady, really, dressed in mostly
white, with black,
and a daring dash of British Tan.
Formal, but no tailor had come near;
Too long in the train, in the tail,
and too big in the ear, too long in the leg,
and too wide in the paw, yet well-heeled
and well suited for the moondust sand of central
Afghanistan.
I was late to somewhere, long forgotten, something with
NATO, a general,
or something.
I had left my trashed small truck, half in a ditch, and here
was this kitten,
she seemed a prideful, small cat.
A cliche contradiction, a soldier, a kitten;
Too busy, too tough, too embarrassed,
to come near. I was a soldier, afraid,
of a kitten.
Evan Young Weaver was and is inspired to write by the veteran community and his time in the Army, but he wants to write more about New England, dirt roads, and old stone walls. Evan is begrudgingly thankful for his parents’ requirement that he write for twenty minutes a night at the kitchen table after dinner. He lives in Austin, TX with his cattle dog and a feral cat that showed up and never left. He is pursuing his MFA at Stonecoast, University of Southern Maine.
Instagram: @evanyoungweaver Substack: @evanyoungweaver
Boogie Gone Wild
Before you left for work,
your precious orange tabby,
rubbed against your shins
purring his heart out, gazing at you
yellow lollipop eyes, begging you to stay,
take a day off, cuddle on the couch,
soap operas and chicken noodle soup
and take that nine-to-five cat nap.
As you scrambled for the door,
and hustled into gridlock traffic,
your thoughts remained home,
with your fluffy, tuna loving, cuddle monster:
Mr. Orange Innocence.
As soon as you scurried out that door,
Boogie, your cat in shining armor,
jumped on the computer, surfing for kitty porn.
When I stumbled in, he wasn’t embarrassed,
ensconced in a chair, cheshire grin.
What’s with his fascination of kittens in bikinis?
I don’t know where he finds kittens in bikinis,
or who dresses kittens in bikinis, then films them.
The vet told me Boogie’s vasectomy,
would slow down his sex drive.
Our vet is full of shit.
Afterward your cat shredded my pajamas.
He sounded like a dying whale moaning for food.
Our cat’s stomach is like a trash compactor.
I read on Wikpedia—tape worms reach seven feet long.
I think Boogie might have seven tape worms.
Maybe he needs to visit the vet again.
Boogie listened to death metal,
downed Johnny Walker, pounded his paw,
head banged violently—orange blur of rage.
and then he urged me to start a mosh pit
but screamed like hell when I stepped on his tail.
You might get another call from the neighbors.
Boogie Boogie Two Shoes watched Jerry Springer re-runs
and stole my cellphone to booty call his felines.
I told Boogie, he needed to get his life together—prioritize.
He told me: “You don’t know me. I do what I want.”
I have no idea how to explain my call history.
I’ve never met a woman named Mittens or Snowball.
I caught Boogie Boogie Gum Drops doing bong hits.
He’d hid his weed in the cat scratcher
and his bong in the kitty litter box.
He used toilet water to fill the bong
no wonder he’s hungry and has gingivitis.
Later Boogie Boy watched a Doctor Phil special:
“Electromagnetic Shock Therapy for Destructive Cats and Teens.”
Boogie, broke down crying, decided to make some changes:
rehab, diet, nicotine patch,
pay child support on his 45 kids,
wipe his poopy paws before leaving the cat box.
When the front door unlocked,
Boogie tossed his joint under the couch,
Took a last swig of Johnny Walker,
hung up on Princess Peaches.
Your cat sprinted towards you
Boogie meowed for rescue
in plangent cadences of S-O-S.
You scooped him in your arms,
then scanned the wasteland of our living room,
the tv’s buzzing speakers, Doritos in the carpet,
Johnny Walker puddles, kittens-in-bikini screen saver.
Boogie gazed at me, purring his heart out,
Mr. Orange Innocence.
Brendan Praniewicz is a military brat, and his father served 21 years in the Army. He was born in Athens, Greece and he grew up on bases in Europe and the US. He won first place in The Rilla Askew Short Fiction Contest in 2020. He was a 2023 Pushcart Nominee for poetry. He can be found on Facebook (Brendan Praniewicz), Instagram (@praniewicz), and his website is brendan-praniewicz.com
A Harmless, Necessary Cat
-William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
Generally speaking, we were not a family of pet owners. When my brother and I were young, we had a brief fling with a fish tank that resulted in tears and my father’s patient explanation of the nature of fish and their inability to breathe air. The fish tank retired to the garage shortly after.
By the spring of my senior year of high school, most of my friends had established plans for the following year. Some, like me, were headed to university. Others elected to stay closer to home and work or enroll in community college. My friend Zack chose to join the Marines. Zack lived on a sailboat in the harbor a few blocks from my house with his father and older sister. His sister had graduated from high school the year before, but was struggling to find a path forward. She lived in the city about 90 miles away, and would occasionally return to the sailboat during various stretches of unemployment or fights with her boyfriend. At the end of one particularly long and volatile stay, Zack’s sister departed for the city in the early hours of the morning, leaving only a short note: I’m leaving. Take good care of Miss Kitty. -Sara.
It’s not that Zack and his dad disliked Miss Kitty. She was a beautiful, if somewhat temperamental, black and white kitten. The problem was future plans. Zack was scheduled to leave for boot camp in July. Zack’s dad intended to sail the boat to Baja Mexico and retire in the sand and sun. Neither plan included a cat. Consequently, the strategy for the cat soon came to include a canvas bag and several large rocks.
I heard of the plan a week or two before its scheduled execution.
“Don’t kill it,” I told Zack, “I’ll take your cat.” And with that, I became the owner of one petit four-month-old feline, sight unseen and parents unconsulted.
Zack and his dad dropped Miss Kitty off at my parents’ house. She arrived with a carrier, a litter box, and a startling amount of food for a cat they were planning to euthanize. I placed the carrier and cat paraphernalia in the passthrough laundry room at the back of the house. I opened the cat carrier and closed the door to the rest of the house behind me. Although I knew nothing about cats, I assumed this one might like some time to explore her new home in private. An hour later, my mother returned from work and entered through the back door. She announced her arrival with the statement, “There’s a cat carrier in the laundry room.”
“Yes,” I responded. “There’s a cat in the laundry room, too.”
By this time, I had re-christened the cat Martini (after my teenage fascination with the shapely stemware, NOT a fondness for gin) so I could formally introduce my parents to the newest member of our family.
My mother pointed out that I would be leaving for college in the fall and wondered who would look after the cat when I was gone. I answered that I thought the cat might keep her company while I was away at school and my father, a merchant marine, was at sea. My mother was doubtful.
Within a week, though, Martini was firmly established as our family cat. She developed a strong, vocal personality that included a vile hatred of dogs and a rigid adherence to a nine o’clock bed time. (If no one moved at nine, she would yowl and glare pointedly until someone walked her to the laundry room, watched her climb into bed, said good night, and shut the door. She refused to go to bed alone.)
Martini lived with my parents for 19 years. She established herself as a master hunter, mostly of mice – although on one ambitious occasion she stalked a deer across the backyard. She kept my mom company on long dark evenings, happily sharing my mom’s bowl of after dinner ice cream. Even my father, an avowed hater of cats, reached a love-hate truce with Martini. He would call her “The Idiot” and chase her around the house (to her delight, I suspect). Then, he would feed her scraps of salmon or venison while cooking dinner. Martini, for her part, refused to come in the house when my father opened the door, but in the evening, she would put her front paws on his chair and stretch her head into his lap for pets and scratches. When my father shot a deer during hunting season, he left the antlers on the front porch so my mom could admire them as soon as she returned from work. Martini left a dead mouse next to the antlers so her prize could be admired, too. I don’t think my mother was enthused about either gift, but she praised both the hunters in her life with love.
I cannot say what life would have been like without Martini’s presence in our lives. I can only assume that it would have been emptier and lonelier without our harmless, necessary cat.
PS: Zack’s dad never moved to Mexico. Halfway through bootcamp, Zack was medically disqualified from military service and sent home. As soon as he arrived, he and his dad adopted another cat.
Madeline Dougherty began her career as a helicopter pilot in the Marines. After nine years of active duty, she transitioned to the Navy Reserves where she still serves as a liaison officer. In civilian life, she has held many jobs including airline pilot, helicopter air ambulance pilot, and teacher. She currently lives in Washington state.
Tree House does not condone violence against animals. For rehoming and pet surrender resources, click here.
Prince of Cats
Breakups are traumatic, life-altering events. Adjust your insurance, change your name, move away, dye your hair, buy a gun. Gisele was done with Robbie. Had been for months. An emotional severance at first, denying vulnerability and connection through wall-building. They agreed to exist as roommates until she could secure a new lease. Now that she had, she sure picked the worst of all weeks. A nasty winter storm was brewing. An unholy polar vortex, derecho, la nina, mother-of-global-warming super blizzard that would blanket DC in a snowfall more befitting of Chicago and with the same texture and consistency as concrete. God promised never again to flood the Earth, but he didn’t say shit about freezing it (or burning it for that matter).
“Why not wait till next week, Zellie?” Robbie bargained, forgetting they had dispensed with pet names and were on a hyperformal basis.
“I already have the keys, Robert. And every night spent here is money wasted.”
Robbie didn’t lift a finger helping her move—a job only halfway done. He would have had she asked; but she didn’t, and he wouldn’t act against his own interests. There’s always that final fight before a breakup, where something feels cut and irreparable. The fight where you give up fighting and opt for the door slam instead. In this case a door was slammed, but then she came back in to pack up her shit for the next eight hours.
The kitchen was now bare—as the slow cooker, air fryer, and most pots and pans belonged to Gisele. The couch and bed were Robbie’s, but her clothes were out of the closet. Only a brown hoodie and a few sad flannels now. She had yet to return for her stack of manga books and her Nintendo (which he would have to replace with one of his own). Most surprising of all, she had left her cat, Smokey. A Chartreux whose charcoal fur was so smooth and shiny, Italian suits looked dull in comparison.
She had begged to adopt Smokey. Love at first sight. Didn’t even bother seeing other cats at the shelter.
“Him,” she had said in the exact same way she had decided on Robbie—on a dating app where women make the first move.
Smokey sauntered into any room where he heard his name. Trained by Gisele like a dog, by calling for him before feedings. He did so now and brushed against Robbie’s calves.
“Guess she abandoned us both, Papa Smoke,” Robbie said, scooping him up and kissing the top of his head between the ears.
But no, she called later that night fighting back tears, which made Robbie’s heart race in a cocktail combination of hope and schadenfreude.
“The blizzard,” was all she said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Robbie said with forced confidence, still wanting her to think of him as strong and competent for some dumb reason. Still wanting to do one small thing for her if he was able.
“You won’t do anything to him?”
“One million in non-sequential bills or I send you his ears. His tail after that.”
“Not funny, Robbie.”
It was a little funny, Robbie thought to himself.
His long, whippy tail was a favorite of Gisele’s, who would fiddle with it like twirling her own hair whenever Smokey slept on her lap. Something Smokey only seemed to tolerate with Gisele. Every time Robbie went for his tail Smokey coiled around his hand in soft attack.
She wasn’t kidding about the blizzard. Robbie opened the door and could barely see two feet in front of him, smacked by a painful gust not the least bit refreshing like those early snowfalls before Christmas—before you’re long sick of winter and ready to fly somewhere tropical halfway around the world.
For quite a while Smokey was an indoor cat. Gisele was terrified of something happening to him out in the wild.
“What could go wrong?” Robbie asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Gisele. “Run away, eaten by wolves, hit by a car . . . cat-napped.”
But there was no risk of Smokey venturing out now. Funny thing was there were lots of stray cats around their apartment complex. If they were dogs, people would be mortified, but cats are able to fend for themselves.
Robbie thought Smokey could make friends outside, but these were street cats. Next thing you know he’d be out late at night doing God knows what: lines of catnip, fighting for status, having unprotected sex in back alleys. He’d grow jaded through heartbreak and come to loathe his parents for being so u n c o o l.
Robbie was projecting his own delinquent self, Gisele countered. Her baby was royalty. A strong alpha jawline and wide yellow eyes. Smokey was both quarterback and homecoming king. Smokey said no to drugs; wined and dined his dates, had them back by 10, and shook their father’s paws.
It was a blessing for Robbie to have Smokey throughout the weeklong blizzard. While Gisele was . . . alone, he guessed.
Although she had left, Robbie was equally responsible for pushing her away. Moody and insomniac at times, the crux of their breakup was difficult to pin down. No clear and singular conflict, but a series of nebulous misunderstandings that had soured their dynamic.
Do you want the Brimnes dresser from Ikea or the four-drawer Storklinta?
. . . I don’t know.
What—why can’t you decide!
If only he had been better at weathering emotional turbulence, then he might still have her. He thought—during this accursed winter—of putting together a regimen of scripture, meditation, and exercise that would turn him into a rock of a man. With an EQ of 140, who diffused all mood swings with masculine grace. Instead he built a fort in the living room. This was on day three of the blizzard, when boredom gave way to shenanigans, shenanigans to madness.
He thought dragging kitchen chairs and spare blankets to the living room that Smokey would join in the fun. His natural habitat disrupted enough to provoke a reaction—this ramshackle tent Robbie now crawled in and out of.
By day four they had taken to eating together under the fort. He didn’t stop Smokey from taking small bites of his microwave quesadilla or oven-fresh pizza rolls, both huddled together over the same plate. He even tried some of Smokey’s kibble but drew the line with his wet food, which always caused him to gag when serving it.
By day five some sort of seasonal and/or post-break-up depression had struck. Robbie rotted in bed until well past 10 o’clock, when Smokey came in hungry but could not rouse him with even his best cat antics: making biscuits, meowing in his ear, pouncing on movement, even biting and attacking his bare feet poking underneath the blanket.
But Robbie sprang out of bed when Gisele called on video, which he was not prepared for. He threw on a ballcap to hide his bedhead, but nothing could be done with his straggly beard.
“Hey,” he said, answering at the last second, doing his best to sound bored and nonchalant.
“Hey,” she said in reply.
She had called to check on Smokey, so he carried the phone to his usual perch atop the fridge.
“Proof of life,” he said.
The roads were clearing up, and she asked if she could pick him up tomorrow.
“That’d be fine,” Robbie said, briefly entertaining a knock-out drag-out cat-custody battle aired on TV.
Realizing this was his final night with Smokey, he proceeded to spoil the fuck out of him. Canned tuna, a saucer of milk, and chasing each other around the house with that toy bird on a string. When morning came, they awoke nestled against each other.
“Let’s get you ready, old friend,” Robbie said, taking him off the bed and placing him onto the floor.
If he wasn’t about to lose him, he would have considered one of those obnoxious who rescued who? bumper stickers handed out at animal shelters. Would it be too much to beg Gisele for weekend visitation rights?
He could always adopt another cat, could even meet another girlfriend, but they wouldn’t be Gisele and Smokey. He recalled the hours they had all spent together curled on the couch playing Nintendo or binge-watching shows. That one 3:00 a.m. trip to the vet when Smokey wouldn’t stop throwing up. Soon they’d both be gone, and Robbie would be forced to cross-reference memories against an uncertain future. Would he choose bitterness and resentment or gratitude at time invested in his life—even if only as a temporary chapter?
Her car pulled up, and Robbie pictured Gisele dusting off snow and scraping the windshield free of ice—a task he usually did for her.
“Hi,” was all she said, still with the measured and performative energy of a job candidate.
“Let me get his kennel,” Robbie said, retreating to the back closet.
Returning, he was surprised to find Gisele seated on the couch with Smokey on her lap. Robbie went to collect him; he was always better at coaxing him into the kennel.
“Wait,” Gisele said softly. “Robbie, he’s so comfortable. Is it okay if we just sit here a while?”
“Of course you can,” said Robbie, setting the kennel on the hardwood floor. “Take as much time as you need.”
Benjamin Inks earned a Purple Heart in Afghanistan and an MFA at George Mason University. He combined these experiences by writing the military short story collection Soft Targets, which was named one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2023. He lives and works in Northern Virginia.
