I knew something was bothering John Mercer when he opened the kitchen drawer for the third time that morning and just stood there looking at it. Normally, John is a fairly straightforward guy. If something annoys him, he’ll tell you about it, usually while making coffee and explaining why whoever designed the offending object should have chosen a different profession. But this morning he was quiet. He opened the drawer, moved a few things around, pushed it shut, and stared at the little gap where it refused to close properly. Then he opened it again. I was sitting at the kitchen table pretending to read something on my phone, although by that point I was paying considerably more attention to John than whatever was on the screen.
Pandora was making breakfast, humming to herself while she worked. Mr Whiskers was sitting near the refrigerator, watching her with the usual expression of a cat who believes every meal prepared in the kitchen should involve him somehow. I asked Pandora whether she’d noticed John acting strangely. She glanced over her shoulder, watched him struggle with the drawer for a moment, and said, “He’s trying to fix that thing again.” Apparently, the drawer had been sticking for a few days. I’d noticed it once or twice myself, but I hadn’t given it much thought. Pandora said John had decided he could fix it, and he’d been working on it since the previous evening. That explained the drawer, I suppose, but it didn’t explain why he looked like a man who’d just discovered a serious problem with his bank account.
I asked John if everything was all right. He said it was fine, which is exactly what people say when they don’t want to talk about something. I asked whether he needed help. He said no. Then he took his coffee into the living room and sat down without another word. Now, I know what you’re thinking. The man was annoyed because a drawer wouldn’t close. Perfectly reasonable explanation. Except I’d heard him moving things around in the kitchen late the previous night, and when I came downstairs that morning, there was a screwdriver sitting beside the toaster. John doesn’t normally leave tools lying around, especially near something that makes breakfast. I figured whatever was going on had to be bothering him more than he wanted to admit.
I tried to put it out of my mind and get on with my day, but I kept coming back to the drawer. Every time I walked through the kitchen, there it was, sticking out just enough to catch my attention. I gave it a push at one point, thinking maybe John hadn’t used enough force. It moved about half an inch and stopped. I pushed a little harder. Nothing. I opened it and looked inside, but all I saw were the usual collection of spatulas, measuring spoons, and utensils that nobody in the house could remember buying. There was also a bottle opener that had been missing for months, which I considered a small victory. I put everything back, closed the drawer as far as it would go, and decided John probably knew what he was doing.
By lunchtime, I wasn’t so sure. John had taken the entire drawer out and was kneeling in front of the cabinet with a flashlight. I stood behind him for a minute, watching him inspect the metal slides. He looked underneath, checked the screws, and ran his fingers along the inside of the cabinet. Then he sat back on his heels and sighed. I asked whether he’d found anything. “No,” he said. “That’s the problem.” I suggested maybe one of the slides was bent. He said he’d already checked. I suggested a loose screw. He’d checked those too. I was about to suggest that perhaps the cabinet itself had shifted when he looked up at me and said, “Hal, I appreciate the help, but I’ve got this.” I took that as my cue to leave, although I couldn’t help noticing that he didn’t look particularly confident about it.
Later that afternoon, I mentioned the situation to Karen while we were talking about work. She asked why I was so concerned about a kitchen drawer, which I thought was missing the point. I explained that it wasn’t really about the drawer. It was about John. He’d been quiet all morning, he’d barely touched his breakfast, and he’d spent hours working on something that should have taken ten minutes. Karen asked whether I’d considered the possibility that he was simply frustrated. I told her I had, but that seemed almost too obvious. She laughed and said, “Hal, sometimes the obvious answer is the right one.” Dave, who’d overheard part of the conversation, suggested checking behind the drawer for anything that might have fallen out of the organizer. I told him John had already looked. Dave shrugged and went back to his coffee, apparently satisfied that he’d contributed everything the situation required.
When I got home, John was gone. Pandora told me he’d driven to the hardware store to pick up a replacement bracket. I found this interesting because I hadn’t realized the problem had reached the point of requiring new parts. The drawer was still hanging open, and the screwdriver had been joined by a tape measure and a small pile of screws on the counter. Mr Whiskers was sitting in front of the cabinet, staring at the gap beneath it. I watched him for a moment, wondering what had caught his attention. He reached one paw underneath, felt around, and pulled it back out. Then he looked at me and meowed. I assumed he wanted something to eat, because that usually covers about ninety percent of his communications with me.
Mrs Jenkins stopped by a little later to return a container she’d borrowed from Pandora. Mr Whiskers hurried over to greet her, probably hoping she’d brought another toy. She’d made him a little blue fabric fish the day before, and he’d spent most of the evening dragging it around the house. I hadn’t seen it since breakfast, but that wasn’t unusual. Mr Whiskers has a habit of putting his toys in places where nobody can reach them and then acting personally offended when we fail to retrieve them. Mrs Jenkins asked how the fish was holding up. I told her it had already disappeared somewhere, which made her laugh. “He’ll find it when he wants it,” she said. I looked over at Mr Whiskers, who had returned to his position beside the kitchen cabinet, and wondered whether that was entirely true.
John came back about twenty minutes later with a small paper bag from the hardware store. He went straight to the kitchen, spread the new parts across the counter, and started working. I stayed out of his way this time, although I could hear him opening and closing the drawer while Pandora and I watched television. After a while, the noises stopped. I went into the kitchen and found him standing there holding a replacement bracket in one hand and the old bracket in the other. He looked at me and said, “They’re exactly the same.” I wasn’t sure what to say to that, so I asked whether it was good news. He gave me a look that suggested it was not.
I offered to help him take another look, and this time he agreed. We pulled the drawer out together and set it on the table. John checked the slides while I held the flashlight. Everything looked fine. The screws were tight, nothing appeared bent, and there was no obvious reason the drawer shouldn’t close. I was about to suggest that we put it back and try again when I noticed something blue tucked into the far corner of the cabinet. At first, I thought it was a piece of packaging. I leaned closer, reached behind the slide, and pulled out a small fabric fish with a ribbon tail.
John stared at it. I stared at it. Then we both looked toward the kitchen doorway, where Mr Whiskers was sitting with an expression of complete innocence. It was the fish Mrs Jenkins had made for him, and somehow he’d managed to get it behind the drawer. The toy had become wedged against the rear of the cabinet, preventing the drawer from closing all the way. John took the fish from me, turned it over in his hand, and started laughing. Not a polite little chuckle, either. He laughed so hard he had to lean against the counter. “I went to the hardware store,” he said. “I bought replacement parts. I spent two hours checking this thing.” He held up the fish. “And this was the problem?”
Pandora came over to see what was happening. When she saw the fish, she laughed too. She said she’d watched Mr Whiskers playing near the open drawer the previous evening but hadn’t realized he’d managed to drop the toy inside. John shook his head and put the drawer back together. This time it closed perfectly. He opened it again, pushed it shut, and then repeated the process several times, apparently just to enjoy the fact that it worked. I couldn’t blame him. After spending that much time trying to fix something, I’d probably have done the same thing. Mr Whiskers, meanwhile, was watching the fish in John’s hand with considerable interest, as though the entire purpose of the repair had been to recover his property.
I told John that at least we’d solved the mystery. He looked at me and said, “There wasn’t a mystery, Hal. There was a cat toy stuck behind a drawer.” I pointed out that we hadn’t known that until we found it, which technically made it a mystery. He wasn’t interested in discussing the distinction. Instead, he handed the fish to Pandora and told her to put it somewhere Mr Whiskers couldn’t immediately lose it again. She took it into the living room, and the cat followed her so closely that he nearly tripped her on the way. I watched them go, feeling rather pleased with myself. I’d been worried John was dealing with something serious, and it turned out the whole problem was caused by a stuffed fish. There are worse ways for a Sunday to end.
John sat down on the couch afterward, looking considerably happier than he had that morning. I told him I’d been concerned about him because he’d seemed unusually quiet. He said he appreciated that, but next time I should probably believe him when he said everything was fine. I reminded him that he’d spent the entire day wrestling with a kitchen drawer and making trips to the hardware store. “Yes,” he said. “And if you’d left me alone, I might have figured it out sooner.” I wasn’t entirely convinced of that, considering I was the one who’d found the fish, but I decided not to argue. Sometimes it’s better to let a man enjoy the satisfaction of a completed repair, even if the repair technically involved removing a cat toy from behind a piece of furniture.
That evening, Pandora made dinner while John and I watched television. Mr Whiskers was back in the living room, playing with his fish as though nothing unusual had happened. He’d toss it into the air, pounce on it, and then carry it around in his mouth for a while before dropping it somewhere else. Every so often, he’d glance toward the kitchen, which I found mildly concerning. I suggested to John that perhaps we should keep the utensil drawer closed whenever Mr Whiskers was nearby. John said that sounded like a reasonable precaution, although he wasn’t planning to spend the rest of his life guarding kitchen furniture from a cat. I agreed. Still, I couldn’t help wondering whether Mr Whiskers had learned anything from the day’s events.
About an hour later, I got my answer. I was getting up to refill my coffee when I saw Mr Whiskers carrying the blue fish toward the kitchen. He walked straight past me, stopped beside the cabinet beneath the sink, and looked at the door. John had left it slightly open after putting away his tools. Mr Whiskers studied the opening for a moment, then pushed the fish through the gap with his paw. It disappeared into the cabinet. The cat sat down and looked up at me expectantly.
I stood there staring at him. He stared back. Then he meowed.
John came into the kitchen to see what was happening, and when I explained that Mr Whiskers had just hidden the fish again, he started laughing. Pandora appeared behind him and took one look at the cat sitting beside the cabinet. “He’s doing it because you keep getting it for him,” she said. I told her I understood that, but I couldn’t exactly leave the fish under the sink. She suggested closing the cabinet door and giving him something else to play with. That seemed reasonable enough, so I retrieved the fish, shut the door, and carried it back into the living room. Mr Whiskers followed me, looking quite pleased with the arrangement.
I put the fish beside his activity center and sat down on the couch. John was still laughing. He said, “You know, Hal, I think you’re the one who’s in trouble.” I asked what he meant, and he pointed toward Mr Whiskers. “That cat has you trained. He hides something, makes a noise, and you come running.” I wanted to argue, but I had just spent the better part of the afternoon helping John dismantle a kitchen drawer because Mr Whiskers had decided it was a suitable place to store a fish. And now I’d retrieved the same fish from another cabinet less than an hour later. I looked over at the cat, who was lying on his back with the toy between his paws, looking as content as any creature I’d ever seen.
I suppose John had a point. I’d spent the morning worrying that he was in some kind of trouble, only to discover that the real troublemaker had been sitting in our kitchen the entire time, waiting for someone to notice him. The drawer was fixed, John was back to his usual self, and Pandora had finally stopped laughing about the whole thing. I figured we could put the incident behind us and get on with our evening.
Then I heard something slide across the floor.
I looked over and saw Mr Whiskers sitting beside the couch, staring at the narrow gap underneath it. The blue fish was nowhere to be seen. He looked at me, gave one small meow, and waited.
John didn’t even look up from the television.
“Don’t do it, Hal.”
I sat there for a moment, considering my options. Then I got down on my hands and knees and reached beneath the couch.
John started laughing again.
I’m beginning to think the cat knows exactly what he’s doing.