Roadblock V
Restored in October 2026 from a 2003 copy of the original PenBase page saved by the Wayback Machine; Pentrace’s own database copy had been cut short.
Laurel’s garden was quite lovely. There were flower beds interspersed with shade trees, a fountain, and a concrete bench next to a picnic table surrounded by four handsomely stained wooden chairs. Stretched out on the picnic table, sound asleep, was a large, black and white tomcat. He periodically grunted in his sleep and moved his paws as if he were running. Laurel pointed at him and said, “That’s Roadblock.”
At the sound of his name, the cat opened one eye, purred, rolled over, and went back to sleep. He was very rotund, and he let out another grunt, this time from the effort of rolling over. I laughed, and Laurel looked at me out or the corner of her eye.
“If you’d like to sit down, I have a lawn chair behind the fountain that I can pull over here. This bench is not at all comfortable, and the wooden chairs aren’t much better.”
I smiled at her, wondering her yard was full of uncomfortable seating. I was willing to bet that although the flowers and trees were her doing, the furniture had come from Handsome. “That would be very nice, thank you. I’m not quite up to cold benches at my age.”
While Laurel went to retrieve the chair, I observed the cat. I am very fond of cats and find them inordinately amusing. This one was no exception. He was dreaming again, waving his paws. I watched his face, and sure enough, he licked his chops. I wonder if it was mouse or bird he was tasting in his dream.
“Roadblock was a stray,” Laurel announced. “I tried to take him in two years ago, but Handsome said he was too much of a ragamuffin to have in the house. So he became my outdoor cat.”
I frowned. “Outdoor cats often have difficult lives.”
Laurel shrugged. “It was that or nothing. Handsome really wanted to chase him off or have animal control come for him, but I stood my ground for once. Of course, Roadblock knew who his friend was and managed to find his way in whenever Handsome was traveling. You know, his advertising work takes him all over the country.”
“Hmmph,” I mumbled, wondering how tactless it would be share my opinion of advertising. I decided it would be extremely tactless no matter what opinion Laurel had of her soon-to-be ex-husband. So I held my tongue.
“Yes, Roadblock really had a good time whenever Handsome was away. He’d come in through the bedroom window and crawl into bed with me. Now, of course, he comes and goes as he likes. I might put in a cat door for him, though I doubt he’d use it. Of course, as he gets older and fatter, it’s harder and harder for him to get up on the window ledge. And in the winter, I keep the bedroom window open only a crack.”
I sighed. “An old cat’s life is not an easy one. “Much like that of an old woman.”
Laurel looked at me in alarm. “Are you uncomfortable? Is that chair all right?”
I shook my head and grinned at her. “I’m fine. I was not complaining about my current situation, just making a general statement. But do go on. How did that handsome specimen of a cat ever get the name Roadblock? I’d think Ptolemy or Ramses would be a much better name for him.”
Laurel looked at me quizzically. “Ptolemy…?” She seemed ready to say more, but the cat in question, cocked one ear and opened both eyes. He stared at me unblinking for a moment and then rose onto all fours. After a brief stretch, he leapt, alas, with no particular grace, from the picnic table and landed on the ground with a thump. Then he padded over to me and sniffed my foot, which seemed to meet with his approval, for shortly thereafter he leapt onto my lap.
“Roadblock, no!” Laurel called out, as if a cat could be ordered around like a dog.
“It’s quite all right,” I reassured her. “He’s a nice fellow, and I don’t mind him on my lap.”
“He is nice, though he certainly caused me a lot of trouble,” she replied.
The cat began to purr as I petted him.
“He’s the reason I lost Handsome,” she continued.
“Really?”
“Yes, really,” she reiterated. “Though maybe calling him the reason is putting it too strongly.”
“So your marriage fell apart over the cat?”
Laurel started to laugh. “No, the marriage didn’t, but Handsome did.” She seemed unable to stop laughing. I watched her, trying not to laugh myself. Laughter often is contagious. One has no idea why one is laughing but can’t stop because someone else, usually someone with an extremely hearty or silly laugh, is out of control. Laurel was definitely out of control, and I was afraid she would soon be laughing so hard that she would cry. I was curious, so I continued to watch her while I concentrated on petting Roadblock. He seemed unmoved by Laurel’s hysteria, so I decided I had no reason to be alarmed.
“Oh goodness!” she exclaimed, wiping tears from her eyes. “I haven’t laughed so much in months. It’s just that I couldn’t help thinking of a philosophy course I took in college. There were all these different forms of causality we learned about: final causes, first causes, efficient causes. I started to wonder which kind of cause Roadblock was. Then I realized how absurd that line of thought was. That was why I laughed so hard.”
“Really?” I said again, wondering what was so funny about that.
“Yes,” she stuttered and began laughing again. Between gulps of laughter she continued, “I realized…our marriage…collapsed…’cause Roadblock…” She seemed unable to go on for a moment. “…’cause Roadblock was hungry,” she howled in one final burst of sound and then began to cry. Roadblock, roused out of his pleasantly relaxed state, sat up and looked reproachfully at Laurel, then leapt from my lap and ambled over to the stone bench onto which she had collapsed in a paroxysm of laughter.
“Mrrow-ra,” he complained. Then he padded out of sight.
It took Laurel a few minutes to calm down, and then she began apologizing. I never apologize, but then I rarely do anything wrong. Laurel, on the other hand, seemed to have considerable expertise in the area of apology and wrongdoing, though I didn’t consider her outburst a sin or even a mistake. She went on for a good ten minutes, before I stopped her.
“Please stop apologizing,” I said. “There is no reason to feel guilty about being upset. After all, you are going through a difficult time.”
She shook her head. “Still, I shouldn’t be so…intemperate,” she replied. “You must have been alarmed.”
I smiled at her. “Actually I wasn’t,” I admitted. “I was merely afraid that I’d start laughing uncontrollably because you were.”
She stared at me, uncomprehending. I was just about to decide that she really wasn’t very bright, despite her having taken a philosophy course in college, when I heard Anita’s voice.
“Laurel, there is someone at the front door,” she announced.
I started to stand up, but Laurel stopped me. “Please, if you’re comfortable, stay where you are. It’s probably just the UPS or Fedex courier. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
The chair was fairly comfortable, and the sun was warm on my face, so I resumed my seat as Laurel disappeared into the house.
I’d been sitting for no more than a couple of minutes when I felt, rather than heard, the padding of cat feet. Roadblock appeared with something long dangling from his mouth. At first I thought he was bringing a dead rat or mouse, but as he got closer I realized he’d caught a snake. He came right over to me and dropped the snake at my feet. It wasn’t very large, an ordinary garden snake but without its head. I wondered if he’d simply decapitated it or eaten the head as well. Then he emitted a soft meow that ended in a laughable chirp and leapt up onto my lap.
“Well, you are a mighty hunter, aren’t you? Perhaps your name should be Nimrod.”
He purred in response to my words and curled up, his tail hanging down over my knees. I laughed quietly so as not to disturb him, relaxed against the back of the chair, and closed my eyes.
Before I realized it, I was seeing a lifelike image of the orange tomcat that arrived with Phoebe when she came to live with us. He was a somewhat disagreeable bruiser with the habit of biting and clawing anyone except Phoebe who came within range of his teeth and claws. Jenny had taken him in when he was about a year old and named him Lawrence, claiming that his personality and my husband’s were so similar as to be almost identical. Lawrence didn’t know about the cat though until Jenny had died and Phoebe came to stay, accompanied by the hissing, spitting feline in a carrier that Lawrence was afraid even to touch.
I’d offered to fly out to Arizona to get Phoebe, but Call Martin, Jenny’s lawyer and the executrix of her will, had said it would be easier on all concerned if she simply put the ten year old on a plane and shipped her to us. It wasn’t until Phoebe arrived at the airport in St. Louis that I learned that the cat had accompanied her. I’d been out to Arizona to see Jenny and had met both Phoebe and the cat for the first time two years earlier, so neither was a complete stranger, but the arrival of the unexpected cat along with the child was still a shock.
The first order of business, after getting them both home and releasing the cat from his imprisonment in the carrier, was to find a new name for him. Phoebe didn’t really understand why that was necessary, but she accepted my assurance that it was without argument. However, she couldn’t think what to call the cat, so he went by the name of “Cat-Cat” for several months after their arrival.
Lawrence ignored Phoebe. When forced to acknowledge her, he called her “girl.” Our sons thought she was someone to be tormented when they were at home, but they soon learned that Cat-Cat was fiercely protective of her. Since they were not home very much, the conflict between boys and cat was kept to a minimum. Soon they started imitating their father when they were at home, ignoring Phoebe as much as possible. So she became my companion. And Cat-Cat was our guardian.
Lawrence had his first stroke within a year of Phoebe’s arrival, and I took over the business. His doctors said that instead of the mostly administrative tasks he was used to doing at work, he needed to occupy himself with physical activities in order to regain as many of his fine motor skills as he could. At first Lawrence insisted on working with our small staff helping with the preparation of corpses for funerals and burial, but he was too clumsy. So I prodded him to exercise his artistic talents and he complied, spending his time in the shed behind our house, constructing birdhouses out of kits, painting them, and hanging them on various trees around our property. Some of the neighbors, feeling sorry for him, I imagine, since he wasn’t very good at painting the birdhouses, commissioned him to construct and paint the tiny artifacts for them. He did, and soon he started selling his birdhouses along with a month’s supply of birdseed at the farmer’s market.
I was glad he’d found a way of occupying himself, but the birdseed in the shed attracted rodents of all sorts. When I suggested he sell the birdhouses without the seeds, he had a temper tantrum and told me to mind my own business. “Isn’t it enough that you’ve kicked me out of the business I spent my life building? Do you have to ruin this for me too?” he demanded, sounding increasingly self-pitying as he went on. I backed off and just hoped that the rodents would stay confined to the shed. Of course, the presence of Cat-Cat made that seem rather likely.
One evening after work though, I came home to find Lawrence trying vainly to bandage a rat bite on his ankle. He refused my help, afraid, I suppose, that I’d remind him that I’d warned him about the rodents. “I’m going to put poison out in the shed,” he said. “Tomorrow morning.”
“Tomorrow morning,” I replied, “I’m driving you to the doctor to get that bite looked at. I’d take you to the hospital tonight, but I know how much you dislike the emergency room.”
Lawrence sighed in exasperation and went up to bed. He tired easily and the stress produced by his encounter with the rat didn’t help any. I just hoped he hadn’t contracted rabies or any other untreatable affliction.
I was tired by the time I finally went to bed, so I didn’t hear Lawrence get up and make his way downstairs. I first realized he was gone when I heard the back door slam. I got up and went downstairs to see if he was all right, but the house was empty and there was a light coming from the shed. I put on my coat and went out, Cat-Cat following in my footsteps. When I opened the door to the shed, I saw Lawrence clumsily wielding a wooden plank as he attempted to beat to death two very large, birdseed-sated rats.
The rodents weren’t scared of Lawrence, but they tried to make a run for it when Cat-Cat entered the shed. Only one of them made it into his hole. It took Cat-Cat just a few seconds to catch and disembowel the other. He brought the carcass over to Lawrence and dropped it at his feet. Then with a self-satisfied grunt, Cat-Cat went over to the hole and stuck his paw into it, feeling around for the fugitive rat.
“Well, well, aren’t you something?” Lawrence said to the cat. Then he turned to me. “What did you say that cat’s name is?” he demanded.
I smirked. “Phoebe calls him Cat-Cat, but he doesn’t respond to the name.”
Lawrence laughed. “I should say not. What kind of a name is Cat-Cat for a hunter like him? His name should be Nimrod.”
“Nimrod?” I asked, perplexed.
Lawrence laughed and for the first time since Jenny’s death he looked like the man I’d married. “Genesis 10:8-9. He was a mighty hunter before the Lord.” He twinkled at me. “If you don’t believe me, you could look it up.”
So my husband Lawrence bestowed upon Cat-Cat, who had once, unbeknownst to him, been his namesake, the name of Nimrod. And Nimrod he remained until his death at the ripe old age of sixteen.