Once Upon a Mattress

I’ve mentioned before that one of the only good things about this terrible Ohio Valley steel mill town is that it’s infested with half-feral cats, which do us a great service by keeping down the rat population. Old women feed them cat food out of salad bowls on the back porches. They have climbed in through my open windows multiple times, and they rub against my leg at the bus stop; I always name them after the feast day they climb in on or the Bible characters they most resemble. At first, as I clung for dear life to the windowsill, I was afraid that this was one of the cats I’ve grown to know and love. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t Elijah with the shape of Mount Carmel on his nose, or The Chariot with the fiery rings of gold on his coat; it wasn’t Demetrius the Myrrh-gusher or one-eyed Peleg in whose time the world was divided. It was a young kit who had been predated by another animal and died on our porch roof.

Michael asked me what was taking me so long, and I sheepishly explained. My cat-allergic husband grunted, went out onto the porch roof for me, disposed of the carcass, and waited to guide the box spring. And I went down to the front yard, to lift it.

Naturally, I was too short. However, we had a coffee table. I dragged the wobbly piece of furniture out to the lawn, stood on it, and pushed the box spring up onto the porch. It only took two or three tries; the neighbors had a fun show.

At that point, of course, we realized that the box spring was too wide to fit through the picture window. We now had a box spring and a tall lanky husband stranded on the porch roof, a coffee table and a short fat wife standing on the lawn, an open window too small to stick the box spring through, a dead cat in the trash and a five-year-old daughter in the doorway asking for a snack. It was quite dark, and the neighbors were smoking on their porches watching the show.

I had a brainstorm.

Our daughter’s bedroom had one skinny but tall window overlooking the porch. Couldn’t we try tipping the box spring on its side and taking it in through that?

Michael climbed back in the picture window, leaving the box spring tottering on the porch roof. He got his tools and took the storm window and screen out of my daughter’s bedroom– one of two windows in the whole house to even have a screen.

And at that moment, we heard the buzzing of hornets.

“Get the bug spray!” Michael cried.

I am an affectionate person, and I love animals. I’m the one who pets and flatters the cats when they climb in our windows. I rescue insects and release them outside. I once called a local beekeeper to humanely adopt a single bee I thought might be a honeybee, which was tunneling into our porch. I don’t like killing things.

At that moment, though, I ran for the bug spray. I had no regrets.

Michael sprayed a heavy cloud into the crack between the window pane and the wall; a few big fat black wasps flew out of where they’d been tunneling and expired on the carpet. Michael went back out to the porch roof. He pushed, I pulled, and the box spring came through the window at last. We somehow got it out of my daughter’s room and into the other bedroom. We slammed it down on top of the frame with a satisfying whump, then threw the mattress on top of it with another whump. The most beautiful sounds I’d ever heard.

My daughter immediately climbed into the big bed and fell asleep next to me.

My husband went to sleep on the sofa.

Life is very, very, very good.