Anthony lost his round at the cards and dice table (and fifty dollars) so he thanked the dealer and left to the slot machines, where garish LED screens, bells, and jingles clashed discordantly with each other.
Gareth would hate it here, he thought, thinking of his late orange cat. Too loud. Too bright. Maybe I would hate it here, too.
A middle-aged waitress with dyed auburn hair and dark red lipstick came by with a complimentary cocktail he had ordered. The casino provided complimentary drinks to gamblers on the floor, so he had ordered the first cocktail that came to his mind, a “mojito.” It sounded good from the movies he had seen. Anthony was homeschooled and received his college degree remotely, so he skipped the whole party phase of his life, not that he thinks he would have enjoyed it, anyway.
“Thank you,” said Anthony, handing her two dollars as a tip.
She nodded curtly, accepting the tip while balancing the tray with the remaining drinks. Her eyes were already on the next patron she needed to serve: a balding, obese man that had been parked at the same slot machine for the past five hours, no breaks. Perhaps he wore a diaper. Or perhaps he was why the carpets smelled like citrus and ammonia.
Alone at the slot machine with his iced mojito, Anthony took a sip and recoiled. He wasn’t a big drinker. In fact, his main drinks at the apartment were water, Mountain Dew, and almond milk. The mojito tasted like an exquisite mixture of ice, lawn clippings, and rubbing alcohol. Its only saving grace was that it was sugary, which somewhat masked the rubbing alcohol flavor of his drink.
A group of non-retirees, a group of eight or so college-aged kids walked out of one of the clubs on the side of the casino floor, laughing and slapping each other on the back while balancing their drinks in their hands.
Maybe casinos are more fun with friends, Anthony thought. Or maybe most things are.
Suddenly he felt self-conscious of being at the casino alone, or at least a relatively young person gambling by himself.
As someone in his thirties, Anthony wasn’t as young as these college kids, but he also wasn’t about to qualify for the senior discount at Denny’s yet. Memories of eating lunch in the boy’s restroom during elementary school, middle school, and high school flashed before his eyes.
During college, with the varied schedules of college students, eating alone during the day was considered less strange, but he did always ache to connect with someone, not just on the surface level, but on a deeper level. But with how short semesters were, classmates always changed, and he would make acquaintanceships that would fade in subsequent semesters. It didn’t help that he was so bashful and had trouble relating to the other students. He gazed enviously at students who congregated in chatty groups. He would fake it by loitering on the outer edges of groups, but he was never one of them.
Anthony shook his head as if to shake these memories away, but they clung to him and made him feel cold. Or maybe it was the air conditioning.
The virtual slot machine rolled with its usual jingling sounds. Then it landed on a mismatched. Dud. Anthony’s gambling money was all done and gone.
Anthony sighed. It was time to face it: he wasn’t having fun here. Coming to Palm Casino had seemed like a good idea when the alternative was a lonely apartment without Gareth, but Anthony felt lonely here in the casino anyway, even while surrounded by people.
He took another sip of his grass mojito and winced again. Nope. It was time to leave. He looked around at the shops, restaurants, and bars flanking the casino floor. A Rolex store gleamed across the floor. He didn’t win enough money to buy a Rolex, nor did he have any interest. After that grassy mojito, he was in the mood for a burger but he didn’t feel like sitting down and being waited on.
There was a drive-thru fast food restaurant along the way home, he remembered, so he dropped his drink off on a tray and left the casino, feeling empty in both his pockets and his heart.
The burger was delicious. After going through the drive-thru, he parked in the parking lot and devoured the burger, fries, and cola. He doused his burger and fries with six packets of ketchup in total. He slurped the icy cola with relief.
As he drove further down the road from the fast-food restaurant toward his little desert town, he saw a sign for an animal shelter with cats and dogs up for adoption. That’s how I had adopted Gareth, he thought. Was it too soon to adopt another cat?
The draw was too strong. He took the next exit.
The animal shelter was filled with the sound of barks and not enough visitors. He went to the counter and asked where the cats for adoption were located. Henry, the man behind the counter, was eager to show him.
The cat section was behind a glass. He looked at the posters and pictures of each cat that was hung on the wall. They had names like “Joseph Conrad” for a black cat, “Cheeto” for an orange cat, and “Snow” for a white cat. Some were described as rambunctious, and others were described as solitary cats that would prefer to be the only furry one at home.
“Have you ever adopted from us before?” asked Henry.
“No,” replied Anthony. He was about to explain that he had found Gareth as a kitten abandoned in a supermarket parking lot, but was quickly distracted by
He stood close to the glass and looked at an eight-year-old gray cat laying on a cat shelf with it tail hanging listlessly over the edge. It looked back at him with one half-opened green eye and one healed empty socket before sinking its head onto the shelf, as if it was too exhausted to socialize.
The poster on the glass described this gray cat as “Brian.” Immediately Anthony’s heart went out to Brian, as he thought of his own late cat who’d had the human name of Gareth.
“Ah,” said Henry. “Brian has been with us since January. That would make it…eight months that he has been here.”
“How long does it usually take cats to be adopted?”
Henry frowned. “It really depends. Some cats get adopted right away, even before their name tags and paperwork is finished. Sometimes the new owner will come and fall in love with the cat in the window. But other times…” He looked at the one-eyed gray tabby with sympathy. “It takes a while. And how long they stay with us depends on our capacity. Sometimes we run out of space and have to prioritize the cats that have the best chances of getting adopted.”
From another glass room, two tuxedo kittens rolled with each other atop a felt blanket. A few inches away, an orange adult cat curled up with sleep.
“What happens to the ones who don’t have a good chance?”
Henry sighed, his shoulders sinking. “The ones who don’t have a good chance…They’re not bad cats or kittens. Many of them are just slower to warm up. They hide from potential adopters, or hiss—but that usually just means they’re scared. If we run out of space, we send them to another shelter down the freeway…”
“Okay…” Anthony was trying to follow.
“…Where unlike us, they are not a kill-free shelter. Let’s face it, we are a small town out in the desert. We don’t have the budget or the funds or the advocacy like the larger shelters in bigger cities do. Our space is finite.” Henry’s voice had taken on a defensive edge. “We try to save as many as we can. But in the end, we only have so much space.” The animal shelter receptionist/adoption coordinator/advocate looked off into a corner of the room, his thoughts far away.
Anthony thought about what daily life was like for Henry and those working and volunteering at the shelter. It reminded him of a story he had read in high school, something about “cold equations,” where a girl snuck herself aboard a spaceship to visit her brother on a faraway planet, but the spaceship only has so much fuel to get to the next stop so the astronaut on board had to eject her out of the spaceship into the cold, airless, and unpressurized space, otherwise they both die and the spaceship would be lost. There was only so much weight the spaceship could carry…
“What happened to Brian? Was he a stray?”
“Not at all,” replied Henry. “Brian is actually from a hoarder’s house, which had a total of 18 cats. His former owner passed away. Brian didn’t get along with the other cats—we’re guessing that’s how he lost his left eye—so he had to be placed in his own room.” He smiled sadly at the cat. “We’ve had a few potential adopters look at him, but he hid under a piece of furniture the whole time. He wouldn’t come out.”
“May I see him?” Anthony asked.
“Of course,” said Henry, and brought Anthony to the back entrance on the opposite side of the glass wall. Brian lifted an ear toward them but did not move. Anthony went in and approached the cat with his hand extended.
Brian reared his head and hissed. He hopped down from the shelf and went into a cat condo, looking out at Anthony and Henry from the cave-like opening of a cat condo.
Henry didn’t look surprised. “Don’t feel bad. He’s been like that with everyone. He hates the kids especially, too much screaming. Do you have any kids?”
Anthony shook his head.
“Well, why don’t you try giving him a treat.” Henry reached into his fanny pack and pulled out a small handful of cat treats.
Anthony accepted the treats and moved to the corner where Brian had hidden. He looked away, and set the small pile of treats near the cat condo.
The gray tabby must have been hungry because he slinked out of the cat condo cautiously and took a careful bite of the treats.
While the tabby was distracted, Anthony touched Brian’s back and ran his palm down until it reached Brian’s tail. He repeated it and felt Brian vibrate.
“He’s purring,” whispered Henry. “He likes you.”
That night, Anthony came home to his apartment with Brian in a box, and opened it. Brian stepped out and darted under the desk drawers.
“It’s going to be okay,” said Anthony softly. “You’re safe now.” He set out some water, treats, and fresh litter for Brian and sat on the couch to watch television. Next to the television, Gareth’s ashes sat in an urn. Occasionally Anthony would look at the urn and feel bittersweet emotions swirling in him. He wondered if he would ever be as close to another cat as he was with Gareth.
Brian stayed under the desk drawer, but hours later, after Anthony had yawned, stretched, and retired to bed, Brian ventured out from his little hiding spot and gracefully jumped atop the bed to peer at this strange new human with his one eye. He then eased himself into a gray croissant next to this human’s feet and went to sleep.
The End
Eden Onpeng 