Finally, a neighbor reached out to them. Her name was Ms. Merce, and she lived a few houses down and across the street. Ms. Merce, along with a few other local women, had started an organization called Adopt-a-Pet. The local humane society, in those days, was essentially an animal disposal unit. They kept the animals only a day or two before putting them to sleep. They were killing animals by the hundreds, and Ms. Merce and her friends didn’t think that was any way for a civilized society to act. Adopt-a-Pet took in animals and kept them as long as it took to find a home. These days, no-kill animal shelters are common throughout the world. But more than thirty years ago, in Flint, Michigan, this was an incomprehensible concept. Cats and dogs were just animals, and animals didn’t have much value. They were disposable playthings that died or ran away and were replaced. Adopt-a-Pet was bucking the attitude of an entire community.
When Ms. Merce asked Evelyn if she would be an animal foster parent, Barbara’s mother was eager to volunteer. Why? Barbara hesitated for a long time before saying simply, “I guess Mom was just hardwired to help animals.” That’s probably somewhat true. Evelyn Lambert had always shown an embarrassing (at the time) level of concern for all living things. She didn’t believe in herbicide, so her lawn was full of weeds. She didn’t believe in waste, so she used old food containers as planters. She preferred herbal remedies to doctors’ visits and despised insecticides. She believed in the sanctity of life. Every life, even insects. She was wired for compassion.
But she was also clearly lonely. And aimless in her unfulfilling job. And stung by the rejection of her husband and community. And eager to make a statement by adopting a cause that her husband would never have endorsed and her small-minded neighbors would never understand. What started as a favor for Adopt-a-Pet became, seemingly overnight, a cause. Almost as quickly, the nebulous idea of “animal foster care” became ten cats of various ages, colors, and conditions living together in one small suburban house.
It was not an easy time. Money was tight. Barbara’s mother watered down the milk to stretch it for a few extra days and made a schedule every Sunday that showed exactly what could be eaten by the children while she was away at work. The biggest treat was a can of soda, which Barbara and her brother Scott had to split, and the biggest argument was always over who had drunk more than their share. Sometimes, there was barely food on the table by Friday night, even as Barbara’s father was off in the next town with another woman, eating at expensive restaurants and taking out-of-state vacations.
Barbara took on the responsibility of running the household. She felt compelled to do it, as much out of fear as love. A few weekends after her parents’ divorce, her neighbors offered to take her on a camping trip. Before the camper reached the end of the block, Barbara started screaming to be taken home. She was deathly afraid that if she left, her mother would be gone when she returned. She turned that terror, that fear of abandonment, into activity. She fed and watered the cats, emptied their litter, and cleaned their messes. She cooked meals in the microwave and washed the dishes when she and Scott were through. Every night before going to bed, she made sure everything was clean and in its proper place, so that her mother wouldn’t have to worry when she arrived home in the middle of the night. If it snowed, nine-year-old Barbara put on her jacket and shoveled the driveway so that her mother could pull right into the garage. She was working to hold their world together, in her own way, as much as her mom.
There weren’t many gifts, even at Christmas. The first year without Dad, the family waited until Christmas Eve to buy a Christmas tree because that’s when the trees were cheapest. On the way home, Barbara and her fifteen-year-old brother, Scott (the oldest brother, Mark, was eighteen and not spending much time with the family), started fighting in the backseat. As they turned into the snowy driveway, their mother starting waving at them to stop.
“Quiet down,” she yelled.
They didn’t.
“Right now. I mean it. Right now.”
The kids sat, shocked, and stared with their mother at the dark house in the silent suburban neighborhood. For a moment, there was nothing but the snow and the wind. Then they heard the tiny meow.
The next second, Evelyn Lambert was out of the car and clambering around in the snow. Her reputation as the “crazy cat lady” had already buzzed around Fenton, and if someone had an animal they didn’t want, they often left it in the Lambert front yard. Over the next few years, the family would turn into the driveway dozens of times to find a sad-eyed animal staring at their car. If it was a dog, they took it into the Adopt-a-Pet office. If it was a cat, they usually kept it because, well, that’s what the Lamberts did. They helped cats in need.
This time, it was Scott who finally found the cat. The throwers had been aiming for the cat lady’s house, no doubt, but they must have gotten the wrong address, because the wet and shivering kitten was buried in the snowbank across the street. Barbara remembers vividly the sight of her brother, a crazy smile on his face and a headband around his ears, walking up the driveway with the light from the garage reflecting off the snow and a tiny, shivering, coal-black kitten huddled inside his jacket.
She remembers pulling the kitten out of her brother’s jacket, snuggling him to her cheek, and saying, “He smells like Hamburger Helper.”
Then she smiled. She hadn’t been expecting any presents that Christmas, but suddenly, as if by magic rather than cruelty and indifference, one had appeared.
She named the kitten Smoky. Although the Lambert house was full of cats, some adopted quickly and some around for months, Smoky was different. When Barbara held him that night, Smoky had hugged her and rubbed against her cheek. That’s when she knew he was hers. Forever. Barbara’s mother called him Black Spaghetti because he was like a limp noodle in her presence. Smoky loved his girl so much that he would let her do anything to him. She dressed him in doll clothes; she pushed him around in a stroller; she carried him on his back in her arms like a newborn baby. When she played dress-up, she wore him over her shoulders like a shawl. He was totally relaxed in her hands. The other cats slept on the first floor of the house or, in the warmer months, in the unfinished basement. Smoky curled up with Barbara every night.
She loved the other cats, too. They had been her companions in the lonely afternoons when her friends ignored her, and her mother was at work. But Smoky was her friend and confidante. She didn’t want to burden her mother, who was already burdened enough, so she told Smoky her problems. Many times, they sat together in her room with the door closed. “I’m really sad today,” she confided in him. Or “I’m scared and lonely. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” If her mother yelled at her for spilling water on the floor while washing dishes, Smoky understood it wasn’t her fault, she was only a child, and she was trying her best. When she came back from another soul-crushing visit to her father, whom she increasingly hated, Smoky snuggled against her side and purr, purr, purred. He let her pet him on the head and play with his paws. There was nothing more comforting than pushing on Smoky’s footpads and watching his claws come out and retract, come out and retract. He just stared at her, blinking slowly in that sleepy way cats do, purring deep and strong. He never complained.
He was there when, at ten years old, Barbara’s father broke the news. He had a new girlfriend by then, and they were leading a glamorous life in an upper-class suburb of Detroit: vacations, stylish clothes, wine tastings. One weekend, he took Barbara and Scott to a movie, something their mother couldn’t afford. As they were settling into their seats, he turned to Barbara and said, “I got married.”