Sherman on the Pier

My friend has a house in North Wildwood right off of the bridge. It’s like a little cottage on a pier, all wooden and ramshackle, but not in a bad way. The ceiling is lined with fishing rods, and we sleep in the lofts. The roof leaks and the floor is uneven. It’s a treasure. His family’s owned it for years, probably longer than he’s been alive. The beautiful thing about that house is the sense of isolation. There are neighbors, but it’s disconnected from the tourist community. The pier sits on the bay, overlooking nothing but the water and a few houses and a bait store on the other side. At night the lights of the boardwalk shine in the distance; the Ferris wheel sits atop the horizon like a Bruce Springsteen song. The world stops when you’re on that pier—it’s timeless.

Not terribly long ago I spent a week there, myself and a pretty large group of people. We spent the days jumping off the pier, combating the tide and sitting in the sun. It was quite a sun too, bright, overpowering and hot. But that was OK; we had an ice cold bay right beneath our feet. Into this idyllic scene wandered a cat. At first, it was just a stray, there were plenty of them down the road, and for one to make its way to us was not unlikely. It stuck around for a while; at first I don’t think we even noticed it too much. But the cat didn’t leave.

In my experience, this was bad news. Not only am I allergic to cats, I find them to be stuck up and altogether unpleasant. But, the cat stuck around and since it had been playing pretty nicely for an hour or so, it was rewarded with attention. After it had been pet and deemed to be fairly well behaved, someone picked it up; it purred and calmly accepted this situation. The girls fed it, and somewhere along the way it got the name Sherman.

I resisted the creature for a day or so, but eventually, even my deep-seeded prejudice against felines was broken down. Sherman was an exceptionally well-behaved creature, more so than most housecats I’ve come across, and the fact that it was a stray tugged at something inside of me, I guess.

We fed it a lot—and I do mean a lot. Pretty much anything we didn’t eat during the week, we left outside for Sherman. He (or maybe she, I don’t think we ever came to a real conclusion) made a home for himself underneath a capsized boat on the side of the house. After a few days, Sherman became a part of our routine. We’d put water out for him every morning, feed him minnows and whatever other spare food we could find, and watch him chase around birds. We were as doting on a stray animal as was possible—more possible than I thought was possible, really.

I can’t really put my finger on why we all fell in love with that cat— myself especially. Something about how quickly he warmed up to and how much he apparently needed us stuck with me that week. He was all too happy to be picked up, to take our food and enjoy our company. I swear he recognized his name. Late in the week, after a long night, we had all gone to bed only to hear an unearthly screech. Something like I’d imagine a cat sounds like when it’s being stepped on by an elephant. I didn’t really know what to make of it; no one else did either. Three of us (at this point the only occupants left) rushed outside to find him at 3 in the morning. We searched for a half hour, but Sherman was nowhere to be found. At the time I thought it pretty ridiculous that we all cared so much about a cat that wasn’t ours, and to be honest I still kind of do—but there it was—three dead-tired vacationers standing on a pier in the dead of the night, trying to find a cat. Just as we were giving up, Sherman came back, much to our relief. Unwarranted relief, but relief nonetheless.

When it came time to leave we had all become so attached to Sherman that we resolved to take it with us. Logistically, it was a nightmare, but what the hell, we felt bad for the thing. It was emaciated and ate like any meal might be its last one, and I personally enjoyed that it was a cat that didn’t act like it was better than me. Not really unexpectedly, Sherman ran when we tried to carry it in a box to the car. As we tried to calm him down, a mother and son passed by, and recognized Sherman as Whiskers. Apparently, our little group wasn’t so special. Eventually, we managed to get him into the box again, but he bolted even faster that time and disappeared completely.

We looked for Sherman for a while, but we never did find him.

Maybe we weren’t supposed to. I think back to the boy who recognized “Whiskers” and wonder if he moved onto another pier and touched the lives of another little community like ours. Maybe that’s what he was there to do.

December 2, 2010