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Abigail Taber, 4, looks out at Miss Chatham from inside Marci Shaver, owner of the Laundry Basket in Stafford's Chatham Square, gives Miss Chatham a daily brushing. The longtime stray finally gave in to nurturing. |
By KRISTIN DAVIS
When Marci Shaver unlocks the laundry at 7 a.m., Miss Chatham is waiting. She is warm and sleepy-eyed, a swirl of gray on a stack of rags beneath the office counter.
Shaver instinctively walks to this spot.
Miss Chatham unfurls, stretches, meows, then heads outside to do her business.
Mornings at the Laundry Basket are quiet but never lonely. Miss Chatham is back at the glass door in a flash, waiting like a little sphinx. Shaver pushes open the door for her, ushering Miss Chatham in from the big world beyond.
The big world was home to the cat for years--perhaps 10 or 12 or 15, depending on whom you ask. No one remembers exactly when she showed up at Chatham Square Shopping Center in southern Stafford County, only that she's as much a fixture as the storefronts.
In the beginning Miss Chatham prowled the parking lot and slept in a storm drain. She relied on humans only for sustenance, and they obliged with shrimp and tuna, bowls of dry cat food and bits of fries from McDonald's. She shied from offers of affection, either not wanting it or not knowing what to make of it.
There was, though, a brief encounter with humans a decade ago. Folks at a nearby dental office collected Miss Chatham, had her spayed and returned her to her stomping ground. She was wild, after all.
Then, a year ago, something changed.
Shaver had just taken over the laundry's operation. She saw the little bowls by the door and the cat who visited them.
Paula MacWelch, who has washed and dried her laundry there almost every Wednesday afternoon for nine years, filled Shaver in.
"She's the little mascot," MacWelch says. Miss Chatham's shopping center home inspired her name, but no one knows who first gave her the moniker. She had a litter of kittens maybe a decade ago, and the same people who spayed her found homes for them.
Miss Chatham, Shaver says, "came with the store. She was part of the package, whether I liked it or not."
She liked it.
On March 1 last year, a cold front blew in, dumping snow and freezing rain across the area. It had been unseasonably warm just a few days earlier, and the sudden change took a toll on Miss Chatham.
Shaver found her lying listlessly against the laundry's door where heat escaped from a tiny crack. She scooped up the cat and carried her inside.
Miss Chatham slept for two days. That brush with death--combined, perhaps, with years of exposure to humans--changed her.
She accepted Shaver's affection, sometimes allowing herself to be held. The cat started marching at her heels through the laundry.
"She adopted me as her pet," Shaver says. "She has me well trained."
She considered taking her home. But confine her? Take her away from everything she's known? "That would be too traumatic for her."
Miss Chatham spends her days half indoors, half outdoors. She knows when Shaver locks up, and usually makes sure she's back inside by then.
When customers learn Miss Chatham's story, their hearts soften for the cat who has spent her long life as a stray. One woman stops by every Saturday without fail to drop off five pounds of cat food for her.
Strays do not thrive in urban environments because it's unnatural to them.
Miss Chatham, it seems, has beaten the odds. She has survived heat and cold and traffic.
Shaver thinks she may have encountered a car early in life. The feline does have a crook in her striped tail.
Marie Smith thinks she might have an extra sense.
Smith works a few doors down, at the TV repair shop. She first saw Miss Chatham five years ago, apparently stalking seagulls. But she was actually hunting cars--to nap beneath.
Miss Chatham would lounge under one for a little while, get up and move to another one. This went on for hours. She chose only cars that would be parked all day, as if she somehow knew, Smith says.
Some folks don't care for a cat in their coin-operated laundry. They're afraid, or allergic, or just unfond of them.
"Well, I'm sorry. She's a free spirit," Shaver tells them. Besides, "she doesn't make a pest of herself."
Amid the rumble of machines Miss Chatham is often the center of attention, playing cat-and-mouse with toddlers or stretching out just beyond the entrance as if she owns the place.
She bounds up to those she knows, like MacWelsh and Lowell Self, who guesses he first saw the cat 10 or 15 years ago.
"This is a mouse-free laundromat," he says, folding towels while Miss Chatham watches, sitting on her haunches.
It is cold and rainy, a good day to be an indoor cat. But by early afternoon the warmth is not enough to keep her inside.
Nature is calling.
She stands at the door until Shaver pushes it open for her. Miss Chatham sits under the awning in the cold and watches. Then she steps onto the wet pavement and runs into the world beyond.
To reach KRISTIN DAVIS:
Email: kdavis@freelancestar.com
