Dr. Ralph Munden of the Mathematics department was going through a divorce; a rather nasty, expensive divorce. It wasn’t that his wife of ten plus years had cheated on him, nor because he had cheated on her, nor because he was gay. He was divorcing her because she killed his cat, Fluffy.
-------
Fluffy was not fluffy. In fact, Fluffy had no hair at all. He was not a sphinx, but rather the victim of a tragic electrical accident. On a stormy January day, in 1979, the stray cat searched for shelter from the hail and rain, when he charged into an old wooden shed. Unfortunately, the tin roof of the dry, wooden shed attracted lightning as efficiently as a lightening rod. He was lucky to escape with his life.
Fluffy adopted Dr. Munden shortly after his accident, when Dr. Munden was just Munden. Ralph Steven Munden had no money; he had no girlfriend. His only hobby, besides writing his thesis entitled “Sines of Calculus; Signs of Life,” was reading Stephen King novels.
One afternoon in February of 1979, through the machine gun fire of rain and the thudding inside his head, Munden heard a noise.
“Rheeeew…rheeeew” he heard. He shook his head, making sure the noise wasn’t coming from in there.
But he heard it again, “Rheeew…rheeew…rheeeeeeeeew.”
He walked to the back door. Peering out his window, Munden saw a bald, burned cat shivering on his stoop; trying to shelter itself from the storm. Red blemishes polluted its skin. The pitiful, repulsive thing paralyzed Ralph Munden. He wanted to walk away; pretend he hadn’t heard it, hadn’t seen it. He commanded his legs to turn around. And yet, Munden found himself picking up the ball of reddish-yellow infection and pain. The smell of burnt flesh followed him as he brought the thing inside.
That was the first time Munden had ever shared his living space with another organism, until he met Martha Phinkle four years later.
