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     Sometimes my job came with bonuses. Caring for more than a single animal was always joy multiplied.  I love odd numbers, there's perfection in a trio or quintuplet that is missing in anything equally divisible by two. Even numbers are dry, odd numbers are whimsical and unbalanced.
     Having said this, you might think I adore the digit one.  I do not. So we'll begin with three and it's the number behind this story.
     The "D" dogs are favorites of mine. They belong to my friends, Diana and John. I've known five "D" dogs: Yellow Dog, J.D, Rusty, Wimberly, and Benji. Wimby and Ben are my companions now
and I'm hopeful the brood will grow.
     On a recent job, Diana introduced me to a phantom cat. She had a cardboard box shelter with straw and blankets on one side and food/water dishes on the other side of the front porch. There was now a cat food section in the pantry.  Emerson had come to live with them.
     John did not love Emerson. He definitely didn't want a feline in their home. Been there done that.
It didn't phase Diana. He could be their outside companion.
     Emerson was a member of the clipped ear society.  Feral and stray cats were captured, spayed or neutered and then released back into the neighborhoods.  I'm unsure who was in charge of capturing the cats, but since Diana had asked me for references for baited traps, I'd guess the effort was successful in great part to cooperative, well-meaning cat loving people all around the city and neighboring districts.
     The animal shelter in cooperation with the local chapter of the Dumb Friends League and other nonprofits corralled hundreds of stray cats in a calendar year.  The goal was to reduce the number of litters resulting from the hundreds of cats. Apparently, it was working. In this temperate coastal climate, stray cats and dogs live their best lives in nature. People interfere with well-meaning intentions. In our city, dogs make up a higher percentage of adoptions.; in part, it is due to the nature of a cat. Dogs can be happy as inside dwellers.
     Some cats just put their paws down and take each day as it comes. They develop a route and follow it sometimes to their last days and if the last person on the route up and moves away, their last days can mean dying alone.
     Emerson is a large cream color tabby. He isn't easily hidden between shrubbery and red cedar mulch. When he first appeared at her door, Diana decided to camouflage his water dish and food bowl behind the hedge so as not to invite criticisms from her non-cat loving neighbors. It worked for a while, but when the weather was uncooperative, the cat and dishes got the worst of it. She moved his dishes to the porch...which invited the non-cat loving dogs to bark and claw at the windowsill. Wimberly would run to the door in hopes of scaring Emerson away. Well, as long as the door was closed, Emerson stayed. This commotion was unsettling, to say the least, and John had enough.  The cat loved early morning visits.  John was accustomed to waking up AFTER the rooster crowed. He insisted that Diana move the dishes to the garage and leave enough space for Emerson to squeeze under the garage door and adapt the boxes, crates and usual garage stuff as his cat cave.
      This move worked well until the day John opened the kitchen door to go in the garage...one of the dogs followed and all hell ensued. Emerson left for vacation and now the dogs knew where
he was hiding.
      Months passed and no Emerson. Diana was worried. I was scheduled to come by for a long weekend and she left me a detailed list of Emerson's needs. Okay, I'm flexible.  I'd never met him and was looking forward to the introduction.  The problem was where to put the dogs when I went outside.
I'd have to go about it covertly.  So I grabbed the kitchen trash as if I was going to put it in the dumpster. Dogs thought nothing of it. They had me on ignore.
       I went through the kitchen door and inspected all the hiding spaces in the garage. No cat.  I opened the garage door and walked to the porch. No cat. I looked in the food bowl. No food. Emerson had come!  I texted Diana.  She was happy to hear the good news. For the next few days
I replenished his water and kibble. Some days there was no evidence he had come by. That's just the way it is.  To this day he remains the phantom cat. I guess that makes me the phantom cat sitter. With my job, anything is possible!