Sallie Satterthwaite

Rejoice with us: The cats are gone.

Last summer, as soon as Jean announced she was getting married, but could not keep her cats because of the allergies of a daughter-to-be, I started shaking my head.

"No. Don't even ask. We're not taking them," I declared. "Old Peaches is likely to die any moment now, and we are not going to be tied down by another cat, far less two. They're your responsibility, not ours."

Well, if you're a parent, you know who loses such contests of wills. Of course, we took them on Jean's promise to reclaim them as soon as Abigail's allergy shots take effect.

Liberation Day was set for April 11, following the children's first visit to our home.

Friends began making book on when we'd really see the last of Gim and Chica. I vowed that we would bid them farewell in April, if it meant I put them in storage and send Jean the bill.

Thank heaven it never came to that.

Change has been the constant in those animals' 10 years, and I don't know what a cat hates worse than change. These two are veritable gypsies, having motored cross-country to California, then up the coast to Juneau, a journey that required a three-day ferry ride in mid-winter. Eighteen months later, crates, cats, and litter box were in the VW again, heading south and east to Virginia.

There they lived in a borrowed room until we could bring them to Peachtree City in the motor home. Wondering, no doubt, why their lives had taken such a turn, they settled in at our house to harass Peaches and shed copiously on furniture and floors.

When the weather became mild, we banished them to the screen porch by day, Dave's workshop by night. We swapped sheets on furniture for an intricate system of door springs designed to confine a pair of Houdinis.

I'll give Dave credit: the bulk of the work fell on him. He coddled the cats by feeding them virtually on demand, but also saw to their unrelenting sanitary requirements. He helped with the incessant vacuuming of hairy upholstery and cleaning up of hairballs.

April came. So did the family. The cats were petted and loved on, even brushed, by three fascinated children who had never had pets beside tropical fish.

With record-high pollen counts in the Southeast, the kids did exhibit allergies, but being around the cats seemed to make no difference at all.

But there was no mention of taking cats home at week's end.

I thought of getting out the crates and placing them prominently in the hall; Dave said that was too obvious. It was also obvious that Jean was driving a Mercury sedan barely large enough for three children and their requisite books and snacks.

As the week drew to a close, however, she floated Plan B, shipping the cats to Virginia by air, then dismissing it almost at once. Terrible things can happen to animals stowed in an airplane's cargo hold, not the least of which is that they can literally be frightened to death.

Then Plan C materialized, just before Brian was due to fly in for a Saturday reception to introduce Jean's new family to her friends.

So it was that on Sunday morning, when he was ready to return to the airport, Jean loaded his overnight bag into her car and handed him instead a small carrier.

The portly Chica who never speaks louder than a murmur was placed on the back seat of the Mercury between Isaac and Esther where she could stand or stretch out in a full-sized cat crate. She'd have relative comfort for a two-day road trip.

Two crates in that car were out of the question.

The solution: Jean learned that Delta permits one carry-on animal per flight, and she booked that slot for Gim on Brian's flight home. The airline's restrictions necessitated purchase of a carrier so small that long, lanky Gim would have to remain in a crouching position but for only a few hours.

He voiced high-decibel indignation all the way to Hartsfield, through Hartsfield, at the gate, under the seat of a hapless fellow-passenger, to Dulles, through Dulles, out to the parking lot, and for the half-hour drive to Leesburg.

Yet Brian said there were no complaints from other travelers on the contrary, people stopped to sympathize with the unhappy animal. Except for his unusual luggage, his trip was without incident, and Gim was exploring his new home before the rest of the family had crossed the state line on their way north.

When I took Brian to the airport that morning, with nothing in his hand but a cage full of furious feline, I was shaking my head again, this time in disbelief.

"Good thing you and Jean are still honeymooning," I said. "Can't imagine this happening 10 years from now."

"Oh, yes, it would," my dreamy-eyed son-in-law assured me. "I'll still feel the same."

We'll see.

The immediate postscript is this: The cats are settled in Leesburg, none the worse for their peregrinations. Gim, who has seldom been around kids, was the hit of a slumber-party of 11-year-old girls last weekend.

And in Peachtree City, Peaches has quit hiding under chairs, I can get into my freezer without moving a Friskies dispenser, and the mood is jubilant.

The cats are gone!

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