The Zombie Cat Summer

The summer before sophomore year, I had two goals: make varsity baseball and finally talk to Maya without my voice cracking like I'd hit puberty yesterday.

Instead, I spent three weeks nursing a cat I found behind the dugout back to health.

My dad thought I was crazy. "You've got tryouts in two weeks and you're playing vet?" He shook his head, his baseball cap—old school Cincinnati Reds—bobbing with disapproval. "Focus, Leo."

But Bandit, this scrawny gray tabby with one ear that refused to stand up, had different plans. The first night he slept in my room, he woke me at 3 AM jumping on my face like my bed was his personal trampoline. By week two, he'd figured out how to open my door and stole my lucky socks.

My friends roasted me constantly.

"Bro's basically a cat dad now," Jordan announced in the locker room, loud enough for the entire team to hear. "Little League meets Littlest Pet Shop."

Everyone lost it. I felt my face burn, that special kind of teenage mortification that makes you wish the ground would crack open and swallow you whole.

The day before tryouts, Bandit went full zombie on me.

I came home from pitching practice to find him limp on my pillow, not moving, barely breathing. Google said his symptoms matched poison. Another site said kidney failure. A third suggested I prepare myself.

"He's gone, Leo," Jordan said over FaceTime that night, genuinely concerned for once. "Sorry, man. I know you loved that little guy."

I sat with Bandit for hours, tears dripping onto his fur, telling him about Maya and how I was scared I'd choke at tryouts and how my grandparents were fighting and I felt like everything was falling apart. The cat was my only witness, my tiny gray therapist, and now he was dying too.

Except at 2 AM, Bandit lifted his head, stretched like nothing had happened, and demanded food with impatient yowls.

He'd been playing dead. The absolute demon.

I laughed until I couldn't breathe, this weird hiccuping sound that was half sob, half hysteria. Bandit headbutted my hand, purring like a chainsaw, completely unbothered that he'd almost given me a heart attack.

"You're not dying," I whispered. "You're just dramatic."

The next day at tryouts, I struck out six batters. Coach nodded at me, this tiny dip of his chin that meant more than any speech. Maya watched from the bleachers, and afterward she said, "You were sick out there," and I managed to say thanks without my voice doing that weird cracky thing.

Bandit the zombie cat taught me something that summer: sometimes things that look dead are just resting, and sometimes you're way stronger than you think you are. Also, never trust a cat that plays possum.