I returned from my last visit in the Midwest with a small pallet of Faygo soda, a soda pop company based out of Detroit but loved in plenty of other locations, including both of my Hoosier grandmothers' kitchens, sometimes over ice cream. My father and I split the pallet, selecting our favorite flavors – grape, root beer, cream soda, Red Pop (a.k.a strawberry cream soda,) classic cola – and neatly positioned them like a parade float lineup in a cardboard box at Horner’s Corner Grocery before transporting them across several state lines.
Cairo was tickled we had brought him a gift. No, not a Red Pop. The box. It was wide and low and flat, with maybe two inches of standing edge. It was just his size. It smelled like other places but was somehow so familiar. He was tantalized by the box, immediately making it his own as I placed it on the kitchen window seat and emptied the sodas into the fridge.
All cats love cardboard boxes, and Cairo prefers them to most toys. I read somewhere it’s because it helps trap their body heat and allows them to hunt better… as good as hunting stuffed animals and ankles can be.
As time progressed, I caught Cairo in the box at least once a day. I moved a snowman toy filled with catnip to the box. He ripped a corner open, scratched some of the insides to expose the corrugation and crumpled the edges with his meaty body as the months went on. The box is just the right height for his little head to rest on the corner while his hearty primordial pouch sinks over his feet and onto the cardboard, pre-warmed by the sun from the window. He rests in the box; I imagine he meditates or practices mindfulness to help deal with Smidge’s and my daily antics. One roll in the opposite direction and he could watch whatever bird was at the feeder. He lazily swats at them through the blinds, cocooned in rumpled corrugated fiberboard.
Yes, a nasty, old Faygo box is my cat’s most prized possession. He is in zen there, in a state of pure tranquility, swathed by the protection of just enough cardboard to camouflage his inner hunter, but just open enough for the modern and debonair chat noir one who eats out of a special bowl and sleep in the bed at night. The Faygo box combines the intensity of a wild panther, the rough and tumble spirit of a street tomcat, and the comfort of a house cat allowed in the shots of the latest multi-page spread of Architectural Digest.
I feel like I am upselling an expensive cologne that is 90% alcohol based, but here, too, there is a luxury in cheap design.
Of course, I am making assumptions on how the box actually makes Cairo feel. Maybe he's secretly a big Insane Clown Posse fan (who are also from Detroit and reference the soft drink in some of their songs) or is just trying to tell me HE wants the Moon Mist that's still in the fridge. Instead, I am going off the fact he has previously loved cardboard boxes, though not to this extent, and by the look on his face as he squashes cheek and jowl against the corner edge, whiskers relaxed and paws crossed and poking through the torn corner and interested he gets when I touch the box or move it for any reason. But however he feels when he is lounging, day dreaming or otherwise relaxing in the box, I have decided the box – the brown, corrugated cardboard box with a red Faygo logo stamped on its white paper outside - really does complete the room.
So it stays. At least until I can bribe him out of it with the brand new Faygo box I will bring back this year. Or, I will just have two Faygo boxes to not touch.
P.S. It turns out the Piggly Wiggly on Gillsville Highway sells Faygo all the time, so I guess I know where I'm headed after work.
