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Signs of Life

Nancy L. Horner

The Laundry Game

The house is quiet, husband and child out for a swim while I run load after load of laundry, creating a giant mountain of unfolded clothing primarily so that I can have an excuse to plunk myself on the floor and watch a movie.

Things that need to be hung immediately are in the closet, the laundry mountain sports an ever-increasing peak, and I'm certain that if I don't start up a movie and begin folding soon the cat will discover the fresh, warm clothing and towels, curl up in the middle, and get black fur all over everything. It's a cold winter evening and cats are seemingly drawn to warm laundry magnetically.

I fetch Remains of the Day from my movie stash. After loading the disc into the DVD player, I turn on the TV and dash off to fix myself a coffee.

I set the coffee on the counter, check my latest dryer load and set it to toss a while longer because it's not quite finished. As I turn on the TV and alter the set-up to include English captions, I realize it's going to be darned cold on the floor and my feet already feel like ice cubes.

My microwavable booties—a gift from the incredibly patient husband who has felt icy toes on the small of his back for over twenty winters—will do the trick. I fetch the booties and toss them in the microwave but I can't remember just how long I'm supposed to "cook" them. I recall thinking that the length of zapping time seemed bizarrely long, but how long? I settle on five minutes, press start and take a sip of coffee.

Since it's going to be a few minutes before my foot-warmers are ready, I busy myself with other chores for a short time, passing through the kitchen to pull out a load of red and pink items.

As I walk through the kitchen, I smell something burning and hear a strange crackling sound. I distinctly recall that my microwavable socks heated up without making any crackling noises in the past.. Uh-oh. There's smoke rising from the fuzzy, lilac booties. I quickly dump my load on top of the laundry mountain and return to push the "stop" button on the microwave. Yep, that's smoke, all right. Maybe it was two minutes of cooking time rather than five.

Where there's smoke there must be fire, so I look around for something with which to smother the sizzling socks. A cake pan will do the trick. I carefully pull a smoking sock out of the microwave, noting the brown spot from which the smoke is rising, and cover the fuzzy fabric with the round cake pan, holding it down firmly against a smooth, glass stovetop until I no longer see smoke when I peer under the pan. On to the second sock.

Finally, the socks are no longer smoking but the coffee is cold and the house smells distinctly liked burned booties. I warm the coffee, light a scented candle and head to the living room to fold. Sure enough, there's a black cat on top of the laundry mountain, paws tucked beneath her white fur bib. She blinks emerald eyes at me contentedly.

"Okay, cat," I say. "You asked for it. Ready to play the laundry game?" I sit on the floor and press "play" to start the movie. She blinks at me, again. In spite of my lengthy delay, the red fleece jacket on the top of the pile is still warm beneath her, as are the other red and pink items. I slide my feet under the warm pile, since I no longer have booties to warm my toes.

The rules of the laundry game are simple. I carefully pull laundry out of the pile around the cat and out from under her, folding as I go. If I manage to lower her all the way to the floor with just the topmost laundry item still beneath her, I win. If she abandons the pile in disgust or is feisty enough to snatch the laundry back from me with her claws (which is, of course, very bad news for sweaters), she wins.

While Emma Thompson's character, Miss Kenton, reflects upon her years in service at the home of Lord Darlington, I slowly fold more clothing and towels than any reasonable person would likely save to conquer in one sitting. The cat seems totally innocuous, first sleeping as I pull things from the outer edge and later gazing at me through hooded eyes, oblivious to the fact that she's slowly moving closer to the carpet.

By the time Anthony Hopkins' character Stevens has carelessly admitted he'd be lost without Miss Kenton, I've reached the last item and the cat is now resting on the red fleece jacket with nothing but carpet beneath. I've won the laundry game! I don't think I've ever actually won this game in the past—maybe once. The cat's green eyes suddenly open wide and she rises, walking off in a feline huff.

"Wait!" I say. I grab the cat and place her back on the red fleece. "I've already won, so there's no point to leaving. You can stay in your warm spot while I finish my movie." I give her a gentle shove and she folds up in place.

The laundry game complete, I watch the rest of my movie with my furry companion, confident that the battle has been won but the war is far from over. We'll duke it out over a new pile of laundry next week, same time, same place.