James, Fabulous Feline

by Harriet Hahn

  James stopped dancing. He sat on the table and looked at me. Slowly the sense of what I was saying began to sink in. He looked wistful. Everything he did these days seemed to be wrong.

  He jumped down from the table. He walked to the door. I opened it to let him out and met Mrs. March in the hall. He marched slowly up the stairs. He shook his head back and forth in a puzzled way.

  “He looks gloomy tonight,” said Mrs. March.

  “He’s had a hard day,” I said. “Good night, James,” I called. “You’re still my best friend.”

  He did not turn around.

  I hoped that, in time, James would come to regard his confrontations with the rules as a learning experience, but I could see, looking at the recent weeks from James’s point of view, that all his friends had been distressed at every recent move he had made to be of service. He might just give us all up and that would be a grievous loss. However, bright and early the next morning, there was a scratch at the door and there was James. Not exactly bright eyed, but there, dragging his carry-bag. We were to go to the theater to begin rehearsals for Cats International.

  “Good morning, Sir James,” I said as I held the carry-bag open. James hopped in with a sniff. I picked up my umbrella and James, and we headed for the Green Park station. Once in the train, James looked around with interest. He dearly loves to create small disturbances among groups of punks, but the trip to Charing Cross on the Jubilee line was filled with businessmen and -women, nothing interesting. We changed at Charing Cross for the Northern line and rode to the Waterloo station. James did manage to scratch the jeans of a young man next to us who was doing his best to annoy a pretty girl, so I knew he was feeling better.

  The National Theater complex is an imposing, not to say intimidating, structure beside the river, and I had some trouble finding where we were supposed to go, but I asked frequently and at last James and I found the stage door, where at first the guard refused to let the cat come in. At last, in irritation, I pointed out that on the list of people to be admitted was the name James and beside it in blue pencil were the words “grey cat.”

  “All right,” he said, “but if anything happens, it’s not my fault.”

  James, who by this time was out of the bag, gave him a hiss and walked along beside me, his tail in the air. We wandered around a bit and at last found our rehearsal hall, where quite a crowd of people had assembled. The hall was simply a large room with a very high ceiling and a bare wood floor. Folding metal chairs were set up, and there was a table in one corner and an upright piano. There were also two mats of the sort used by gymnasts against one wall. The singers and dancers were dressed in leotards, sweaters and leg warmers. Shep, in his usual jeans with a black turtleneck shirt stood at one side with Poppy, who carried a clipboard and was wearing a dark green jumpsuit. Next to two comfortable director’s chairs, one labelled SHEP and the other POPPY, was a high stool labelled JAMES. James sat on his stool and nodded to one and all. I pulled up a metal chair and joined the group.

  The dancers now cleared the hall and began to warm up. James began scratching the top of the stool. A young acrobat moved out from the pack and began doing somersaults. James hopped off his stool and walked toward her. She stopped to look at the cat. He did a long front-paws stretch and turned to her. He waved a paw. She understood and, sitting on the floor, she repeated James’s exercise. He shook his head and repeated the motion. She nodded and made some corrections on her own. James nodded and they were off. They tried rollovers, back arches, pounces. Some movements took three or four tries to perfect, others were easy. The rest of the cast, Shep, Poppy and I all watched.

  “Marvelous,” said Shep at last. “I suggest that all of you try to follow Ursula and James. Some of you will not make all the movements. Don’t worry about that, but get the feel.”

  So there was James, completing a movement and then watching as first Ursula and then the rest of the cast performed it.

  While rehearsal was going on, the door opened and Roger came in.

  “Hello, Ham,” said Shep, “come to check on your investment?”

  “I’ve come to learn something about the theater, now I’ve got money in it,” said Roger, and sat down next to Poppy, who was sketching cat faces and costumes.

  The door opened again and a round young woman with short, honey-colored curls came panting in.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” she gasped. “I had no idea this place was so big or that there were three theaters, and I have been all over the place trying to find this rehearsal room. This feels almost like a city and I have been all over it.”

  “No harm done, Anne,” Shep said. “We haven’t really begun to set any business.”

  Roger took the opportunity to speak since the dancers had stopped working. “I want a show of hands,” he said, “of those who have have never had a tour of this place.”

  I held up my hand. James held up a paw and to our surprise, most of the rest of the cast held up their hands as well.

  “Very well,” said Roger. “As angel, I insist that at the next break, say in an hour, Shep lead us on a tour of the place. Will you do that?” He turned to Shep.

  “Splendid idea,” said Shep. “Now, back to work.”

  The dancers went back to learning how to be cats, and shortly, Tony Duke, who was the choreographer, was turning the movements James had shown Ursula into a ballet. Anne, the roly-poly one, was having a very hard time with some of the movements, particularly those that were ideally adapted for tall, thin dancers. At last she gave up and sat on one of the mats in the corner and began to cry softly. James went to sit beside her. She stroked him and blew her nose. “If only I were tall and thin,” she sighed to herself.

  James stood up and tapped her on the leg to get her attention. She looked at him. He rolled over on his back, curled his paws and cocked his head to one side. She lay down on the mat and did the same. He rolled over, made a ball, tucked his paws under his chin and raised his haunches. She did the same. James sat up and patted the air. James was training a fat cat.

  It was time for a break. The dancers put on sweaters and sat on the floor. An assistant who had arrived while everyone was at work passed out paper cups of fruit juice. Shep gave us five minutes’ rest and then we started out in two groups to tour the complex. Our first visit was to the Oliver Theater, the largest of the three theaters housed here. It was dark, of course, until performance time but Shep found the work lights, and we saw a steeply pitched amphitheater of seats and an elaborate stage with moving sections that can go around or up and down. As a group, we sat in front-row seats while Shep pushed buttons backstage and James sat on the movable parts as they went round and round or up and down. He loved going down below the stage level and waving his tail as he disappeared.

  Our next stop was the medium-size, conventional theater called the Lyttelton. It had seats pitched at the usual level, a proscenium arch and an orchestra pit, and it appeared to be in use at the moment. The curtain was open and a work light on. As we sat and watched, a very imposing black man appeared and crouched down in what appeared to be a very scruffy, dusty clump of grass on one side of the stage. He began roaring. Shep moved onto the stage. James went with him.

  “Harry Kinyata,” Shep called.

  From somewhere out of sight, a voice called “Just a minute,” and a flood of rosy light from the left and pale green light from the right brought the dirty clump of grass to vivid life. The man let out another roar and stood up. A technician made a slight adjustment in the lights.

  “Fine,” Harry called. Then the lights went out, leaving the work light.

  Harry came to the front of the stage. “Hello, Shep,” he said, holding out his hand. “What brings you here? I thought you were working down in number two.”

  “We are,” said Shep, “but most of the dancers have never been around this place, so we’re on an impromptu tour. What are you doing?”

  “Well,” Harry Kinyata now addressed all of us. “The producers of
this piece think of it as an African revue. It is called Hunt the White Hunter. It has the usual idiot plot to be found in a revue, but it provides a vehicle for African dances and African music. We open in three weeks with a cast that is almost entirely African.” During this small speech Harry was addressing the public. He has a wonderfully flexible voice and great presence and we felt the power of an outstanding personality. Suddenly he changed.

  “By the way, Shep,” he said in a perfectly ordinary voice, “you might be able to help me. I desperately need a young woman who should be attractive but need not be talented, to appear from time to time to identify a scene or character. I’ve been so caught up in getting my Africans acclimated in this cold, miserable country, I almost forgot about this one piece of casting.”

  “I know just the girl,” said Roger from the audience.

  “Who?” said Shep, who hadn’t even had time to give the matter any thought.

  “A girl named Ellen Bruce. She asked me if I could find a place for her in Cats International, but she is not much of a dancer and this might be just the thing for her. She’s very good-looking.”

  “Well, send her around today if you can,” said Harry. “I’ll certainly take a look at her.”

  Then he turned to us, the audience. “I hope you all will find some time to come to our performance. The future of Africa, indeed the future of us all, depends on a greater understanding of our different cultures, and such exchanges as this go a long way toward making that possible.” He bowed and turned to find James in the grassy clump. James let out a yowl. Harry let out a roar. James pounced. Harry pounced back. The curtains slowly closed. There was a scuffling sound and James crawled under the curtain and swaggered back to us, happily waving his tail.

  Our tour took us through restaurants, exhibition areas where art shows were held from time to time, through a book shop, and wide halls. Then we left the public areas and were conducted through the backstage complex of rehearsal halls, costume and scene design areas, where the costumes were made and stored and scenery constructed and stored. There are a large number of dressing rooms and offices and at last we arrived at the Cottesloe Theater, the little theater of the three, where Cats International would make its debut. Cottesloe is a small (for a theater) rectangular space. Everything in the space is movable except the floors of the two balconies on three sides of the rectangle. The seats can be arranged in any way desired. For our production they would be arranged around the sides, and the performers would work in the middle. The side walls and ceiling of the space were painted black and seemed to disappear along with the pipes to which the multitude of lights were attached.

  James was enchanted with the space, and while we sat on the floor in the center and listened to Shep outline the limitations of the performance, James danced along the pipes overhead, his silver fur glinting in the working lights.

  Anne waved at him. He jumped down and landed in her lap. Delighted with this effort, he ran up the pipes, found another spot and sailed through the air to her lap again.

  “Now,” said Shep, “starting next week, I will have the size of this space taped on our rehearsal room floor, and we will go to work in earnest with Tony and the music.”

  We returned to rehearsal hall two.

  As the dancers were getting ready to go to work again, James beckoned to Anne. She followed him. He walked up to Tony Duke, who is a lean, agile man with wispy grey hair.

  “What’s up, James?” Tony asked.

  James sat down and waved a paw at Anne. Anne gulped and went through her new repertoire of fat cat movements. In the beginning she was self-conscious but she began to enjoy herself and Tony began to grin.

  “Hey, Shep,” he called, “come see this.”

  Anne performed again.

  “We’ll make her a character,” said Shep, delighted. “She and Ursula will be splendid foils for each other.”

  Tony smiled at Anne, then he looked at James. “You are a clever fellow,” he said. James nodded casually. After all, people were telling him he was clever every day. I was secretly delighted that James had, at least for the moment, become absorbed in the theater. He was certainly almost his old, insouciant self.

  It was a long, hard day. We broke for lunch, which James and I had in the rehearsal hall because Shep had not been able to persuade any of the restaurant managers that a cat was the technical director of a production. In the end he brought us tuna fish sandwiches and cartons of milk. James didn’t mind much. He had worked harder, physically, all morning than he ever does, and he went to sleep immediately after eating the tuna out of a sandwich. I took the opportunity to visit the office of the costume department, where Poppy showed me the sketches she had already done for some of the cats. She and an engineer were working on the problem of the cats’ tails. They hoped, through a series of straps and strings, to be able to control the tails and give them catlike movements.

  During the afternoon some music was added and Tony devised some exercises he expected his dancers to do to make the catlike movements they must perform more accurate. This required James to repeat many movements a number of times, and he stretched and pounced and arched his back and ran across the floor most of the afternoon.

  On the way home, he paid almost no attention to anyone in the crowded train. At last, we were safely back in flat twelve. I poured a little Laphroaig in James’s saucer and some in a glass with a little water for myself and had just settled down when the bell rang and Roger announced he was there with Ellen. James barely opened an eye.

  Ellen had recovered her self-possession. She sat on the floor at Roger’s feet.

  “She got the job,” Roger announced. “Harry Kinyata was quite taken with her. Your career is on its way,” he said, ruffling her hair.

  I noticed a slight twitch of distress on her face at Roger’s gesture, but she smiled happily at him.

  I heard a slight hiss, but James appeared to be sound asleep.

  When we went out to dinner, he declined and walked wearily up the stairs but I noted he seemed just tired, not depressed.

  Life now changed drastically for James. He spent most of his time at the theater supervising the rehearsals of Cats International, so he spent less time than he used to at Thwaites and almost no time checking out the tenants at Baron’s.

  As I was leaving one morning, one of the maids, Maria, met me in the hall.

  “That couple in flat eleven is truly dirty,” she said. “I can’t imagine how they ever got in here. James spots that type right away. They have paid in advance so we can’t throw them out, but they are awful.”

  Each afternoon when James came back from the theater, he was truly tired, but the workout was doing him good. He was a leaner, trimmer cat.

  The very afternoon of the day María had spoken to me, I was determined to mention the matter to James, but Roger and Ursula had come to my flat with James and he was busy showing them how he could walk on the windowsill on his hind legs. Of course, since Roger was there, Ellen had followed. She was talking at some length about how hard it was for a girl of exceptional breeding to get along with no money.

  At last, James could stand it no more. He jumped off the windowsill, trotted over to Ellen where she sat on the floor at Roger’s feet and smacked her on the mouth with his paw.

  Ellen looked greatly startled and said no more.

  Ursula said good-bye and left.

  “I guess I’d better get you fed,” said Roger.

  “How lovely,” said Ellen, leaping to her feet. “Can we go to Mon Plaisir?”

  “I guess so,” said Roger without enthusiasm. “I really had something simpler in mind.”

  Ellen has selective deafness and she was already on the phone making a reservation.

  “They’ll take us if we hurry,” she said.

  “Fine,” said Roger cheerfully. “Come along, you two.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Ellen, not at all distressed, “they only have room for two.”

  “Then we’ll go
someplace else,” said Roger.

  Ellen looked really distressed.

  “Go on,” I said. “James is exhausted and we’ll have a bowl of soup right here. I’ll see you at rehearsal tomorrow.”

  They left, Ellen beaming triumphantly.

  “James,” I said, “do you think Roger really likes Ellen?”

  James shook his head. He shrugged his trim shoulders and yawned a huge yawn.

  “Want some soup?” I asked.

  He shook his head. He walked to the door. I opened it. He turned on the stairs and waved a paw at me. He was nearly his old self.

  The next day I took James to the theater. The rehearsals had been going very well and only the finale was left to be finally set. Poppy wanted my opinion on some patterns she was using on the set. Cats International was one of her few forays into set design as well as costume.

  We were in rehearsal room two. The man at the upright piano played an introduction and the dancers assembled for the finale. James, carried away by the music, joined the dancers. He knew all the steps—after all he had invented many of them—and he danced with Ursula and Anne in front of the rest. He was a fluid, grey streak of movement, arching, stretching, pouncing, playing with an imaginary ball. As the music became more insistent, he climbed a flat that was leaning against the wall and, inspired by the crescendo as the music rose to a climax, he launched himself into the air and landed safely on a beanbag chair, used as a prop in the scene.

  There was a burst of spontaneous applause. James grinned, then assumed a modest attitude, but he clearly was delighted with the opportunity to show off.

  “That would make the most spectacular finale,” said Shep, slinging James on his shoulder. “We could introduce him a little earlier. What do you think, Tony?”