by Lea Tassie
***
After Gareth, Sue and Beanbag left, taking with them three dozen large brown eggs, I said, "It's time I started my career as an egg lady; the fridge is still full of eggs." I didn't expect it to be demanding; we were on a back road and most of the customers would be neighbors.
Ben went out to nail a sign on the gate post saying we had eggs for sale and I went to tidy the living room. George lay sprawled in a patch of sunshine, green eyes glinting under half-shut lids, whiskers white against his dark fur. He looked so relaxed I wished I could trade lives with him for a while. A cat sunning himself, utterly abandoned to the sensual joy of warm sunshine, is the best demonstration of how to live each moment to the fullest, an art form in itself.
When Ben came in, George had twisted himself into a black-striped pretzel to bathe a hind leg. When that was finished, he unwound himself, licked a paw and wiped his face with it.
"Look at him," Ben said. "He's actually washing his face like a human being."
"Don't say that! He'd be very insulted to be compared to a lowly human."
"Have you noticed he licks his paw on the average of four times before wiping his face once?" Ben watched George wash the other hind leg and resume bathing his face. "He licked his paw only once that time and wiped his face four times." It was not the first time I'd noticed that cost accountants like counting things.
"A choreographer could create an interesting dance sequence from his washing routine," I said. George ignored our rude personal comments and continued his graceful ballet solo. Finally he stretched out, rolled on his back and gazed at the ceiling.
"Contemplating the mysteries of life," Ben said.
"I wish he'd spend more time doing that. He's clever and funny but sometimes he makes life so interesting that I yearn for a little boredom. I wonder if he's ready to accept a second cat."
Ben looked doubtful. "He was ready to attack Beanbag. I think he'd give another cat a rough time."
"Maybe he does need more time to realize he has a permanent home with us. But I want another cat, so he'll have to get used to the idea sometime."
"We don't need two. George does a fine job of catching rats and mice. Anyway, he's special. You'd never find another one with a personality like that."
Suddenly George sat up and cocked his head.
"What do you hear?" I asked. He leapt to the back of the couch and looked toward the garden. Ben went to the window.
"Deer!" He dashed out the front door, leapt over the veranda railing and ran toward the garden. He flapped his arms at the deer, but was within six feet of them before they moved and within three before they reluctantly jumped the fence and ambled down the slope into the trees.
Ben came back red-faced and furious. "I'm going to phone Cal Peterson. Maybe he knows a way of getting rid of those corn stealers without building a ten-foot fence."
"You should have taken George out there. He'd have bagged one all by himself."
"Don't be funny," Ben snapped. When he came back from phoning, he said, "Cal says we should put urine in tin cans and place them every few feet along the fence."
"Why would that work?"
"He didn't know, he just said it might. Or we can tie lengths of our hair to the fence posts."
"I wasn't planning to have a haircut any time soon. And you don't have enough to even think about it." Ben had spent ten years in the military during his first marriage and still favored very short hair.
"Well, I'm going to try the urine. Don't flatten any more tin cans for the recycle box, okay? And how about potting those cherry tomatoes I bought yesterday?"
"Why don't you put them in the garden?"
"The plants and pots and soil cost me over twenty dollars; I'm not letting the deer eat them."
"Ben, you know they'll die if I touch them. Remember what happened when I tried to grow some on the condo balcony?"
"You can't possibly ruin cherry tomatoes." His faith was touching, if misguided.
I spent a half hour filling pots with black soil and crooning over the plants to make up for my ineptness. The veranda seemed a good place for them; they'd get plenty of sunlight, yet be protected by the house.
Later that night, after wondering aloud if George would ever catch another crow, the Houseboy said, "I suppose he's like Tiberius and Nero. He's become bored with the mundane – now he demands the exotic."
We resumed watching television and were soon engrossed in the last five minutes of a particularly suspenseful murder mystery. I was aware of George walking purposefully along the hall past the doorway, tail carried high, but he was almost into my studio before I realized he was carrying something large and furry in his mouth.
The Houseboy went in pursuit. With a last yearning glance at the mystery, which was at the point where the Inspector gathers the suspects in the drawing room, lights his pipe and says, 'Now all shall be revealed!', I followed Ben and reached the hall in time to see George drop the body of a rabbit on the carpet. The body came to life and fled back down the hall into the master bedroom, George hot on his tail, the Houseboy hot on George's and me lagging behind. The rabbit went under the desk. George tried to follow but Ben grabbed his tail and I wondered if any of them would notice if I quietly went back to watch television.
With a great scuffling of claws, the rabbit leapt on George's chair, across his throne and out the window. The Houseboy had managed to grab more of George's anatomy than just his tail and the King was swearing in Siamese. I closed the bedroom window to give the rabbit a chance and rushed back to the living room just in time to see the credits roll by.
"George," I said, when he came back, still struggling in Ben's arms, "your timing is lousy. Next time, wait for a commercial break before you bag an elephant."
VII - Uncaged Cousins
Ginna called me again from Dawson Creek. "Tom's gone to Calgary to rent a house for us and driving to Victoria from there. I'd like to find a way of coming south that doesn't involve changing planes and lugging two cats in and out of taxis. Any suggestions?"
"I'll come and get you." Aunt Ruth, who lived in Fort St. John, might have driven Ginna and the cats down but she'd gone to Europe for a month. Anyway, I enjoyed driving and I hadn't seen the north country for a long time. Also, my short story had come back with a rejection slip attached to it and I wanted a break from trying to figure out where to send it next. And maybe a day or two alone in the car would provide me inspiration for a new story. "But will Clyde and Jeremy be okay traveling by car?"
"Of course. You worry too much."
"I guess they're all grown up now." I peeled George off my shoulder. His Royal Highness didn't approve of me talking on the phone when I could be more usefully employed paying attention to him.
"Clyde's turned into a master hunter," Ginna said, "but Jeremy's a lap cat."
"Do you think they'll get along with George? He's very territorial."
"If they don't, we'll have to keep them separated."
After hanging up I started worrying about leaving George alone with Ben. The King had progressed to sleeping on the bed more than he did on me and splitting his time between Ben's lap and mine. If I deserted him, would it bring back all his insecurities?
The prospect of escaping from the farm and routine for three or four days was too tempting. "He won't be any problem," I said to Ben. "All you have to do is feed and water him. And keep him out of trouble."
"What do you mean, that's all?" Ben combed his beard with his fingers and eyed the King, who was still toying with the phone cord. "While you're away, I'll make him a scratching post with a little house on top. I've got some old carpet stowed away in the work shop."
"Good idea."
"He deserves some luxuries. I haven't seen a mouse in here since he arrived."
I refrained from reminding him that he'd once thought traps were a better solution and went to pack a bag. I'd be taking the Chevy sedan, leaving Ben stuck with bouncing Blue Betsy for four days but he didn't mind; he'd even bought
a straw hat to wear when he was driving her. Next thing he'd be wearing overalls and sporting a red bandana.
I set off in glorious sunshine, excited about being on the road, though it took four hours and two ferry crossings before I got to a road that actually went somewhere.
The drive through the Fraser Valley was delightful; dairy cows grazed on green meadows and the smell of fresh cut hay filled my nostrils. The Fraser canyon, which I had never driven before, sliced dramatically through steep fir-clad mountains, its wild beauty very different from the Valley. The Cariboo, its rolling brown hills dotted with sagebrush and ponderosa pine, was different again. I was in a mellow mood when I arrived in Dawson Creek.
Ginna met me in the driveway and we hugged. "What have you done to your hair? I love it." Her hair was as black as it had been when she was a girl and cut short to swirl around her neck in a pageboy cut.
Her hazel eyes twinkled. "I dyed it to cover up the gray. Besides, I was tired of wearing it long like yours."
"You look great. Are you still running five miles every day?"
"I don't have a perfect record," Ginna said, "not with the icy roads we got here last winter." She led me into the living room. "I'll order a pizza. We can eat that with our fingers. All our possessions have gone in the moving truck except for some of my clothes and the two sleeping bags we'll use tonight."
After the pizza, we settled in for the rest of the evening to catch up on the news and family gossip.
"Are you getting reconciled to farm life?" Ginna asked, when we finally headed for bed.
"It's not as bad as I thought, but I do miss Victoria. And my friends. In spite of my job, I loved the life I lived there."
"Well, wait and see," said my sister. "Nothing is forever."
Next morning we loaded the car. "Where are the cat carriers?" I asked.
"I don't have any."
"How do you get them to the vet?"
She looked at me as if I were crazy. "I carry them in my arms."
"Don't they try to run away?"
"Not so far."
I was envious. Why was Ginna blessed with such docile felines when every cat I'd ever had would disappear for a week at the slightest hint of being put in a cat carrier or car or taken to the vet? Then I was besieged with a new worry. How on earth would Ben manage if George became ill?
"They'll freak out if they're loose in the car, Ginna."
"No, they won't. They like car rides."
I didn't want to argue, but I knew that as soon as we were in the car and I started the engine, two whirlwinds of screaming fur would be rebounding off every surface.
Now the cats had disappeared. "They must know we're planning something evil for them," I said. We found them sunning themselves on the porch roof, quite unconcerned. "Okay, how do we get them down?"
"No problem. We go upstairs and I climb out on the roof and hand them in to you."
Soon the four of us were tucked cosily into the car. Slim, long-legged Jeremy, with gray fur so thick and soft that Ginna called him her velour cat, lolled on her lap. Clyde, with long white fluffy fur on belly and chest and a mixture of brown, black and orange on the rest of him, sat on the back seat.
I rubbed a hand across my forehead. "You going to behave yourselves, boys?"
"I forgot you didn't know. They're not boys, they're girls," Ginna said.
"Then why did you name them Clyde and Jeremy?"
"We thought they were male when we got them. By the time we found out they weren't, the names had stuck. And we've never been able to get out of the habit of referring to them as 'he' and 'him'."
"If they're neutered, I guess it doesn't matter."
Ginna smiled. "They are. Anyway, they don't care what we call them."
I started the car and braced myself for an explosion.
Nothing happened.
While I backed out of the driveway, my three passengers calmly observed the scenery. I shook my head and aimed the car south. I didn't mind being wrong, but nothing in my life thus far had prepared me for angelic cats.
The miles rolled by and the angels got restless. They explored the back seat and the floor where their dishes were, but refused to touch food and drink that vibrated. They meandered to the back window, then returned to the front seat to complain gently about the boring environment. Ginna was kept busy removing first one, then the other, from under my feet, off my lap, my head, or the steering wheel.
At seven that evening, we quit. I didn't want to drive one more inch and Ginna was sick of prying cats off the brake pedal. I pulled into a motel with a vacancy sign.
"I'll register," she said. "Hang on to the cats."
I got a firm grip on them and Ginna was out and had the door shut before the cats wriggled out of my hands. Five minutes later she was back, tapping on the window. I rolled it down two inches.
"There's a sign saying they don't allow pets."
I groaned.
"It's okay. I didn't tell them we had any. We're registered, but we'll have to smuggle the babies in."
"And smuggle them back in the morning."
"What for?" Ginna said. "It'll be too late for the manager to kick us out then."
I eased the car into our parking slot. "Now what?" The cats tried to crawl out through the two-inch gap above the window.
"I'll open the unit door. Then you hold Clyde and Jeremy so I can get back in the car and grab one of them. You'll have to hold the other one while I get out again."
This was accomplished with less fuss than I'd expected, but I noticed she'd left the motel door open when she came back for the second cat. "You didn't shut the door! Jeremy will get out."
"You worry too much. I locked him in the bathroom."
Ginna took Clyde and I hurried in with the cats' food, water dish and litter box. The cats strolled around as if they owned the place and seemed quite contented.
When we returned from dinner, the cats were still being angels. They snuggled on Ginna's bed while I lay awake until very late, worrying about my own demon feline and imagining in horrific detail all the major disasters that might greet me when I got home.
Next morning we put the cats and their paraphernalia back into the car. "How do we get in without letting them get out?" I asked.
"Stand on the driver's side and scratch at the window. They'll come to see what you want," Ginna said.
To my surprise it worked. Both cats stood on my seat with their angelic little paws on the window and Ginna slid in and shut the door. Then she held them while I got in.
"Hey, we're getting good at this."
Ginna smiled. "I told you it would be easy."
Two hundred miles later we stopped for lunch and did it again. I thought the cats would catch on, but they came to the window, convinced I had treats for them. I felt guilty for fooling them and wondered if they were stupid. George would never have fallen for that trick more than once.
In early afternoon we drove into the Fraser Canyon. On the way north, I'd driven on the inside lane, against the mountain. Now we were on the outside where the sheer walls of the canyon, hardly a car width away, dropped to the river thousands of feet below. I'd forgotten about my old fear of heights, now returning as full-fledged terror.
I clung to the steering wheel, palms sweating, trying not to look at the steep drop on my right. But my gaze was drawn back again and again, and each time I could feel the car beginning to move toward the edge. Heavy traffic, mostly freight trucks, roared beside and behind us, horns blaring as I lost speed. All I wanted to do was stop the car, get out, lie down and cling to solid pavement.
"What's wrong?" Ginna asked.
"I'm scared." A blast of air from a passing semi made the car shudder. "We're going to go over the edge into the canyon; I know it."
"No, we're not. There's lots of room on the road. Do you want me to drive?"
"There's no place to stop. Besides, I can't keep the cats away from you if I'm lying on the floor with my eyes shut tight."
"I don't remember you being afraid of heights when we were kids," she said.
"I was too ashamed to admit it." Ginna, a year younger than me, had been a fearless tomboy. "Talk to me. Tell me stories. Keep me distracted."
"What kind of stories?"
"Anything! I don't care. Something bizarre. Or funny. Tell me about your sex life. Just get my mind off this horrible canyon."
I've never found it easy to tell stories on demand, but Ginna came through as if she'd trained for it. She told me tales about the cats, then every dirty joke she'd ever heard, and those got me through the next mile, and the next, and the next, and finally out of the canyon. I pulled off the road onto a side street in the first small town and sagged against the backrest.
"We're almost there," Ginna said. "Another hundred miles to the Tsawwassen ferry and then another few miles to the Adriana ferry and we'll be home."
I lit a cigarette and realized my hands weren't shaking any more. "You're right. Nothing to it." I rolled my window down to suck in a big breath of fresh air.
Something landed on my shoulder and the next thing I knew, Jeremy was out the window and streaking toward a small yellow house with flower baskets hanging at the corners.
"Oh, Ginna, I'm so sorry!" I hurriedly rolled the window up before Clyde could follow. "I'm such an idiot." I felt like crying; my thoughtlessness had lost Ginna her special velour cat.
"Grab Clyde," she said, getting out of the car. "I'll go look for Jeremy."
I stroked Clyde and bit my lip to hold the tears back. If she couldn't find Jeremy I'd never be able to make it up to her. But she'd barely reached the end of the driveway when he trotted down it with a pink fuchsia in his mouth and dropped it at her feet. She picked up cat and fuchsia and strolled back to the car. I held Clyde while they got in.
"Good boy," she said to Jeremy. "You always bring me flowers, don't you?"
"You're joking."
Ginna laughed. "No, I'm not. He used to sit for hours under our hanging baskets in Dawson Creek, waiting for flowers to drop, then pounce on them and bring them to me."
"Maybe he could teach George to bring me flowers instead of rats and rabbits."
We made the three o'clock ferry, leapt out of the car and locked our two frustrated and now vociferous passengers inside. For the next hour and a half we walked on deck, admiring the ocean and catching up on more family gossip. I was so relieved that the Fraser canyon was behind us and both cats were in the car that I didn't worry about one single solitary thing.
As the ferry nosed into the dock, we returned to the crowded car deck and I reached in my bag for the car keys.
They weren't there.
I searched frantically through my pockets. Not there, either.
"Ginna, did I give you the car keys?"
"No."
"Now what will we do? I've lost them."
She peered into the car. "They're in the ignition."
We stared at each other. The windows were shut except for the driver's side, which I'd left open an inch so the cats could get air. All around us car engines were being revved by drivers anxious to get off the ferry and hit the road again. Our line of cars began to move and the ones behind us honked angrily. The cats, looking frightened, were pacing restlessly inside the car. I thought they must be as terrified of the noise as I had been of the canyon.
"Do you think, in the next five seconds, we could teach Jeremy to pull out the keys and hand them to me through the window?" I asked.
"He's not that wonderful." Ginna went in search of a crew member to rescue us.
Five minutes later a deck hand unlocked the door with the help of a coat hanger. "Good thing you left that window cracked," he said. "These Chevys are hell to break into."
Once more we went through our ritual of climbing into the car without letting the cats out and were waved off the ferry by impatient crew members.
A mile down the road, Ginna said, "You feel like stopping for coffee?"
I moaned.
"You worry too much," she said. "You always did. I was only kidding."
When Ginna and I walked in the back door, Ben took one look at me and stuck a stiff scotch in my hand. I collapsed on the couch while Ginna shut her two babies in my studio.
"Rough trip?" He mixed a gin and tonic for Ginna.
"Let me put it this way." I took a bracing sip of scotch. "Clyde and Jeremy were unbelievably well-behaved. But I'll never take another cat anywhere, ever, unless he's in a cat carrier."
"Never mind," Ben said, "George missed you as much as I did. All he's done for four days is follow me around, demanding to know where I hid your body."
"Is that really all he did?" I asked, remembering the awful things I thought he might have done.
"He threw up on the bed once," Ben admitted. "He was asleep on it when the urge hit him. He didn't do it because I was mean to him." He caught my expression. "And, yes, I did wash the bedspread."
"Where is he?"
"The last time I saw him, he was sitting on the fence teasing Cal's goats."
The cat door slammed and George raced into the living room. After so much concern about my absence, did His Majesty greet his head slave? Of course not.
He turned his back and sat in the doorway, pointedly ignoring me. When he decided I'd been punished enough for leaving him, he wandered over and sniffed my ankles. Scenting Clyde and Jeremy, he turned his back on me again and walked away, tail flicking.
"I guess he thinks I've been unfaithful."
"He's more concerned that you went missing for four days. Slaves are valuable property, you know. In ancient Rome, they were sometimes branded on the face to discourage them from running away."
"I'll stay out of range of his claws for a while then. Did you make a scratching post?"
Ben nodded. "It's in the workshop. I thought you could give it to him as a present to make up for having left him all alone for four days."
"He wasn't alone. He had you."
"Tell him that."
Ben had become a true cat lover. When I got another cat I'd have far more trouble with George than with Ben. Two cats, or half a dozen, would be no problem when we moved back to Victoria at the end of two years. My Aunt Peggy's house was roomy and so was her yard. My only problem at the moment was to convince George that we needed another cat.
George returned ten minutes later, leapt onto my lap, purred, and nuzzled my chin lovingly. I was so glad he'd forgiven me for deserting him that I didn't even care about the cat hair in my scotch.