A lot of them came for their kids. “Ooooh, Daddy, lookit that one! Can I have it? Can I have it?” “You sure? You don’t want to look more?” Some came on their doctor’s advice. “No no no! Not that one. Too frisky. Something quiet, for a blood pressure problem.” The lonely came for a companion. “Maybe I’d be better off with a dog?” Others wanted pedigree, “No alley cats. You don’t have anything else?” Some shopped for replacements as if deceased cats were small appliances. “Tortoise tabby like my Eubie, may he rest in peace. You got any?” Especially on weekends, they came to pass the time like they’d go to a zoo.
Most wanted the just-weaned with teeth, but sometimes settled for six-month olds–if neutered. The birdbrained Calico, at nine months over the hill to begin with, in her anxiety to get a home cooked her goose completely by plastering herself against the cage door, giving browsers a good look at her milk-swollen teats. “Fucking bastards have no pity, don’t care if you live or die.” Steamed, she’d hiss like the place’s old radiator.
Little Alice connected first, Simon soon after, Bob and I last because Janet told potential takers we couldn’t be separated, we’d pine away. Undeniably true—but we doted on Little Alice, our only sister, all charm and sweetness, we wanted her with us too. So when lookers came the three of us would creep to a far corner of the cage: For bad as the pound was, there we had one another and Janet, there’s where Mama’d know to find us. Like slaves on the auction block who’d cough as if one foot was in the grave to discourage bidders, we’d hunch in our corner with closed eyes, sighing. “You fucking nuts? You want to stay in this hellhole long enough to get the needle?” the Calico would spit out before going to throw herself against the grate, to mew plaintively or purr like a tuned engine if she got the slightest tumble. “Retard assholes!” Simon seconded before joining her at the front where he’d put on his crossest face so’s to resemble Morris of catfood fame as much as possible—if adopters overlooked his baleful eye and rodent features. And Janet would coax us forward with a worried frown.
Anyway, thanks to–-who else?—Linda, in the end our stratagem failed. The day she marched Martha Merkel over to our cage we lost Little Alice. Shooing the Calico and Simon out of the way, “That one. The little gray one,” she said, fingering our little sister. “The one with —.” “Oh, I see her, I see the sweet little girl. Oh, she does look just like my Georgina at that age!” Brushing her tired-looking eyes with a chapped hand, “Oh, yes, I’d love to hold her, but—” Margaret Merkel hesitantly accepted Linda’s hard-sell offer, “she’s so shy. I wouldn’t want to scare her. I—” But qualmless Linda already had our terrified Little Alice out of the cage and was handing her over.
Bob and I reached the door in time to have it slammed in our faces. Helpless, we looked out at our sister panting in terror, looking wild-eyed at us over the shoulder she clawed in a futile attempt to free herself, unconsoled by Martha’s gentle strokes and whispered assurances she’d be given the best home, she’d be loved and cherished. “Okey-doke then,” barked Linda. “Come with me to sign the papers and we’ll wrap it up.” Yowling in unison, broken-hearted, Bob and I watched her being carried away. “Good riddance,” said The Calico. “The less competition the better.” “Can you beat it? She lucks out,” grunted Simon, “and bitches like the world’s ended. I should be so cursed.”
Losing Little Alice was as bad as losing Mama, maybe worse, because we’d been together longer. And telling myself that for the second time in his miserable life Simon was right: She’d been lucky to get a good home; telling myself it was all for the best: She’d be warm and fed, she’d be fixed like Mama wanted, didn’t help much. Her going left a hole in my heart. My slight consolation was that time’d scab over the hole a little every passing day—just as little by little it was scabbing over the wound Mama’d left. Not that scabs’re real healing—far from it. Real healing is from the inside out while memories crack scabs open and make them bleed.
To this day, in the vet’s office where FIV takes me too often, if a cat coughs I hear Mama, the scab over the loss of her cracks open and bleeds, from my carrying case I strain to see into other cases on laps and floor. To this day, if I see the super-model cat on TV who looks like Little Alice’d look now, ditto. “Hey,” laughs Booley when I leap from his lap to reach the screen image before it goes away. “What’s with you every time you see that one? Take it easy, Sis! You’re supposed to be a sick man.” I touch the image with my paw in the split second before it goes, leaving me with a fresh sense of loss. Dispirited, I return to his lap and settle into my current state of inertia and nausea.
Still, time’s palliative’s better than nothing, right? It alleviates to an extent anxious expectancies which make life hell. Hoping and waiting for Mama to show any minute had led to misery. When I finally began letting go of the notion she’d definitely be back and settled for hoping, I’d fared better; and though he never said so, I suspect by that time Bob’d given up even hoping. We stopped talking about her so much, spoke mainly about Little Alice, telling each other she’d be fine since virtue was its own reward and no kitten was purer than she was. “She’ll be OK,” we assured each other time and again, while beneath our verbal acceptance of what Fate doles out the festering fear that one day we’d be separated grew stronger.
A week after Little Alice, Simon left with a couple Linda, purse-lipped and put-upon, brought to our cage. “What’re you bringing us here for?” the man barked, and her reply that his wife asked to see kittens, that anyway he hadn’t liked any of the dogs, was given through gritted teeth. “A kitty,” the wife confirmed, “is what I want, remember? For me! I’m alive, I breathe, I have my needs. You gotta have a dog? So, we come back some other time and get you your damned dog.” And I have to assume this difference of preference was what led crafty Simon to tailor his usual shtick to market demand. He puffed himself up, arched his bony back, looked his fiercest, and let out a menacing doggish growl. “Hey, Vinnie!” said the wife. “Get that one. Macho like you. Hey, can we see it? It’s a male, what else, right?” “Right,” said Linda pulling sly Simon out, turning him around, lifting his tail. “Hey, willya lookit them on such a little guy!” marveled the wife, and Simon seeing things were going his way, didn’t raise so much as a meow, let alone a paw, against the indignity. “Let Vinnie hold him first,” she said with a covert wink to Linda. “I don’t know about this guy. He’s maybe a little too tough for me.” And practically home free, Simon closed his eyes, butted his head against Vinnie’s cheek with something between a purr and a growl. “Great, he likes you, who knows why. Here, lemme try him.” At which point in order to close the deal, Simon really outdid himself: all purr, all nuzzle the neck, all pussycat. What a fraud.
So it was goodbye to the Genghis Khan of our family. Off he rode in triumph on the shoulder of the wife with a “So long, suckers” to us who didn’t mourn his departure and a hiss to the Calico who hissed back a curse. “May he drown in dog shit for what he did to my teats!” And although I didn’t wish that on him, I agreed in my heart some reprisal was in order. To this day my muzzle bears the scars of his aggression. Ah, well. Biology can’t be relied upon to produce brothers in the true sense of the word, and I suppose to have had Bob in my life is a blessing most cats never know.
Got that right, Fairbanks! says his voice in my head.
Anyway Simon’s departure left just the two of us and The Calico who was getting more frantic and unhinged, more impossible to get along with every day. Mainly, now that we had our milk teeth, she argued about food, complained we ate more than our share: Not that it wasn’t to be expected, the slop served being fit for pigs only, and we were pigs in cats’ clothing alright, she knew pigs when she saw them alright. Needless to say, my silent meow did nothing to soften her hostility. And word from the grapevine that every day without adoption for a cat her age meant a day closer to the needle did nothing to lessen her woes. “Oh, oh, oh, where’re my babies? What is this fucking death camp?
Why am I cursed? Wh
at’ll they do to me?”
And so it continued day in day out until the black day Linda brought the “farmer” to our cage. “The two in the back’re just about a month old.” She had a bad cold. She blew her red ski-run nose and sneezed, dabbed the bags under her squinty eyes with a sodden tissue. That day, word had it, she was in even a worse mood than usual because she and Janet had been up all night bottle-feeding two litters of unweaned orphans of the storm left on the doorstep. Snow blew against the frosted-up window on the opposite wall, the heat wasn’t coming up too well, altogether a bad day heavy with dark omens.
“Look good to me, them two little buggers,” said the bastard passing himself off as a farmer. “Yep, them two’ll fit the bill alrighty. Them’ll make the wife and my little girls happy as clams and that there dog I picked out–he’s for me, a man’s dog to go hikin. No, I ain’t no hunter, Lordy no. I love animals more’n I love some of my relatives. Har har.” And Linda sneezing, he stroking his gray beard, babbling about the joys of rural living for man and beast, off they went to sign the papers which condemned us and the dog who shared our fate to the worst hell any animal can know.
Of course we didn’t know that then. Then we were thanking Cat Almighty that not only weren’t we being separated, but we were going from a place we hated to what sounded like a resort fit for Him Himself. We’d heard the SOB’s spiel about his farm way back from a country road where a cat could run and roam in peace and climb trees till the cows come home. “Speakin of cows, them kitties’ll just lap my Flossie’s milk right up, har har.”
We couldn’t believe our luck. “Turn it down, you shits,” growled The Calico about our purring. The only fly in the ointment was saying goodbye to Janet, but it was better than saying goodbye to her in the back room, right? Sad to say, by then painful goodbyes were nothing new to me. In fact my entire life seems to have been about partings—after a while, except for Booley, everyone I’ve loved has fallen away, fallen away.
C’mon, Fairbanks, I’m still here. In alternate form maybe, but I do my best, Bob says in my head.
Anyway, after the papers were signed, Janet was the one who got us ready for our trip to Shangrila. “I told Linda I had to say goodbye to you guys,” she said, beaming from ear-to-ear. “You’re going to have the life you deserve,” she said after one last tickle under the chin, one last silent meow, one final nuzzle behind the ears, one last hug before lowering us into our carriers. “So long, suckers,” said the Calico. “Don’t take any wooden nickels.”
From the back of the van we shared with a yelping dog we watched Janet wave goodbye through a blur of gusting snow. She hadn’t bothered to put on a jacket. Then we turned the corner and she was left behind.
Janet’s one of the fallen away I loved and will never forget. Whenever Booley takes me to the vet, just like I hope one of the coughing cats in the waiting room might be Mama, I hope someone else I loved, maybe Janet, will be either sitting there or will walk in. I always hope something good’ll come of the rotten ride to the vet’s wailing all the way and the smell of disinfectant once we get there making me feel even sicker than usual.
Hope springs eternal, Fairbanks. It can’t hurt to hope.
5
Still, I can’t deny that happiness over liberation from the cage, the smells, The Calico, eclipsed sadness over leaving Janet. Such is life. Survival’s the thing, right? We were young and alive and expecting good things—not the least of which was cow’s milk. After some initial jitters we even found being in a moving vehicle—an experience normally anathema to cats— tolerable. At the wheel the farmer bellowed along with the blaring radio between swigs from a brown bottle. All was good as it gets including the dog traveling with us who made it clear right off the bat he was no cat hater, no dog to fear, by holding forth as if we were already the pals we’d quickly become.
“Ach, that place! That voman, that Linda who took care—a viper!” A big talker, on and on he went about how she badgered dogs just for barking (“Vot dog von’t bark ven excited?”); what she called dogs (“Shit machines, vorse.”) “Ach,” he sighed, “vat good that voman does, she does mit cold heart!” We were on the same side, alright. “But vhy beat a dead horse? She vas saint compared to my owners. Vhere ve’re going? No vorse can it be than vhere I vas before her! Yah, into this box you can’t see, but I am big dog—German shepherd on Mutti’s side, Husky from Eskimo fadder. So I am made vatch dog. Shep, they called me, you too should, pleased to meet you. Ach!” Letting out a growl Simon couldn’t have duplicated, he went on to describe the yard where he’d been chained to a tree and never unchained so he had to stand in his own shit (“You should pardon my French”), cook like frankfurter in summers, freeze winters, be drenched always (“Cats and dogs it rained there, never mit little sprinkles.”), mostly sick like a dog; mostly hungry and thirsty.
A born story teller, Shep. A wordspinner whose soft bark transported me to the inner city where he lived in a smog of chemicals and garbage, slept in filth, cowered from stone throwers, shook all over when shots pockpocked the bedlam there, ached with hunger and gagged on thirst, whimpered under the chain cutting his neck. To get out of the snow or rain or scorching sun I watched him struggle to reach a dachshund-size doghouse. “But this chain–-so short they made I strangle, can’t reach—still hoarse you can hear, still scarred you should see from the beatings they gave if I couldn’t stop myself from crying in the night how much I vanted just to die.”
Panting and sniffling he paused to get a grip on himself. And that’s when the farmer slammed on the brakes so hard our carriers danced. “HOLD IT NOW, YOU GUYS! What do I see but a pussy cat needing my help?” Grinning from ear to ear, he swivelled round, grabbed a net on a long pole and leapt out.
“Here puss, puss, puss,” he called. But the cat after a disdainful glance in his direction started to run. “Come to papa, meow, meow!” Laughing, swinging his net, the farmer started after her. “Meow, meow, meow.” “Such a mensch,” babbled Shep. “Look how he tries to help.” And that’s how I saw it too. But not Bob. “What’s with the net?” he asked, frowning. “What’s he chasing that cat for?” “Because he wants to bring it to the farm, Einstein,” I answered. “Why else? What’s the problem?” “Memory, Fairbanks, memory. Remember what Mama said about men who chase animals to hurt them or sell them? There were plenty of cats in the pound he could’ve had. I smell a rat, brother.”
To say I’d been flabbergasted would be putting it mildly. How in Almighty Cat’s name he could’ve seen any connection between Mama’s warning and the farmer had been beyond me. “C’mon, Bobby!” I poo-pooed. “Mama meant a guy like the farmer who rescues animals? Gimme a break!” “Cats!” snorted Shep. “Alvays mit vorry and suspicion. Don’t vorry so much. He is good man, he brings her to good home. Your brother knows.” “Maybe. But what about she’s got a collar?” Bob said, eyes glued to the outside. “What about he’s chasing her up the driveway of the house? What about—? Never mind, he’s coming back, she got away and he doesn’t like it, looks mad as hell.” “Vhy vould he like it? He vanted to help her!” “Right, Bobby. Just forget about it, alright?” I advised, telling myself that as much as I loved my brother he could be a pain in the ass. And on our way again, listening to Shep pick up where he left off, I didn’t give his crazy idea a second thought.
“Christmas Eve it vas, a night so cold my fadder vould have froze, my paws didn’t feel no more, numb all over I vas. Also big dumbhead because I go make matters vorse by trying again to get to the dog house. So I vind up choked mit the chain, howling and howling, not giving a shit I make them mad. Vell, that time it payed. The daughter, a little kid, ran out and unhooked. ‘Go, man!” she told. “Beat it! Run like hell!”
“So? So? Then what happened?” I’d prompted when he took a breath to scratch his fleas so hard his carrier jumped. “So for vagrancy, for garbage can vandalism—can you imagine?—they pick me up, Animal Control, I am brought to the pound, the farmer choose me, I go mit you boys to a go
od life. Happy ending.” “Let’s hope so,” muttered Bob. “But I worry abut that cat.” “Give it a rest, Bob.” “Yah, listen to your brother.”
But after that episode you paid attention to me–at least most of the time. Right, Fairbanks? Ah well, a prophet’s without honor, etc.
True. Still, supposing I hadn’t thought he was nuts? What could we’ve done? In general, what’s the use in worrying? Always scanning the grass for snakes? Suppose I’d worried along with him? Would that’ve changed a damned thing? Did all his brooding about the cat who got away anyway or his worries about the two other dogs the farmer actually caught stop what happened from happening? The die had been cast the minute the farmer picked us up. Bob might just as well’ve stayed happy like me and Shep right up to the end. What good did it do to bite his claws, dogged by doubts?
You should’ve been born an ostrich, Fairbanks.
OK, granted that after the farmer snared the small white dog I should’ve at least considered that he might not have been a St. Francis taking animals to heaven on earth. Agreed, in retrospect it’s hard to understand my unshakable faith in his good intentions— considering how she yelped and carried on as he shoved her into a wooden crate. “Oh my, what is this?” she’d whimpered. “Where am I? What did he do with my red collar?” Hard to understand, but I’d swallowed his fishy con hook, line, and sinker. “It’s OK,” I’d assured her, believing every word. “He’s taking us to a good home.” And even when she cried “But I have a good home!”, I’d kept the faith, believing she didn’t know what she was talking about, that she was kidding herself. Would a good home’ve let her out in the cold and snow? “Hear that, Fairbanks?” Bob had grumbled. “I don’t know about this, I don’t know about this .” But who would argue my steadfast trust in his goodness was challenged by the brown dog’s “rescue”? Even Bob admitted that there he was doing the right thing. From our glimpse of the beast being wrestled into a crate—no argument he needed help: gashes oozed over his body and face, one piggy eye was a blob of white gristle, half an ear was gone. Snarling, growling, shreds of net hanging from his bared fangs, he doggedly hurled himself against the bars of the crate, scaring the hell out of us, sending us to cringe against the back wall of our carrier so as to put maximum distance between us. “If he dint got me in that fuckin net I’d’ve tore the fucker apart!” he growled. “Never mind,” Shep tried to console him. “You go to a good home. For your own good he snatch.” But “Fuck you, pal. Put a muzzle on it,” the brown dog snarled. Well, after that we left him alone, and there was no talking to him or for that matter to the unconsolable white dog who whimpered nonstop about her red collar.
Sisypuss: Memoirs of a Vagabond Cat Page 3