On we went. Drinking and singing at the top of his lungs, the farmer drove fast along country roads. Inside our carrier Bob and I stood on our hind legs so’s to see through its holes out the window. And my first look at the world outside shelter walls, at the sun hanging like a yellow balloon in the pale winter sky, took my breath away. To me, whizzing past snow-covered fields and lonely white houses with smoking chimneys was action! We saw a black lab barking with joy and leaping in circles around kids making a snowman. We saw a fat tabby squeeze itself inside a pet port.
Placidity isn’t my strong suit. Depending on circumstances, I’m either keyed up or down in the mouth. Even if I wasn’t such a mess what with my holes which never healed and my lidless eyes which are always seeping, or wasn’t in a state of general disrepair, I’d be too jumpy to hold a job like the cool cats you see serenely hawking cat products on TV. So it was only natural for me to be totally blown away by everything I saw during my first foray into the wide world; it was in my nature for the happiness I felt and my high-flown expectations of happiness to be— excessive.
Did it matter to me that gradually the Christmas card landscape turned into a rural slum, that houses grew smaller and shabbier, that fields disappeared and faded vehicles without wheels squatted amid weeds, old sofas and wringer washing machines crouched on decrepit porches? I can tell you joy and high hopes never wavered until we the moment we arrived at our destination and disillusion thundered down like an avalanche.
6
For the “farm” turned out to be a tumbledown shack and two chicken coops. Barks and whines and yowls of misery filled the frigid air. Upon our arrival a draggletailed dog chained to an old truck hurled itself toward the van with menacing growls. The newly-fallen snow white everywhere else had turned to grimy slush. “Cat Almighty, Fairbanks,” said Bob. “I knew it, I felt it, I told you I’d smelled a rat.”
Well, I hadn’t. And just as my earlier joy and wonder upon seeing what I’d never before seen will never be duplicated, neither will my despair upon having high hopes smashed the first time. For my rude awakening that day toughened me (somewhat) to future disillusionments: after my initial baptism in disenchantment I accept shit happens. Such is life, I tell myself; I hold my breath until I can surface.
The farmer took our carriers out and dumped them on the snowy ground. From that perspective all we could see were his dirty sneakers shuffling back and forth and the dirtier work boots planted alongside them. No little girls’ feet anywhere. “So, whatcha got?” asked a voice like gravel. Penske’s.
“Gotcha the serum dog and kitties you ordered. Plus a Lhasa and Pit.”
“Them two in the crates you bringin me? What the fuck for? Both of ‘em look half dead. Who’s gonna give me anythin for ‘em? Junk dogs! Here. Take fifty for the serum and the cats.”
Well if there’d been any hope that all wasn’t as it seemed, that killed it. Bob’d been right. Trembling more in fear than from the icy air eating into our cardboard carrier, the snow seeping through its bottom, I looked at him and found confirmation in his grim expression that we were in real trouble. Our traveling companions knew it too. I heard the white dog’s “Oh dear, oh dear,” the Pit’s “Fucked!” and Shep’s worried “Ach, vot is this place?” I saw Penske’s boot kick their crates and Shep’s carrier, barking they should shut up or he’d kick their heads in, he’d give them something to cry about alrighty. Then, the farmer’s outrage.
“WHAT? Fifty bucks, Penske? Fifty fuckin bucks you’re handin me? I give ‘em twenty five at the pound for Christ’s sake!” he sputtered.
“Chill, man. I look like a Class A dealer to you? I look like Santa Claus? I look like I make big bucks here? Them two I didn’t order, forget about ‘em. Junk dogs, like I toldya. Unload ‘em on a cat food factory, hee-hee.”
“Fuck you. You know fuckin well you’ll get something for ‘em. You do OK!” ranted the farmer. “I look like a retard to you? Like I aint been doin this long enough to know you’ll clear a grand for the big mutt alone?”
“In my dreams. Maybe a Class A guy gets that. Not Penske. OK, OK. Rob me. Take another twenty-five.”
“Fuck you. Fifty.”
“C’mon man! I’m freezin my ass off out here. I’m just a little guy, I aint got your blubber. Take the seventy-five or leave it,” advised Penske whose gravely voice had turned to stone. “There’s plenty bunchers out there, you aint the only fish in the sea, you’re takin up too much of my time, you’re pissin me off, man.”
Well the farmer took it. Yelling Penske was a fucking crook, he stomped back to his van while Penske, that laughing hyena who should only burn in hell, yelled back, No hard feelings, he shouldn’t be a stranger, he should keep in touch, he should take Penske’s advice and lay off the sauce so’s he can tell junk dogs when he sees ‘em, hee-hee hee-hee. To which the farmer hollered back it took one to know one and tore off, screeching tires kicking up gravel and snow.
So there we were in a kettle of fish no silent meow could get us out of. “Like Mama said,” Bob whispered, whiskers quivering like my stomach. “The so-called farmer sold us. “And Penske’ll sell us again,” I finished for him. What neither of us would put into words was that we’d gone from the frying pan into the fire.
According to Booley, Phoenixes rise from their ashes ad infinitum . . . so why not cats? Why do we get but nine paltry lives? Sitting in my window scribbling away, I pause to ponder this unfairness and review my sequences this go-around which— except for this last with Booley and the one with Elizabeth—were bummers. Men, says Booley, lead lives of quiet desperation. So maybe it’s because I’m not man but cat, that in the main I’ve led a life exceeding mere quiet desperation. Today I ask myself: did Fate (I picture a big klutzy bird, flightless with sheathed talons) put me on her shit list because of karma (how Elizabeth explained suffering)? After all, not all cats live desperate lives, right? Take a look at Little Alice. Didn’t Fate send Martha Merkel to give her the good life she deserved? And how about Simon, living proof virtue doesn’t enter into her considerations, lucking out with the couple perfectly matched to his combative nature?
Let’s say I’d been adopted from the shelter by Booley. Then, except for boredom my life would’ve been all fish and liver, I’d’ve never tangled with whichever bastard gave me FIV; the way he takes care of me I’d’ve lived to seventeen minimum. Better yet, say he’d adopted Bob too. Then, there wouldn’t’ve even been boredom, there would’ve always been things to do and talk about. Conclusion: Fate favors some and screws other for reasons inscrutable. Which is why Bob and I wound up at Penske’s Supply Depot for Class B research labs being thrown in a filthy cage by Penske’s aged whore Leni, Beelzebub’s handmaid.
You got that right, Fairbanks. Ah, might-have-beens, might- have-beens! Ah, what-ifs, what-ifs!
Penske’s Supply was housed in a coop from the era of mom and pop chicken farmers. The birds were long gone, but the stench of the dung they left behind fought with the outgassing of current feces for dominance. Still, foul as it was in Penske’s, from what I heard later from Elizabeth, the coop’s chicken stink and filth was child’s play compared to today’s warehouses where thousands of birds are jammed into a verminous shed, suffocating on ammonia from their own droppings, cannibalizing–.
Enough, Fairbanks! Lectures are my shtick. Get on with it!
Right. So, there we were: frightened and freezing. For all the good its one stinking kerosene heater did, they could’ve left the place unheated. Coughing and sneezing from feathers still in the cage corners, we watched Penske wheel Shep’s box toward the back end of the place: “Ach, vot is this? Vhere am I? Boys, are you in here?” our poor friend yelped as they passed by, and that was the last we saw or heard him until things went from bad to worse. At his heels came Leni trundling the small white dog. “Oh dear, oh my, oh dear,” she whimpered until Leni stopped to jounce her crate so hard she lost footing, crashed into its side, and lay on her back panting with fear as she too was wheeled away
. Then Penske again, rolling the Pit who stuck his nose between the bars, snarling he’d kill Penske, tear off his fuckin face, rip out his balls, until Penske slammed him down right in front of us, lifted a heavy boot and kicked his nose so hard the dog shrieked. Bob and I huddled together, shaking. Penske horselaughed.
Oh, the terror, the terror. We were barely a month old, after all, and though you grow up fast on your own with no Mama to guide you, though we were no scaredy cats, that act of horrible cruelty on top of what we’d seen done to the small white dog terrified us. Compared to Penske and Leni, Linda had been Mother Theresa. Compared to the coop, the pound was a five-star hotel.
Horrified, we watched the slobbering Pit, nose streaming blood, both good eye and the one like gristle red with hate, lunge toward Penske with a bloodchilling snarl. “Tryin to scare me, fuckin sonofabitch? Weel, this’ll learn ya!” With a cackle he grabbed a shovel and rammed its handle into the dog’s chest. And when in return the growling and slavering Pit clamped down on it, spluttering expletives, Penske retaliated by shoving it so deep into his mouth that with a agonized yelp the dog let go.
“Chickened out, didn’tya? Bruuck, bruuck, bruuck!” cackled Penske, flapping imaginary wings. “But, hey dog, don’t feel bad hee-hee, you put up a good fight.” Then all of a sudden he stopped flapping, broke into a fiendish grin and slapped his sloping forehead. “Hey Leni, get your ugly lardass over here quick! Jesus! A brainstorm just hit!” he hollered. Dancing a little jig, muscles bulging like tennis balls in his skinny arms, he thrust the handle into the Pit’s chest again. “C’mere, lookit this! Move it!” And on command, filth and evil embodied, she materialized, draped a gross arm around him so her greasy gray hair straggled over his batwing shoulder and rubbed against him like a cat.
What a pair. Drunk as skunks (their usual condition), they tittered over the dog beside itself with pain and rage, its mangled mouth snapping at the handle knocking its wind out even as it cringed and tried to dodge it. “Hee-hee-hee! Lookit what we got here, love. Real tough guy, aintcha champ? We’re gonna put him in the ring, honey bun. Watch this! Lookit this! lookit! Hey, Toro, Toro! No shit, but we got ourselves a goldmine here! Dogmen net five grand minimum a night, babe! Jesus!” crowed Penske, screwing the handle into the side of the growling dog who kept trying to get his torn mouth around it. “Think about it! That fuckin buncher found this sucker on the street, probably dumped ‘cause it lost a fight! And the pounds snuff ‘em by the carloads ‘cause who wants killer dogs but dogmen they won’t give ‘em to. Christ! Why didn’t I think of this a long time ago? You and me could retire in two years tops! Jesus! Dumbbell!” With his free hand he slapped his forehead again. “We got the other coop already, see? We get the dogs, train ‘em, we’re in business!”
“Well, yeah, but how d’ya train ‘em though?” asked Leni, hippopotamic face puzzled.
“Dumb cow! Use your fuckin head!” Cackling, Penske lunged and rammed. “Hey Toro, Toro! That’s how, moron! Ya toughen ‘em up! Ya tie kitties, puppies, rabbits, whatever, to trees and leave the mutts go at ‘em.”
“Oh! I get it! That’s it? Jeez, and free litters a dime a dozen! Hey, lover, how about we start right away with them two he come in with?”
But lucky for Bob and me, Penske was a practical man not to be carried away by enthusiasm. “Y’know somethin, birdbrain? They don’t make ‘em stupider than you. Them two’s and the big dog’s requisitioned. Birds in the hand, moron. Plus, dummy, this aint no project ya start right away. Somethin this big takes a plan. It takes you cleanin the shit and feathers out the coop. It takes me getting the word out to other dogmen so’s we get Toro here contenders.” Gazing into the wonderful future, he dug at his red stringy beard. “But first off, you and me gets us a beer, sits down and talks business.”
The storm clouds were gathering. Knowing we were out on a limb but not knowing when or how Penske meant to saw us off, we watched the ghoulish pair, after a final jab at the Pit, go off for their beer booster. Pitchfork thin with red hair and scanty goatee and pointed ears, gut overhanging jeans stiff with dirt, Penske looked like Beelzebub himself in midlife. And Leni with the face and body of an elderly hippopotamus was his perfect mate— though judging from her black eye and broken nose they had their disagreements.
Shaking in our boots, Bob and I asked each other what “requisitioned” meant, what was going to happen to us. Apprehensively we wondered if the other animals in cages on shelves like ours or in wood crates all over the floor were “requisitioned” too. Besides Toro gingerly licking his wounds, within view were rabbits and rats, colonies of cannibal mice jammed together so tight they could hardly move. Three live puppies caged with a dead one. There was a black and white cat whose cage Leni’d kicked on her way out and called Deadmeat. And a lone duck. A few of the animals looked back at us with the same hopelessness and fear in their eyes I felt in my heart.
Terrible, terrible. But the most chilling sight of all was what I saw through one of the cracked windows: cats and dogs stacked like wood beside an open pit. And judging from the size of the pile and the fact it was partially concealed by old sooty snow, they’d been there awhile. Even today when I look back on that grisly heap of snow-covered dead whose lives had been so without value they hadn’t merited burial, my skin crawls, my gut heaves. I still picture the grimace of horror and disbelief on Bob’s face when I told him to look. I hear again the tremor in his normally firm voice when (for once not insisting on a wait-and-see course of inaction) he agreed we should get out of there right away. “Right, Fairbanks! The first time they open the cage to feed or clean, we run for it!”
”The fly in that ointment is,” feebly piped up the cat Leni’d called Deadmeat, “they don’t feed or clean.” And in a thin breathy voice went on to say that because we were requisitioned they’d never let us get away, that they’d be carting us off right away, that she didn’t know why she was still there (on layaway they called it) because just about everyone else goes out fast as they come in. But when we asked where they carted you to and what requisitioned meant, she said she didn’t know what it meant but she was whatever it meant because she had FIV, and she’d heard they’d be carting her someplace that hadn’t paid for her yet. “What it means in your case and where they’ll cart you, you’ll find out soon enough, Supreme Cat help us.” With a shaky sigh slowly, slowly, she turned away. “Sick, so sick,” she mumbled. “Everything aches. Forget about escape, that’s all, we can’t.”
Well, she was my first contact with FIV. Not that I knew what feline immunodeficiency virus was then. Now unfortunately I know much more about it and being “requisitioned” than I want to. Now I know what she must’ve been put through by those fucking psychopaths who call themselves researchers; who— despite the fact that “studies” over decades have confirmed FIV and AIDS are different diseases—insist the horror they put cats through will result in a cure for human AIDS. “Grant money,” was Elizabeth’s comment on the subject. “It’s all about grant money.”
“More polemics? Off the soap box and on with the memoir, Fairbanks.”
Right. So, rest in peace, Deadmeat. Ah, how you suffered even before you fell into their bloody hands. One look at your ribs sucking in and out much like Mama’s with each hard-won breath, your drooling mouth, your eyes half-closed eyes in pain, made obvious your defeatist attitude toward escape. For a cat in your condition escape was no option.
For Bob and me, however, it was the only option. We considered ourselves to be an unbeatable team. Wet behind the ears we might’ve been, but we had absolute faith in our resourcefulness and ability to do anything. As long as I paid attention to Mama’s voice in my head advising me to restrain my impetuosity and allow Bob to put the brakes on my propensity to risk and let the Devil take the hindmost in dangerous situations, without first considering consequences or assessing safer courses of actions, I believed wholeheartedly we’d always be OK. And needless to say in the Penske kettle of fish there was no alternative but heroic actio
n. There was nothing for it but to hiss, spit, scream, scratch, claw, bite, and then run like hell for the outside door the minute the cage door opened. Toro, who’d eavesdropped on our whispered plan, agreed. “Fuck Deadmeat. Soon’s I get the chance, I’m gonna run for it too and take their fuckin throats with me. Do it!”
And so we did that very same day when Lena waddled over. “GO! GO! GO!” I hissed the second her fungused nails cracked the door. And spitting and hissing and screaming with synchronous precision, we gave her the works. “KILL THE BITCH!” Toro cheered as in a dual-pronged attack I assaulted her bashed-in nose with a raking I hope scarred her for life and Bob raised claw against her whiskery cheek. “Good for you!” quavered Dogmeat as like a forked streak of lightening we headed toward the door . . . just in time to meet Penske head-on. “Catch the motherfuckers! KILL ‘EM!” shrieked our victim, jumping up and down like a demented banshee. “Don’t let ‘em get away!”
Well, though we fought him fang and claw, he didn’t. Heart hammering with fear and excitement, I bit deep into his greasy thumb so hard he howled, but it didn’t stop him from getting us by the scruffs and shaking us until I thought my head would come off. “Fuckin scumbags!” he bellowed, tossing us back in the cage. “If you wasn’t worth more to me alive than dead, I’d smash your heads against the wall. Try some more of that shit on me and I’ll do it anyways.” Then he punched Leni the stomach. “Asshole! Klutz! You ever watch what the fuck you’re doin? Tomorrow I take ‘em myself.”
Sisypuss: Memoirs of a Vagabond Cat Page 4