Sisypuss: Memoirs of a Vagabond Cat

by Patricia Halloff

  That night, trembling with cold and dread, afraid to close our eyes, we couldn’t sleep. From far away, “Oh my, oh my, oh my, I want to go home,” whimpered the small dog through the night. But except for her and an occasional mournful honk from the duck, all was deathly quiet. Hopelessness: the great muzzler. I tried to think of Mama and Little Alice and Janet and happier times, but there was no room in my head for anything but fear. Fear had me by the throat and wouldn’t let go. Bob’s tongue grooming me was too nervous to comfort, and I was too nervous to even think about reciprocating. I’m a cat of ups and downs, darks and lights, and I was in the pits where there were no lights.

  Bright and early the next morning Penske drove us to the research lab in our cage. But even if he’d opened it so’s to transfer us to a carrier, for fear he’d smash our heads against the wall, I have to say we would not have raised a paw.

  7

  Oh my, oh my, oh my, I sigh, echoing the small dog’s lament throughout the night preceding our descent into Hell. Sour self-pity possesses my normally light-hearted soul as I steel myself to write about the agony Bob and I suffered in Able Testing Laboratory. Oh my, oh my, oh my, I sigh to the hard spring rain slamming Booley’s fogged and grimy window, the bloated clouds sagging in a sky gray as I’d been before disease turned me brown. Her whimper returns to my inner ear as I reflect on the utter desolation she must’ve felt over going from a loving home to Penske and from there to (barring miracles) vivisectors.

  Vivisector: a word those who practice vivisection have rejected in favor of “researcher.” Just as those who commit acts of terror have rejected “terrorist” in favor of “freedom fighter.” Well, I in turn reject “researcher” as the proper designation for those mutilating and dissecting living creatures, and reserve it for scholars and librarians who do no harm. And who, except the mutilators in white coats themselves, would argue “vivisector” with its taint of age-old sins against sentient beings and the images of knives, blood, medieval restraining devices, and ultimate “sacrifice” that it conjures up is not the better label?

  It’s thanks to vivisectors that today I gaze at the cold rain through eyes always sore and inflamed, always tearing, as I ask myself whether they got that small dog too and how they butchered Shep and Dogmeat before putting them out of their misery. It’s because vivisectors exist that I ache for the billions of cats, dogs, rodents, primates, sheep, et al “sacrificed” in repetitive and meaningless experimentation every year. It’s vivisection which would lead me to contemplate the nature of evil, the sins against nonhumans, if a cat were equal to the contemplation of philosophical issues such as the homocentric utilitarian attitude toward other species.

  But we’re not, Fairbanks. So try not to think about it.

  Because he too was “requisitioned,” Shep again traveled with us. In the back of Penske’s freezing van we rode back over the same road we’d traveled the day before, but this time we wailed in fear. In no time our paws and ears turned numb, our whiskers stiffened, our muzzles ached with cold. Pathetic fallacy, Booley would call the early morning’s icy air and grim sky. “Oh, vat? He is taking us vhere, you boys, do you know?” Shep asked. We shook our heads. “No? Vell, vhere do you think?” We looked at each other and shook our heads again, too cold, too fearful to guess. “Vell, maybe, you think, it vill be better?” “Supreme Cat!” muttered Bob. “The optimism of that species!” “Ach, you cats! Vhy so down in the dumps? Never on the bright side, do you look!” “I do,” I said, characteristically wanting to in spite of all the bad signs. “Requisitioned” could mean something good, right?” “Sure, Ray of Sunshine,” mumbled Bob. “Like ‘farm’.” “Never mind,” said Shep. “Ve vill see soon enough. Ach! You little boys are shivering so bad. I vish you could come in here vith me, my fur vould make you varmer.”

  Kindred in spirit, if not in species, Shep. I see again his dense grizzled coat, his intelligent expression, his limpid dark eyes. A mensch of a dog whose bad luck was the large chest cavity which made him a candidate for cardiovascular vivisection. By the end of that day, he was gone from our lives. Rest in peace, Shep: if there’s a dog heaven, you’re warm and safe and your belly’s full at last. “Never mind, Bob. Ve von’t borrow trouble,” he yipped. “Ve vill—” But Penske’s bellow cut him short. “Shut your fuckin yaps back there!” And though Bob and I hissed, sotto voce, he should only be torn apart by hyenas, “Sssh, boys! Better ve do vat he says. Ve don’t antagonize. If he takes us somevhere good, ve don’t vant he should change his mind.”

  Well, on the outside chance he could be right, but mainly because we feared Penske, we paid attention. We rode in silence out of Penske’s rural slum, past the snow-covered fields which the day before had inspired such great expectations, but now were shadowed by dread and a bleak sky leaking eerie light. No kids or dog danced around their forsaken snowman whose carrot nose was gone. We passed a wasteland of gouged earth where hills of gravel crusted by snow, a scaffold with metal drums, and a transmission tower dwarfed a weathered shed. Rust and snow covered idle excavation equipment in that arctic desolation not far from the destination I was in no hurry to reach, despite the cold piercing my bones, despite the peptalk I’d been giving myself that things were going to be better there.

  But reach we did that windowless stone building crouched on black sandy soil of pine barrens, its ABLE TESTING LABORATORY faded as advertisements painted on ghost-town barns. Oh, if I could blast that place I keep going back to in nightmares and its criminals to hell, I’d die a happier cat!

  They put Shep’s crate on a hand truck and wheeled him away never to be seen again. They carried Bob and me to a room filled with caged cats and put us in adjoining cages with metal sides so we couldn’t see each other. And there I hunched, separated from my brother for the first time in our lives, the stink of fear from maimed and desperate cats plunging me into panic. The pitiful, sporadic mews, the foul reek of piss and shit—nothing new there: those I knew from the shelter and Penske’s. New was the funkiness of terror and hopelessness informing me that Able’s was the worse place I’d ever known, a place from which there was no exit but one for cats.

  The fear which shook me when I looked into cages I could see and continued to shake me every minute I was there, was greater than any I’d known before or since. I saw old cats and kittens no more than a week old with metal rods sticking out of their heads and ears, their eyes and mouths. I saw cats with holes in their throats and rods in their diaphragms. I saw cats with eyes stitched closed. I saw cats thinner even than Mama, ribs barely covered by their mangy fur. I saw a cat pacing its cage from corner to corner, sniff, sniffing as if it had caught a scent, then crouching and leaping on—nothing: all this with closed eyes as if it slept. I saw cats with shaved, bloodied spines. I saw cats lying still as death and two dead kittens. My heart hammered so hard against my chest, roared so loud in my ears, I barely heard Bob’s: “Cat Almighty, what is this place? Why are we here?”

  Well, though I had no answer, answers came from the weak, mutilated victims caught in the kind of trap you couldn’t escape by gnawing off a paw. “So they can kill you, you’re here.” “Torture cats and kittens is what they do here, dogs and puppies too.” “They make me walk on a machine until I pass out.” “He hooks me up to something that gives me shocks if I fall asleep.” “If I don’t stop breathing when a light goes on they spray my face with stuff so I choke, so I can’t breathe at all, so it feels like my eyes catch fire.” “He cut up my back so my hind legs won’t work.” “They’re giving me shots that make me vomit and cough and shit. I’m not going to make it.” “They’re forcing infected mice brains down my throat that make me vomit and cough and shit. I’m going to die, soon I’m going to die.”

  And more from cats too far away or too far gone to be heard. “Bob? Bob?” I called, shaking, shaking. “We’ve got to get out of here. How’re we going to get out of here?” I said because there had to be a way and he’d be the one to find it. But . . . “There is no way,�
� came his grim answer. “There’s only the door we came through and they locked it.” “No! C’mon! There’s got to be another way!” Desperately I searched the windowless walls for an escape hatch I expected to miraculously appear, there had to be one, Bob’d just missed it, that’s all. But no. The place was a sealed tomb only the vivisectors could open. Except for an occasional moan or mew the room had taken on the eerie quiet of a third-world ward for terminal cases abandoned to neglect and fate. The cats had sunk back into despair, crouching or lying in the cages labeled by number and type of experiment.

  Memory Lane’s not linear, and down a fork in the road I go to find Elizabeth on the phone, impatiently tugging its coiled cord, trying to light up with her free hand. “So you want to know about Able and the cats they keep there?” she croaks and immediately Bob and I perk up our ears. “You going to print what I say or sweeten it up?. . . Right. I only hope your editor feels the same way.

  “Am I well acquainted with Able? Oh, you’ve come to a good source alright. I’ve got a couple of their victims with me now. That’s right—victims. I wish they could tell you what was done to them in that chicken-shit hellhole which purportedly–-look, will you hold still a second while I light this damned thing? —OK, good, that’s better—which purportedly seeks to find something unknown about the human nervous system.

  “So why cats? Because cats, my dear, are their standard tool (I use the word ‘tool accurately) for probing the mysteries of our spinal cord, strokes, traumas of all sorts, vision, speech and hearing.

  . . .“Then doesn’t their research benefit people, you’re asking me? Bullshit, it does!” Elizabeth puffs furiously on her umpteenth butt of the day, breaks into her wracking smoker’s cough. “Excuse the interruption, dear. It’s only lung cancer,” she cackles upon recovery. “Just kidding. Total bullshit, as I was saying! Benefits their coffers in grant dollars is what it benefits. And now with this cock-and-bull business about a connection between FIV and AIDS, diseases with no connection, the biomedical/pharmaceutical industry’s mercenaries have got themselves another windfall. Even more cats than the millions already under the knife will be called upon for the ultimate sacrifice. . . . Sorry again, dear, I get excited, I cough.

  . . .“Describe some typical experiments? Protocols of ingenious fiendishness leading nowhere for literally centuries? Oh sure, I can do that. Listener discretion advised. Oh Christ, oh shit, where will it end?. . .”

  Not in our lifetime, Elizabeth. Squinting at the cold rain through my sore, tearing eyes I wish I could conjure your spirit now, leap into its lap redolent of the free kidneys you collected from sympathetic butchers and stewed not only for us foster cats but for the homeless you fed nightly. You knew about the biomedical/pharmaceutical grant industry, you knew all about animal exploitation.

  Yeah, Fairbanks. A terrific old lady. Rest, Czarina Elizabeth, rest.

  But back to me in my cage, not even two months old, scared and desperate, dreading whatever was coming, the guts and foxiness of my namesake nowhere in evidence. How much time passed before Abdul wheeled in the vivisection victims and shoved them into their cages where they lay limp and silent as stuffed animals, I had no idea. “Tomorrow another day, sissies,” he brayed, then went haphazardly about emptying some litters, leaving most untouched, sluggishly delivering individualized food packets and water to the few cats alert and well enough to eat. “There, spawn of Satan,” he sneered, fat lips partially hidden by a full kinky beard black as his soul. He didn’t feed or water Bob and me. A kneeler toward Mecca five times a day, he seemed to be engaged in a Jihad against cats.

  Though not one to brood about villains of the past, I still ask myself who I hated most: the psychopath Hudak who’d put us through the exact same torment he and myriads of vivisectors had already put myriads of cats through (only to arrive at conclusions having no relation to a fucking thing human), or Abdul his (self-titled) technician. Who, after turning out all lights but one, prostrating himself and calling upon Allah to rid the world of cats and infidels, left.

  Night: as it turned out the one and only night in that hellhole in which I was aware of my surroundings or myself. Semi-darkness, feeble mews and hoarse whimpers. From somewhere else dogs whined in a chorus of pain. And there was Shep’s deep voice among them, its tone telling me his optimism had lost out to fear like mine, that he too had heard all about Able. Bleak light shrouded the room in foreboding. Deep shadows lay in corners where occasional brief scuttlings indicated the presence of mice who after a look around decided against staying.

  Still, that early in the game, as yet only on the threshold of hell, I’d had enough spirit to calm myself down a little and whisper to Bob we’d get through whatever it was—somehow. “Dream on,” muttered the best brother a cat ever had. “Look around you, Fairbanks. That’s going to be us.” No, I said, it wasn’t, because they’d given up and we never would. “Be brave! Be tough!’” I quoted Mama. “Fight with claws and fangs!” Mama said, and we will till we find a way get out of here.“ “Bullshit,” hissed Bob, “under the circumstances. Non-applicable. I know it in my bones, Fairbanks. This is a no-exit situation.”

  Well, that was one of the main differences between us: however bad things were I wouldn’t accept what Fate dumped as irreversible. So, even in that worst of misadventures which sorely tested my faith in eventual release from the intolerable, I’d continued to hope (before pain and exhaustion wiped out all thought, that is) that somewhere was an escape hatch through which my sweeping whiskers would guide us.

  And even today, waiting for Booley to come home, waiting for what the vet calls the inevitable to come and get me, I don’t believe in inevitability. Something could turn up yet, I still tell myself, something may still save me.

  That’s the spirit, Fairbanks. All things are possible

  8

  Upon once again taking over the telling of what you couldn’t know, I grant you, Sisypuss, that if hoping had been in vain you wouldn’t be on your window bed today enjoying the sun. Still, though all things are possible, the gulf between hope and its validation isn’t always bridged, and sometimes the gulf can be a snakepit like this one where you and Bob have been tossed.

  I watch Abdul grab your scruffs and take you, one in each hamlike hand, spitting, hissing, and kicking, claws bared, to a steel table on which he throws you like slabs of meat. Muttering between his teeth in a language I don’t know, he pins you down so Hudak can plunge a needle into your trembling thighs and send you spinning into sleep.

  Hopefully, a sleep so deep you boys don’t feel him drill holes into your skulls so he can implant the electrodes and thermode into your brains; or feel him affix the electrical sockets to be coupled with recording cables; or feel him bolt on the cement caps holding the recording devices; or feel him suture more electrodes to the trapezius muscles on either side of your seven-week-old necks. And most of all hopefully you’re oblivious to the worst of what he does after shaving your faces: the cutting away of the margins of your upper and lower eyelids, the stitching your eyes closed with steel thread. “In order to control extra visual stimulation from occurring during experimentation,” he explains to Abdul.

  Heartsick, I turn away. I think: if this atrocity took place anywhere else, its perpetrator would be thrown into a facility for the criminally insane.

  No PH, as far as I know I was out cold throughout. It wasn’t until I came to semiconsciousness back in my cage, nauseous and dizzy, that the first twinges of pain began stealing into the numbness of my head and neck, that I dimly realized terrible things had been done to me and that I couldn’t see. I wanted to open my eyes, but couldn’t. I wanted to lift a paw to feel why but was frozen as in a nightmare, couldn’t move from stupor. A kind of drug-deadened panic invaded me. I tried to call out to Bob, but my voice wouldn’t work either and to try again would’ve taken too much effort. I didn’t want to be awake. I passed out. But eventually I of course awoke to the awareness of mutilation and the horror of sightlessness. Fil
led with dread, shakily feeling my sealed eyes so’s to determine why they wouldn’t open, I touched the steel stitches sealing them shut and . . . went crazy. Panting with fear, I clawed at the thread in a frenzy and got nowhere; I tried to hook a claw under it to pull it out, but it was too tight, too fine; I succeeded only in producing such a painful throbbing I had to stop. Panic escalating each passing moment, with a paw shaken by terror and horror I touched the rods sticking out of the cement cap on my head and those on the sides of my neck. I moved it back and forth again and again over my eyes, my face shorn of fur and whiskers, the cap, the rods in my neck. I’d been turned into a cat like the others in the room, and the same funky stink of fear was now coming from me. Trembling inwardly and outwardly, I asked myself, What’ve they done to me? What’re these rods in my head and neck? Then, growling, thrashing, and flailing, I tried to rip them out. I broke three claws on the cement cap before I gave up on it and began to tear at the ones in my neck.

  Enter the smell of Abdul. “OK, sucker, you ask for, you get.” One hammy hand held me down and the other fastened a stiff collar around my neck which not only made it impossible to reach the rods or my eyes, but also to lie on my side or clean myself. “Go try funny business now, sucker! Your brother, I go give him one too, he bad as you, that guy.” And sure enough in a little while Bob’s furious yowl penetrated my pulsating misery. In Sphinx position, falling in and out of drugged sleep, I knew only agony in waking moments. I lived in a purgatory of shooting pains, gnawing pains, throbbing pains, grabbing pains, stabbing pains, and the unique thumping agony from slashed, blinded eyes. Paralyzed, I sank in scalding water heavy as lead, crackling with fire.