Sisypuss: Memoirs of a Vagabond Cat

by Patricia Halloff

  It seemed to me then that, oblivious of anything but pain, I suffered longer than I’d lived my short life. I remember asking Bob in a hoarse, broken whisper: “Bobby, Bobby, what did they do to me? Did they do it to you too? Can you see? Can you?” “I can’t open my eyes, Fairbanks. I can’t see, I can’t see.” And the voice which described his rods and cap and agony wasn’t my clear-headed brother’s, but the Calico’s lamenting her lost babies. After that, because the faintest mew or faraway yelp stabbed my brain so violently that once I heard myself scream, we didn’t talk much. No plans to escape were made that time. A paralysis of pain petrified thought, froze resourcefulness, and reduced any flicker of hope to embers. I have no idea how many days passed in which, racked and mutilated, dirty and tattered, we crouched in our own waste in separate cages, in literal and figurative darkness, moaning like the other cats, stinking like the others, dreading what they’d do to us next.

  It isn’t good, Sisypuss, it isn’t good. Some days later Abdul removes your Elizabethan collar and takes you to a darkened room where he puts you on a small platform inside a water-filled 50-gallon drum. “Keep awake, sucker, or you find yourself in hot water.” And that’s where you spend the next nine days, Sisypuss, balancing on different platforms in decreasing size: this first just big enough to allow you to crouch and smell the metallic brackishness which means you are poised over the element most anathematic to cats. Blind, no whiskers to guide you, after many hours your small head weighted down by cement and electrodes and pain and fatigue droops, you lose your battle against exhaustion, and fall in the water. “Haw-haw, haw-haw,” brays Abdul who later finds you thrashing around, unable to climb back onto the platform. “Didn’t make it, sucker? Don’t worry. He give you lotsa practice.”

  Seventeen hours out of each one of the nine days you spend there Hudak keeps you on those perches in order to broaden the world’s knowledge of what sleep deprivation does to a seven-week-old, sightless, whiskerless kitten. Ah Sisypuss, I turn away when after your first seventeen-hour ordeal he takes you off the perch, your small body bristling with metal rods, wet and shivering, exhausted by its struggle against sleep and pain, and puts you on a treadmill. A scream in my head, I watch you, panting and shivering, take your forced three-hour walk. Whenever you stop I see your body jolt and twitch. “We apply direct electrical stimulation of arousal centers,” Hudak explains to a grinning Abdul, “until he learns he must keep going.” He speaks in a monotone, his expression impassive: to him this is old stuff. I think of Nazi death marches. I think about the many evils practiced in pursuit of “knowledge.” No! I correct myself: the untold repetitions of meaningless experiments, many identical to this one, over untold years can no longer claim pursuit of knowledge as a reason for being. Today in the same room, unknown to you, Bob is being put through the same ordeal. Over the eighteen years before you two had the bad luck to fall into his clutches, Hudak alone has “sacrificed” thousands of kittens, ferrets, and mice (as he plans to “sacrifice” you and Bob) in his senseless repetitious experiments. And on this savage planet his ilk multiplies exponentially, glutting itself on grants. Dr. Jane Goodall: “If anyone other than white-coated scientists treated monkeys, dogs, cats, rabbits, pigs, and so forth as they do behind the locked doors of the animal lab, he or she would be prosecuted for cruelty.” After he brings you to the cage labeled “Sleep Deprivation #309" for the first of four one-hour “breaks” granted you every twenty-four hours, Abdul comes back and looks into the drum. “Pig!” he snarls at the water turbid with your feces and urine. I leave asking I know-not-who why such horror is allowed.

  I don’t remember the cage breaks, I remember only that fucking drum and treadmill. So I suppose in the four one-hour breaks PH says I was given every twenty-four hours I must’ve passed out and slept.

  How to describe exhaustion beyond exhaustion? My literary flair fails me. Today the sun bounces off the fleecy pad of my window bed and into my sore eyes. Oh, but I welcome it. Heat me, sun! Bake my sick shivery body! Purring, I stretch my long legs out full length and rejoice in the warmth on my belly and paws as I (reluctantly) search for words to communicate what they did to me at Able Testing Laboratory—reluctantly, for I’d rather not remember. Before I started this memoir business, I’d done my utmost to drown those memories in water where no thought swims.

  I picture myself cowering over water reeking of feces and urine and rusty iron. I’m struggling to stay awake on a platform too small even for crouching, so I’ve had to sit upright for the eternity I’ve been on it. If I forget about my tail it uncurls, its tip dips into the water, and I’m too wasted to care.

  Are there words which can truly convey exhaustion beyond exhaustion and pain beyond pain? I can’t find them. “Utterly exhausted” doesn’t do it. A missed night’s sleep, you’re “utterly exhausted.” If I say I was more dead than alive during my torture sessions in that stinking drum, so wiped-out and cramped I’d deliberately fall into that cesspool in order to doze on my feet until Abdul wandered in and fished me out coated with muck—does that do it? And what about “jumped a mile high and throbbed all over” when Hudak pushed his shock button? No good. A crash of lightning, you jump; a cold, you throb. Maybe if I say violent convulsions sent me into a tailspin, sickening vibrations shook my head so hard my teeth gnashed and chattered and I swallowed my tongue? Or if I write the excruciating currents made me lurch and wobble and sink to my knees and shriek like a maniac in pain and terror before they took my breath away and the blackness I lived in went blacker?

  Well, evocative or not, that’s as far as words can take the experience I thank my stars I will never relive. Fortunately, I only remember the stultifying fatigue and terror I felt every moment and can no longer feel it. Only in memory did hope and pride and self-reliance desert me. My body was no longer under my control. Blindness combined with severe sleep deprivation and atrocious pain had wrecked my equilibrium. I reached a point where, blind and whiskerless, I often lost the edges of my body, the plank, the treadmill.

  So, there it is. Such as it is, it’ll have to do. Inadequate, but as Booley grumbles, that’s the nature of words; and after all he’s a bona fide poet published in literary magazines. Raking his thinning hair, smoking butt after butt, tossing back drink after drink he can ill afford, he crumples up page after page, sometimes even stomps on them. So, what the hell, I’ll call it quits with Able. Enough. I want to close my ruined eyes and sleep. And why not do it? My time’s running out, remember, and every day in every way I feel worse and worse. Soon Booley’ll be home to jam pills down my clogged throat, drop stinging crap on my bleeding gums, open a can and pester me to eat. I’ve got to rest up.

  Sleep, Fairbanks. Rest. Tomorrow’s another day.

  9

  Liberation, Sisypuss! Hours before what would’ve been a tenth day of agony dawns, footsteps race down the hall, the steel door to your dimly-lit room crashes open, ski-masked people wearing backpacks and holding hypodermic needles dash from cage to cage. Not that you and Bob and the other Sleep Deprivatives are aware of this. But for the moans and spittle bubbling from your twisted mouths, you’re seemingly lifeless as your silent and efficient liberators go about their business of injecting cats with a sedative which’ll put them under enough to be handled. You don’t hear them whisper to each and every cat, sleeping or awake, not to be scared, it’s OK, it’s OK. And when the needle sticks you, you stir a little, maybe feel its prick in your thigh, but a second later in the bottom of a backpack with Bob and a kitten less than a week old, you’re dead to the world again. Up and down the row of cages collecting cats, go the rescuers. A scene both hectic and restrained performed by pros. No cat’s left behind. Then backpacks bulging with out-cold cats, the rescuers, breathing fast, go down the hall on silent sneakers into frigid blackness where a van waits. There the saved are transferred into carriers.

  Heart tripping, I follow Paula and Sid back up the stairs, back down the hall into the room of empty cages where they spraypaint “DO
N’T MESS WITH ANIMALS!” across one entire wall. Perfect! In the room of reeking drums and urine-soaked treadmills I cheer them on as they trash stereotaxic restraint devices, batter water drums to scrap metal, smash everything in sight, spraypaint their message. I smile and smile watching them gather up dozens of containers holding Hudak’s pickled cat brains. I’m with the van on its short drive to a dead-end gravel road where a transfer van waits. “Got ‘em all,” whispers Paula to the driver. “Got what we need.” Then after exchanging exultant hugs with the other team members, she and Sid head with you and half the cats in one direction while the transfer van with the other cats heads in another. Mission accomplished, Sisypuss! All over, your bout as sacrificial cat to science. Over and out.

  Praise the lord, Fairbanks. That was a close one.

  In my head sparks of light became wheels whipping like Catherine wheels, increasing in intensity and size until my brain spun off like fireworks. Penske’s super-sized roaches appeared on hairy legs in the back of my throat and behind my eyes, scuttled into my stomach to gnaw my gut with mouths black as caves. Then suddenly they had shocks gripped in their jaws which sent me into convulsions, my legs and tail jolted and shook, my head whirled faster, my face jerked and twitched, my infested throat let loose a shattering scream which surged in volume until it drove them into a drum of stinking water and floating turds where they drowned. Which is when Mama came back. Mama! Mama! Oh to see her again, my joy knew no bounds, my heart took over my body, I became euphoric thumping heart—no head, no legs, no body, just heart. But then–-but then—Mama fell into the drum with the filth and roaches, sank down down down in the brown bubbling water fuming foul odors. Horror-stricken, paralyzed, I watched her drown, the scream in my head swelled up again, and though Janet came and tried to smother it, it smothered her instead.

  Well, Sisypuss, your jerking and twitching are emergence reactions to be expected when Ketamine wears off. As are hallucinations if you’re having them. Never mind, it can’t be helped. The important thing: you’re safe now, Sisypuss! Frightening images’ll go, you’ll sense light on your stitched eyelids, your whiskerless muzzle’ll twitch and you’ll ask yourself, Am I still dreaming, or is that Bob I sniff? You pick up the faraway sound of human voices. You sniff harder. Yes! It’s Bob alright! Moreover, he’s right there beside you for the first time in nine days, furiously licking your face. Overjoyed, you groom each other excitedly. Your tongue feels his shaved muzzle, his stubble of whiskers, the steel thread sealing his eyelids, his cement cap and electrodes; you smell the metallic water, the feces and urine in his dense fur. The deep-felt love between you manifests in every lick, every fierce purr.

  After the grooming you groggily talk about where you are and why you’re there and what they’re going to do to you. Since it’s not the laboratory and you’re allowed to be together, you both hope things may’ve taken a turn for the better. “A hell of a lot better than where we were, right?” you say. “I don’t smell that water or Hudak or Abdul. The whole place smells different, right?” “Well, it does and it doesn’t,” Bob answers in character. “I don’t smell them either, but I still smell some of the cats from there. Though . . . in different places, true—not in their cages, right? Also it’s lighter on my eyelids.” That’s right! He’s right! you realize with elation: it’s lighter through yours too!

  Here’s to you, Sisypuss! True to form—so what, you’re woozy—you’re on your feet. Oops! You topple and fall. But there you go, picking yourself up, then walking free for the first time in your short life. Sure, thanks to the drug it’s more of a wobble on unsteady paws than a walk; you keep toppling and rising and reeling onward. Somewhere along the way you bump smack into the cat with the bloodied spine who’s using front legs and chest to drag himself around, somewhere else you exchange sniffs with the cat who hunted in his sleep. Bob staggering beside you, the two of you nose the motel room Paula and Sid sneaked you into, you teeter and totter here and there, purring with pleasure.

  Paula and Sid sit on the bed feeding unweaned kittens from doll bottles. The room teems with cats coming out of anesthesia. Except for a few too frightened to explore who peer from corners or under the bed and those whose spinal nerves Hudak destroyed, they’re all up on their paws, including a three-legged tom, all purring, teetering and reeling about. Like you and Bob most wear electrodes, bolts, and cement headgear, have holes in their throats and rods in their necks. A few who fall and can’t get up again moan and cry.

  There’re bowls of food and water and litter pans all over the floor. And within me there’s a bittersweet mingling of pleasure and pity at the sight of all those wobbling, moaning, purring maimed cats and the obvious joy they feel—for most, probably for the first time in their lives.

  “Hey you, you’re one happy boy,” Paula chuckles, scratching your belly because you’ve flopped over at her feet and rolled onto your back, purring loud as your punctured throat allows because you’re in seventh heaven, rolling from side side to side far as the rods in your head and neck allow. “A real sweetie, aren’t you?” Paula coos. Which is when for the first time since Janet, you open your mouth ever so slightly and give a silent meow. “Oh, that’s beautiful” she whispers in a voice breaks a little. Tears come to her gray eyes. She turns to tell Sid, but he’s busy talking to Bob and tickling him under his ball of a chin.

  These two talk to every cat not in hiding, they rub intact bellies and tickle under shaved chins. The room hums like a plane with purring. And I too have the equivalent of a purr vibrating within as you stretch your skewered neck so Paula can stroke you under the chin. She smells like flowers. “OK. That’s it, love. Enough with the lovey-dovey,” she laughs. “No more with the silent meows. You’re not the only cat here in need of my admiration.” She calls over to Sid: “Hey, this little guy’s really something.” And all purr, you stay on your back, all submission to the power of love.

  So there you are, Sisypuss: one man’s criminal is another’s lifesaver. No question about whose side we’re on, is there? Watching Paula and Sid bottle feed throughout the night I ask myself how long those orphans just days old would’ve survived whatever they were being used for. For sure, no one bottle feeds lab animals. How long could they’ve lasted before they died and were thrown away? Never mind. I don’t want to know. Right now I just want to be happy for you and the others.

  10

  At dawn, hours before he leaves for his office, the lot of you are brought to Dr. Cohen’s house. An undercover operation, since under the circumstances the dispensing of veterinary treatment is a felony. So, all blinds are drawn, from the outside no lights are visible, and once you’re all inside Sid drives away so no one will see the van in the driveway.

  Poor Sisypuss. After the happiness of last night you’re in for an unpleasant surprise. The minute Paula puts you on the table and your paws touch cold metal, memories surface of the surface on which Hudak inserted his implantations. You begin to wail. Deathly afraid, expecting the worse, you flail about, struggle with all your might to break free of Paula’s restraining hands, hiss, scratch, and draw blood. “Hey, c’mon! It’s OK. We’re going to help you,” she says, but your hisses and growls and frantic squirmings make clear you don’t believe her. “Here, let me help,” says Elizabeth. Hands in canvas gloves clamp your legs together so you can’t move them. “Hey, this little guy’s a fighter. Watch your title, Rocky,” says Dr. Cohen. “Hold his head, Paula. You know how. Don’t let him move.”

  Ah, Sisypuss, you cower as cold metal comes toward your eyes, you pant in fear as the tip of surgical scissors works its way under your stitches. Pinned and trembling, heart knocking against your heaving chest, you feel a snip and then a sickening sensation as the doctor slowly pulls the steel thread from your upper lid. “Hang in there, Rocky. That’s one down,” he says. “Three to go. Ready, girls?” “Got him,” says Paula. “He can’t move.” “He’s strong for his size alright, poor little boy,” says Elizabeth’s husky voice. “My God, what those bast
ards do, what they do.”

  Dr. Cohen removes the remaining stitches, a long, painstaking process it makes me queasy to watch. He gently removes crusted puss, swabs away pussy discharge plugging the holes sloppy stitches made. “Infected. Torn,” he mutters. “Looks like he tried to pull them out himself. You do that, Rocky?” He applies ointment to the raw area. He tsks when detaching your cement cap and taking out the electrodes bristling from you. He sighs upon telling Elizabeth you’ll always have a pit in your head and wherever else the electrodes were and you’ll need antibiotics for the infections and phenobarbital to control seizures. “Yeah, yeah,” she says grimly. “Who knows better than you I ain’t no virgin in these matters? I’ve been there.”

  They put you in a recovery cage where you crouch in misery and pain. Your eyes are closed, you don’t yet realize you can open them; the whole area is so inflamed and so heavily smeared with ointment, they may feel even worse than they did when you were brought here. Anyway, you keep them closed— wondering, I suppose, what other terrible things will happen to you here; telling yourself, I suppose, you must’ve dreamed yesterday, that it never happened; most likely telling yourself Paula’s just another farmer who sells cats to places as bad or worse than Able. For how can you not believe the worst? How can you not dread what’s next, Sisypuss, considering your life’s been a downhill series of ever-worsening experiences? Drained by pain and apprehension, you fall into a troubled sleep.

  You don’t hear Bob’s growls and hisses when Dr. Cohen does to him what he did to you. You don’t hear Dr. Cohen mutter to Paula and Elizabeth that there’s no way he can fix the cat with the hacked spine, there’s no way to put severed nerves together—all he can do, as they know, is to fit the paralyzed rear legs with a sleeve that’ll hopefully prevent soreness and infection. You don’t hear him explode over the butcher job on a female’s throat. “And she’s spayed-–she’s known better days. Christ!” he grumbles. “Will you look at her ear? Only flies could’ve eaten it away like that!” “Barbarians!” says Paula. “Euphemism,” says Elizabeth.