While worn-out and worn-down you sleep, Sisypuss, on goes the procession of cat after mutilated cat to the steel table. By the time Dr. Cohen’s done what he can do for them and straightens up to massage the small of his back with pudgy fingers, full daylight’s behind the closed blinds. Washing up, his expression vacillates between anger and pity, his soft eyes are red and circled with bruised-looking skin, his tightened mouth bracketed by wrinkles.
“Ah, sleep it is a blessed thing beloved from pole to pole!” Booley, an insomniac, groans during his sleepless nights. When after my long sleep I awoke to a pulsating strip of light between my eyelids, at first I couldn’t believe what I saw. Heart thumping, I waved a tentative paw over it: gone! I lowered the paw: back! Then cautiously, fearfully, I opened my eyes partway. Well, what can I tell you? Moses must’ve felt as I did when the voice of God thundered! I’m talking miracles! Albeit through a blur of ointment, I could see again! I saw Bob in the cage next to mine. I saw Paula and Elizabeth and Dr. Cohen the miracle worker who restored my sight. “Bob! Bob! I can open my eyes! I can see you! Can you see me?” “I’m doing it now, Fairbanks! Looking right at you, brother! I can’t believe this!”
Transported, but half-expecting things to turn black again, I looked at Paula who looked like a tired angel and Elizabeth who looked like a tired czarina and Dr. Cohen who looked like a tired Buddha. Although purring hurt my throat I couldn’t stop purring, so happy I couldn’t really feel as ashamed of myself as I should’ve for ever thinking I’d been sold down the river. That morning had been an eye-opener in more ways than one. Till then Janet had been the only human I’d known who not only hadn’t considered me a nuisance or commodity or throwaway tool, but had actually loved me. So, to learn she wasn’t the only one who cared about animals, that there were others besides her to give cats a helping hand when needed, lightened the shadow of alienation darkening my view of a world where inhumanity seemed to be the rule.
Oh, what a beautiful morning! Oh, what a beautiful day! For also on that pivotal morning Elizabeth entered our lives. And though to my great sorrow our relationship didn’t last forever, it got off to a perfect start when she came to my cage, poked a nicotine-stained finger smelling of tobacco and laden with rings inside, hooked it under my chin and proceeded to tickle. How to win a cat’s heart and mind. Love at first sight. “How you doing, Rocky?” asked that hoarse voice of hers I still hear in dreams while the finger I still feel and smell in dreams tickled me pink. “I’m Elizabeth,” she whispered her name like a secret between us. “Good news, kiddo. You and your buddy Fred next door—I noticed you two have a lot to say to each other, right?—are going to live with me.” I let out a meow of joy. Bob and I were going to have a home! I stuck my elated nose between the bars, raised ecstatic eyes to her regal face, and silently meowed my delight. “Priceless!” she breathed. And when she bent down to kiss my nose, cementing the bond between us which has outlasted death in a bloodless blood oath, I placed a soft paw on her lined cheek.
The start-up of a closeness and communication transcending species, an interaction on a plane dismissed by western culture. And though she connected with all her animals, I know I was special to her, that the closeness between us existed because our natures were so in tune. She was the one who gave me the first real happiness I knew. Oh, that’s not to say Booley doesn’t do all he can to make me happy, or that I don’t love him too, but . . . this disease, this draining disease, this isolation, my lost brother, don’t make for total contentment. There’re shadows now that in the time of Elizabeth didn’t darken the sun.
Even Bob accepted her without question as a beautiful soul. Her goodness was so manifest there was nothing in her behavior to activate his characteristic cautiousness. “She’s AOK, Fairbanks. I do believe we’ve lucked out,” he said after she’d given him the news. “I’d be rolling from side to side except that I hurt too much. And listen, did you feel through the bandages yet? Have you got pits in your head and neck, little holes around your eyelids too?”
Pits? Holes? I’d been so carried away by seeing and Elizabeth, I hadn’t given a thought to the rest of me. Typical. Now raising a gingerly paw to my head, yes I felt a pit and instantly plummeted from the heights of euphoria to the to the depths of despair. I’d been mutilated! Fearfully I touched my throbbing eyelids. Not just holes—jagged skin! Did I do that? Did I do that when I tried to rip out the stitches? My shaking paw went on to the surrounding area and touched—exposed bones. But, as you force yourself to stay in nightmares until you know the worst and wake yourself up, I continued my grisly self-examination until the bitter end. My quivering paw checked out hole by hole: those riddling my head, the two borings behind my eyes, my windpipe and neck punctures, and finished with my shaved muzzle stubbled with what were once sweeping whiskers.
In the clutch of alarm, hoping to hear I shouldn’t worry, they’d close up, fur and whiskers would grow back, we’d be as good as new, I mewed to Bob that I had the pits and the holes too. But . . . “I figured,” was what he sighed. “Listen, what can you do? What’s done is done, Fairbanks. All we can do now is try not to think about them.”
So there it was: as far as he was concerned there was no hope for restoration. As for not thinking about how they’d messed me up, it was all I could think about. Beauty may be only skin deep, but now that mine had been wrecked, I had to kiss goodbye my self-image of the handsome covercat and aristocat Mama’d called me. A future on boxes and labels was no longer an option. What good was an elegant gray suit with shadow stripes to makers of cat products if it was moth-eaten and riddled with holes? Disconsolate, I felt again the stubble of my whiskers. Chances were if they grew back at all, they’d never be the beauties they’d been. Sad but true: “Rocky” suited me now not only because of my pugnacity on the examination table. I looked like a beat-up alley cat. I’d been ruined.
But don’t get out the crying towel. Though at the moment I didn’t see the bright side, shortly thereafter I’d emerged from self-pity. Incapable of sustained brooding, I told myself, what the hell, things could’ve been worse. In fact, compared to my past problems, things had actually taken an uphill turn. I would live to see (“see” the operative word) another day. I could sleep whenever I wanted to. I still had Bob and we were going to live with Elizabeth. My faith in something turning up to turn things around had been validated.
(True, thanks to Hudak I still have seizures and IBS, but from the shoulders down I’m intact, not paralyzed like a lot of his victims. So . . . not only can I walk, not only does my tail stand as erect and swing as nonchalantly as any supermodel cat’s, but—and this is no trivial matter–it’s been immortalized in a stanza of Booley’s “Ode to Sisypuss.”)
So, having quickly recovered my sense of proportion that morning, I could purr listening to Elizabeth apologize for taking only four cats with her. “The old gray mare ain’t what she used to be,” she chortled. “That’s all I can handle right now.” “As long as you can laugh about it,” said Paula, laughing. “What’s with the apologies,” snorted Dr. Cohen, “from my personal nominee for the St. Francis Lifetime Achievement Award? Sean’s a handful all by himself. My god, more scar tissue than dog that sweet old guy.” “And still a nervous wreck almost always in pain,” sighed Elizabeth. “Jumpy as a cat, you should pardon the expression. Still screams in the night. They should only drop dead, those butchers.” “Amen,” said Paula. “Let us kneel and pray.” No one laughed. They stopped talking. Dr. C cleared his throat. Heavy sighs all around. Coughing the phlegmy cough which would become so familiar to me and which was apparently already familiar to everyone there, Elizabeth lit a cigarette. “There she goes again,” Dr. Cohen grumbled. “Your fifth since you’ve been here—I keep track, Lizzie. Tell me, lady, Why the hell are you still smoking?” “Stop with the nudging, Jack. Who pays attention anyway?” she snorted after inhaling deeply. “I’ve got too many dependents to die.” “Be serious, be sensible. At least cut down a little?” “Stop with the nudging
, she said, Jack. Quit pestering her. She’s immortal,” said Paula, and that time they all laughed. I looked at their happy faces which just moments ago had been harrowed by pity and purred.
And I ask myself now was it this ability to shift so quickly from pity to laughter, to accept “whatever happens, happens” as effortlessly as cats do, combined temperaments connected to what’s beyond the five senses and mores and convention, which explained their empathy with other species? Was it this transcendent quality of character which made them willing to risk losing years of their lives to prison and ties to family and friends who condemned their actions in order to save the victims of vivisectionists? Of course, at seven-weeks I didn’t ask myself such questions. Then I simply sensed that on some numinous plane everyone there, humans and cats alike, vibrated on the same wavelength.
Well-put, Fairbanks. You may be right about that.
Sid returned to pick up Paula and those cats not going with Elizabeth. Hugs and goodbyes. Dr. Cohen handed Elizabeth a bagful of medicine, and when she kissed his cheek and called him a real mensch, “A drop in the bucket. Don’t mention it,” he punned. “Just one guy trying to undo some of the harm done by that army of barbarians out there.”
But whatta guy: a hyperion to a satyr as Booley would say. For sure, he and Sid were the first male mensches to cross my path. Now in my sorry state, in need of constant medical attention, I wish Dr. Cohen was the guy Booley took me to, for unless there’s a miracle quota per cat, he who’d restorethed my sight might, who knows, be able to restoreth the whole cat. Dream on. Forget it. Like ships that pass in the night, we’ll never meet again. Judging from the ride to her house that morning, Elizabeth lived too far away to go to him for routine matters; whereas even if Booley, a neo-Luddite who won’t drive, knew he existed, we probably couldn’t get bus or train connections.
“Take care, take care,” they told one another that morning. “Especially you two,” said Elizabeth. “Watch yourselves. It’s dangerous work.” To which Paula answered nothing could keep them from their appointed rounds, neither rain nor snow nor sleet, neither friend nor foe nor even the lover who’d dumped her. Just point him to the john, Sid said, and fill their jug with coffee, for they’ve got miles to go before they sleep. “Then away we’ll go,” she laughed, “in a cloud of dust with a hearty, Hi ho, save the animals! to deliver the rest of them to their new homes.” Vaya con dios, wherever you are. You saved my life and I’ll love you until the final curtain, already lowering, lowering, goes down.
Amen, Fairbanks. May the gods keep them safe wherever they are.
11
“The summer’s gone, and all the leaves are faw-aw-lin,” warbles Booley in his off-key Irish tenor as he tries to tempt me into swatting a string he’s snakily twisting and turning, but today the best I can do to reward his efforts is a halfhearted silent meow. “Poor Sisypuss,” he sighs. “Not a good day, huh?” He drops the string and gently rubs behind my ear which, no matter how lousy I feel, how sore my throat, he knows will always get him a faint purr. “That’s the way!” And somewhat cheered, off he goes to enroll in a Clinical Study for the Treatment of Constipation, Irregularity. “Let ‘em prove I’m not a routine sufferer,” he mutters on his way out. “This one’ll last months, cover a lot of expenses.”
No, not a good day. Still, I’ve got to get back to work sometime, right? after a summer fit for desert rats which rendered me immobile and dehydrated, necessitating two separate overnight stays at the vet’s on intravenous, so sick both times I didn’t even mind the whines and cries of fellow sufferers, the smells of piss and shit and disinfectant. Of course Booley came for me first thing in the morning, hazel eyes dark with worry until he heard I’d be OK . . . for a while yet.
So today it’s on more borrowed time, awaiting the arrival of the memoir muse, I rest on my fluffy bed and watch trees sick of greenery and soughing, tired of bending to sudden summer storms, ready themselves for winter. Past my window dance leaves briefly bright in reds and golds before they die and mummify. Well, nothing lives forever, does it?
So I take a good look, for barring miracles (I don’t), I won’t be around to catch next autumn’s show. Whether I’ll even make it through this winter is up in the air. Never mind. Don’t cry for me, Argentina. What’s one more winter to a cat that can’t swat a string, let alone run and jump to the top of the fridge in a spectacular leap; whose rotting mouth can’t manage even the watered-down cat food Booley hopefully prepares? What’s life if it isn’t fun?
C’mon, Fairbanks! Snap out of it and get real. Except for the time with Elizabeth was life ever cream and catnip?
Hell, no. But since there was that time, I know the difference, brother. I know that back then where there was never a dull moment, always some crisis or other, I knew contentment and love. If you factor out the dreaded seizures which still turn me into a convulsing wreck and the nightmares which still scare the shit out of me, I was pretty healthy; if you overlook the perforations around which fur won’t grow, I was intact. You and I were still children and together, we were good friends with the other animals–-Sean, FDR, and Bubby–-living there. I loved Tiny Bubby who’d been rescued with us in Paula’s backpack and was so like Little Alice in coloring, temperament, and prettiness. And of course there was Elizabeth. In short, joy sang in me a little while that in me sings no more.
It was snowing hard and bitter cold when we left Dr. Cohen’s. But inside Elizabeth’s old car Bob and Bubby and I were cozy and warm, snuggled together on a fluffy towel in a classy vinyl carrier with a front grill I looked through and exchanged friendly meows with the cat with paralyzed legs (named FDR by Elizabeth because of his handicap) looking back at me. Then we four survivors amused ourselves dreaming up tortures for Hudak and Abdul while Elizabeth smoked and sang along with oldies on a staticky radio. The sky was darkening and the snow drifting in soft feathers by the time we reached her house. Needing paint, sitting cheek-by-jowl with its neighbors a few feet back from a cracked sidewalk, to us it looked better than the Taj Mahal. What cats need money can’t buy, and this was home.
My eyes mist, my throat tightens, when I think of the love Elizabeth gave me and so many there. Like my bodily aches the ache of losing her’ll die only when I do. But that first day on her stained, clawed-up rug, trading sniffs with Sean’s moist black nose through the carrier grill and peering into his worried eyes I felt only joy at having been rescued from Hudak. Thanks to Shep, from the very beginning I’d every expectation that we’d be the pals we became, but that day Sean sure as hell didn’t share my conviction. May he rest in peace, that other paragon of a dog kept backing away on his haunches with whimpers of protest, slithering forward an inch only to retreat again. “It’s OK, Sean,” Elizabeth assured him, hunkering down. “Lizzie’s right here—so what, her knees’re killing her? C’mon, kiddo, how many pussycats have you lived with already? You know they don’t hurt big boyos like you!” But no, he didn’t know. A canine Job whose faith had been sorely tried by the Almighty Dog he nevertheless prayed to, she couldn’t persuade him to trust me; moreover, when the doorbell buzzed a second later, in spite of her gently restraining hand with a frantic scramble of claws he flung himself behind the sofa.
To the very end he never did get used to that bell however many times it buzzed daily, always dashing behind the sofa, unable (he later confided) to believe completely he was safe from the vivisectionists who’d destroyed his ability to trust along with his body. Even when—as it did that first day—it turned out to be Manya, who always rang but never waited for Elizabeth to get to the door, his nerves kept him where he was for long minutes before he could get himself to emerge and collect the treat she always brought him. “There’s the dog. There’s the brave and handsome dog!” Then flipping snow out of her hair, off her red jacket, all over the floor, she burst in on a barrage of words about a squirrel hit by some bastard and left to die in the street. “So what else is new?” growled Elizabeth. “On the bright side, meet Rocky, Fred, Bubby,
and FDR,” she said, opening our cage and thereby sending Sean for cover again. “Cats, this screwball is Manya.”
“Oh my God, oh my God! Will you look at those precious beasts!” She picked us up one by one and kissed us between the ears. Like Paula, she smelled of flowers. She kissed FDR twice, held him the longest. Needless to say that when it was my turn I looked into her eyes and silently meowed my appreciation. “Priceless, right? The second time I’ve seen him do that,” said Elizabeth, all smiles under her flaming wig. “Oh, I love them, I love them,” whispered moon-faced Manya, tucking wild dark curls behind an ear decorated with tiny silver balls and a dangling silver star. “Oh, you poor babies, what did they do to you? Never mind, Lizzie’ll have you up and running in no time, and then she’ll find you homes.”
For despite all evidence that the world was largely a hostile place for animals and though almost every day she stormed in with yet another horror story, Manya like me and Elizabeth believed that ultimately dreams come true and right wins out. Though tears would often smudge her heavy eyeliner as she told Elizabeth about a cat frozen to death in a clothes drop, new born puppies in a garbage bag, more cats dumped in the homeless colony behind the chain store, a dog whose snout had been duct-taped, she never threw up her hands in despair. She and Elizabeth were dogged in their fight against man’s inhumanity to non-man. And like me, both of them believed in miracles; that is to say, they had faith that in time the cat would mew and the dog would have his day.
Sisypuss: Memoirs of a Vagabond Cat Page 7