Sisypuss: Memoirs of a Vagabond Cat

by Patricia Halloff

  Of course for me to’ve speculated over what was in those dogs’ heads was unproductive, considering specie differences and how outlandish the idea of fighting another cat to the death is to me. We don’t do that. Sure, we’ll fight up to a point if some rogue cat disrespects us by meddling in turf or carnal matters, but basically we’re peace lovers who hate disorder and dissension and rarely let things go too far. Unlike the dogs who, for whatever reason, were staking their lives on stamina or guts, when physical combat gets out of hand, we concede defeat by gracefully rolling over into submissive pose and then leaving the arena in as dignified a manner as possible.

  It makes sense, Fairbanks.

  Well, although sleep eventually did creep up on us, it wasn’t long before revving motors, slurred shouts, horselaughs, and a slamming door jerked us awake. “GET IN THERE, FUCK-UP!” someone snarled, then a loud whack and a weak yelp, and knowing we were going to hear something we didn’t want to hear, Bob and I huddled closer together. “What’re you taking the fucker back for?” someone else asked. “Sucker’s almost dead. Why don’tcha leave ‘im for one of them gooks’ in there tonight to eat? You a racist or somethin’?” “Hah-hah funny. Nah, I’m takin’ ‘im back so’s I can burn ‘im alive to teach my other pits what happens to losers. This bastard’s cost me big tonight. You hear seven grand’s what that Chops made that scumbag Hector tonight?” “I heard eight. Anyways, Chops ain’t in great shape neither. So, you burn ‘em, huh? What I do, not that you’re askin’, is hang ‘em from the barn door till they croak and stink too bad to keep ‘em there. Lasts longer, gives the rest of ‘em more chance to learn.” “Nah, burnin’s my way.” “Well, whatever. Good luck the mother’s alive come mornin’ the way he’s moanin’ in there.” “He ain’t, I do it anyways.” “Yeah, well, whatever, but no sound effects that way hah-hah. Listen, I’m freezin’ my ass off out here. See ya.” A door slammed, an engine roared, tires tore up gravel, the horror show ended.

  Something cold crawling around in the pit of my stomach, “We’ve got to get out of here,” I mewed in despair. But Bob’s response was to start grooming me again, albeit nervously, and to again insist we shouldn’t jump the gun, maybe they would never come back and it would never happen again, living out there in the cold without shelter wasn’t good.

  However, the following night upon our return from foraging, again–-the trucks, the lights, the roars. Hearts hammering in dread of what we’d see, we looked inside the other coop and saw cocks doing what the dogs had done, shedding fresh blood over the now rusty stains from the night before. Well, that did it for Bob at last. “We’re out of here,” he said.

  Cats have too much spirit not to have hearts, Fairbanks.

  15

  Last night after tossing back half a bottle of red, voice broken and slurred by passion and drink, Booley recited “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” to his current love, also a poet. Sleet slammed the window. “Oh my God!” snapped Molly, the one I preferred over her predecessors and successors. Like Manya she’d breeze in and out smiling, kiss me hello and goodbye between the ears, tickle me with her long honey-colored hair. While Booley who loves people to love me beamed. Best of all, she’d scoop me up and take me to her lap where I could knead to my heart’s content as long as I didn’t dig hard. A small concession for the bliss of snuggling in that soft warm place which smelled of patchouli and her own six cats. Molly.

  But last night they’d argued because she was two hours late, they didn’t go into the bedroom, he started in with “La Belle Dame”: all bad signs. And in the middle of his sadly singsonging “Her hair was long, her foot was light,/her eyes were wild,” Molly cut him short. “I told you on Day One, Booley, nobody owns me. Drop the drama,” she said, her husky voice a little shaky. “Right. Gotcha!” “And this is why I sojourn here/Alone and palely loitering,/Though the sedge is withered from the lake,/And no bird sings,” Booley bristled before taking another swig. “Oh, for Christ’s sake! I’m going home, I’m tired.” “Why? Why’re you tired, Cynara?” “Screw you,” Molly hissed. She picked me up and kissed me goodbye. “Love you, Sisypuss,” she said, putting me on his lap. And left.

  Booley’s love life isn’t a hell of a lot better than mine was. He’s too hung up on exclusivity—as I was with Queen (not the reason she spurned me, of course). “And I awoke, and found me here/On the cold hillside,” he croaked, more than a little green around the gills—probably a bad reaction to all the wine on top of the test drug he’s taking to keep us in funds. “Let her go, let her go, God bless her,” he bellowed. “Wherever she may be./ She can search the wide world over,/ And never find another man as sweet as me.” After which he sank into morosity and together we bachelors watched the sleet change to heavy snow, splatter itself against the black glass.

  This morning he oversleeps, missing two doses of the antidepressant they’re testing on him, missing my morning Q10 pill and squirt of Interferon. For me, a lucky break. Sometimes I think, Better he should give me the antidepressant, this is no life for a cat of my nature who’s tasted freedom, this stagnating existing on-hold by virtue of pills and squirts and procedures. Where’s joy? Where’s excitement? Why waste money on crap which only prolongs paralysis in a straitjacket of disease? Not that I’m not still up for a miracle cure, mind you, but the shit he pumps into me isn’t the stuff miracles are made of.

  Still, Booley’s nothing if not persistent. So after a strong dose of the hair of the dog, he leaves around noon to doggedly buy more lousy-tasting junk to smear on my gums and more of the cat treats I often throw up. “Hang in, Sisypuss, be right back.” And no sooner do I close my eyes he is, waking me up with his hammering. “Don’t open till Christmas,” he says, hanging a cat toy stocking high on the wall—as if I could reach it at a lower level. As if I had the strength to try. “Hang in, Sisypuss. Only two weeks to go,” he says, trying for an upbeat tone. Two weeks? I wouldn’t bet on me making it.

  But back to better days. Bob and I on the go again, weaving our weary way after a fast getaway from the dogfight coop. Wind and cold constant, landscape different. Here and there we ran into backwoods hovels with collections of dismantled vehicles, broken bed frames, beer bottles piled in weeds, garbage in overturned cans raided nightly by feral dogs and cats, thieving raccoons, possums, crows, scavengers of every stripe. While resident dogs, every rib showing, strained at their chains and howled obscenities until some missile hurled from a window shut them up.

  Considering that our way of life had calloused not only our paws but our sensitivity, that it was eat-or-be eaten, every-cat-for-himself in our world, that self-interest was a cat’s instinctive guiding star, why I was touched by one particular scroungy mutt’s plight had to be laid to the images of Shep and Sean and the brutalized dogs of the chicken coop flashing before my mind’s eye at the sight of him. Granted, self-interest came into it later, but in the beginning it was strictly from the heart. Bob and I were shivering. So was he. A black lab, a breed known for gentleness and amiability, on a short chain wrapped around a tree, no water or food bowls, his joke of a house too small for him by half. A wreck of a dog, undernourished, raw red patches of skin all over him, a hangdog posture which quickly changed to one of menace when he spotted us. Lips drawn back over yellow fangs, he lunged snarling in our direction, choking and gagging on the chain.

  I turned to Bob and said we should bring him food. “Are you nuts, Fairbanks? He’d eat us given half a chance. Let’s get out of here,” said Bob whose common sense could be counted on to overrule impractical promptings of his tender heart. But memories of decent dogs and kindnesses done to us made me stand firm. Would Janet, Elizabeth, Manya walk away from this? I asked him. Wouldn’t Shep or Sean find him at least a bone? So, we got him a squirrel. And though he charged and choked and snarled and slavered, while Bob tried to calm him, yelling, Enough with the theatrics, we’d brought him something good, I snuck close enough to push it within his reach. Then from a safe distance we watched him sniff the carcase suspiciou
sly from every angle until he attacked it with gusto.

  And Cat Almighty be my witness, only then did it strike me that this was a clear-cut case where one paw could wash the other. “I’m going to ask if we can sleep in his doghouse,” I announced. “He can’t fit in it. Can it hurt to ask?” Well, you can guess Bob’s reaction. “I give up,” was my brother’s reply. “I throw up my paws. Go knock yourself out, Fairbanks. Ask and see for yourself you won’t receive.” And as usual he was right. “You crazy? Fuckin’ cats in my house? Get the fuck outta here!” snarled the dog, and when I pointed out we’d brought him food, that we’d bring him more if we stayed, instead of listening to reason, he reared up horselike, charged and blustered, ears flat, hackles raised, frothing with outrage and hate. “You tryin’ to bribe me, scumbag? Get lost! Get out before I get loose and rip you apart!”

  Well, needless to say, we did. We didn’t stop running until the specie slurs he barked after us no longer reached our burning ears. So much for doing unto others and/or one paw washing the other. So much for nature too, if upbringing can turn gentle and amiable labs into aspiring assassins.

  By then, dusk was blowing icy breaths down our necks. Bloated gray clouds pierced by cold white and orange light were turning ever darker. We found shelter in the form of a fallen pine just as the night sky canceled out the last bit of twilight. Then snow. Large flakes soft as feathers drifted down on the needly branches we’d crawled under. The hush of bitter cold fell over the woods as, safe from harm, we nestled together almost warmed by body heat and snow piling upon our roof of pine boughs.

  As Booley says, We know what we are but know not what we may be. What a few short months before would’ve been unbearable we took in stride. We accepted often empty bellies, harsh weather, threats of all kinds too numerous to mention. We took pride in survival. Like the young ferals at Elizabeth’s, now I too valued freedom over security. To come and go as whim dictates for a cat in its salad days is to be king over all it surveys. Believe me: To this day if I weren’t dying, irregardless of my love for Booley, there’re times I want to dash out a momentarily open door to run wherever I damn please, to feel alive again, chase leaves, roll in dirt, match wits against the Malevolent Force upstairs, breathe fresh air, walk or sleep in the sun, stargaze and moondream. Especially when a full moon floods the room does my mind’s eye return to woods moonflooded with lights and shadows, and I long to leap from my window ledge, to be on my way to known and unknown places; I long to be free and wild again, to have my heart broken again; I long to see Queen in moonlight one more time.

  Due to circumstances beyond my control she was The Unattainable: my Belle Dame sans Merci. She came into my life one winter night filled with the false promise of spring: lightness of air and a waxing creamy moon though the ground was still crusted with snow. Bob and I were asleep in our pine-bough shelter when her squalls awakened us. “Go back to sleep. That sort of thing has nothing to do with us,” Bob mumbled and promptly took his own cryptic advice. But for me sleep was no longer possible. Before I even laid eyes on her, her voice was an aphrodisiac. I followed its siren song through lights and darks cast by the lopsided moon, a strange sweet muskiness leading me by the nose to where she rolled on the ground calling, calling. Black as the night but for the heart-shaped touch of white at her throat, she rolled from side to side in the crunchy snow calling hollow-voiced of a hunger demanding satisfaction.

  And watching her, hearing her, inhaling her scent, strange feelings engulfed me, I floundered in unfamiliar waters. It was as if I too was hungry but lacked the equipment to eat. It was as if I were in the air beating wings useless against gravity pulling me down, down. It was as if I had to touch her, to feed that small crumb to the hollow hunger in my guts or waste away. So I went over and began grooming her. “Mmmmmrrrrr,” she purred. “Mmmmmrrrrr,” I purred in the throes of a wistful wanting for I knew-not-what. I hadn’t a clue what she wanted when arching her back, raising her tail (as Mama warned Alice never to do), she moaned, “Make love to me.” Nor did I have more than a shadowy sense of the connection between her behavior and my internal stirrings, the sense that somehow I was being frustrated. But—by what? “Enough with the foreplay! Let’s go already!” she yowled.

  Go where? I couldn’t make head or tail of it. And hard though it may be to believe, instinct (let alone the male organ) didn’t rise up to clue me in. It took a tom charging full speed from nowhere (and later Bob) to clear things up. As if I weren’t there, my tongue blissfully burrowing her velvety ear, like a shot he was on top of her biting her neck. Well. In what I thought was a courageous, swashbuckling move, I jumped on top of him. A move unappreciated by either of them. “What the hell’re you doing?” she wailed, turning her head to glare at me. “Get off a him!” While he, a cat who believed action spoke better than words, in a wink had me on the ground (considering his size advantage not hard to do) and was scratching my eyes, sinking vicious fangs into what Booley calls the family jewels, biting the hell out of me in general. “Buzz off, pervert, eunuch, whatever the hell you are!” he hissed through a mouth full of my fur. Was there any other option? I’d been defeated in battle by a cat who knew what Queen wanted when I didn’t and rejected in his favor. Oh, the shame, the shame. Wounded in body, pride, and heart, I waved all four paws in surrender and crept away. From cover, crouched in freezing snow, I watched him mount her once more, fang her delicate neck once more; and even as she howled bloody murder, her rear end humped against his belly, her erect tail quivered like a rattlesnake, and she made no effort to fight him off. What were they doing? Was that, I asked myself aghast, what she’d meant by “Make love to me”? Was that what Mama told us never to do? I could do that, but why would I want to? I could jump on her and fang her neck also, hang on like a bulldog, but why would I want to hurt her, and why would she want to be hurt enough to make her scream bloody murder?

  A mystery—not the least of which were my undefinable feelings when I first came upon her rolling around that way and which, watching the tom move on top of her in time to some inner rhythm, increased alarmingly. I sensed a lack: it was as if something needed to complete those feelings was missing. Nursing hurt pride and an ambiguous sense of frustration, I hid until he leapt off her with a grunt and disappeared into the woods.

  She’d stopped screaming. A deep hush settled over the moonlit scene. It was so quiet that when I limped from cover I heard the rasp of her tongue as bent double, one elegant leg raised straight up, she licked under her tail. “Why did you want him to hurt you?” I asked plaintively. “I don’t get it.” “Holy cow! You still here? Go chase your tail,” she spat out. Then she whirled around and ran off into the woods. Her paws were fleet, her tail was long, her eyes were wild. *

  Beat up, tail drooping, totally demoralized, a failure not understanding how I’d failed, I hobbled back to crawl beside Bob. “What the hell happened to you this time, Fairbanks?” he exploded. “Never mind. I can see. I can see where you were. Why am I asking? I don’t want to hear it.” Well, I told him everything anyway, and that’s when I belatedly learned the Facts of Life.

  “What planet you on, Fairbanks? You don’t know why you had those feelings? You don’t know you didn’t do what she wanted because you’re neutered?” he asked with mixed amazement and exasperation. “What’s neutered you’re asking me? I can’t believe this! Don’t you pay attention to anything? What d’ya think the ferals were convalescing from? Didn’t you listen to Elizabeth and Manya’s conversations about birth control? What about what Mama said about staying away from hot females doing the rolling around and calling thing because what the world doesn’t need is more unwanted cats? Where’ve you been, Fairbanks? What d’ya think happened when Manya took us to the vet’s that day? Why d’ya think we were sore under the tail after that? Get your head out of the clouds, Bro. Observe! Listen!” All as a preamble to explaining what neutering did to cats. “Then he wasn’t neutered, and neither was she,” I said with a sinking feeling. “Correct!” sa
id Bob. “Which means bad news for both of them, especially her.”

  Well, all things considered, I agree wholeheartedly neutering’s imperative, but at the time I hated my altered state for screwing up a relationship I wanted. If I’d been given the chance, like any cat faced with a moral dilemma involving the choice between self-gratification or self-denial for the general good, I would’ve opted for the former. Was there a way to get around it? I wailed, hoping Bob would know one. But, no. “What’s gone is gone, you can’t put it back,” was the answer. “Then what about faking it?” I proposed, grasping at straws. “Undoable. No way she won’t know. Forget about it.” “But she’s so beautiful!” “Never mind, she’s beautiful. Here, let me clean you up so you don’t get infected again. Forget about her or you’ll wind up like this again—for what?” “Still, what about her?” I groaned. “How’ll she wind up having litter after litter?” “Enough already, Fairbanks. You can’t stop her if that’s what you’re thinking. You’re no vet. C’mon, lift up your tail. Let me get at the bites on your—Cat Almighty! He really did a job on you!”

  Clearly there was no sense in talking to him about it any more, and less to be gained by telling him I didn’t intend to forget about it. My warmhearted brother was cold when it came to Queen. As for me, I was smitten, pierced not only by that rapist’s fangs but by Eros’s arrows and determined to somehow remove the obstacles between Queen and me. So what, Bob thinks faking it wouldn’t work, I told myself. Is he so well informed in these matters? Can it hurt to give it a shot? So, that night when her throaty squalls howled through the trees, ignoring his mutterings, I went to her again in order to warn her about where her lifestyle would lead, to propose an alternative, to offer my heart. I was sure that once she thought about the consequences of what she was doing and heard my proposition she’d see its merits and rethink her position.