Sisypuss: Memoirs of a Vagabond Cat

by Patricia Halloff

  “Ah, what the hell,” he sighs. He lines the mice and balls up on my windowsill. He replaces “Rudolph” with “The Drummer Boy.” Then he picks me up gently and sits down with me on his lap. “Well, maybe tomorrow’ll be better,” he says, one hand tenderly rubbing my ears, tickling me under the chin, the other dangling over the chair arm, joint between his fingers. “The time for miracles and all that shit, right?” I force a purr. Maybe he’s right. Maybe Dr. Cohen will come through the door tomorrow with a magic cure, and Bob’ll walk out of my dream tonight to curl up beside me in the flesh, to say in his living voice, “C’mon Fairbanks, enough already. Here I am. Let’s get on with the job of living.”

  I ran through woods. As if being chased by wild dogs I ran: I couldn’t get away from that farmhouse and dump fast enough. All the while I kept thinking Bob was with me. I kept turning around, looking around, expecting to see him. And when he wasn’t there it’d strike me all over again that he’d never be, and I’d choke on despair. Not wanting to live but driven (I suppose) by something subliminal to survive, on I ran and on, again feeling as I’d felt on the treadmill: dead on my paws, ready to keel over, but forced to keep running to save myself. I was lost without him. There were no silver linings in the clouds darkening my world. With no reason to go on, I went on.

  In time I found myself out of the woods facing a highway. Far as the eye could see vehicles racing in opposite directions charged forward like raging, roaring beasts chasing one another to the ends of the earth. Trucks longer than houses belched billows of black smoke. Cars and vans traded lanes, weaving, scooting in and out of every opening in the traffic. The glaring winter sun bounced off steel and windshields, blinding me. Nevertheless, like Booley’s windup mouse, I would’ve kept going, too exhausted and miserable to know what I was doing, I would’ve dashed right into the highway if it hadn’t been for Bob’s first posthumous entry into my head. HALT, FAIRBANKS! YOU WANNA BE ROADKILL?

  So, I halted. I crept a little way back into the woods to get away from the racket and crouched there at the end of my rope. I couldn’t go back, I couldn’t go forward. Fumes from the road made me cough and burned my eyes. I crouched amid trees dead and dying from highway pollution and strangled by brier which had crashed on one another and the underbrush. The only thing needed in that desolation was for the blustery sky to send down more snow.

  Oppressed by loss and hopelessness, I stayed put while dusk deepened, road lights and headlights blinked on, traffic increased. For a while I dozed, but awoke with a jolt and racing heart at the sound of a great crash. Then, sirens screamed, red lights spun, police radios squawked. Men cleaning up shattered glass and crushed metal shouted back and forth while others lifted two bodies onto stretchers and slid them into an ambulance. Shaking all over, once more in the presence of Death whose grasp extended beyond where Bob had died, beyond where Sean and Elizabeth had died, embracing the entire globe, I watched the tragedy unfold.

  Cats don’t do that, I think to myself now: cats don’t form herds which push other cats to their deaths. Curiosity, cruelty, Nature, or disease kill cats—they don’t mechanize their own destruction. No cat ever committed suicide with a manufactured aid. Willing itself dead to escape the unbearable? In extremis that’s been done—in fact, it’s an option I’m half considering. But that’s another thing altogether, an act done at a cat’s discretion and convenience, a godlike prerogative taken on his/her own behalf. And . . . should the cat change his/her mind at any point in the willing, or some miracle make it unnecessary–-you can stop, you can always stop.

  Well, eventually the police and ambulance and road crew drove away, the sky turned black and moonless, the cold worsened, the wind sharpened and blew still more litter into the brush where I hid. But little by little the number of trucks dwindled and more space appeared between vehicles. Still a nip and tuck affair, mind you, to make it across but less risky than before. Go! What the hell, you can’t stay here forever. Just look before you leap!

  Except that after looking and looking, trying to see a pattern to the traffic, as he would’ve, I couldn’t. It roared by at random. Either leap or stay stranded was my choice. So with hammering heart and the roar of fear in my ears louder than the traffic, I leapt, making it to the center aisle from which I leapt again, making it in one piece to the other side. Beating the odds, beating the odds. Whew! Either the Malevolent Force had been occupied elsewhere, or Death had decided I’d had enough for one day.

  And there I was—back in civilization. I’d wound up on rough-mowed grass at the foot of a weedy embankment. Styrofoam cups and plates, plastic bags, sodden paper. Gasoline and diesel smog. All part and parcel of the civilized life Bob and I had set out to find. Panting, weak from hunger and overtired, I crawled partway into a culvert set into the embankment to get away from the wind and road racket. And there in icy blackness I immediately drifted off to dream good and bad dreams of my brother until light seeped through my eyelids.

  I crawled toward the light and out the other end to find myself at the foot of another embankment separated from a supermarket’s parking lot by a cyclone fence. And against the fence on the parking lot side—if I could believe my eyes, if hunger hadn’t freaked me out to the point of hallucinating—a bunch of cats hunched over aluminum plates were—eating! I crept closer. Yes! They were eating! The smell of fish in my twitching nostrils wasn’t imaginary, nor were the heads whipping around at sound of me bounding up to the fence.

  Well, do I have to tell you their glares didn’t stop me from squeezing through one of the many gaps in the fence and wolfing down my first food since the deer meat I’d tried to feed Bob? And probably because there was enough to go around and because they were used to their ranks fluctuating, except for one testy tom they raised no objections. “Who the fuck are you, asshole?” he’d growled when I’d finished up. “Go back where you came from! Get lost!” But no longer the Fairbanks I’d been in my first run-in with that kind of cat, having been around the block many times since then, I deflated him fast. Facing him head-on, I let him get a good look at the punctures and lidless eyes which made me look like a cat not to be messed with. I bristled my tail, I flattened my ears, I made ready to spring. “Back off, ratface,” I advised him, and I meant business.

  Bravo, Fairbanks! Star performance! There he goes!

  Now that I can’t eat at all I think of how great things tasted that day. And just as I did then, I wonder how food could’ve lifted my spirits so soon after my devastating loss and all leading up to it. Would any cat’ve been happy to find the wherewithal to keep itself alive, or was it just me? Am I—is anyone—capable of pure selflessness? Is the inner force which kept me going after Bob’s death—even while telling myself I didn’t want to live—so overpowering that love of another however deep is no match for it? If so, does it exist in all living creatures or only some? As I feel myself closing off, shutting down, fading away, as I look out the window at street lights blurred by icy mist, the Xmas garlands and red plastic bells which span the streets swinging in the wind, I think such thoughts, I ask myself unresolvable questions.

  But to get back. Indifferent to the suspicious circlings and scrutiny of the others, after Ratface skulked away I commenced grooming myself without Bob’s help for the first time in my life. My fur was matted with burrs and sand. The area where my lower eyelids should’ve been was crusted with dried pus. There was grit in and around the main puncture on top of my head, that especially tender place we’d always cleaned for each other. It took me a long time to finish, and doing for myself what Bob’d always done made the anguish of his absence return full force.

  Well, because sleep was and is for me the only defense against that, I crept inside one of the cartons lined with old towels there and slept. I did a lot of sleeping in the days following Bob’s death. Never big on reality, I’d cut time spent in it to the minimum needed to keep myself alive. For in sleep I led another existence, one where Bob lived not merely as a voice in my head, but as a li
ving-breathing cat going about his business.

  “‘Til human voices wake us and we drown,’” as Booley would say about the voice that jerked me from my happy dream. “Oh dear, you’ve been through the mill, haven’t you?” And there was a lady wiggling fingers smelling of fish under my nose, and when I made no move to run, she knelt down and began to rub my ears. “You’re not feral either, are you?” she sighed. “What crime did you commit to wind up here?” she asked in a voice so gentle that a little bubble of hope rose within me for the first time since Bob died. Was I going to be rescued after all? Were things going to change for the better? I searched her face for affirmation. A silent meow broke from me like a plea. But . . . “I know, I know what you want. I wish I could, I wish I could take you home, sweet puss,” she said. “But there’s no more room, just no more room in my inn.”

  Then she was on her feet again, all business, putting out food and water, dumping leftovers into a garbage bag, talking away to the others as if they hadn’t dashed into tall weeds the minute she’d appeared. Not me. I’d stayed. Hoping she’d change her mind and take me with her, I followed her from pan to pan. I sidled against her legs, silently meowed, purred at top volume. I gave it my all. But though at some point she peeked under my tail and said “Good,” otherwise she paid no attention to my pleas, or me she didn’t relent then or ever. She was no Manya. No room, just no more room, had been her final words on the subject.

  When everything was cleaned and the pans restocked she walked over to the fence, parted some tall weeds, and pulled out two traps. “Ah! Gotcha!” she crowed, carrying the growling victims to her car. “They’ll be back, they’ll be back after they’re fixed,” she called over to me and the hiding ferals before she drove away.

  “It’s true,” said a middle-aged female, marmalade like Bob but with white whiskers and trim. “After she caught me, she brought me back. The rest of them too. All of us feeling the worse for wear. Don’t go into one of those things, kid, no matter how hungry you are.” Rejected and dejected, in no mood for conversation, wondering if anything would ever turn out OK again, I ignored her and plodded wearily back to the carton, wanting only to sleep. She followed. “What she does is always keep food in those things so hungry newcomers who get here when there’s nothing left to eat, or even some of us too hungry or soft in the head to wait for her to bring our stuff, get themselves caught.” I pretended she wasn’t there. I wished her away. Why the hell was she bugging me anyway? “And when she brings us back we don’t know where we’d been or why.” Well, because of Elizabeth and Manya I knew, but I wasn’t about to tell someone I wanted to leave me the hell alone. So, to shut her up and spare the world more unwanted kittens, I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep. She went away.

  Right, Fairbanks! Besides, there’ll always be some—I won’t mention names—who’ll want sex more than food, so better they shouldn’t know.

  Nights I tried to turn a deaf ear to the howls of the horny the cat lady hadn’t yet managed to trap and neuter. As for her, I never followed her around again, I had my pride. The small part of me still hopeful pipe-dreamed that maybe one day Manya would come in her place, but that never happened. There’ve been no returnees wanted or unwanted in my life. I never saw Manya or Dr. C or Penske or Hudak or Queen or anyone else again. The ones I loved or the ones I hated never recrossed my path.

  “In your case, the moving hand done writ and moved on, boyo,” is how Booley would put it. Not in his case though: last week he’d sighted Molly at an antiquarian book fair, darkening his days all over again because she was there with some other guy.

  Catching me eating, “She caught me,” continued the middle-aged marmalade as if no time had passed since she’d last pestered me, “because I’d just kittened again and was so hungry I could’ve eaten a horse.” I kept on eating. To finish up fast and get back to dreaming was my desire. Did she think I gave a shit about her life story? Get lost, dammit! I hissed mentally. Shut up, go away, leave me alone. I wanted no part of her or the shitty world. So without a word, as soon as I finished, I went to the carton and got inside. But again, she followed. “You’re sad,” she said, peering in. “I know what it’s like to be sad.” She asked softly, “What happened to you, kid?” Then she reached into the carton and touched my shoulder with a timid paw.

  And with that unforgettable gesture restored me to life. All my pent-up misery heaved up like a tidal wave to shatter the shell I’d been growing plaque by plaque. I poured my heart out to her. I told her how I got the punctures, I told her about Bob, I told her everything. Somewhere during my unburdening she came into the carton and nestled against me and our combined body heat made me the warmest I’d been since I’d been alone. Shut away from mating calls and wind and traffic noise in a cocoon of warmth and affinity, we talked through the night.

  She’d never really known her mama either. After they were weaned someone dumped the litter she was part of by the woods. One brother got run over trying to cross the highway, the others just wandered off never to be seen again. But when I said maybe it was better that way, better not to get as close as I’d been with my brother, she said, No it wasn’t better. She believed like Booley who’d announced after the antiquarian book fair “Twas better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all.” “Listen, kid,” was the way she put it, “I’m old enough to be your mama and had more babies than I can remember. I loved ‘em all with all my heart and never once wished I hadn’t after they were gone.” The opposite, she said, because after the cat lady trapped her she never had babies to love again.

  She was the best thing which could’ve happed to me at the lowest point in my life. “You believe in a Supreme Cat, kid?” she asked. “I do. I believe that though the cat underclass has it rough now, in the sweet by-and-by that’ll be reversed. Meanwhile, we got to swing our tails and keep smiling is what I say.” From that first night on we stuck together, groomed each other, slept in the same carton. The only downside was that sometimes upon just awakening and still in the twilight between sleep and reality, for a split second I’d think the ginger body snuggled against me was Bob’s, that I hadn’t lost him after all. And the subsequent realization that it wasn’t true was desolating.

  Thinking it would help me, she kept nudging me to talk about him. No, I’d tell her, it would make me too sad. “To talk about happy times makes you sad?” she scoffed, smiling her crooked smile, giving me a playful cuff on the ear. “Not me. The opposite. What keeps me going is the memory of the days I walked in the sun.” She was a cat after my own heart, the closest thing to a mama since Mama.

  She had no name because she’d never been owned. “Call me anything you want, Fairbanks, except late for dinner,” she said. So from the limited stock of names in my head I chose “Paula”, my first rescuer. She was sweet and kind and despite her optimism, tough-minded. She didn’t buy into my reemerging belief that everything turns out all right. “Not everything, Fairbanks. Talking homewise for instance: even if a saint whose goal in life is to adopt homeless cats showed up here, we’d be bypassed in favor of the young. Who wants a middle-aged gimpy feral with ratty fur, a skin condition, and a crooked nose? Or you, kid, with your fits and holes and spooky eyes? Dream on, if rescue’s what you dream about.”

  A long time ago before the cat lady starting coming and feeding, when she was young and stupid and starved, she told me, she’d gone through an opening in the fence to the parking lot hoping to find something to eat. No soap. Only a few crumbs some sparrows were eating. Cars and vans and delivery trucks coming and going, you never knew when something sitting there would start moving backward or forward. A truck the size of an elephant came at her, and if some guy hadn’t kicked her out of its way, yelling she’d be hash if she didn’t watch it, she’d’ve been killed. “Did I ever go back, you’re asking me? Do I look stupid? And don’t you go there either!” she warned. “I see you looking over, Fairbanks. You think I don’t know what you’re thinking? Forget about it, take it from me i
t’s no place for cats who want to live. We got all we need right here.

  But with the lifting of the worst of my depression came a revival of curiosity and my old restlessness, the return of the feeling most cats share that wherever I wasn’t was better than where I was. So, right—I had been thinking about checking out what went on over there—and maybe beyond. For spending the rest of your days living on handouts and sleeping in freezing cartons winters wasn’t the kind of civilization Bob and I had set out to find. She was the only thing keeping me there, we were very close, but because she was sick a lot, always coming down with colds or infections, I’d become obsessed with the fear that she’d die, that I’d lose her the way I lost everyone else I’d loved. And if and when that happened, my one reason for staying would be gone. Of course if I’d known at the time that I was a marked cat, that Death was already on the first leg of his trek toward me and might very well reach me before he reached her, I wouldn’t have worried so much.

  But that’s neither here nor there. Not knowing what was in the cards and being by nature like most cats an intrepid explorer, at present I wanted to see for myself what the lot was all about. So, the first chance I got (Paula being busy orienting a newcomer), undaunted by her warnings, I snuck through a hole in the fence. A good thing too (though I didn’t think so at the time), or there would’ve have been no Booley.

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