This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The private life of the cat who...
A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright © 2003 by Braun, Lilian Jackson
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ISBN: 0-7865-5201-8
A JOVE BOOK®
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Electronic edition: November, 2004
Also by Lilian Jackson Braun
The Cat Who Could Read Backwards
The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern
The Cat Who Turned On and Off
The Cat Who Saw Red
The Cat Who Played Brahms
The Cat Who Played Post Office
The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare
The Cat Who Sniffed Glue
The Cat Who Went Underground
The Cat Who Talked to Ghosts
The Cat Who Lived High
The Cat Who Knew a Cardinal
The Cat Who Moved a Mountain
The Cat Who Wasn’t There
The Cat Who Went into the Closet
The Cat Who Came to Breakfast
The Cat Who Blew the Whistle
The Cat Who Said Cheese
The Cat Who Tailed a Thief
The Cat Who Sang for the Birds
The Cat Who Saw Stars
The Cat Who Robbed a Bank
The Cat Who Smelled a Rat
The Cat Who Went Up the Creek
The Cat Who Brought Down the House
SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS
The Cat Who Had 14 Tales
Short and Tall Tales
Dedicated to Earl Bettinger,
The Husband Who . . .
foreword
James Mackintosh Qwilleran is a journalist who wrote for metropolitan newspapers from coast to coast before relocating in Pickax City, four hundred miles north of everywhere. Now he writes a twice-weekly column for The Moose County Something, and also keeps a personal journal of his off-duty experiences.
Koko is a “real cool cat” who happens to have sixty whiskers instead of the usual forty-eight. Yum Yum the Paw, as she is known, is an adorable female who will steal anything—including hearts.
These excerpts from Qwilleran’s journal include memories, thoughts, and ideas from the “Qwill Pen” column. Altogether it’s a drama starring two feline celebrities.
Raise the curtain!
I’ll never forget those days! I was getting my life back on track. I had a job, writing features for the Daily Fluxion. I had a place to live, an apartment on the ground floor of an old mansion. And soon I would be getting a roommate!
My landlord, who was art critic for the Fluxion, lived upstairs with his art treasures and a Siamese called Kao K’o Kung. Although I knew nothing about cats, I was enlisted for cat-sitting when the critic was out of town.
He wrote his reviews at home and never went near the news office. According to conventional wisdom, he never went near the art galleries either, but wrote his nasty criticism off the top of his head. Among local artists he was well hated, to coin a phrase. So no one was surprised when he was murdered in his own backyard.
That was the first time I heard the cat’s “death howl,” a blood-curdling experience!
Kao K’o Kung—that smart cat!—then walked downstairs and moved in with me. I recall giving him some turkey from the Press Club that I had been saving for myself.
So here we were! Thrown together by fate! First thing I did, I changed his name to Koko.
He made no objection. He knew which side his bread was buttered on! In the days that followed we invented games to play, both athletic and intellectual. I was at work all day but made up for it by reading to him every evening—either the Daily Fluxion or the dictionary; he was not particular.
Then I began to find fault with the old mansion. It seemed to be the ancestral domain of a dynasty of moths, which were eating holes in my bathrobe and neckties. But where could I move? Apartments in my price range specified “no pets allowed.” I discussed the problem with Koko, who listened thoughtfully. I told him that a friend of mine was going to Europe for three months and had suggested that I house-sit. Koko squeezed his eyes. We were getting to be pals. Then, to my surprise, he turned out be a self-appointed bodyguard and somewhat of a bloodhound!
One day he wanted to go upstairs to his old haunt. The murdered man’s treasures had been removed, but I had a key to the apartment and the supply of cat litter. But that cat seemed to have his own urgent reason; he ran up and down the stairs ahead of me in anticipation.
Sure enough, there was a large tapestry still hanging in a hallway, and Koko was determined to paw his way behind it. When I went to his assistance, I discovered a door back there, which the landlord had found it advisable to conceal. It led downstairs to a small ground-floor apartment in the rear of the building, and it was filled with clues to the recent crime. It had been used as an artist’s studio and still had an odor of turpentine.
Just as I was snooping around in amazement and Koko was getting some kind of catly high from the paintbrushes, I heard a key turn in the rear door leading to the backyard, and a big man walked in. For a moment we were both frozen in surprise. Then he looked about wildly, grabbed a palette knife, and came at me!
Before I could find a chair to swing at him, Koko threw a catfit! The room seemed filled with snarling animals, attacking him from all sides with claws extended! I was able to clobber the guy, and we left him on the floor while we called the police. Koko spent the next few hours licking his claws.
I was glad to move into my friend’s posh apartment on the fifteenth floor of the Villa Verandah. Koko seemed happy, too. I think he liked the view. Then one day I came home from work and found a large hole in the green wool upholstery of a fine wing chair. As I examined it, with horror, Koko jumped onto the chair seat and upchucked a green fur ball—still moist!
I immediately phoned the Press Club bartender, who always had the answer to all questions.
He listened and said wisely, “Sounds like an emotional problem. You need a psycatatrist. I can tell you where to find one.”
It sounded like a hoax, especially since the address he gave me was on the edge of the red-light district. And I was even more suspicious when I phoned for an appointment and was told to come alone without the cat . . . but I was desperate! I reported for the consultation.
It was a tawdry house, but there were cats on every windowsill, and that was promising. I was welcomed by a kindly woman in a faded housedress accompani
ed by at least a dozen cats who seemed quite well adjusted. She ushered me into the parlor and gave me a cup of tea with the inevitable cat hair floating in it. No matter.
What I learned, after stating the problem, was this: Siamese, when troubled, become wool eaters. My ties and bathrobe were undoubtedly wool. Koko was lonely because he was accustomed to having someone at home all day. He needed a nice little Siamese female for a companion. Neutering would make no difference. They would be quite sweet to each other. . . . I found this concept extremely interesting.
Now all I had to do was find a little female Siamese. . . .
Panic time! Here I was—a lifelong cat illiterate—involved in matchmaking between temperamental Siamese! I phoned the Press Club bartender for advice once more.
“Call the catteries listed in the Yellow Pages,” he said with authority. “Check the classified ads in the paper. Call the pet hospitals!”
I did. My efforts turned up only one available candidate, and the asking price was more than my weekly paycheck at the Fluxion. I was just getting back on my feet financially. I needed to make a down payment on a used car.
Meanwhile I was afraid to leave Koko alone in the borrowed apartment; he might start eating the rugs! Once, as a test, I shut him up in the bathroom, and he howled so continuously and with such volume that there were five complaints to the manager.
Someone suggested selling Koko; it would solve the whole problem.
I considered that unthinkable. Already I felt a kinship with him that was hard to explain.
I’ll never forget the frantic search for a companion who would stop Koko from eating wool!
She was a poor little rich cat when I first met her. Didn’t even know her name. And she was the butt of arguments between husband and wife. He hated cats. She sat in a wheelchair all day, stroking the kitten on her lap. The little thing was a Siamese, she said, but so young that her brown points had not appeared. There was only a brown splotch on her nose. Her name was Freya, the woman said.
The man, a jade collector, said her name was Yu, an Asian word for jade. I thought it was a ridiculous name for a cat. How would you call her? You’d have to say, “Hey, Yu!”
I had gone there with a photographer to get a story on a fine old house that had been updated by a fine young designer. The Taits were supposed to be a fine old family, but there were signs that the family fortune had been squandered by the jade collector. Altogether, it was not a pleasant experience, but the photos were excellent, and it made a good story.
Twenty-four hours after it came out, there was a scandalous development: burglary, sudden death, missing person, rumors of fraud, even murder.
By this time, Koko had upchucked the memorable green fur ball, and I was searching for a female Siamese. I phoned the Tait house and learned that the poor little creature had been thrown out. Thrown out! Gulp.
How she was rescued is another story. The facts are that I brought her home in a taxi; Koko was with me. We had a cardboard carton with air holes punched in the sides. I talked to her. Told her that her name was Yum Yum. She was quiet except when we turned a corner or passed a truck or stopped for a red light or exceeded fifty miles per hour. Then she would make a sudden ear-splitting screech that made it difficult for the taxi driver to keep his vehicle on the road.
At the Villa Verandah, when we went up to the fifteenth floor in the elevator, the ascent did something to her littler interior; her piercing shriek made women faint and strong men wince.
All that is over now. Yum Yum is happy. Koko has stopped eating wool.
We’ve been together several years now and the little girl has grown into a charming young lady—with some playful idiosyncrasies, like untying shoelaces, stealing small shiny objects, and losing her toys. It’s obvious that I’m smitten with the poor little rich cat. So are the readers of my column in The Moose County Something.
She still utters a shriek when it’s least expected. But who could resist her winsome ways?
When I’m reading, she climbs up on the back of my chair and breathes hotly into my ear and then bites it ever so gently.
When I’m reading aloud, she puts her ear against my chest and purrs. She identifies the resonance, my vet explained, with her mother’s breathing when she was in her womb. I don’t tell that to everyone.
Early in life my education in pet culture was sadly neglected. A dog said “woof” and a cat said “meow”; that was all I knew or cared to know. Not until middle age did I come face-to-face with the breed of feline called Siamese.
Koko has a yowl at a decibel level sufficient to knock you over, and Yum Yum has a soprano shriek like a knife in the eardrum. Not all the time, of course. Under ordinary circumstances their conversation can be quite civilized.
Koko has moments of irritability when he chatters “ik ik ik” as a royal put-down. (He knows—even if no one else does—that he is descended from the royal cats of ancient Siam.)
Yum Yum’s vocabulary was limited to a timid “mm-m-m” when she first came to live with us; her role as lap cat for an invalid had dictated a certain sickroom reserve. Eventually she learned “yow” from Koko—a fine all-purpose syllable that lends itself to a variety of meanings. The knife-like “EEEK” is her own idea. Thus far, no fatalities have been attributed to it.
Yum Yum has one original expression that is demanding and yet sweetly definite at the same time. According to women friends, its onset coincided with the feminist movement. Yum Yum says, “N-N-NOW.”
From the very beginning I knew Koko was a remarkable cat. But his gifts continue to amaze me—and mystify me! Then I read somewhere that cats have forty-eight whiskers, including those feelers above the eyes that I call eyebrows. When I convinced that little devil to let me count his whiskers, I came up with a total of sixty! My journalist’s skepticism demanded a recount. . . . Sixty!
Most cats, I’m told, are nervous before a violent storm, and they’re being used to predict earthquakes. We have no earthquakes in this area, but Koko has a tantrum before a storm. What’s more, he is visibly disturbed when an intruder is approaching. He lets me know, several seconds in advance, when the phone is about to ring—and whether to expect friend or foe. How does he know?
One more puzzlement: He senses right from wrong! Not only when a faucet is dripping or the light has been left on in the broom closet; that little four-legged psychic knows good from evil.
These are facts I have confided to only two or three persons, knowing that my close friends would decide I was cracking up.
How Koko conveys his information seems too farfetched to believe, and really must be attributed to coincidence. He licks glossy photographs, pushes books off the shelf, and swipes small objects with bold impudence. Whenever this occurs, his bizarre action steers my mind in a certain direction. Since I often have my own suspicions, it’s possible to put two and two together.
My source of personal hunches, strangely, is a tremor on the upper lip, causing me to pound my mustache. I’ve been kidded about my overgrown mustache for years, and it has become part of my persona. Now I wonder if it helps me tune in to Koko’s extrasensory perception. I’m serious! Koko’s sixty whiskers may be the catly equivalent of the optic fibers that carry information in today’s digital world.
Kao K’o Kung has ESP
And a higher IQ than you and me.
He loafs all day
And has a devious way
Of getting his gourmet meals for free!
Everyone admires Koko, but everyone loves Yum Yum! She’s so dainty, so kittenish, so sweet! But don’t be fooled! She has a mind of her own . . . and a talent for larceny! You see, she has this lightning-quick paw that darts out silently and pilfers some small shiny object. Over a period of time her loot has included a silver pen, a gold watch, a guest’s lipstick, a silver cigarette lighter, and another guest’s left earring, pulled off when she used the phone and found under the sofa several weeks later.
The police chief visits us occasionally, and Y
um Yum has designs on his badge but contents herself by untying his shoelaces.
She stole my toothbrush twice before I learned to keep it under lock and key. She is fascinated by brushes, including the one on my upper lip. The famous paw reaches out and touches my mustache with wonder—this when I’m in my lounge chair and she’s perched on my chest.
Speaking of toothbrushes, I recall an incident one winter when we were living in Junktown—a street of Victorian town houses occupied by antique shops, with studio apartments upstairs. I was writing a series on Junktown and rented a second-floor-rear for a few months. It had been owned by a famous editor and abolitionist in the nineteenth century. The cats were fascinated by the pigeons in the backyard; I was fascinated by the extensive bookshelves and quantity of old books.
One day a toothbrush (not mine) appeared in the middle of the floor. Yum Yum looked guilty but refused to answer questions. I threw the toothbrush away.
A few days later, I was visiting my neighbor in second-floor-front when I noticed a red feather on the carpet. It was my feather! It had recently disappeared from the brim of my tweed porkpie! You see, in the nineteenth century the house had been a part of the Underground Railroad, harboring runaway slaves. There was a tunnel concealed in the bookcases, and Yum Yum had sneaked through, exchanging my feather for my neighbor’s toothbrush!
Now Yum Yum amuses herself by stealing one of my socks, wrestling with it, beating it up, then losing it. I have a drawer full of socks without mates. If I throw them out, the missing ones will suddenly appear.
But I can think of one act of heroism for which her famous paw must be given credit. We were spending some time at the beach, and a hummingbird flew smack into a porch screen, getting its long slender bill caught in the mesh. Yum Yum, huddled on a porch table, calmly stood on her hind legs and gave the trapped bill a whack with her paw. The bird flew away, and she went back to dreaming about silver thimbles and toothbrushes.
The private life of the cat who...: tales of Koko and Yum Yum from the journal of James Mackintosh Qwilleran Page 1