This happened after the Great Jade Robbery, following my feature on the Tait mansion. In the Fluxion photo lab, the pundits who claim to have the inside dirt on everything maintained that there was no robbery. It was a hoax engineered by Tait himself in order to collect on his insurance and embarrass the Daily Fluxion. Tait had family connections with our competitor and a longtime grudge against the Flux.
The photographer who had worked on the assignment with me had an idea. He knew I was going to pick up the Taits’ cat. He would give me a set of prints—close-ups, of the jades and shots of the house interior. It would be a friendly gesture and would give me a chance to snoop a little. I was going solely to pick up the cat and was taking Koko to help ease the transition.
The photos were handsome shots, printed eleven-by-fourteen, with bleeding edges. As I spread out the interior views and studied them, Koko sneaked up and licked one of them.
“No!” I thundered. It was probably the only time in his life that he had been scolded. He glared at me and then left the room in what might be called high dudgeon.
The photo he blistered with his saliva was a shot of a breakfront that had been in the Tait family for generations. The detail was excellent; the grain of the wood, the lead mullions of the glass doors, and even the hairline shadows where the wood was joined. I could only hope that Tait wouldn’t notice the blistered photo.
I apologized to Koko, buckled him into his harness, and attached the length of rope that would have to serve as a leash until I could buy one. Then I hailed a taxi. At the Tait house I told the driver to wait.
He said, “You with the Flux? I recognized the mustache.” Cabdrivers feel a camaraderie with newsmen.
To make a long story short, Tait was overjoyed. As soon as he left to get the kitten, I set Koko down on the floor—and played out the rope as he walked directly to the heirloom breakfront and sniffed the hairline crack that had shown up in the photo. It was in the side of the large cabinet. I touched the crack, and the section opened.
Before I could identify the contents of the secret compartment, Tait was coming at me with a jade harpoon. Next thing I knew, he was on the floor unable to move. The cat had flown around and around trussing the man’s legs in the rope leash, and he continued to guard him with bared fangs and menacing snarls until the police came.
The little female was on top of the breakfront, gazing down and wondering, perhaps, what kind of family she was joining.
When I inherited the Klingenschoen fortune and moved to Pickax with my two suitcases and two Siamese cats, police chief Andrew Brodie gave me some astute advice in his slightly Scottish brogue: “Look sharp, laddie! All the women in town will be after you and your money.”
His daughter, Fran Brodie, was among the first. She was an interior designer—with strawberry blond hair, a model’s figure, gorgeous legs, and she always wore those high-heeled flimsy sandals, in and out of season.
My plan was to donate the sumptuous Klingenschoen mansion to the historical society and live in the servants’ quarters in the carriage house. I commissioned Fran to furnish the rooms in Comfortable Contemporary. The project called for numerous consultations, sitting side by side on the old Depression-era sofa with furniture catalogues and large books of fabric swatches spread out on our knees.
“No, I don’t want a four-poster bed,” I told her. “No, I don’t want pleated fabric on the walls. No, I don’t want a mirrored ceiling.”
These appointments were always made in late afternoon, after which I was obliged to offer her a cocktail, after which I was more or less obliged to take her to dinner. She suggested a cozy trip to Chicago to visit furniture showrooms.
All I wanted was a comfortable environment in which to live and work. To tell the truth, I had never liked sexually aggressive females, no matter how classy their legs. I preferred to do my own chasing. As for the Siamese, they seemed to sense that Fran was lukewarm about cats. In fact, Yum Yum was patently possessive of me, hovering close and staring with a go-home look in her eyes. That’s a “look” that Siamese do very well.
“Why is that cat following me around?” Fran demanded while measuring wall spaces.
“She’s responding to your magnetic personality,” I said. “Have you thought of a way to display my antique Mackintosh crest?” It was currently leaning against the wall of the foyer—a round ornament of wrought iron a yard in diameter.
“It’s somewhat out of scale, you know. But . . . it might be possible to use it as camouflage for that big ugly radiator.”
A few days later I came home in late afternoon and saw Fran’s car in the parking lot. She had a key to the apartment and sometimes dropped in to take measurements or work on floor plans.
Walking up the narrow stairs I noticed that the Mackintosh crest was no longer leaning against the wall. Good! That meant she had found a way to display it.
“Hello!” I shouted, but there was no reply.
In the living room, the crest was lying in the middle of the floor, and two cats were huddled over it in attitudes of troubled concern.
“What happened! Where is she?” I demanded.
Then I noticed a red light on the answering machine. “This is Fran. Call me at home.”
“Oh, Qwill! You’ll never guess what happened! I had an idea for the Mackintosh crest and was taking it over to the radiator to see how it looked . . .”
“You didn’t try to lift that thing!” I interrupted.
“No, I was rolling it like a hoop, and I stepped on a cat’s tail! There was such a hair-raising screech that I rolled the crest over my foot.”
“I hope you weren’t hurt!”
“Hurt? I broke three toes! A police car took me to the hospital . . . so we’ll have to call off the Chicago trip.”
I was much relieved. I had no desire to traipse through furniture showrooms in Chicago. I said, “Which one of you rascals caused the accident?”
Koko looked noncommittal. Yum Yum was licking her paw and washing her face.
In Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, the author, T. S. Eliot, talks about a cat named Rum Tum Tugger: For he will do / As he do do / And there’s no doing anything about it!
I wish to go on record as saying that Kao K’o Kung is Rum Tum Tugger the Second.
I knew from the beginning that he had his own ideas, but it was not until the episode of the Pork Liver Cupcakes that I could definitely accuse him of Rum Tum Tuggerism.
A friend of ours, Hixie Rice—nice girl but a little wacky—knew a chef who wanted to develop a line of Frozen Foods for Fussy Felines. To promote it, Hixie envisioned a video in which Koko would endorse the product. At the time we were living in the old Klingenschoen mansion with its crystal chandeliers, grand staircase, and K monogram on everything monogrammable.
The synopsis was simple. With the camera grinding at the foot of the stairs, Koko would be shown at the top of the flight. Then he would run downstairs on cue and into the dining room, where a plate of pork liver cupcakes awaited on a K-monogrammed plate. (K for Koko. Get it?)
Hixie was at the bottom of the stairs with the camera; I was at the top with Koko, who was supposed to look alert and eager and hungry. Unfortunately he had just stuffed himself with diced prime rib with a side of Roquefort cheese, and he felt like taking a nap. In fact, he was lying on his side, looking blotto.
Hixie called from the foot of the stairs, “Stand him up on four legs!”
I said, “You come up and stand him on four legs, and I’ll take the pictures.”
With some changes in the scenario and a gentle shove to his rear end, he flew down the stairs and over the head of the photographer.
When I finally grabbed the struggling, kicking model, Hixie was willing to settle for a close-up of him gobbling the evil-looking smear of gray pork liver on a K plate. Koko took one look at it and bushed his tail, looking at the camera with ears back, nose wrinkled, and fangs bared in an expression of utter revulsion. End of publicity shoot.
Over
the years I’ve come to the conclusion that Koko considers picture-taking an invasion of his privacy. He’s so handsome, though, that I can’t be blamed for wanting a portrait. Yet even John Bushland, a professional of the highest order, was unable to shoot Rum Tum Tugger.
Despite several attempts, using all the tricks of the trade, Bushy has still been unsuccessful. “I haven’t given up!” he said. “One of these days I’ll get that little devil!”
That’s what he thinks. Koko is a Rum Tum Tugger. Yum Yum, yes. Koko, no!
Bushy, as we all call him, said one day that he’d like to photograph Koko and Yum Yum for a cat calendar. He suggested that I take them to his studio in Lockmaster. I didn’t want to discourage him, so I agreed, and we drove down there on a Saturday morning.
The cats were on the backseat in their usual travel coop with a cushion and a door at one end. I could tell, by the way they both huddled at the back of the coop, that they knew some dire experience was in store for them. I talked reassuringly to them as I drove, but I could feel the bad vibes coming my way.
I had suggested to Bushy that we keep our voices low and leave them in their carrier while we had a cup of coffee and talked about the weather.
This we did. Then, making sure to close both exit doors, we casually opened the carrier door and had another cup of coffee. The cats remained on their cushion.
After a while I said, “You get your camera ready, and I’ll casually draw one out; the other will follow. The whole idea is to stay calm.”
They were both crammed together at the rear of the conveyance, but I reached in and got a handful of fur. It was Koko, bracing himself against the sides of the carrier. He had the strength of an iron vise. No way was that cat going to go through that small door.
“How’re you doing?” Bushy asked quietly.
“Batting zero,” I said under my breath. I and Koko were both very quiet and unruffled. He didn’t protest, just braced himself against the sides of the opening.
“He doesn’t wanna and he ain’t gonna,” I said.
“Leave him alone and leave the door open. We’ll have another cup of coffee,” Bushy said. “He’ll saunter out of his own accord.”
We drank a lot of the brew that morning and discussed every topic in the news, but Koko never sauntered out. He was doing his Rum Tum Tugger act, and as T. S. Eliot said: There’s no doing anything about it!
When Koko and Yum Yum came to live with me, I was a novice about cat care. No on had told me how to be personal valet, gourmet caterer, and wise parent to a pair of pampered Siamese. Perhaps “pampered” is the wrong word. What I mean to say . . . They had definite opinions of their own on every matter that came to the fore.
Vitamin pills, for example. No one at the pet shop told me how to administer the formidable tablets. I consulted my neighbor, Rosemary Whiting, who had raised, successfully, cats, dogs, and children.
“Simple!” she said. “I’ll demonstrate.”
First, I learned, you catch the cat, who has become an expert at mind reading.
Rosemary knelt on the floor of the kitchenette with Koko between her knees. “The secret is: Stay calm,” she said. “Tell him he’s a good kitty. Stroke his fur. Gradually circle his head with your left hand, applying pressure to the hinge of the jaw. His mouth opens. You pop the pill down his gullet. Gently grasp his jaw to close his mouth while stroking his throat until he gulps. . . . Success!”
Koko had been cooperative and stayed between Rosemary’s knees as if waiting for another pill.
“It’s all in knowing how,” she said. “Stay calm and the cat will relax.”
At that point Koko gulped again and deposited the pill on the floor—damp but otherwise intact.
“Oops!” she said.
“He’s relaxed, all right,” I commented.
“No problem. We’ll repeat the process, and it’ll stay down. He’ll get the idea.”
She was right. The pill stayed down—for a couple of minutes. Then Koko heaved a convulsive burp and shot the pill into the adjoining living area, where it disappeared among the seat cushions.
See what I mean?
Next, someone who seemed to know advised me to have Koko’s teeth cleaned, saying that Siamese require dental prophylaxis oftener than other breeds. I made an appointment at the pet clinic.
Koko made no protest. He had been to the vet before and actually purred when his temperature was being taken. He seemed quite at home on the examination table until . . . a firm hand forced his mouth open.
Then, before the good doctor could assess the situation, Koko galvanized into a missile of catly energy. An assistant reached for the flailing legs. I yelled, “Koko!” and grabbed his lashing tail! But he turned inside out and somehow landed on top of an eight-foot cabinet, from which he glared down at his pursuers and uttered a tirade of Siamese curses. Anyone who has not been cussed out by an angry Siamese doesn’t know what profanity is all about!
Oh yes, he jumped down after being ignored for a few minutes. He jumped down to the examination table and opened his mouth!
See what I mean? My theory is that cats in general and Siamese in particular have a wicked sense of humor. They enjoy making us look like fools.
It’s like this: There are thousands of house cats, barn cats, and cat fanciers in Moose County, and readers of my “Qwill Pen” column enjoy hearing about the antics of the Siamese occasionally. They are awed by the handsome, intelligent Koko, but they love the sweet little Yum Yum with her dainty demeanor and iron will. In fact, there is a Yum Yum Fan Club in the county.
Members of this unofficial organization send her crocheted mice that squeak and plastic balls that rattle. Her most precious possession, though, is a silver thimble, a gift from a dear reader no longer able to sew. “Cats,” she said, “love thimbles.”
Yum Yum has always liked anything small and shiny, but she is absolutely infatuated with her thimble.
She bats it around with her delicate paw, carries it from one venue to another in her tiny teeth, hides it, forgets where it’s hidden, then cries until I look under rugs, behind seat cushions, and in wastebaskets to retrieve it.
She has deposited it in the pockets of my jackets, in a bowl of mixed nuts, and down the drain of the kitchen sink.
I should take it away from her, but I haven’t the heart. She would pine away and die.
Many of her playthings vanish, especially her dearly beloved silver thimble. In fact I’ve been moved to write a limerick in her honor:
Little Yum Yum is quite a cat!
She walks thin and sleeps fat.
One of her joys
Is losing her toys,
And she never knows where her thimble’s at!
I have appealed to readers of the newspaper. All solutions to the problem will be thoughtfully considered. Address me in care of the psychiatric ward at the Pickax General Hospital.
11.
cool koko’s almanac
While researching Benjamin Franklin’s life for column material, I was reminded of his wise sayings published as Poor Richard’s Almanack and I thought, “Hey! Koko could steal his idea! Old Ben wouldn’t mind; he had a sense of humor. . . .” Here’s the first installment.
A cat without a tail is better than a politician without a head.
There’s a destiny that leads a hungry cat to the right doorstep.
Home is where the sardines are.
No matter how humble, a free meal is not to be sniffed at.
Where there’s a will, a cat will find a way.
Soft cushions are for cats—all others use them at their own risk.
What goes down must come up, if it’s a pill.
When I started writing the “Qwill Pen” column for The Moose County Something, I envisioned a forum for ideas, book reviews, personality stories, and information on local occupations and hobbies. In a weak moment I happened to mention that I shared my domicile with two Siamese cats. Cat fanciers all over the county responded with newsworthy tale
s of their own feline housemates.
Moose County, I swear, has more cats per capita than any other county in the U.S. Readers asked questions about Koko and Yum Yum, wrote letters to Koko and Yum Yum, and otherwise developed a chummy rapport. Reader participation is always welcomed by small-town newspapers, but we had almost more than we wanted. Wherever I went, strangers shouted, “Hi, Mr. Q! How’s Koko?” . . . “Did Yum Yum find her thimble?”
Thought-provoking topics were suggested for discussion: Why do cats do what they do? Do cats have a sense of humor? No hardworking columnist is averse to having readers share his workload, and some curious incidents were aired in the “Qwill Pen” column.
about toulouse
He was half-starved when he came to that particular doorstep in Indian Village. Did he sense that Mildred Riker was food writer for The Moose County Something?
He was a sad sight, she recalled, his fur matted with blood and mud, one bad ear, and a slight limp. We gave him a dish of tuna—not too much at first—we didn’t want him to make himself sick. He didn’t even sniff it! He stared for a moment—in what must have been disbelief—and then did something very curious. He raised his right front paw and did three pawing motions in the air before starting to eat, as if asking a blessing! It was so touching! Such a winning gesture! We adopted him at once.
Now, after a bath and a trip to the vet and a proper diet, he’s a handsome black-and-white longhair. But here’s the amazing thing! Before every meal he still paws the air three times!
about princess
From Purple Point comes an anonymous note:
Princess is pure white with four black feet and two black ears that she wears like a crown. I brought her with me when I visited my daughter. The guest bed was queen-size and had some designer bed sheets (Dior, as I recall). A most unusual design! Broad stripes in bold colors ran diagonally across the bed! At home Princess has her own royal suite, but when we travel, she sleeps with me. Imagine my surprise when she arranged herself on one of the stripes—and slept diagonally for our entire stay! . . . My daughter said I should write to you about this.
The private life of the cat who...: tales of Koko and Yum Yum from the journal of James Mackintosh Qwilleran Page 2