Felidae on the Road - Special U.S. Edition

by Akif Pirincci

  Next morning, totally different programme. Talk about incongruity between loving vows of a spring night and disillusionment of everyday life! Anyway, woman's claims on my own territory becoming clearer and clearer. Stupid man seems to be gradually realising has made mistake of life - but alas, too late! Third World War broke out during breakfast discussion. She absolutely determined to put own 'ideas' about furnishings, financial investments and life-style into practice, no quarter shown. Apparently woman was once interior decorator. Also psychologist. Also artist. Also ... well, don't ask me what woman is now! Divorcee, probably. In same shrill voice as always scares off dear little birdies in garden just as yours truly about to spring, stupid man told to renovate entire flat from top to bottom to suit her taste. When man made some objections - man's degenerate cells seem to retain a few male hormones after all - screeching became howling hurricane threatening to sweep us away. Naturally woman has no armaments to atomise him, for instance rocket launcher or such-like, so reached for most reliable weapon of her own kind, started shedding tears. Man instantly defended self and signed own death sentence in imaginary treaty as mentally concluded by such couples: stupid sucker said would do everything, but everything woman wanted if woman would only stop that miserable weeping. Since bawling working so well, woman speedily rattled off more wishes in between heavy sigh and next fit of sobbing: wish list began, oddly, with asking man to throw away old white cotton underpants and please, please buy some of the trendy coloured sort. Really, if not all so sad would be riotously funny. But laughter dies in my throat when I wonder what part allotted to me in woman's diabolical game. Because after cooked-up reconciliation, ending with both of them thoughtfully eating boiled eggs (and instructions from woman for man to decapitate egg with clean knife-cut in future instead of peeling shell off top), woman turned head to me, very slowly, with kind of bittersweet smile executioner might give principal actor in drama. Suddenly saw that had lost battle ages ago, and must leave Promised Land for ever.

  End of diary.

  Or maybe not; one more thing. What was her name? I hardly like to tell you, but I must, I must: it was Francesca!

  The thing that finally set me off on my travels was a wicked lie. While Gustav and that - that person - were throwing out items of furniture to go to the tip, and doing all kinds of other daft things with a view to turning the whole place upside down, I kept hearing her utter the mysterious words: 'Those nuts must go!' At first I could make nothing whatever of this; least of all could I see any connection with myself. As far as I knew Gustav never ate nuts, and I certainly didn't. So what nuts did she mean? Repeated with ever-increasing frequency, the remark began assuming disturbing dimensions when I realised that it was always made when I was around. And things became downright scary when she slowly but surely went on to wrinkling her upper lip, glaring accusingly at me, theatrically pretending to detect some disgusting smell in the air and sighing in an affected way, 'Dear me, those nuts must go!' The mystery of the nuts preoccupied me more than ever as the connection between 'nuts' and yours truly became clearer with every passing day. So during a quiet moment when they were both out of the house, I sat on the side of the bathroom basin, inspected myself in the mirror, and thought with all the keen powers of my mind. I was looking for something nut-like about myself, or more precisely, something nuts-like, because she always mentioned these nuts in the plural. No, my reflection showed nothing, or at least nothing like nuts. Unless perhaps ... oh no, that was too far-fetched - it was absurd, ridiculous, more than ridiculous, it was ... (2)

  I saw them there in the mirror, dangling between my thighs like sacred fruits in the Elysian Fields, like revelations of power and glory, my nuts, those engines of procreation the good Lord gave me! At the same time, as if in a double exposure, I saw the vision of a surgeon emerge from this impressive still life, but a surgeon with a sinister difference, holding a barber's instrument - a cut-throat razor! In terrifying parody of his profession, he wore a scarlet coat, and the cap and mask which made his face unrecognisable were the colour of blood too. This horrific figure loomed closer and closer without actually stepping forward until its face filled the entire mirror. My breath faltered. Suddenly the hand holding the sharp blade rose and tore the mask from the face. Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene! I saw Francesca, her eyes boring into my innocent soul like icicles fired from a harpoon. That witch, that horrible woman, that brute was after my nuts!

  Shocked by this nightmare vision, I jumped off the side of the basin and ran into the living room, which was bathed in sunlight. I got up on my beloved tapestry sofa, which wasn't due for removal on Francesca's orders until some time in the next few days, and shook myself hard to clear my head. As I made myself comfortable on the cushions, my heart thumping wildly, I started working out the way she was probably trying to justify such a barbaric mutilation to Gustav. Of course I knew how many beans make five: I was well aware that some ninety per cent of my colleagues went around without any nuts to their name. After the op their faces usually wore the ecstatic expression peculiar to the ascetic disciples of a fraudulent Indian guru who has managed to have it all ways by making his home a brothel. They seemed to have lost more than their testicles; somehow or other they had lost their zing, their love of adventure, and even worse, they'd lost heart. Despite that, they sometimes became furiously aggressive for no obvious reason, as if they hadn't noticed their sad loss until they peed and saw their reflection in the puddle of piss. Experience told me, however, that all they did with their lives was sit on walls and window-sills mourning the past like pensioned-off border guards, keeping an eye on their territories but otherwise letting the world go by. If a queen on call ever did come their way by mistake and rolled, wailing sexily, before their dull eyes, they'd get all excited in a childish way, as if suddenly hearing echoes of a cry, long mute, from dark primeval times. I don't want to attract a storm of indignant protest with this description of misery, so let me add, with scrupulous honesty, that there may be exceptions among my comrades who've lost their crown jewels. With respect, however, the amputation of one's sexual organs is not to be compared with the extraction of a rotten tooth.

  So what was her nefarious plan? Just what cunning ruse did the witch have in mind to make Gustav imprison his beloved Francis in a basket and cart him off to the vet who, for a princely fee, would part him and his nuts for ever? The most unkindest cut of all, literally. Because so far my nuts had never bothered Gustav himself. Far from it: he rather liked to see me doing my bit out in the gardens to prevent the extinction of the species, probably as compensation for his own failure in the reproductive sphere. The answer was simple. Francesca had obviously been feeding the idiot that old line about the likes of me leaving liquid stink-bombs round the flat when in amorous mood. And since in fact there wasn't any stink, she must have suggested that there was something wrong with his sense of smell while extolling the unusual sensitivity of her own. The deduction was as logical as 1 + 1 = 2: off with his nuts!

  Reflecting on this gloomy prospect, I nodded off. A leaden slumber overcame me, and by the time I woke up night had fallen. I felt as if I'd only just escaped from a defective pressure chamber. At first I didn't think I could even move the tip of my tail, all my limbs were so numb. It was only with difficulty that I shook off my paralysis, got to my feet and arched my back more stiffly than ever before in my entire career. Meanwhile, a spring shower had begun outside. The patter of the rain was soothing. Then it all came back to me, and I took a panic-stricken look between my legs. It was so dark in the room that I couldn't spot my crown jewels straight away, and for a fraction of a second I thought I was going crazy. But then I felt their warmth, their weight, their whole regal splendour, and I pulled myself together again.

  The hands of the clock on the wall stood at twenty past three. That afternoon's terrible experiences had obviously put me out like a light, so that I hadn't heard the lovers coming home or even felt hungry for supper. Late as it was, however, I heard voices in
the bedroom. With as little sound as a scarf dropped on the floor, I jumped off the sofa and approached the bedroom door. Then I stood outside and listened. It was not a quarrel going on in there, more the spooky kind of conference that takes place between victor and vanquished at the end of a war. They'd just reached an interesting section of the negotiations, apparently the last, dealing with the pros and cons of neutering domestic pets. The victorious power was going over the advantages of this 'therapeutic treatment' once more, not to convince the vanquished but because running through the positions stated before battle commenced is part of the political ritual. Gustav had to accept the outcome whether he liked it or not. She was pouring out all the confused tripe you'll find in every well-intentioned book about our species. First, it's all for our own good; you might think it was only as a side effect that the result left humans with a sparkling clean home and spared them hours of lustful nocturnal caterwauling and the distasteful business of drowning our unwanted progeny in the bath. Such duplicity almost made me throw up. Gustav, lying there in the dark like Billy Bunter on his deathbed, wearily uttered an occasional if and but like responses in a litany, whereupon Francesca the Snow Queen smothered his misgivings with a brand-new knock-out argument. Her visions went even further: far in the future she saw a wonderful New World in which my claws would be amputated so as to preserve the beautiful furniture they'd just ordered from suffering ugly scratch marks.(3) Good heavens, what tortures were yet in store for me?

  I have to admit that I wouldn't have set out on my travels, or not that night anyway, if Gustav had had the decency to put up any kind of serious resistance - if he'd kept the matter open for at least a little longer. After all, we'd been faithful friends for years, ever since my birth, in fact. We'd come through many difficult times and celebrated many a happy event together. How about love ... was there no love left in this dark world? No trust? Once upon a time Gustav had really and truly loved me more than anything else ...

  But before they cuddled up and - this you will hardly believe - before they started making 'love' in their own disgusting way after discussing this very subject, he just said, 'All right' and 'I'll take him in tomorrow.' 'Traitor!' I felt like screeching. 'You double-crossing two-timing traitor!' But I didn't. Why not? Well, what would you expect of creatures - never mind the individual exceptions - who will train dogs to tear each other apart, who put rings through the sensitive noses of bears and tug them about by those rings to the wild applause of the crowd, and who regard the public butchering of some poor bull as the peak of virility? Would you expect trust? Pity? Respect? Even the devil keeps his pacts signed in blood. To date, however, man hasn't honoured a single clause in the contract we made with him back in primeval times when he depended on us for everything. Or to call upon my good old teacher Schopenhauer for another quotation: 'Man is a fierce wild animal at heart. We know that animal only in the tamed condition of restraint known as civilisation, and so the occasional outbreaks of its true nature horrify us. But wherever, whenever the padlock and chain of law and order fall away and anarchy sets in, then we see what man is.' And that's not the only time, I might add.

  I turned away from the two wild animals who were copulating again, unmoved by the prospect of their small friend's mutilation, ran across the kitchen and the bathroom and jumped up on the window-sill. Before me stretched the dark gardens, wet with rain, like a sinister threat. Behind me lay what in spite of occasional vexations had once seemed the best of all possible worlds. I would have liked to die in that world when my hour came. Faded pictures which I thought I'd eradicated from the memory centres of my brain rose before my mind's eye, like flowers from an up-ended cornucopia, accompanied by sweet hurdy-gurdy music. I went back over our happy days in my mind, including that episode when I laid the first mouse I ever caught on Gustav's desk as a kind of sacrificial lamb, out of pure respect. It was only half eaten, too. Yes, there had been sad times as well. But hadn't I been the ideal therapy for him, snuggling under the bedclothes in the dark of night and soaking up his tears in my fur? Hadn't he always introduced me to his few friends as his 'son'? He used to make out it was a joke, but he really meant it in all seriousness. What evil spell had so bewitched my 'father' that his heart had suddenly turned to granite?

  Tears came into my eyes, ran down my nose and dripped off my chin. The patter of the rain provided a melancholy accompaniment to my bleak mood, and I suddenly saw, with crystal clarity, all I'd have to give up if I left home now. Obviously I couldn't cast about for a new home anywhere in the neighbourhood, because Gustav would be sure to get a search operation going in the morning. No, I must go far, far away, even leave town, go where Missing notices tacked to tree-trunks and ads in the Lost and Found columns of newspapers wouldn't work. Well, asked the optimist in my head (not a fellow who inspires a lot of confidence), haven't you been feeling very keen on the country life recently? Here's your chance. It was hard to say if he meant it seriously or if he was stifling roars of laughter. I hope you realise, said the pessimist in me, that you'd have to accept a few alterations to your diet, to put it mildly? Particularly where quantity of food is concerned - always supposing you find any food at all. This pessimist made a deep impression on me - yet there was something apathetic, even lethargic about him, as if he'd really rather let things slide.

  Before the problem could be flogged to death in discussion yet again, I saw the vision of that menacing nutcracker woman in her scarlet surgeon's outfit before me once more, and it was easy for me to make the decision. Either you submitted to the blows of Fate, or if you wanted to arm yourself against them you must sacrifice certain things, even yourself, on the altar of comfort. 'There is only one innate error: to believe that we are here to be happy.' Who said that, you ask? Well, who do you think?

  One last, yearning look back at the flat where they'd have to dispense with my purr in future, one last farewell meditation on my beloved stainless steel bowls, bowls which had sometimes seemed to me as full of promise as the teats of the mother I never knew, and one final farewell in the spirit to that total nincompoop Gustav (Gustav before his brainwashing, that is), and then I was off. I wiped the tears from the fur of my face with my right forepaw, choked back a sob, and took the first step into freedom.(4)

  My journey to the heart of darkness began with an ordinary jump. I dropped from the window to the balcony and from the balcony to the terrace below. Using tortuous racetracks above the walls and secret gaps in garden fences known to no one but me, I soon reached the well-tended jungle of rhododendrons and ornamental shrubs. From here I could have found the way out to the street through a gap between the buildings in my sleep. A short sprint along the pavement parallel to the way I'd already taken through the gardens, and within seconds I was back outside the building I'd just left. Humans are dependent on doors, steps and direct paths, since their bone structure and musculature, retarded in a pitiful state of inflexibility, seem to leave them no option but to move along regular tracks like an antediluvian locomotive groaning under its own weight. The whole business becomes particularly painful when they employ the very latest metering devices to make meticulous records of their lack of athletic prowess at the various Olympic Games meetings they hold. They even show it all live on television and end up awarding themselves cups and medals for the miserable results. Come to think of it, we're inferior to them only in respect of stamina. I expect they need all that stamina to bear the thought of their physical uselessness.

  By now the rain, which was coming down harder all the time, had made me very wet. When I looked up at the ground-floor flat in the old building, I realised to my surprise that it already seemed strange to me. For as the mighty building rose to the angry sky in the darkness, the paint on its façade peeling like the skin of a putrefying corpse to reveal stained grey stone, the windows like eye sockets in an emaciated head, I felt no sense of familiarity any more. It was as if I'd never lived in that building, never had a friend there, never shared his joys and sorrows. Suddenly it
was just an old dump like any other crying out for luxury renovation. Good: that meant I needn't shed a tear for the amazing bulbous oriels and the basalt heads of demons set under the cornice, guaranteed to keep evil spirits away. I'd obviously had enough of the place and my boringly conventional life there anyway.

  I trotted on along the pavement, following my nose, while the spring shower gave me a foretaste of something more like a summer splash. Incidentally, it's not true that we hate water. We just don't like being bathed, because unlike human beings we are always clean. Of course I knew my way about the immediate vicinity; I'd often been out and about in this district. Tonight, however, the place didn't seem at all familiar, but on the contrary downright foreign and threatening. The picturesque old street lights were like absurdly tall, lanky spies with opaque faces. The asphalt, which had a film of water rippling over it, was a ramp leading to the unknown, giving the impression it might come to a sudden end any moment and cast me into the deepest chasms of horror. Since I really knew these parts like the back of my paw, why did they suddenly seem so sombre? Surely it wasn't because I knew there was no going back now to the fluffy sheepskin rug in front of the crackling fire? That's unworthy of you, I told myself angrily, you haven't gone a hundred metres from hell yet, and you already feel tempted by all that bourgeois soft soap! Concentrate on your nuts, you effeminate fool, think of those nuts which will rise in summer like twin suns in a blazing firmament!

  Spurred on by such thoughts, I marched automatically on as the storm gradually became a raging tempest. I was wondering if I'd win the Nobel Prize for proposing, as a new natural law, the simple fact that you're spoilt rotten for all the comforts of life so long as you don't lack for anything in any case, whereas no end of horrible things happen, instantly and all at once, just when you're in need. Why else must I find myself on the set of a bad film about the cruel sea just now, at the beginning of my glorious flight? To all appearances I was reduced to half my normal size, since my coat was drenched with rainwater, its wet fur clinging to my body like a marten's. Anyone who'd seen me in this state probably couldn't even have said what species I belonged to. Complicated flashes of forked lightning tore through the sky, showing the full extent of the flood in their sudden spotlights. The rain was now falling like great sweeping veils of water. The water-level in the street was rising perceptibly, and soon reached the dimensions of a small river. Everywhere, unfastened window-shutters slammed deafeningly against walls, branches were torn off trees and fell in the road, dustbins were overturned by powerful gusts of wind, and the penetrating rattle of raindrops on car roofs provided just the right rhythmic bass accompaniment to these outstanding soloists.