Our conversation began as I explained to Dr. Grog—the name I shall use to avoid libel—that I wanted to get Darwin's teeth cleaned, that he was not exactly my pet, that he was just hanging out at my place, but that cleaning his teeth seemed like a good idea. Dr. Grog conducted a cursory exam as I spoke, prying open Darwin's mouth and peering in, then listening to his heart and lungs with a stethoscope. It struck me how docile the cat was, submitting to the indignities of examination as if he were half asleep. Wrinkles then appeared on Dr. Grog's brow, a grave look came over his face, and he said softly, seriously, "I'm afraid he has a murmur."
A chill crawled up my back but did not linger.
"So—what does that mean?" I asked, suspicious of what a heart murmur had to do with the cleaning of teeth. Murmurs are a common phenomenon in people, and many live long, long lives with them. Why would the case be different with cats?
"Well," said Doctor Grog, "I can't clean his teeth until I run some tests on his heart."
"What would that cost?"
"Around two hundred and fifty dollars."
"Why do you want to test his heart if we're just going to clean his teeth?"
"Well, because bacteria could get in through his gums, which can get cut during the cleaning process, and infect his heart valves. That's what the murmur means—something is wrong with his valves."
I knew from having studied biology that the chances of heart infection were small—after all, the cat was designed by nature to eat flesh and bone, and when you eat bone, your gums are likely to get cut from the broken ends. Certainly cats had evolved the ability to cope with such injuries and with the bacteria that came along, and I could feel my back arching at the veterinarian's patronizing tone, contrived, probably, to manipulate people who truly loved animals and threw themselves in fear and faith at the good vet's feet when their pets fell sick. Well, he had not bargained on a tough nut like me, a biologist who listened to all doctors with a skeptical ear.
"Look, there's no way I can afford two hundred and fifty dollars for heart tests—and that's on top of the cleaning fee. By the way, what is the price for the teeth?"
"Well," said Dr. Grog, getting huffy, "I'm not doing his teeth unless he has the proper tests. It's a matter of policy."
"For crying out loud, the cat is just a stray."
This goaded the doctor into revealing his true colors, and they spanned the entire spectrum of the color green. "You wouldn't say that if you came home some night and found Darwin having a seizure."
"You don't know me, friend," I snapped back, driven more by male bravado and spite than by true conviction. "If the cat has a seizure, it will just have to go ahead and have it."
No snake-oil vet was going to manipulate me with cheap sentiment. But as I lugged Darwin home in his cardboard container, the question kept nattering away inside my head. What would I do if I found him in the throes of cardiac seizure? Dr. Grog's tactics were clearly insidious, shamelessly insidious, but why should the question bother me if a stray cat were truly as worthless as I professed to myself?
I decided, after adding up my feelings and values, that Darwin's teeth would have to wait for another veterinarian—another trip to the hall of medicine. The experience, however, left a hollow feeling where a solid sense of righteousness ought to be. Darwin and I were back at square one in our quest for a doctor we could trust and respect, and I had no idea how to go about finding one.
***
We resumed the rhythms of existence, and Darwin prospered over the next few months, his frame filling out and his pelt growing thick and shiny. We grew more and more familiar in our daily routine, and life became a series of intimate episodes.
One of our more endearing interactions, for example, occurred whenever I took a shower, an event that Darwin found irresistibly intriguing. I would turn the water off, reach out for a towel, and find the big orange cat sitting on the bathmat, staring up at me. Apparently my ablutions showed through the shower curtain but were blurry, unfocused, and therefore novel. To focus for the strike was the sine qua non of cat existence, and blurry movement was probably impossible to ignore.
Familiarity, intimacy, the communion of ennui—we proceeded toward the inevitable. One evening after dinner, I looked down at Darwin and he looked up at me. We gazed at each other for several seconds. Then he raised his tail so it was sticking vertically into the air with a small crook at the end and took several small mincing steps around my feet. Without thinking, I reached down, scooped him up, and cradled him in my arms, nestling his head in the crook of my left arm, supporting his rump with my right arm.
The move could not have been performed more smoothly had it been rehearsed for months, and it occurred to me as I gazed down at this small creature that in fact the move had been rehearsed, countless times over countless generations. How many men, women, and children have swept how many ancestral cats into their arms and rocked back and forth in the embrace of the ages? I stood there absorbing the warmth from Darwin's body, savoring the feel of his fur on my skin, and understood then that what I felt was not confined to the present but extended back in time like a puppeteer's string, connecting our bodies and minds so that actions in the past traced themselves out here and now, on the cutting edge of the instant.
Unmoved by my philosophic reveries, Darwin closed his eyes and left soliloquies to me. I was happy to oblige and thought of Shakespeare. What a piece of work is a cat. How noble in spirit, how infinite in instinct. In form and movement how like—an angel? (I wasn't so sure about that—but not to quibble.) In voice how like a siren, which is to say how like an infant.
Yes indeed, this furry little face had its moments. Its cuteness spread through my substance in waves, and for a moment the sheer wonder of creation muted the noise of conscious thought. It was as if the ancestral creatures from which the mind is fabricated were communing directly with the creature in my arms, and I simply let the beauty of life flow through. The large, pure eyes, the finely chiseled nose, the velvet ears. What was it about this face that affected me so deeply? Without question it had to do with the illusion of kinship. As a general rule the more closely related two species are, the more similar they look and the more features they have in common. This holds for behavior as well as physical traits and has a most interesting consequence: communication—or, in the case of us humans, the yearning for communication. The features of the cat are similar in basic ways to the features of the human infant and that is why cats fit so neatly into the maternal-paternal reactions that evolution has fashioned into most of us.
Mammalian kinship was plucking my strings. I gazed down at Darwin and rocked him gently, his body fitting perfectly into my clutches, his small, furry countenance delighting me in the same way, I suspect, that a baby's face delights its parent, between diapers. Who needs an infant, I thought, not having children of my own, if you have a cat? The razor-sharp innocence of each slices into the soul with each cry in the night, with each mewling, whining request.
***
Then, in one brief moment, everything changed.
We had finished dinner and retired to the living room for the nightly pastime of reading the paper. Darwin was indulging an expansive mood and first lay down against my feet, then turned over onto his back and began to roll and paw the air. I took this as an invitation to join the celebration and rumple the fur on his belly. He writhed in ecstasy, squirming and twisting and rolling from side to side. Then, without warning, his body seemed to fold over my hand. Before I could even begin to pull away, his claws had locked onto my skin, his rear feet were cocked to rake my arm, and his mouth was fitted over my wrist, ready to bear down and drive fangs deep into me.
At the same instant an icy logic seemed to lock my mind, and I resisted the reflex to jerk back, forcing my hand and arm to go limp. There we paused for maybe two or three seconds, and then, as if realizing what he was about to do, Darwin loosened his grip, pushed my arm away, and leaped back in one motion.
I sat there with sweat oozing from
my pores, the television flashing and yammering in the background. The speed and power with which a cat can move astonished me, and I sensed in the animal labyrinths of my brain how close I had come to severe lacerations, to the virtual slaughter of my arm. Then I noticed a brown smear of fecal fluid glistening on the underside of my forearm where the base of Darwin's tail had pressed against my skin as his body had wrapped around my hand. If I needed physical evidence of how close I had come to the edge, there it lay.
I stared at the creature who only seconds before had been reveling in affection, and it occurred to me that perhaps he was afflicted with some sort of involuntary reflex that could fire off without warning. The room seemed empty, bleak. Years before, an argument with a girlfriend had flashed into a brief physical altercation and I had experienced the same feeling of spiritual vacuum; now, just as it had then, came the awful feeling that things were over for us. This, however, was a notion to sleep upon, for the relationship was on trial.
***
The next morning I awoke well baked from a night of hot, fitful slumber and knew that the decision had been made. The cat would have to go. Things had been said that could not be taken back; injuries had occurred which would not heal. Furthermore, having no experience with feline relationships, I thought of my neighbor's note and it struck me that perhaps the cat was indeed damaged in the brain. It seemed ill-advised to ask for further proof.
I sat in bed, aching inside at the finality of it all, and Darwin meowed to come inside for breakfast. He entered as if nothing had happened, expecting with his customary impatience to be fed and giving no indication that he remembered the incident. I fed him, of course, although with some trepidations.
Then I began to consider the practical details of removing Darwin from my life and I realized I faced a quandary of sizable dimensions. The most obvious choice was to take him to the animal pound, where he could be adopted by someone else. However, even though I was not experienced in these matters, I knew from my cat-loving friends that the pound was for practical purposes a death sentence. I quickly rejected it. What has happened to me? I thought, as I looked down from above while Darwin ate. Why does the thought of parting ways bother me? I didn't know. I knew only that it did matter to me.
Very well, one of my friends would take him. They were more experienced in the ways of cats and would know how to cope with the peculiarities of his temperament.
I soon found out that my friends could not or would not take him away. They all had more cats than they should properly have. I began to call friends of friends and put out the word that I had a wonderful cat for someone to adopt. After a month of active campaigning, Darwin still had not attracted an offer, and finally the truth became clear: people did not want older cats; everyone wanted to start out fresh with a kitten.
Meanwhile metabolism went on. Mouths had to be fed. Sleep had to be had. Life continued to rotate through its ancient cycles. But Darwin and I were going through the motions of existence, or at least I was. Psychologically, emotionally, I had withdrawn into my self and refused for the most part to acknowledge the grace of Darwin's presence. When he did try to cuddle after dinner, I stroked him gingerly, tensed to leap back at any sign of aggression. He showed none, however. He seemed more docile, as if our close encounter had exorcised some sort of demon, but it made no difference.
Our relationship had arrived on some high desert with both of us trudging along parallel paths, looking straight ahead, each absorbed in his own reality, with nothing but the daily encounters for feeding and perfunctory contact scattered across the landscape like creosote bush and ocotillo. Darwin was completely unconcerned. So long as food and water came from the great source in my flat, his spirit depended on nothing but his whims.
***
So we led our separate lives, I following the contrapuntal score of human nature and Western culture, Darwin following the ancient script of feline genetics. The clear, cold air of this emotional desert, made for rational detachment, and as the days passed I began to notice patterns in Darwin's daily habits. I began also to see the differences between the behavior of a neutered torn and that of the feral, testicle-toting hombres that infested the neighborhood. Mainly it was a matter of degree, of intensity.
For instance, territoriality. Patrolling his fiefdom was the reason for Darwin's being. I had always assumed the loss of his pearls would liberate a male from the curse of testosterone, but I learned that in Darwin's case, this was nowhere close to the truth. When not patrolling, he was sleeping strategically, bedded down in places with a clear view of his boundaries or with downwind notice of approaching foes. Clearly, this behavior was wired into Darwin's brain and while high hormonal levels would intensify it, undoubtedly testosterone was not the fundamental cause.
These territorial tendencies brought to mind incidents I had observed over the years. Since my office windows overlooked three backyards, I could not help noticing the relentless campaigns of tracking, ambush, and skirmish to which the neighborhood toms dedicated their lives among the gardens, shrubbery, and sagging clotheslines. In particular I remembered one tough, old, battle-scarred veteran who had owned the land below my flat for about two years. He wore his lumps and scars and threadbare fur like full military dress. His ears were shredded, his brow balding with scars or mange. His gray coat always looked dirty, and he glowered at the world through milk-white eyes. Even I shuddered when he appeared from beneath some bush and skulked off in silence after some clean, fluffy, innocent house tabby out for a stroll in its owner's backyard.
One day a challenger arrived. He was a young, long-haired standard tabby, not nearly so large and probably no match for the old warrior in an out-and-out brawl. That didn't deter him. Despite his physical limitations, he stalked his older foe relentlessly, and I peered down from above for hours, as the two moved here and there, the challenger always following, gradually closing the distance between them until finally, when the old warrior was least expecting it, the challenger would jump him from behind. A large, writhing ball of fur would then roll about on the ground, emitting large wads of hair and horrible screams and air-rending hisses, and from time to time you would get a glimpse of what was going on inside. Usually the young one fought on his back, kicking furiously with his hind feet at the older cat's belly, but clearly getting the worst of it. Finally they would stop out of sheer exhaustion and glare at each other, crouched, tensed, waiting for the slightest move on the other's part, and disengage oh so slowly, as if their bodies were thawing. The old warrior would walk deliberately away, ears laid back to detect any sounds from behind, and turning now and then to glare back with the most baleful malevolence.
At some point I realized that the old torn had not appeared for several weeks, and I never saw him again. What became of him, driven from his home, growing older, weaker, slinking through a life of trespass on the land of the ever younger and stronger toms who tracked and attacked him without mercy? How did he die?—for almost certainly he had. Youth had been served. I shuddered to think of Darwin condemned to such an end and appreciated a bit more clearly the prospects he was facing when we met.
What emerged was a lesson in the power of simple, undiluted persistence. Even though outgunned and getting the worst of each encounter, the young torn licked his wounds and promptly set out after the old torn again, implying to his foe that unless he was physically disabled or killed, he would never stop. He persisted his way to the top, and I could see the demoralizing effect of this never-ending harassment over the course of hostilities. In fact, early in the skirmishes, I could feel the dominance passing from the old to the young. In this case dominance was not to the bigger and stronger physique, but to the tougher and more ruthless will. Youth was also a factor, and perhaps the young cat could sense that this old warrior was running on old batteries, unable to recharge and recover as fast as his young challenger, thus vulnerable to a long campaign.
Another lesson was the remarkable sense of geography by which the cat assesses t
he world. In stalking quarry, you need a mental map of the land to tell you where your quarry is likely to go, and this allows you to pick a place to lie in wait. Cats were masters of the ambush; I observed this mastery almost daily.
Darwin, too, displayed a fine sense of spatial setting. Once he batted a golf ball under the couch, where it disappeared. A dog encountering this dilemma for the first time usually tries to get directly at the object; it might reach under with a paw and, failing in that, course back and forth in front of the couch in growing frustration; finally, having rounded the corner in its ever-extending dashes, it discovers where the ball lies. On the next occasion, the dog remembers this route to success and proceeds immediately around the corner to get the ball, but its behavior gives little evidence of topographic comprehension.
Darwin, however, wasted no time in useless pacing. He sized up the situation in a long glance, stood up and, without hesitating, walked around the end of the couch to retrieve his errant toy. He knew exactly where he was going.
Another time, as I walked back from the post office and approached my flat, I saw Darwin sitting on the sidewalk in front of my landlord's house (behind which stood the garage and the two second-story flats). This was the first step in a ritual we had evolved in which he would wait as I approached and, when I was within about twenty-five feet, turn and scamper down the driveway to wait for me at the foot of the stairs.
There were two routes to my flat. Approaching from the north, I could walk past the landlord's house and down the driveway, which ran along the south property line, or I could turn off before the house and walk along the narrow passageway between the wall and the north line. The two routes were parallel.
The devil was in me that day, and out of sheer perverseness he decided that I should have some fun at Darwin's expense, justifying it in the spirit of science. I decided to see how thoroughly a cat could comprehend the layout of his land.
When I approached the house, I could see Darwin preparing to dash ahead as I turned down the driveway in the choreography of our daily ritual. Then I began the experiment. Instead of proceeding to the mouth of the driveway, I stopped at the north property line, turned right, and walked toward the passageway between the house and the rotting fence. Without hesitating, Darwin turned and dashed down the driveway in the same direction I was going toward the flat. Clearly he understood that his course ran parallel to my own on the other side of the house and he intended to meet me when I emerged from my alternate route.
A Cat Named Darwin Page 4