A Cat Named Darwin

by William Jordan

  Mostly, however, I looked forward to our assignations because it relieved me of Darwin's suffering. For a few minutes I could abandon my worries and cares in the new cat's vigor and escape the aching weight of Darwin's misery. Always this misery waited at the door to my flat like a coat on a hook, required dress for admission to my home, and always I put it on as I entered.

  One day several weeks later, the new cat developed a slight limp. My heart lurched and stumbled against the inner walls of my chest, and I reached down and swept him into my arms. He placed his left paw on my right arm and I saw that all his claws were frayed, bloody stubs. I checked the other paw and found the same thing. I had no idea what could have caused this, but whatever it was, it had been violent. I found myself carrying him up the stairs to the flat. I wanted to protect him, to shield him from the dangers of a natural life, but then I stopped midway, remembering that Darwin was sleeping inside. We had come to an impasse. The time had come to face the issue of keeping the new cat.

  I sat down on the steps and cradled him on my lap. He commenced to vibrate, the energy passing from his organ of purr into my thighs and proceeding directly into the reptilian complex beneath the cerebrum of my brain. There it caressed the inner lizard of urge, desire, feeling, appetite, lust, and deep, deep pleasure. The lizard understood immediately what the cat was saying, for they spoke directly to each other in the language of touch and feel.

  ***

  For years I had been pondering the mind as a process arising from the anatomy of the brain. For years I had been bewildered. I am still bewildered, though not quite so thoroughly, for I had a front-row seat as my mind went into the convulsions of a difficult decision.

  As a biologist, I thought in terms of evolution, natural history, plants and animals, physiology, genetics, molecular biology. I knew that certain regions of the brain generate certain aspects of the mind, and I knew that the different regions are interconnected by bundles of nerves which serve as neural pathways.

  As a writer I looked for common terms to replace the Brobdingnagian words assigned by science to the brain's anatomy. I wanted names that arose from the nature of the specific regions, based on what they contributed to the mind, and if the name had a wry twist or a certain lilt, all the better. Thus the inner lizard. In time these names assumed a life of their own, like characters in a fable or actors in a morality play.

  There was, of course, the inner lizard, named for the reptilian complex or limbic system, the center of visceral impulses like lust, appetite, urge, aggression. This creature was an island unto itself, supremely self-centered and wholly oblivious to the outside world. Having no intellect, it had no awareness of self, no comprehension of space or time, no conceptual grasp of death. It expected immediate gratification; it wanted what it wanted and wanted it NOW. The inner lizard, however, was stitched with countless neurons directly to the other creature, the cerebrum and its cortex, that cap of anastomosing neurons which generated intellect. The reptile, therefore, had to manipulate its cerebral partner because intellect stood between its urges and their satisfaction. The intellect was the lizard's link to the world. Reason operates the hands, the hands manipulate the world, so the lizard, to get its way, had no choice but to manipulate the rational mind.

  The cerebum creature was harder to name, in part because there is no antecedent in evolution. There has never been an animal in the natural world without skin, limbs, or muscle; there is no creature incapable of any movement whatsoever, existing as a flabby, defenseless, three-pound gob of neurons that transcends itself in a rationalizing, self-aware mind capable of conceiving existence and death, comprehending infinity and eternity, holding moral values and religious beliefs, aesthetic sense and philosophic curiosity—the whole panoply of intellect by which we humans define ourselves and project our gods. Such a creature could exist only in myth or fairy tale.

  I thought of the human skull, that bulbous urn of bone with its high forehead and bulging rump. I thought of Humpty Dumpty, with his immense noggin symbolizing a brain larger than reason, and the name of this fabulous creature came to mind, ready to take its rightful place in the natural history and natural politics of my mind.

  The noggingod was everything the inner lizard was not. Where the lizard was supremely self-centered, the noggingod was able to rise above itself as disembodied curiosity and observe the lizard as it writhed in the cold blue light of reason. Because all senses are routed through the cerebral cortex, the noggingod comprehended a world beyond its self; one of its main tasks was to measure, weigh, analyze, and make rational sense of it. As a result of its wide horizons, the noggingod understood that other individuals similar to itself existed outside its skull, and these others had feelings and rights, just as did the noggingod. They had to be respected if one wished to coexist and reap the benefits of social living. Despite what the lizard might feel or want, its actions had to be edited. The lizard had to be curbed.

  And so the two regions, two creatures, were joined at the hip by neural bonds, but they were born as natural enemies. Yet despite their differences, they had no choice but to interact, for each needed the other. The noggingod needed the passion and self-centered sureness of the reptile to give it direction and to force the rational mind past the infinite confusion of intellectual choice. The lizard needed the conscious mind of the noggingod to plan and connive and carry out its schemes.

  The noggingod entered the mind wars by appealing to truth, beauty, and goodness, to the ascetic fulfillment of self-restraint, to the pride of achieving the long-term goal, to the self-respect of resisting temptation and doing the right thing. Speaking a language known only to the neurons, the noggingod tried to explain that discipline and self-restraint bring a pleasure as satisfying in its way as carnal indulgence.

  The lizard, on the other hand, entered the fray with corruption as its guide, attempting to infiltrate the rational mind and convert it to the carnal agenda. When it succeeded, lust seemed supremely logical, right-headed, inspired, even to the moral lizard. In the heat of passion, in the grip of the moment, with no thought of consequences, seducing thy neighbor's wife might seem like a pretty good idea; in the fury of divorce proceedings, murder might seem even more attractive. A master of specious logic, the carnal lizard caused the mind to rationalize, twisting, distorting, magnifying, diminishing the truth. Without the burden of thorough, painstaking thought, this superficial smartness shimmers and shines, dazzles and inspires. In the end the lizard succeeds in turning the rational mind to its carnal agenda, for it has turned the rational mind into the nose ring of reason. Smartness does that in focusing on one issue or another. The cost of focus is denial. Without the most rigorous vigilance for this weakness, smartness becomes a sublime form of stupidity. It is a rare, or old, noggingod that learns this lesson, because the noggingod is also the god of rationalization.

  The antidote was wisdom—intelligence tempered by experience. Along with wisdom came morality, a code of restraint extracted from ten thousand years of civilized existence. The purpose of morality is to save us from reason.

  ***

  So there I sat, the cat purring on my lap, emotions and thoughts tumbling and turning in a kaleidoscope of conflict.

  "WANT ..." said the lizard, absorbed in its own needs and desires.

  "I can't leave him out in the wild like this. He's not tough enough," said the noggingod, corrupted for the moment with righteousness. "There has to be a way. If you want something badly enough, you'll find a way..."

  The cat gazed outward, serene as the Mona Lisa. I gazed inward by staring outward, with the blank and stony stare of the Sphinx. The cat continued to vibrate. I looked down and savored his young, supple form, his intricate striped and spotted markings, his shiny fur, his metallic eyes. I looked to the top of the stairs and my mind proceeded through the door into my flat. Darwin lay there in a state of misery I could not fathom, with no prospect of recovery. He was going to die. Another thought came up from below, spoken with the unctuous to
nes of a New Age guru.

  "You should keep this cat," said the voice. "Darwin has only a short time left, and when he's gone, you'll have this cat to help you cope. You owe it to yourself. You need to take care of you"

  The logic was compelling. The logic was despicable. I agreed without a whimper. I would keep the new cat.... Or, actually, come to think of it, I would rescue him; I would save him from a short and brutish life on the street, ending with an early death.

  But—what if he was someone's pet? The thought had crossed my mind before ... well too bad. He would have lost an eye, maybe more, to a foxtail boring into his brain. He had bloody stubs where claws should be. Anyone who paid so little attention to his or her pet was not worthy of this cat and would not care if it disappeared, as it had just done. I carried him purring into my office and shut the door. Moral values were fine, said the carnal lizard, leading me by the nose ring of my own reason; you just had to take them with a grain of common sense.

  Decision made, I turned my attention to the impractical matter of incarcerating a cat in a four-room flat, at the same time keeping him away from Darwin. The bathroom and the kitchen received too much traffic to serve as a holding cell, and this left only the room that I used for work. My office, then, would be the new cat's castle. I knew he should have more space than one small room, but I could think of no way to allow it. Perhaps I could give him the run of the flat while Darwin was outside? But that would expose him to the feline leukemia virions that probably lay everywhere.

  The new cat, however, seemed to accept his sentence without a second thought. Often, when I entered my office, I found him on the windowsill, stretched out flat on his back, forepaws tucked under at the wrist, floating off in the cosmos of his dreams. So relaxed and contented was his sleep that he never even opened his eyes when I began stroking his belly, my own muscles tensed, nerves strung tight, dreading the convulsion of grasping claws and kicking, raking hindfeet I had triggered in Darwin. Apparently his brain was not wired this way, and he snored away in the ecstasy of a tummy rubbie.

  Nonetheless, in the days that followed, guilt slowly seeped into the grooves of my brain because Darwin was not happy with the arrangement. I wanted to evade the guilt and feel good about myself, but I refused to accept the obvious solution and find another home for the new cat. A clever alternative then came to me. What if I could integrate the new cat into the household and create a happy family? By making the two cats love each other, I would account for the needs of both and be absolved of my sin.

  The problem of viral infection still remained. Veterinary doctrine held that FeLV was so infectious the new cat would almost certainly be exposed to the disease. There was nothing here, however, that a dash of denial and a pinch of rationalization couldn't fix. I reread my veterinary source books, and found inconclusive answers about the dangers of shared quarters. Although not recommended, use of the same space, furniture, and rugs might not be a death sentence. But shared food and water, along with bite wounds, were far more likely to cause infection. I talked to my cat-loving friends. Oh, they said, our cat so-and-so has been infected for years and none of the others have gotten it. Just what I wanted to hear, and soon my fears subsided. I would feed Darwin and the new cat in different places and not let them fight.

  If the worst happened and the new cat contracted the disease ... well, that would be unfortunate. But so it goes. I was doing this for me.

  This left only the chore of making two strange adult male cats, enemies to the genetic core, into affectionate friends. If we can put a man on the moon ... et cetera, et cetera. Counseling would do it. I had seen books about such things. In no time we would be comfortably cohabiting.

  The new cat soon revealed a personality that seemed to support my rosy visions of harmony, for he proved affectionate to a fault. He wanted to be near me at all times and took over the surface of my writing desk as his bed. I constructed another nest from cheap bathroom towels and placed it at one corner, hoping to preserve space for my own work, but time and again that did not satisfy him. He would stand up, walk to the edge of the desk, reach down with a forepaw to test my lap, and then, when it passed his standards, he would climb down, curl up, and go to sleep on my legs.

  At first I found this behavior a little too needy, even cloying. Darwin had always been more independent and self-possessed, and we had arrived at a low-key, comfortable relationship in which affection was sensed rather than physically expressed. In the beginning he had curled up next to me on the couch while I read or watched television, but my movements, however slight and occasional, seemed to irritate him and after several weeks he chose to lie on the floor, back pressed against my ankles. Even my ankles, however, eventually fell from grace, and from that point on, Darwin curled up nearby but not in physical contact. He seemed to understand that he was firmly entrenched in my affections and that I would accept whatever he wished.

  ***

  The matter of a name now became an issue. The new cat had become a member of the family and could not go on in lowercase. The human intellect seems to have an innate need to label its intimates. Strangers, by definition, have no names; friends and acquaintances and, above all, family members must have names. I could no longer refer to this new member of my family as "the new cat" any more than a mother and father could refer to their youngest child as "the new kid."

  Choosing a name is a momentous task and takes considerable effort. Having named Darwin a year earlier, I recalled that a good name fits the recipient's character, captures his essence, and, above all, feels right.

  As a writer I also had literary honor to uphold, and I wanted to choose a name thematically consistent with Darwin the biologist. Once again the great one came to my aid, for like my own Darwin, he had run afoul af a formidable young rival named Alfred Russel Wallace who recognized the mechanism of natural selection first, thus becoming not only a rival but a nemesis as well. What better name for the new cat than that of a nemesis? Wallace he would be.

  I bought a new transport box and labeled it "Wallace Jordan." I began talking to him as "Wallace." But some intangible something was off-key. Try as I would, I could not make the name feel right. The cat was just not a Wallace.

  One day, after placing a bowl of delicious cat food before him, I looked down and watched the cat devour his rations. Slurp, snort, smack, lick lick lick lick—I was astounded at how quickly the food dematerialized. When the last crumb had disappeared, the cat licked the bowl so clean I could not tell from my standing height whether it had even been used. It was literally spotless. Then he licked the floor around the bowl. Finally, he pushed it aside and licked the floor where the bowl had been.

  Later that day I decided to clean the flat. I wheeled out the vacuum cleaner, flicked on the power switch, the motor roared to life, the vibrations passed up my arm, and eureka! the name blurted from my mouth. His name was Hoover.

  ***

  The counseling sessions began a few days later. Darwin had slowly gained strength, and the time seemed right to begin negotiations, placing the two cats in the same room. The first session was almost unnaturally civil. It consisted of me sitting on the couch with Hoover curled up next to me and Darwin sleeping a few feet away on my prized leather armchair. Common sense indicated that the more time the two cats spent together the more accustomed each would become to the other, so there we sat, practicing domestic bliss. The second session went as peacefully as the first. Sleep came quickly to the two patients, and I sat between them, beaming peaceful vibes and retaliatory menace like the enforcer Buddha I was.

  The third session began with the same quiet harmony as the first two, with Hoover sleeping beside me and Darwin stretched out on the leather recliner in the angle where the back and the seat joined. Around eleven o'clock—the news had just begun—Hoover stood, stretched first his forelegs, then his hindquarters, walked calmly to the edge of the cushion, dropped to the floor, and ambled lackadaisically toward my office as if he hadn't a care in the world. Judging
from his posture and his slow, unconcerned walk, I assumed he was heading to the litter box and turned my attention to the state of the world.

  His path led directly past the recliner, and what happened next occurred so quickly that it could have been a dream. Just as Hoover reached the midpoint of the chair, he stopped, whirled, reared up on his hind legs, and threw a roundhouse right at the dreaming Darwin. The blow caught him on the cheek and jolted him awake in a posture that was indefensible. Fur flew. Screeches exploded into the air, and Darwin, caught completely off guard, ended up against the back of the chair—sick, weak, bewildered, cowering, helpless.

  If I'd had more experience with the combat tactics of cats I would have known they are consummate sucker punchers, and I could have seen this coming. The cat's entire nature is crafted for the ambush, for that is how these predators hunt, concealed, waiting, strung tight. In times of war, the cat instinctively looks for those precious instants when the enemy relaxes its guard, but I had no experience in these affairs and I, too, was caught off guard.

  My eyes saw everything, but my mind could not keep up. Incredulity needs an instant or two. Then, before thoughts could form, my body stood up and a Triassic roar erupted from my throat. The image of Darwin cowering—my sweet, helpless Darwin—triggered a rage I could never have foreseen, and before reason could collar urge, I leaped up and heaved the Sunday

  Times —five pounds of scintillating politically correct impending mulch—at the terrified Hoover.

  He bolted toward the office and disappeared into the room he knew best. My rage, however, now mushroomed into a wild urge to hurt, terrify, pound into the ground this monster who had attacked my Darwin.

  I struggled to control it. I managed to wrestle the thought of serious weapons away from the grip of my fury, but could not stanch the flow of anger and ran to the kitchen for a spray bottle. I opened the nozzle to form a water jet and ran back to the office for the kill.