Seven Lives and One Great Love, Memories of a Cat

by Lena Divani

  I will give you an example so you see my point. Mr. Josef, a housemate of mine for four years, in my fourth life, must have been one of those. He was an accomplished carpenter and an excellent family man. At nights, though, he would secretly get up and learn Mandarin through a self-teaching method. When his spouse accidentally found him out, he explained it was because he feared the children’s ridicule. What use did a sixty-year-old have for Chinese?

  “Actually, what use do you have for it?” his good wife whispered.

  “I was thinking of becoming a chef specializing in Chinese cuisine,” he whispered back.

  “Where? Here?” she went on, askance.

  “No, there. In Shanghai, that is.”

  “Shanghai?” she was flummoxed. “Without asking us? Without consulting with your family?”

  “But . . . you aren’t my family in that life,” he answered after a long pause.

  Then, we all thought that he’d gone bonkers, to put it bluntly. Now, I know that, quite simply, he was hiding others in himself, one of whom fancied frying bamboo shoots with rice for a slant-eyed clientele. The human soul is an abyss, in short. But, my dears, so is the feline one, because that very thing happened to me. For better or for worse, it transpired that I had a dog in me who had a human in him!

  I had a flash of realization out of the blue, when I remembered the very first phrase I heard come out of her mouth. “I always wanted a dog,” she’d said to Mrs. Sweetie. So, that is it. She doesn’t let me get in her bed and her books because she doesn’t love me. And she doesn’t love me because I am not what she wants. By the ocean shrimp, this makes my mission mighty difficult. Not only do I have to teach her to love a cat in his entirety, but in addition, to love a cat even if it’s not a dog! Pardon me, dear universe, but not even Jesus from Nazareth had his work cut out in such a manner! I’m sorely tempted to sum things up the same way he did himself: Father, father, why hast thou forsaken me?

  The point is that, recalling everything about her behavior, I could suddenly see the whole thing perfectly clearly: She treated me as if I were a dog. She called me and expected me to respond at once, she ordered me and thought it perfectly natural that I obey, she posed as my mistress and considered that I would make do with the role of the underling. Small wonder she hadn’t named me Rover, really . . . That is how it is if that is what you think, Damsel. You wish me a dog? I will become one! But promise me that you will allow something of the feline to enter your human dimension as well.

  THE CALL OF THE WILD (OR, LOST IN TRANSLATION)

  I’ve heard a great many things in this house. Words sailed above my head night and day: caress-words, bomb-words, slap-words, sleeping-pill-words. Actions hung around in the corners temporarily, waiting for words to give them meaning so they could rise and present themselves. It was there that I realized that the exact same action can be served up by my housemates as an abominable crime or as self-sacrifice, depending on the words chosen to describe it. “Everything is a matter of narrative,” the Damsel would say over and over again, in defense of the way she earned a crust. It was confusing, my dears, even for a wise, seventh-life cat. Here is a situation that is indicative of my predicament: Once, when they were having friends over and had served the hors d’oeuvres, I jumped on the table and had a taste of most everything. When she discovered me, she went so red that for a moment I feared that the party would be taking place at the hospital. Now, here are the narrative versions of my action that were voiced on that occasion:

  FAVORABLE VERSION (by Christina, a good friend of mine): I feel neglected amidst all the hoopla and need to be made part of the proceedings.

  DAMNING VERSION (by the Damsel): I am spoiled and do whatever comes into my head, regardless.

  REALISTIC VERSION (mine): I was starving because they’d forgotten to feed me, preoccupied with feeding their friends as they were.

  You might wonder whether all this is of any significance. Why, of course it is, you silly coots! If the first version had carried the day, they would pet me apologetically and let me have another treat or two. If the second, I would get smacked with a slipper. And if anyone had eyes for the third, why then, they would serve me my can of food and let me be. In the end, as it happened, none of them did gain currency because the doorbell rang, and the first guests saved me from becoming another cat lost in translation . . .

  FREEDOM OR DEATH?

  The hardest word, though, by far, was “freedom.” What on earth does “freedom” mean? At first, things were fairly simple. Having grown up in a fifth-floor apartment, the word freedom to me meant being able to walk in and out of any room I felt like. So I didn’t feel exactly what you’d call free but, as I am not an ingrate, I considered my life fine and dandy. Only I constantly overheard people feeling sorry for me and that started undermining my sense of joy. It was insidious but it was eating away at me. On one occasion, I even got tearful over my case when a friend of the Damsel pensively said, as he stroked me:

  “Poor animal, growing up in captivity. It’s not his fault. Why should he be leading a life so far removed from nature and from his own true nature? He is neither an animal nor a human being, but rather a hybrid, completely unnatural, condemned to never know the world that he was created to know.”

  “But . . . ,” The Damsel stammered.

  “There’s no buts,” he cut her short. “Can he open the door and just walk out? No! Only when one has the choice to leave but instead stays, only then does one choose freely.”

  Those words rocked my world, my dears. I got into deep thinking. So, freedom isn’t getting inside some place, but, on the contrary, being able to leave? Where I had been looking on myself as a super lucky guy, I suddenly was transformed into someone doing a life sentence. And it all happened by means of a couple of simple sentences! Damned narrative, what traps you set! When the couch philosopher got up to leave, for the first time in my life I ran and sneaked out the door, unobserved by all as they hugged and kissed farewell. The housemates didn’t even notice I was missing. They fell straight into bed, as it was five in the morning. I went up two flights of stairs, drunk with freedom, went down three flights appraising freedom as I was becoming familiar with it, went back up two flights, a little worn out by too much freedom at that point and, then, I ended up incredibly bored. The outside world didn’t offer much in terms of entertainment value—not to mention it had too many staircases. So I returned to the front door rug and lay there, waiting for the door to open and admit me inside again. Because, my dears, although I’ve no bone to pick with freedom, I actually like my couch better.

  The Damsel located me in the morning after looking everywhere, practically yelling out my name, that’s how anxious she got at not seeing me in any of my usual nooks and crannies. She hugged me tightly to herself and smiled. I think she understood immediately what this was about because from then on, every time someone left the house, she let me pretend that I was leaving, only to return of my own will, just before she closed the front door. So we all were happy. I was exercising my free choice and she was alleviated from the stigma of being a prison warden.

  But, then, what goes around, comes around, isn’t that so? Soon, fate would play a game on me to teach me in the most humiliating manner just what the cost of that notorious freedom is. Summer had arrived again and I was a year and a half old, with my Perfect Whiteness in full bloom. The city was sizzling in the heat wave but I was purring blissfully on the couch, across from the electric fan. You see, I was still at that stage unaware that my housemates had decided, alongside the hoi polloi, to evacuate the city in favor of the nonsensical habit of swimming in the sea. It was the first time they would be leaving our domicile, and my good self with it, for so long a period and it gave them pause.

  “What’ll we do with Zach?” Ziggy asked out of the blue.

  The Damsel stood stock still, in the middle of packing her bags. My hairs stood on end. That very
question was the beginning, during my second life, of an adventure in which I ended up in a rubbish dump. I started to shake.

  “What do you want us to do with him?” (Yes, what?)

  “Who is going to look after him?” (So, that’s what you mean? Phew! I was worried there for a bit . . . )

  “Christina.” (The person answering to this name had started out as the Damsel’s sister and gradually ended up as mine. For details, see the chapter below, “The feline-ness of strangers.”)

  “But we’ll be gone a month.” (Whaaat? A month?)

  “So?” (Jeez, have a heart, you callous goon!)

  “He’ll freak out in here all by himself.” (Quite so!)

  “I don’t think so. He’ll be fine.” (Oh, no, he won’t, callous goon!)

  “Maybe we should take him over to my mother’s?” (Aaaargh!)

  “ . . . ” (Don’t, please, consider it, Damsel. Say no! Say no!)

  “He’ll have a ball at my mother’s, I’m sure of it.” (You, dearie, can go jump off a cliff, and take your certainty with you.)

  “You think?” (I can’t believe this! She’s buying it.)

  At this point I jump off the couch and ostentatiously absent myself, to indicate my disagreement.

  “Yeah, sure. Why should the poor guy stay by himself all these weeks? There’s a yard there, too. The poor kitty can enjoy a bit of freedom for a change!” (Oh oh, I can just see myself going up and down stairs all over again.)

  “Hmmm . . . alright. Fine. Let’s take him there.” (Hey, don’t I get a say in this?)

  I, my friends, was left speechless. These humans, who supposedly loved me, were deciding on my behalf without so much as taking the trouble to find out where I stood on the matter. Inconceivable! It made no difference, my nervous coming and going through all the rooms like crazy, no difference that a whole international bibliography was emphatic about cats detesting moving, that I hid under couches or that I scooped out the dirt from every single flowerpot in the balcony; they were under the impression that I was insanely happy about my transfer to Mrs. Sweetie’s yard. And you know why? Because that’s what suited them. In order for their conscience not to be burdened with the thought of doing me harm (abandoning me) they did me a greater one (moving me). I got the rough end of the deal just like the old lady the boy scout drags across the street against her will, so he can tick off his good deed for the day. As I think it over, I’m surprised as to why it made such an impression on me back then. It’s something humans do all the time. Haven’t you seen them willy nilly carrying their aged parents from their beautiful villages to the horrible cities? If you ask them why, they hypocritically answer, “So the poor souls aren’t on their own.” In truth, they leave them even more alone in filthy one-room basements or old-age pensions, depriving them of their village home, their friend the coffee shop owner, and their pal the goat. By the ocean shrimp, they are the greatest hypocrites!

  So they shoved me in my carry basket and took me straight to Mrs. Sweetie’s place. It even occurred to them to stay for dinner, supposedly so they could check how easily I would adjust to the new environment. (Unmerciful translation: because they coveted Mr. Jean’s pork ribs.) During the trip I kept meowing forlornly. I felt sorry I didn’t have a flag I could fly at half-mast over my carry basket. When we finally arrived, they opened it in the middle of the garden and let me out. The Damsel, meanwhile, had started getting suspicious. “You wait and see: He’ll freak out once we leave,” she whispered. Ziggy and Mrs. Sweetie on the other hand, thought otherwise. They pointed to the spot I had left so I wouldn’t have to look at their mugs and they exclaimed: “Nah, not a chance! Just look at him. He found a garden and he is overjoyed. He’s relishing his freedom. He doesn’t give two hoots about you!” (Congrats all round. You obviously possess the hereditary gift of thought reading!)

  So they steadfastly ignored me and then left, after each had about thirty pork ribs apiece. Night had come. Strange noises started from behind the bushes. Well, Madam Sweetie, let me draw a line right here; as deeply as I cherish my freedom, there’s no way I’m spending the night in this jungle. So I quickly sneaked inside through the open kitchen door and hid under the couch. Next morning, as a result of all the distress, I had a fever. Clearly, I looked like death because Sweetie got the message straight away, took me to a decent doctor and started me on antibiotics. Let it be noted that my hypocrite housemates called from time to time, because they were supposedly worried about my health. Nonsense, my dears. Just keeping up appearances.

  Two weeks went by and the truth is I had adjusted well, whether willingly or not. I had even started getting bold and leaving the kitchen for short strolls in the grass, always under the supervision of Sweetie. This freedom business wasn’t half bad, after all. As soon, though, as I felt completely safe and master of the situation, I made the fatal mistake. I heard through the adjacent fence the sounds of a group of cats partying and having a grand old time. Listening to all that meowing here, there and everywhere, the beast woke up in me. I am a cat, too, and I was tempted to do a bit of courting myself. In the fifth floor where those two held me captive (yes, that’s right, I had now woken to the fact of my captivity) the only female I had available was the red leather armchair, which is why I had clawed it to bits. So I ostentatiously left the veranda where Sweetie and Jean were having their coffee and—to their great surprise—I entered full of confidence and with much posing in the yard next door to choose the dark object of my desire. A mistake of the greatest order, my dears! Before I’d had a chance to check things out, three wild commando-cats were onto me, extremely irritated that I had turned up uninvited on their little turf. In two nanoseconds flat, my Perfect Whiteness was bleeding. My heart sped up to advanced aerobic rate and I—don’t ask me how—ejected myself as if I had turbine propellers in my butt, leapt over the fence in cartoon-like fashion and landed by Sweetie’s feet, terrified out of my wits. This is no exaggeration, unfortunately. I had literally shat myself! Sweetie still laughs when she recounts my misadventure, which she always finishes by saying: “Ah, Zach dear, set a beggar on a horse and he’ll ride to the devil!” Well, ma’am, I didn’t happen to know that freedom has such sharp nails and I was duly punished for it. But you ought to know that you must spare the dishonored from further maligning. The punishment for your ignorance will be the two days you’ll have to spend restoring my ass to its former pristine condition!

  Of course, there’s no bad without some good. Out of this mishap I derived two precious conclusions:

  a) Don’t listen to the nincompoops who pity you for your life of captivity. When it comes down to it, we all live inside some kind of wall. It’s just that some fail to see the fence of their own enclosure due to spiritual myopia.

  b) In defeat, you can actually score great victories! My humiliating adventure, paradoxically, moved the Damsel greatly. Without realizing it, she had Anna, the heroine of her novel, humiliate herself in the erotic arena because she simply didn’t meet the requirements for winning. Characteristically, the title of the chapter in question was the refrain of my own little drama: Put a beggar on a horse . . . (Zach, my boy, I can’t say if you are free or not, but you most certainly are a living inspiration!)

  HOW I GOT IN HER BED

  (AND BACK OUT STRAIGHT AWAY)

  The Damsel had a soft spot for her bed. I could tell at first glance. In her own words, “All the nice things take place there: rest, sleep, contemplation, sex, reading, eating.” What she meant was that she did all those things there. It took ages before I finally understood that she also devised the plots of her novels there, in perfect complicity with her unconscious—I don’t know if you follow, as, at first, I myself couldn’t.

  The extremely few times I managed to sneak unobserved into her bedroom, I saw her open her eyes but not get up. She would sit there for an hour like a zombie, neither asleep nor quite awake. In the twilight zone. Every so often she�
�d leap up, grab a pen and scribble wherever she could reach—usually in the back, blank pages of books—and then go back into the aforementioned coma. By the ocean shrimp, I couldn’t figure it out. What was she scribbling, if she was napping? And why spoil perfectly good books and not grab one of the countless notepads strewn everywhere in the house?

  Months later, I heard her explain to a friend of hers. As soon as you open your eyes, she said, just at the moment when you cross the threshold of the unconscious (sleep) to enter consciousness (being awake) your brain operates at the Alpha level. Don’t ask what the hell that Alpha level is, I’m not that sure myself. At all events, that is where all the treasures are supposedly piled that we have gathered in our lives: experiences, thoughts, fantasies, desires, sounds, fears, information, impressions. Something like a dream storehouse. In that buried treasury, the Damsel extends the hand of consciousness and collects her material. And now you know as much as I do. What is for certain is: a) this is where I urgently needed to sneak into, so she’d fish me out as well; and, b) she is an incorrigible slob who systematically destroys her books because she never takes care to have a notepad by her side.

  In addition to fishing for ideas in the bedroom, The Damsel sleeps. She sleeps a lot. Why humans charge us cats with being sleepyheads, when they lay themselves down and can’t be budged with a crane before eight hours have been and gone, is beyond me. We cats do take our naps at regular intervals but we are also on the alert. I also find it rather rude, my dears. If you choose to sleep till you rot, so to speak, well then, you can’t just shut me out on my own for all those hours. Let me in and then you can lay there forever and a day!

  The truth is that I do have a small share of responsibility for my exile from her haven. The very first time I managed to get inside—after many hours of siege during which my meowing and sniveling reduced her to a nervous wreck—I was a tiny bit greedy and inconsiderate. At first, I clambered onto the southernmost part of the bed, where her feet normally rest. With bogus restraint, I took up a little corner on the bedcovers and I waited. As soon as I was sure she wasn’t responding, I moved into stage two of my siege: I sneakily crawled under the eiderdown. Again no response. Perfect! Evidently, drowsiness had lowered her resistance and the citadel was mine for the taking! I started inching my way upwards. “Hey, you, where do you think you’re going?” her voice was heard in the dark. “Let him in, he’s cold,” Ziggy said. (For some inexplicable reason, men were always kinder to me. As you’ll see, they empathized, protected me, fed me and put up with me with a smile on their face. Unfortunately, however, my target was this incorrigible woman.) She let me be for a bit. Well, this was the point at which I went too far; instead of sitting tight, I climbed even higher with the end result that my hefty tail ended up across her face. The Damsel leapt up as if she’d been stepped on by an elephant, yelling, “I swear, this cat is as bad as my ex, you give him an inch and he wants a mile!” Needless to say I ended up spending the night outside their bed. Likewise, it goes without saying that she replaced the handle on the bedroom door with one so heavy not even a bear could dislodge it.