It's like this, cat

by Emily Neville

  It's like this, cat

  by Emily Neville ILLUSTRATED BY EMIL WEISS

  [Cover: Dave standing on top step looking across street; Cat curled up below. Tall apartment building in background.]

  IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT

  BY EMILY NEVILLE PICTURES BY EMIL WEISS

  [Title Page: City scene of park entrance and busy street: tall apartment building on left; car driving by; bike-riding boy behind running boy and dog; mailman handing mail to woman on sidewalk.]

  IT'S LIKE THIS, CATCopyright (C) 1963 by Emily Neville

  Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever withoutwritten permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied incritical articles and reviews. For information address Harper & Row,Publishers, Incorporated, 49 East 33rd Street, New York 16, N.Y.

  TOMIDNIGHT,"MAYOR" OF GRAMERCY PARK1954-1962

  CONTENTS

  1. Cat and Kate 2. Cat and the Underworld 3. Cat and Coney 4. Fight 5. Around Manhattan 6. And Brooklyn 7. Survival 8. West Side Story 9. Fathers10. Cat and the Parkway11. Rosh Hashanah at the Fulton Fish Market12. The Red Eft13. The Left Bank of Coney Island14. Expedition by Ferry15. Dollars and Cats16. Fortune17. Telephone Numbers18. "Here's to Cat!"

  *IT'S LIKE THIS, CAT*

  1

  Dave holding Cat while Dad looks up from reading his newspaper.]

  CAT AND KATE

  My father is always talking about how a dog can be very educational for aboy. This is one reason I got a cat.

  My father talks a lot anyway. Maybe being a lawyer he gets in the habit.Also, he's a small guy with very little gray curly hair, so maybe hethinks he's got to roar a lot to make up for not being a big hairy toughguy. Mom is thin and quiet, and when anything upsets her, she gets asthma.In the apartment--we live right in the middle of New York City--we don'thave any heavy drapes or rugs, and Mom never fries any food because thedoctors figure dust and smoke make her asthma worse. I don't think it'sdust; I think it's Pop's roaring.

  The big hassle that led to me getting Cat came when I earned some extramoney baby-sitting for a little boy around the corner on Gramercy Park. Ispent the money on a Belafonte record. This record has one piece about afather telling his son about the birds and the bees. I think it's funny.Pop blows his stack.

  "You're not going to play that stuff in this house!" he roars. "Why aren'tyou outdoors, anyway? Baby-sitting! Baby-talk records! When I was yourage, I made money on a newspaper-delivery route, and my dog Jeff and Iused to go ten miles chasing rabbits on a good Saturday."

  "Pop," I say patiently, "there are no rabbits out on Third Avenue. Honest,there aren't."

  "Don't get fresh!" Pop jerks the plug out of the record player so hard theneedle skips, which probably wrecks my record. So I get mad and startyelling too. Between rounds we both hear Mom in the kitchen starting towheeze.

  Pop hisses, "Now, see--you've gone and upset your mother!"

  I slam the record player shut, grab a stick and ball, and run down thethree flights of stairs to the street.

  This isn't the first time Pop and I have played this scene, and there getsto be a pattern: When I slam out of our house mad, I go along over to myAunt Kate's. She's not really my aunt. The kids around here call her CrazyKate the Cat Woman because she walks along the street in funny old clothesand sneakers talking to herself, and she sometimes has half a dozen ormore stray cats living with her. I guess she does sound a little looney,but it's just because she does things her own way, and she doesn't give ahoot what people think. She's sane, all right. In fact she makes a lotbetter sense than my pop.

  It was three or four years ago, when I was a little kid, and I cametearing down our stairs crying mad after some fight with Pop, that I firstmet Kate. I plunged out of our door and into the street without looking.At the same moment I heard brakes scream and felt someone yank me back bythe scruff of my neck. I got dropped in a heap on the sidewalk.

  I looked up, and there was a shiny black car with M.D. plates and Katewaving her umbrella at the driver and shouting: "Listen, Dr. Big Shot,whose life are you saving? Can't you even watch out for a sniveling littlekid crossing the street?"

  The doctor looked pretty sheepish, and so did I. A few people on thesidewalk stopped to watch and snicker at us. Our janitor Butch was there,shaking his finger at me. Kate nodded to him and told him she was takingme home to mop me up.

  "Yas'm," said Butch. He says "Yas'm" to all ladies.

  Kate dragged me along by the hand to her apartment. She didn't sayanything when we got there, just dumped me in a chair with a couple ofkittens. Then she got me a cup of tea and a bowl of cottage cheese.

  That stopped me snuffling to ask, "What do I put the cottage cheese on?"

  "Don't put it on anything. Just eat it. Eat a bowl of it every day. Here,have an orange, too. But no cookies or candy, none of that sweet, starchystuff. And no string beans. They're not good for you."

  My eyes must have popped, but I guess I knew right that first day that youdon't argue with Kate. I ate the cottage cheese--it doesn't really have anytaste anyway--and I sure have always agreed with her about the stringbeans.

  Off and on since then I've seen quite a lot of Kate. I'd pass her on thestreet, chirruping to some mangy old stray cat hiding under a car, andhe'd always come out to be stroked. Sometimes there'd be a bunch of littlekids dancing around jeering at her and calling her a witch. It made mefeel real good and important to run them off.

  Quite often I went with her to the A & P and helped her carry home the catfood and cottage cheese and fruit. She talks to herself all the time inthe store, and if she thinks the peaches or melons don't look good thatday, she shouts clear across the store to the manager. He comes across andpicks her out an extra good one, just to keep the peace.

  I introduced Kate to Mom, and they got along real well. Kate's leery ofmost people, afraid they'll make fun of her, I guess; my mom's not leeryof people, but she's shy, and what with asthma and worrying about keepingme and Pop calmed down, she doesn't go out much or make dates with people.She and Kate would chat together in the stores or sitting on the stoop ona sunny day. Kate shook her head over Mom's asthma and said she'd get overit if she ate cottage cheese every day. Mom ate it for a while, but sheput mayonnaise on it, which Kate says is just like poison.

  The day of the fight with Pop about the Belafonte record it's cold andwindy out and there are no kids in sight. I slam my ball back and forthagainst the wall where it says "No Ball Playing," just to limber up andlet off a little spite, and then I go over to see Kate.

  Kate has a permanent cat named Susan and however many kittens Susanhappens to have just had. It varies. Usually there are a few othertemporary stray kittens in the apartment, but I never saw any father catthere before. Today Susan and her kittens are under the stove, and Susankeeps hissing at a big tiger-striped tomcat crouching under the sofa. Heturns his head away from her and looks like he never intended to get mixedup with family life. For a stray cat he's sleek and healthy-looking. Everytime he moves a whisker, Susan hisses again, warningly. She believes in novisiting rights for fathers.

  Kate pours me some tea and asks what's doing.

  "My pop is full of hot air, as usual," I say.

  "Takes one to know one," Kate says, catching me off base. I change thesubject.

  "How come the k
ittens' pop is around the house? I never saw a full-growntom here before."

  "He saw me buying some cans of cat food, so he followed me home. Susanisn't admitting she ever knew him or ever wants to. I'll give him anotherfeed and send him on his way, I guess. He's a handsome young fellow." Katestrokes him between the ears, and he rotates his head. Susan hisses.

  He starts to pull back farther under the sofa. Without stopping to thinkmyself, or giving him time to, I pick him up. Susan arches up and spits. Ican feel the muscles in his body tense up as he gets ready to spring outof my lap. Then he changes his mind and decides to take advantage of thelap. He narrows his eyes and gives Susan a bored look and turns his headto take me in. After he's sized me up, he pretends he only turned aroundto lick his back.

  "Cat," I say to him, "how about coming home with me?"

  "Hah!" Kate laughs. "Your pop will throw him out faster than you can say'good old Jeff.'"

  "Yeah-h?" I say it slowly and do some thinking. Taking Cat home had beenjust a passing thought, but right now I decide I'll really go to the matwith Pop about this. He can have his memories of good old Jeff and rabbithunts, but I'm going to have me a tiger.

  Aunt Kate gives me a can of cat food and a box of litter, so Cat can stayin my room, because I remember Mom probably gets asthma from animals, too.Cat and I go home.

  Pop does a lot of shouting and sputtering when we get home, but I just putCat down in my room, and I try not to argue with him, so I won't lose mytemper. I promise I'll keep him in my room and sweep up the cat hairs soMom won't have to.

  As a final blast Pop says, "I suppose you'll get your exercise mousehunting now. What are you going to name the noble animal?"

  "Look, Pop," I explain, "I know he's a cat, he knows he's a cat, and hisname is Cat. And even if you call him Honorable John Fitzgerald Kennedy,he won't come when you call, and he won't lick your hand, see?"

  "He'd better not! And it's not my hand that's going to get licked aroundhere in a minute," Pop snaps.

  "All right, all right."

  Actually, my pop sometimes jaws so long it'd be a relief if he did hauloff and hit me, but he never does.

  We call it a draw for that day, and I have Cat.

  2

  Dave looking at Cat locked in cage.]

  CAT AND THE UNDERWORLD