Sleeping With Cats

by Marge Piercy

  Still, we had our adventures. We ferried to Crete and fell in love with it. Crete was wild then, not a tourist destination. We met and visited a peasant family in a little village called Ano Moulia in the mountains—Crete is a long skinny island that goes up to a ridge pole of mountains from sea level and then down again toward Africa. You pass bananas growing in the morning, and by noon, it’s snow-capped peaks. We met the mother of the family on the road and gave her a ride in our VW rented in Iraklion. We came to know the family well. In that little village with the well at one end and the latrine at the other, I contracted a periodic form of paratyphoid that would not be recognized nor dealt with for months.

  When we left Rhodes for Mykonos, a storm came up. The wind was howling, the ship was pitching and rolling and heaving as if about to break in two. The deck passengers had long since taken shelter in the salon, for waves were breaking high over the decks and sometimes we seemed entirely underwater. We came to know two Australian women when one of them passed out on me. They were deck passengers who had come inside. They were bold, up for any side trip, raunchy and delightful. Soon most of the crew was seasick, and so was Robert. I have no idea why I did not become sick in that storm. I was certainly frightened, but after a certain point of alarm, I tend to get hard and steely. When events pass into real danger, I turn clear and focused.

  My father’s side of the family, to which I feel so little connection, may have contributed something to me besides glaucoma: they were seafaring men. I saw a plaque in Canterbury Abbey to a Captain Piercy lost at sea. I was once told that a great-grandfather Piercy was accused of piracy. Perhaps in my own private mixed gene pool, there is something that makes me less prone to seasickness. At any rate, there were only five crew and me standing as the storm was at its peak, and I was pressed into service helping to batten things down, stow flying furniture and help those who thought they were dying.

  At two in the morning we arrived off the harbor of Mykonos. The ship signaled and a little fishing boat chugged and bounced out. We were still bounding wildly, but passengers for Mykonos, including the two Australian women, Robert and myself, had to climb down a ladder. Then they threw our luggage on top of us, almost capsizing the fishing boat, and steamed away.

  The next day, we were covered with livid bruises, from the luggage landing on us and probably from being flung about in the storm. On Mykonos the sun was shining in the morning from a sky as blue as hope and the light was creaking bright and dry on every windmill and dovecote adorned with the horns of the great goddess. Together the four of us walked and walked, picnicking and glorying in our survival. We heard that two boats had gone down in the storm.

  I had begun collecting old Baedekers in San Francisco. For a couple of dollars I found guidebooks to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to Bohemia, and to New York in 1890. They were far more detailed than anything produced since. But sometimes our information was a bit out-of-date. In the Peloponnisos, we spent four hours climbing the Akrocorinth, a great rock that sits over Corinth, crowned by the ruins of a temple of Aphrodite. We climbed hand over hand in the broiling sun, running out of water halfway up. It was a hard scramble, but we knew we would be rewarded by a great view from the deserted summit. When we reached the top, exhausted, the first thing we saw was not Aphrodite’s temple, but a bus disgorging German tourists. A road had recently been built from the other side to the summit. A kiosk was selling refreshments and a sign advertised orange soda. We quenched our thirst and got a ride down.

  Nearby on Greek Easter a middle-aged man (probably thirty-five and prematurely old from hard work) flagged us down on the road and brought us into his small house—little more than a two-room hut—to share their meal. They had killed the Paschal lamb, roasted potatoes with it and field greens. Since they had no refrigeration, it was a matter of eating the whole thing. It tasted great, but we got into trouble with the family patriarch. He had been in the States for twenty years in his youth, although he spoke little English by now, an enormous imposing mustachioed barrel of a man with bushy white hair and leathery skin and a tendency to bellow. He explained he had worked on the great bridge at what sounded like You-frens. We had no idea what he was talking about, and he became instantly suspicious of us, saying we could not be Americans if we didn’t know about the great bridge at You-frens. I asked him to write it down (in Greek). Then I pretended to recognize it and asked him how hard it had been to build such a wonder. By then I had figured out he had worked on a railroad bridge in California. To him, it was one of the great engineering marvels of all time, and if I understood him correctly, two men had been killed in its construction. Stuffed and having reassured them we were real amerikani, we drove on. The next day, we ate at a castle in the bay, a former retirement home for executioners where the food was not nearly so good.

  We were often traveling in extremely poor districts. Yet the American military presence was striking. The village women went about in eternal black, carrying bundles of sticks on their backs, but all the shepherds had transistor radios and listened to rock music, and the village boys who had gone into the army had the newest, fanciest weapons and trucks. Everywhere in Greece we found lean hungry half-feral cats who responded to a bit of food and a pat with utter ecstasy. I felt guilty before them and wondered about the cat we had left in Boston—but at least she would be sleek and well fed and pampered.

  We went north to Epirus and stayed in Ioannina. Now we were to cross the Pindus Mountains—the backbone of this part of Greece—on the highway indicated on our tourist map. After we had been going for a couple of hours, it became clear that yes, someday there might be a highway, but at the moment we were on a one-way journey—there was no way to turn around—on what deteriorated into an unpaved road and then a cart track and then little more than a shepherd’s path. Our car climbed boulders and forded gulleys and gushing streams. We went up and up and up past the tree line and then we ingloriously bumped down the other side. When we finally got to Thessaloniki, the VW Beetle was half destroyed. Our best times together were when we found ourselves in trouble. The sightseeing bored him, and then so did I.

  Three months after we had come to Greece, we returned to Boston. We were out of money. Robert was an extremely good poker player, and he managed to win enough on the trip back to tip everybody and pay what we had to—enough to get us home. Poker was one of his great useful gifts. Robert could do a great many things well. It enabled us to improvise when others had to plan. There was a streak of adventurer in him that meshed well with me.

  We picked up Arofa immediately and were stunned. For the last month, she had refused to eat. She was skin over muscle and bone. Her eyes were glazed, but then fierce again. She recognized us immediately, and as soon as we got her to the apartment, she began to eat. She had gone on a hunger strike to bring us home. She was convinced it had worked. She was very happy.

  AROFA

  My little carry-on baggage,

  my howler monkey, my blue

  eyed sleek beige passion,

  you want a monogamous relationship

  with me. Othella, if you were

  big as me you’d have nipped

  my head off in a fit.

  Gourmet, winebibber, you fancy

  a good Bordeaux as much

  as schlag, but would rather

  be petted than eat.

  You play Ivan the Terrible

  to guests, you hiss and slap

  at them to go away. Only

  an occasional lover gains

  your tolerance if my smell

  rubs off on him and he

  lets you sleep in the bed.

  When I travel you hurtle

  about upending the rugs.

  When I return you run from me.

  Not till I climb into bed

  are you content and crouch

  between my breasts kneading,

  a calliope of purrs.

  When I got a kitten a decade

  and a half ago, I didn’t know
/>   I was being acquired

  by such a demanding lover,

  such a passionate, jealous,

  furry, fussy wife.

  TWELVE

  HELLO CHO-CHO

  Arofa was overjoyed we were back, but her pleasure took the form of being increasingly demanding. I read books on feline behavior while trying to get back into the novel I was endlessly rewriting. It was always coming back with letters of almost-made-it but no cigar. The solution to Arofa’s boredom seemed to be to give her a companion kitten.

  In early August, we went down to the Animal Rescue League. I hate those shelters that kill unwanted animals for the general public. I give to no-kill shelters. I know they are a luxury, but when you go into them, the atmosphere is completely different. The cats in the disposal shelters know what faces them: they know it very well. A tiny fluffy black and white kitten reached out of its cage and grabbed Robert by the arm. He named her Cho-Cho—butterfly in Japanese. He had just begun the study of Japanese when Scotty was killed. Cho-Cho-san was Madame Butterfly in Puccini’s opera.

  It turned out that Cho-Cho was sick—she had distemper, and Arofa, even though she had shots, caught it. The vet said that both cats would die. I force-fed them baby food mixed with water every two hours during the day, and set the alarm for the night feedings. They could not keep much down, and this went on for a week. I was so exhausted I could barely speak or function, but on the eighth day, they both ate a little tuna in water. I swore to them that if they would only live, every Saturday they would have tuna as a treat. To this day, long after Cho-Cho and Arofa have died, all my cats get tuna every Saturday morning. With five cats splitting a can, that isn’t much, but they enjoy the ritual. I swear to you, although it defies logic, that at least one cat always knows when it’s Saturday morning and she’s entitled to tuna.

  Cat and kitten slowly recovered. Cho-Cho may have been brain damaged by her early illness or she may just have been genetically predisposed to stupidity. Fortunately, she was beautiful. She grew into a longhaired tuxedo cat, probably a Maine coon to judge from the plume of her tail and her extraordinary ear and leg tufts and her gorgeous ruff. She was beautiful, vain and about as smart as a footstool. She was given to panics (thunder, loud noises, the vacuum cleaner) but at other times was placid in the face of things that should have alarmed her like strange dogs. She adopted Arofa as her mother, and Arofa tried to teach her manners and cat behavior. Her mew was a tiny high-pitched cry that only grew into a magnificent dramatic contralto when she was angry (and when she went into heat before we had her altered). Cho-Cho was far more attached to Arofa than Arofa to her, although they slept curled together. Cho-Cho was the cat visitors liked, because she circulated from person to person asking to be petted, and she was extremely pretty. Arofa developed a hostility toward visitors. She would bite guests if they tried to pet her, apparently believing any outsider might carry her off and imprison her for months. She had been a friendly kitten. Now she viewed every person who was not Robert or myself with intense suspicion.

  Both cats were so photogenic that we took many photos. In the albums of those years, there are pictures of friends, some of each other or our travels, and many shots of Arofa and Cho-Cho playing on a ladder, watching the snow through the window, chasing toys or flies, curled up in a variety of positions. Cho-Cho slept on her back with her four paws in the air and her head flung back, as Malkah sometimes does but only when she is right next to me.

  Cho-Cho never grew out of her kitten awkwardness. She was the only cat I have ever known who could run into a room and trip on the rug. Arofa never broke anything unless she was angry. If we had gone off on a trip without her, often when we returned she would wait till she had our full attention, and then carefully knock a vase or a glass to the floor. Cho-Cho was always breaking things without meaning to, then looking astonished. She had such a sweet innocent face, it felt unfair to punish her for klutziness.

  Some of my friends began to have children. Among the writers, mostly the men went on with their work while their wives cared for the offspring. Among my female friends, having a baby seemed to spell the end of whatever they had been doing previously. Robert did not want children, and neither did I. He wanted to be free to travel, and I wanted to be free to write. This further cut down on what I had in common with female friends—that and the fact that everyone seemed to come in couples, and few of the women besides Sophia were motivated to pursue female friendships that did not involve children or their husband’s careers.

  That year we went several times to Ann Arbor, where the VOICE chapter had been founded—the precursor to Students for a Democratic Society. The Port Huron Statement, that ode to participatory democracy, was our credo. I took the train to New York to see my agent and friends, to take part in an occasional demonstration against the war in Vietnam. I made new friends in Brooklyn, the writer Sol Yurick and his wife, Adrienne. Robert and Leslie Newman were living in a fancy apartment and trying to break into writing for the theater. Robert began to accompany me, as he found some of my new and old friends interesting. He was increasingly restless in Brookline.

  Robert always said he worked best alone, but I did not over the years observe that to be true. When he worked alone, after a while he would begin to feel isolated and finally desperate. He seemed to work best not in a group, but with one other man. Around this time, he began working with a mathematician named Tole (pronounced to rhyme with Jolly) who lived in Philadelphia and was with a company based in New Jersey. Tole was a tall charismatic man with many interests. Born in Riga, Latvia, as a teenager he escaped from the Nazis. His mother got out ahead of him, to spend the war in Indonesia, where she learned Balinese dancing. He did not see her for years. He had no accent, a great deal of intelligence and charm. He, his wife and his two daughters lived in a rambling turn-of-the-century house in the Germantown neighborhood of Philadelphia. Their third daughter had been murdered. His wife had leukemia and grew sicker and sicker. After Robert began working with Tole, he was always going down to Philadelphia or Tole would come and stay with us. Robert and he would work, I would make dinner, we would socialize, Robert would go to bed and Tole and I would talk on for an hour or so. Tole was intelligent and read some literature and was knowledgeable about music, which made him more interesting than most of the people we dealt with socially. I was starved for communication. From college on, I wrote very long letters to friends, which I doubt they bothered to read. I was trying to fill in gaps in my life with friends located elsewhere.

  Going to visit Tole in Philadelphia was bizarre and amusing. Around this time, he discovered the Beatles and began to proselytize everyone he knew. Taking their music seriously was a heretical view when they were considered teenage bubblegum music. At his house in Germantown, interesting music was always playing and interesting books lay around. His wife was now bedridden. His daughters, in grade school and middle school, took over the cooking. I especially remember breakfast oatmeal with half a jar of jam cooked into it.

  I look back at myself then and in some ways I am the same person and in other ways, so different I have to work hard to cram myself back into my mind-set. I certainly loved and trusted Robert. Socially I was sometimes stimulated and sometimes bored, but my major frustration was being unable to break through with my writing. I felt that Robert was deeply committed to the marriage and I certainly was. It never occurred to me to regret I had not stayed in San Francisco. I was proud of our funky comfortable light apartment and proud of Robert and our life. But I could not ignore signs of his discontent. He had rarely been happy since Scotty’s death followed by his father’s. His company had not turned out the way he had imagined it. They took on more and more contracts for money rather than scientific interest, and an increasing number were for the military. Crisis followed crisis. Because of too many contracts, they had hired people without experience or talent, and the workplace was no longer an exciting ongoing seminar. It was just a job and a hectic one with too many overdue deadlin
es.

  Around this time, the company was acquired by Tole’s larger company. The upshot was that Robert managed to get transferred to New York. In the spring of 1965, we packed up the cats and our household. We found an affordable apartment in Brooklyn near Prospect Park in the area properly known as Adelphi, but usually considered part of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

  We moved into a recently renovated town house, one of three owned by brothers. The basements were connected, as it had been one large house owned by the Pirie family, for whom a department store in Chicago was named. Robert had become fanatical about storing wine and bought a gas refrigerator which the brothers agreed could be installed in the basement. It was to avoid vibration while keeping wine at forty degrees. When the row houses were one mansion, Teddy Roosevelt had shot billiards in the carriage house in back, now full of the garbage of the ages. Between the rickety carriage house and the terrace of the ground-floor apartment was a small plot of land soon to become a battleground.