Cat People

by Michael Korda

  “Cat-harsis” was not one of the cats in The French Cat, since nobody could figure out what drawing of a cat could accompany it, but the word might easily describe a plenitude of cats, or perhaps a quantity of cats beyond which it seems impossible to go. Of course these things are relative. To many people, one or two cats seem like a lot, or too much, to others a half a dozen or so don’t seem enough, to a select few, the sky’s the limit, the more the merrier.

  By and large, it’s not the number of cats that’s the limiting factor—cats don’t take up a lot of space, and have a way of vanishing out of sight, except when it’s their mealtime—it’s the number of litter boxes you’re prepared to live with. Our own limit in this crucial area grew from one, to two, to three (plus one outside on the screened-in front porch and another in the barn laundry room, which also don’t really count—inside the house is all that counts). Three litter boxes seem to represent our own personal comfort limit (until further notice), two downstairs, one upstairs. (Since one of the downstairs ones belongs to Tootsie, who seldom leaves her own private suite in one wing of our house unless she’s carried out, limp and howling piteously, and since she also doesn’t encourage the other cats to come in, it’s really in the nature of a one-cat private bathroom.)

  From time to time we have tried more “modern” devices, which appear regularly in upmarket mail-order catalogs as the latest technological advance in cat litter boxes. One of these was what looked like a small fiber-glass astrodome or igloo that fit over the litter box, with a hole for an entrance, that was supposed to provide the cat with privacy, and to reduce odors, and eliminate the scattering of litter. We quite liked this, but as luck would have it, the cats didn’t like the look of it at all—none of them would go near it, however much they needed to use the litter box. Cats do have a need for privacy, but not so much that they wanted to enter a blue plastic igloo and sit in the dark. More elaborate (and expensive) was a high-tech, plug-in, mechanical “self-cleaning” device that could tell when the cat left the litter box, and then, clicking and whirring, combed through the litter with fine metal teeth. This seemed to us like a big technological step ahead of a large slotted spoon, but the cats viewed it with unconcealed distrust, or, in some cases, outright terror.

  Well, who can blame them? How many people, after all, really like self-flushing toilets (the kind that flush the moment you stand up, while you’re still groping for the toilet paper and your trousers are down around your ankles, if you’re a man)? I mean, we’d all like to think that we can deal with flushing toilets by ourselves, and cats seem to feel the same way about mechanisms that whir, squeak, comb through the litter, and dispose of whatever is there. They must think: Who knows, maybe I could get scooped up myself? There are exceptions, of course. A good friend of ours, William Steinkraus, the Olympic gold medal–winning rider, has a cat that has learned how to flush the toilet. None of ours has ever grasped this mechanical principle, alas.

  Of course we are merely dabblers, amateurs, as it were, in the litter business, much as it sometimes seems to dominate our lives (especially first thing in the morning). Our friends the Lynns—Susan and Jeff—who live on a horse farm up the road from ours, have eighteen litter boxes in their house, down from their maximum number, they explain with a certain degree of sadness, when they had twenty-seven. Twenty-seven litter boxes! We ask the obvious question: Do they empty the supermarket shelves every time they need to resupply themselves with fresh litter? But no, of course not. They shake their heads, like people sharing a trade secret. They order it from Masten’s, our local feed store, and have it delivered by truck, on pallets. They have tried everything to make the task easier—clay-based litter, sand-based litter, the kind that clumps and the kind that doesn’t, and are now using litter made of tiny balls of old newspapers. Clumping sand was the worst, they agree, since the cats tended to carry it between their toes and leave a thin layer of it all over the pillows and the furniture. Would we like to have a look?

  Who could say no? The Lynns have a handsome old house, somewhat more modern and more of a country manor really, with a big formal entrance hall, than our own eighteenth-century farmhouse. On the other hand, their decorating scheme, though they have lived there for several years, seems to have stalled at inception, apparently brought to a halt by the needs of their cats. In the living room, what remained of the carpets has been removed, and the furniture has been covered with sheets—too late, alas, since the cats have already sharpened their claws on every square inch of upholstery. The Lynns have attempted to prevent further destruction by putting up barricades around the more vulnerable corners of the furniture, using what looks like tough, mustard-colored corduroy mounted on L-shaped pieces of plywood, with only mixed results, frankly.

  At the entrance to the living room one of the paintings has been removed to make way for a big hook on which to hang a plastic hospital hydration bag and its tubing—several of their kitties have failing kidneys and need to be rehydrated daily. One end of the living room is completely devoted to a long row of litter boxes—the Lynns’ cats, unlike ours, have apparently learned to like the kind that have a big plastic cover, like an Eskimo’s igloo. In a closet under the elegant curved staircase, is another big litter box, dimly lit with a purple fluorescent light, for those cats who prefer a little more privacy. The small powder room opposite seems to have so many water bowls on the floor that it’s hard to see how a person could get to the toilet without putting a foot in water. No cats are in sight, however.

  The small, glassed-in porch on which we are sitting has also been stripped bare by, or for, the cats—furniture covered in sheets, a stack of fifty-pound sacks of dried cat food. We chat about the cats’ eating habits. Here, the Lynns take a stricter line than we do. Whereas each of our cats gets a different kind of food, and some of them have food cooked for them, the Lynns give every cat the same food, on its own plate—no choices on the menu, no substitutions. Sooner or later, they all learn to like it, or at least to eat it, whether they like it or not. Otherwise, they explain, life gets too complicated.

  One can see why. At the moment they “only” have thirteen cats, down from their high of twenty-six. Each of them gets its portrait painted in oils by a pet portraitist, so the Lynns have a painting to remember them by when they’re gone.

  They didn’t start out with the intention of having a lot of cats, Jeff points out—it more or less happened of its own accord. They had one cat, and felt it needed another for company, then, as fate would have it, Sue, a flight attendant, began to fly back and forth to Barbados. Barbados has no rabies, it seems, and like the United Kingdom, of which it is a colony, you can’t bring a pet in without a six-month quarantine period. On the other hand, nothing prevents you from bringing a pet out.

  Barbados, like most of the Caribbean islands, is full of stray cats (having their cats spayed or neutered is not a major preoccupation of the native islanders), so everywhere Sue went she saw cats that attracted her sympathy and attention. First she brought back one, then another—nobody at U.S. customs or immigration seemed to care that she kept on using the same original set of papers for innumerable cats—and before long the Lynns had twenty-six cats and twenty-seven litter boxes in their duplex New York City apartment. Fortunately perhaps, Sue got shifted to another flight, and at about the same time they bought the horse farm, and eventually gave up the apartment, moving their entire cat population up to the country. Since that time, the number of cats has diminished, as the old ones pass on, though the Lynns find it hard not to add the occasional stranger that comes to the door, many of them from a mutual neighbor who, like the Barbadians, also does not believe in spaying or neutering animals.

  In various pet-lover magazines there’s an ad that shows the potential population growth of a male and a female cat if neither they nor their offspring are neutered. It’s rather like those charts that used to show what happened to money if you allowed it to grow at compound interest over twenty years—in any case, before very
long, Mother Nature and the reproductive habits of cats produce millions of cats, the message being, of course, to spay and neuter them. Our mutual neighbor seems to be putting this mathematical theory to a practical, experimental test, and is so far producing an almost unlimited number of cats, most of them suffering from some rare and expensive disease, so there’s never a shortage for the Lynns to draw on, whenever they feel they don’t have enough.

  Wally, named because Sue found him as a tiny kitten on a wall near their house and brought him home in her riding helmet, is the kind of cat that would make even a non–cat lover’s eyes turn moist. He appears suddenly and silently, apparently from nowhere (How do cats do that?), a massive bundle of tawny fur, with huge yellow eyes and a trusting expression. The phrase “long-haired cat” (as opposed to “short-haired”) hardly does Wally justice. Even without the fur, he would be a big cat, but with it, he looks immense, so fluffy that he could pass for one of those spun sugar desserts, his silky hair sprouting in every direction. Like certain fat men, he has a kind of elephantine grace, and an almost eerie calm. He is noted, Jeff explains, for his rough tongue. Some cats love licking their owners’ faces, Wally being one of them, but his tongue apparently has an abrasive power beyond that of the ordinary cat, which he proceeds to demonstrate as Jeff kneels down to him. Sure enough, Wally licks his cheek, a beatific expression in his eyes, and when Jeff gets up he has a red patch there, as if he had shaved himself too hard with a blunt razor.

  “Each of them has a trick,” Jeff explains, looking dreamy-eyed himself. “That’s Wally’s.” He thinks for a moment, looking at room after room with the carpets rolled up or removed and the furniture protected as if from imminent civil war (but too late). “The thing is,” he says, “they give you something to laugh about every day. Who can knock that?”

  Who indeed? Of course, eventually they make you cry too, but that’s part of the deal.

  As we leave, we see Wally watching me through the glass door of the kitchen—the Lynns don’t let their cats out, unlike us. His expression looks as if he might be thinking, “Thanks for coming to visit me,” and maybe he is.

  After all cats aren’t dogs. They don’t defend their owners’ homes—the idea seems not to have occurred to them. They see the place they live as their home, one they share with their “owners,” or would if the concept of ownership were clear to cats, but it’s not. Just as the Indians couldn’t understand how it was possible to buy or sell land—the land was everybody’s, it didn’t belong to them, they belonged to it—cats don’t think they’re owned by anybody.

  Even behind doors and windows, like amiable Wally, they’re free. Always.

  That may, in fact, be the most important thing about them.

  About the Authors

  MICHAEL KORDA is the author of many books, including Horse People, Country Matters, and Ulysses S. Grant.

  MARGARET KORDA was born in England and now lives with her husband in Dutchess County, New York. They are also coauthors of Horse Housekeeping: How to Keep a Horse at Home.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  PRAISE FOR

  Cat People

  “Funny, insightful, heartwarming, and sometimes heartbreaking, this charming little book is as beguiling as the creature it celebrates.”

  —Sarah Casey Newman,

  St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  “With a wink and no small amount of wit, the Kordas begin a delightful look at their obsessive devotion to their pets and the world of cat lovers at large.”

  —Dolores Derrickson,

  Rocky Mountain News

  “A humorous and insightful look at just how consuming cats can be for their owners. For those who have experienced what the Kordas call ‘cat-harsis,’ this book will be a fun and often hilarious read.”

  —Fort Wayne Journal Gazette

  “I have savored Cat People. It’s just wonderful. What a treat! It is totally entertaining—amusing, charming, touching, and insightful—alternately producing nods, listen-to-this calls to my husband, spontaneous guffaws, and tears…. You and Margaret have done a fabulous job retelling your cat tales. I feel as though I know your cats—can see each of them in his/her favorite spot. More than telling the story, you and Margaret have done a fabulous job caring for and loving all these pets. I’m in awe of you for that.”

  —Barbara Delinsky, author of

  Looking for Peyton Place

  “Cat People proves once again that you recognize it’s important to be humble before one’s superiors, in this case your cats. Reading Cat People proves how very intelligent you are. Most important, you will impress your cat.”

  —Rita Mae Brown, author of

  The Hunt Ball and Cat’s Eye Witness

  Books by Michael Korda

  Clouds of Glory

  Hero

  With Wings Like Eagles

  Ike

  Journey to a Revolution

  Ulysses S. Grant

  Marking Time

  Horse People

  Making the List

  Country Matters

  Another Life

  Man to Man

  The Immortals

  Curtain

  The Fortune

  Queenie

  Worldly Goods

  Charmed Lives

  Success

  Power

  Male Chauvinism

  By Margaret Korda and Michael Korda

  Horse Housekeeping

  Cat People

  Copyright

  CAT PEOPLE. Copyright © 2005 by Success Research Corporation. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  ePub edition October 2007 ISBN 9780061740190

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