The Third Cat Story Megapack: 25 Frisky Feline Tales, Old and New

by Damien Broderick

  The old man looked at me meekly, his bill-shaded eyes wide with hurt as he said around a glob of chaw, “I already got my pay for that ’un, but I s’pose you could say it’s my cat—”

  When he said that, all my irritation and impatience melted into a soggy feeling of shame mingled with heart-thumping awe—this baggy-trousered old man had to be Hobart Gurney, the sign painter responsible for all of the Katz’s Tobacco signs dotting barns throughout southern Illinois and western Kentucky, the man who was still painting such signs up until a couple of years ago, stopping only when old age made it difficult for him to get up and down the ladders.

  I’d seen that profile about him on CNN a few years ago, when he was painting his last or next-to-last Katz’s sign, but most old men tend to look alike, especially when decked out in the ubiquitous uniform of a baseball cap and paint-splattered overalls, and at any rate, the work had impressed me more than the man who created it.…

  Putting out my hand, I said, “Hey, sorry about what I said…I—I didn’t mean it like that; it’s just that I only have so many days of vacation left, and the weather hasn’t exactly been cooperative—”

  Gurney’s hand was dry and firm; he shook hands until I had to withdraw my aching hand, as he replied, “No offense meant, no offense taken. I ’spect Fella will wait awhiles until the clouds see fit to cooperate with you. He’s a patient one, is Fella, but shy ’round strangers.” The way he said “Fella,” I knew the name should be capitalized, instead of it being a generic nomenclature for the animal at hand.

  Judging from the way the clouds scudded across the sun, I figured that Fella was in for a good long wait, so I motioned to the rental car parked a few yards away from the barn, inviting Gurney to share one of the cans of Pepsi in my backseat cooler. Gurney’s trousers made a raspy rubbing noise when he walked, not unlike the sound a cat’s tongue makes when it licks your bare arm. And when he was speaking in close quarters, his tobacco-laced breath was sort of cat fetid, too, all wild-smelling and warm. The old man positioned himself half in and half out of my car, so he could see his Fella clearly, while still keeping his body in the relative warmth of my car. Between noisy slurps of soda, he told me, “Like I said, no self-respectin’ cat aims to model for you, so’s the only way to get around it is to make your own cat. Memory’s the best model they is—”

  I almost choked on my Pepsi when he said that; all along, I’d assumed that Gurney had used whatever barn cats were wandering around him for his inspiration…but to create such accurate, personable cats from memory and imagination—

  “Funny thing is, when I was hired on to work for Katz, back in the thirties, all they was interested in was getting’ their name out in front of the public, in as big letters as possible. That I added the cats to the Katz’s signs was my idea—didn’t get paid no extra for doin’ it, neither, But it seemed natural, you see? And it did get folks’ attention. ’Sides, them cats, they kept me company, while I was workin’—gets mighty lonely up on that ladder, with the wind snaking down your shirt collar and no one to talk to up that high. Was sorta like when I was a boy, muckin’ out my pa’s barn, and the barn cats, they’d come snaking ’round my legs purrin’ and sometimes jumpin’ straight up onto my shoulders, so they’d hitch a free ride while I was workin’—only I didn’t get ’round to givin’ too many of them cat’s names, you see, ’cause they was always comin’ or goin’, or gettin’ cow-crushed—oh, them cows didn’t mean no harm, see, it’s just they was so big and them cats too small when they’d try snuggling up wi’em on cold winter nights. But I sure did enjoy their company. Now you may laugh at this, but—” Here Gurney lowered his voice, even though there was no one else around to hear him but me and the huge painted Fella resting on the side of the abandoned barn. “—when I was a young’un, and even a not so young’un, I had me this dream. I wanted to be small, like a cat, for oh, maybe a night or so, just long enough for me to snuggle down with a whole litterful of cats, four-five of ’em, all of us same-sized and warm in the hay, and we’d tangle our legs and whatnot in a warm pile, and they’d lick my face and then burrow their heads under my chin, mine under theirs, and we’d sleep for a time. Nothing better for the insomnia than to rest with a cat purring in your ears. ’Tis true. Don’t need none of them sleepin’ pills when you gots yourself a cat.

  “That’s why I took the Katz’s Tobacco job when I heard of it, even though I wasn’t too keen on heights. ’Course, it bein’ the Depression was a powerful motivator, too, but the name Katz was just too good to pass by…and them not minding when I dickied with their adverts was heaven-made for me, too. Struck me funny, when them television-fellers interviewed me and all, when I was paintin’ the little girls—”

  Gurney’s words made me remember the album of Katz’s signs I kept locked in the trunk of the car (not my only set, but a spare album I used for reference, especially when coming across a barn I may have photographed before, under different lighting or seasonal circumstances); too excited to speak, I got out of the backseat and hurried for the trunk, while Gurney kept on talking about the “pup reporter” who’d interviewed him for that three-minute interview.

  “—and he didn’t even ask me what the cats’ names was, like it didn’t matter none to—”

  “Were these the ‘little girls’?” I asked as I flipped through the album pages until I found the dry-mounted snapshot of one of the most elaborate Katz’s signs: four kittens snuggled together in a hollowed-out bed of straw, their pointed little faces curious yet subtly wary, as if they’d all burrow into the straw if you took one step closer to them. Clearly a litter of barn kittens, even if you discounted the straw bedding; these weren’t Christmas-card-and-yarn-balls kittens, cavorting like live Dakin kittens for a Madison avenue artist, but feral-type kittens, the kind you’d be lucky to coax close enough to sniff your fingers before they’d run off to hide in the farthest corners of the manure-scented barn where they were born. The kind of kitten who’d grow up slat-thin and long-tailed, slinking as if sizing up whether or not to take a sharp-clawed swipe at your shoe before running for cover. The kind of cat you know will get kittened-out before she’s three-years-old, winding up saggy-bellied and defensive by the time she’s four.

  But when Gurney saw the eight-by-ten enlargement, his face lit up and his puckered lips stretched out into a broad grin, exposing what my own grandfather used to call “dime-store choppers” of an astonishing Chiclets gum uniform squareness and off-whiteness.

  “You took a picture of my little girls! Usually they’re tricky ones, on ’count of Prissy and Mish-Mish lookin’ so much alike, but you caught ’em, by gummy, got ’em in just the right light—”

  “Wait, wait, let me get this down,” I said, reaching over the seat for the notebook and pen resting on the front passenger seat. “Now, which one is which?”

  His face glowing with the kind of pride most men his age took in showing off pictures of their grandchildren (or even great-grandkids), Gurney pointed at each kitten in turn, stroking their chemically-captured images with a tender, affectionate forefinger, as if chucking each under her painted chin. “This ’un’s Smokey, the tiger gray, and here’s Prissy—see how dainty she looks, with them fox-narrow eyes and little points on her ears?—and right next to her is Mish-Mish, even though they’re both calicos, Mishy’s a little more patchy-colored than usual—”

  “‘Mish-Mish’?” I asked, not knowing how he’d come up with that name; Gurney’s answer surprised—and touched—me.

  “Got that name from the Milwaukee Journal Green Sheet, where they put all their funnies and little offbeat articles…was an article about the Middle East, and it mentioned how them A-rabs like cats so much, and how their version of ‘Kitty-kitty’ was ‘Mish-Mish,’ which is their lingo for peach color, on ’count of most of their strays bein’ sorta peachy-orange. See how Mish-Mish’s face is got that big splotch of peach on it? Oh, I know we’re not s’posed to care what them A-rab folks think, on ’count of them bein’ the en
emy or whatnot, but you can’t fault a people who care so much for their cats too much. Heard tell the Egyptians worshipped their cats, like gods…done up their pets as mummies, the whole shebang. So’s I don’t even mind when their descendants says they hate us, long as they take care of their cats—’cause a man who can hate a cat can’t much like hisself, I says.”

  I had to laugh at that; before Gurney could go on, I quoted Mark Twain from memory: “If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve the man but deteriorate the cat—”

  Now it was Gurney’s turn to laugh, until he spittle-flecked his shirt collar before he went on. “Anyhows, next to Mish-Mish is Tinker, only you can’t tell from lookin’ at her that she’s a girl, on ’count of her only bein’ two colors and all, but from personal experience, most gray cats with white feet I’ve seen’s been girls. Don’t know why that is…sorta like how you never see a white cat with black feet and chest, like you see black cats with white socks and bibs. Funny how nature works that way, ain’t it?”

  Having told me the names of the “little girls” (which I dutifully wrote down in my notebook), Gurney began paging through the rest of the album, matching heretofore anonymous painted felines with the names that somehow made them real—at least to the man who created them: black-bodied and white-socked Ming, with his clear, clear green eyes and luxurious long fur with a couple of mats along the chest; calico Beanie with her rounded gray chin and owl-like yellow-green eyes; dandelion-fuzzy Stan and Ollie, black-and-white tuxedo-patterned kittens, one obviously fatter, but both still too wobbly-limbed and tiny-eared to look anything but pick-me-up adorable; and too many more to remember offhand (thank goodness I had many clean pages left in my notebook that afternoon). But once each cat was named, I could never again look at it as just another Katz’s Tobacco cat; for instance, knowing that Beanie was Beanie made her into a cat, one with a history and a personality…you just knew that she was full of beans when she was a kitten, getting into things, playing with her tail until she’d spun herself like a dime-store top.…And for a moment, Gurney’s cats became more than pigment and imagination. Not unlike the work of regular canvas-easels-and-palette artists, or those natural-born billboard painters, the legendary ones who never needed to use those grid-like blueprints to create the advertisements.

  It was sad, really, how that reporter had missed out on the essence of Gurney’s work; all the “pup reporter” seemed to be interested in was how long Gurney had been at it.

  As Gurney looked at the last of the barn pictures I’d taken and enlarged, he said shyly, “I feel sorta humbled by this and all…it’s like I was one of them art-fart painter guys, in a gallery ’stead of a regular workin’ Joe…Oh, not that I’m not pleased…it’s just…oh, I dunno. It just seems funny to have my cats all put in a book form, ’stead of them just bein’ out where they are, in the open and all. Like they was suddenly domesticated ’stead of bein’ regular barn kitties.”

  I didn’t know how to answer that; I realized that Gurney must be astute enough to realize that his signs were works of art—he may have been slightly inarticulate, and most likely unschooled, but he wasn’t ignorant by any means—he was obviously in a quandary; on the one hand, he was from a time when work was simply something you got paid for, period; yet on the other hand, the fact that he’d been interviewed on TV and caught me taking pictures of his efforts must have been an indication that his work was something special. He couldn’t quite cope with having a fuss being made over something he’d considered to be paid labor.

  I gently lifted the book off his lap and placed it on the seat between us before saying, “I can empathize with you there…I work as an advertising photographer, taking pictures of products for clients, and when someone praises me for my composition, or whatever, it can be a strange feeling…especially since I’m just a go-between when it comes to the product and the consumer—”

  Gurney’s water pale-blue eyes were darting around as I spoke, and for a moment I was afraid that I was losing his attention, but instead he surprised me by saying, “I think Fella’s lost his shyness…the sun’s been shining for a good minute now.”

  Quickly I got out of the car and positioned myself in front of the barn; true to Gurney’s word, Fella was no longer shy, but exposed in all his sunlit perfection against the sun-weathered barn. It’s funny, but even though the lettering next to the cat was badly flaked, I could almost see every individual hair of the tomcat’s fur.

  And behind me, Hobart Gurney took a noisy slurp of soda as he repeated, in the way of old men you find in every small town, “Yessirree, my Fella’s not shy anymore.…”

  * * * *

  I said goodbye to Gurney a couple of hours later, outside the adult day-care center and seniors apartment where he lived; without going in, I knew what his room must be like—single bed, with a worn ripcord bedspread, some issues of Reader’s Digest large-print edition on the bed-stand, and a doorless closet filled with not too many clothes hanging from those crochet-covered hangers, and—most depressing of all—no animals at all to keep him company. It was the sort of place where they only bring in some puppies or kittens when the local newspaper editor wants a set of human-interest pictures for the inner spread during a dull news week—“Oldsters with Animals” on their afghan-covered laps.

  Not the sort of place where suddenly-small men snuggle with litters of barn cats in a bed of straw.

  With an almost comic formality, Gurney thanked me for the Pepsi and for “letting me see the kitties” in my album. I asked him if he got out much, to see the signs in person, but instantly regretted my words when he nonchalantly spit at his feet before saying, “Don’t get ’round much since I turned in my driver’s license…my hands aren’t as steady as they used to be, be it with a brush or with a steering wheel. Once I almost run over a cat crossing a back road and tol’ myself, ‘This is it, Hobart’ even though the cat, she got away okay. Wasn’t worth the risk.…”

  Not knowing what else to do, I opened the back door of the car and brought out the album; Gurney didn’t want to take it at first, even though I assured him that I had another set of prints plus the negatives back in my studio in New York City. The way he brushed the outside of the album with his fingers, as if the imitation leather was soft tiger-stripe fur, was almost too much for me; knowing that I couldn’t stay, couldn’t see any more of this, I bid him farewell and left him standing in front of the oldsters’ home, album of kitties in his hands. I know I should’ve done more, but what could I do? Really? I’d given him back his cats; I couldn’t give him back his old life…and what he’d shared with me already hurt too much, especially his revelation of the smallness fantasy. I mean, how often do even people who are close to each other, like old friends, or family, reveal such intimate, deeply needing things like that—especially without being asked to? Once you know things like that about a person, it gets a little hard to face them without feeling like you have a bought-from-a-comic-book-ad pair of X-ray glasses capable of peering into their soul. Nobody should be that vulnerable to another living being.

  Especially one they hardly know.…

  * * * *

  A few days after I met Hobart Gurney my vacation in the Midwest was over, and I returned to my studio, to turn lifeless sample products into…something potentially essential to people who didn’t know they needed that thing until that month’s issue of Vanity Fair or Cosmopolitan arrived in the mail, and they finally got around to paging through the magazine after getting home from work. Not that I felt responsible for turning the unknown into the essential; even when I got to keep what I photographed, it didn’t mean squat to me. I could appreciate my work, respect my better efforts…but I never gave a pet name to a bottle of men’s cologne, if you get my drift. And I envied Hobart for being able to love what he did, because he had the freedom to do it the way he wanted to. And because the now-defunct Katz’s Chewing Tobacco people could’ve cared less what he painted next to their logo. (Oh, for such benign indifference whe
n it came to my work!)

  But I also pitied Hobart, because letting go of what you’ve come to love is a hard, hard thing, which makes the ending of that creative, loving process all the harder to take, especially when the ending is an involuntary thing. What had the old man said in the TV interview? That he was too old to climb the ladder anymore? That had to have been as bad as him realizing that he couldn’t drive safely anymore.…

  And the funny thing was, I got the feeling that if he could have climbed those ladders, he would’ve still been putting those man-sized cats on barns, whether Katz’s paid him or not.

  I honestly couldn’t say the same about what I did for a living.

  * * * *

  I was in the middle of shooting a series of pictures of a new women’s cologne, which happened to come in a bottle that resembled a piece of industrial flotsam more than a container for a fragrance boasting “top notes of green, with cinnamon undercurrents”—whatever that meant, since the stuff smelled like dime-store deodorant, when my studio phone rang. I had the answering machine on Call Screening, so I could hear it while not missing out on my next shot…but I hurried to the phone when a tentative-sounding voice asked, “Uhm…are you the one who dropped Mr. Gurney off at the home a couple of months ago?”

  “Yeah, you’re speaking to me, not the machine—”

  The woman on the other end began without preamble, “Sorry to bother you, but we found your card in Mr. Gurney’s room…the last anyone saw of him he was carrying that album you give him under his arm, before he went for his walk, only he never went for a walk for a week before—”

  The sick feeling began in my stomach and soon fanned out all over my body; as the woman in charge of the old people’s home rambled on, telling me that no one in the area had seen the old man after he’d accepted a lift from someone with Canadian plates on his car, which naturally meant that he could be anywhere, but maybe headed for New York. I shook my head, even though the woman couldn’t possibly see me, as I cut in “No, ma’am, don’t even try looking here. He’s not far away…I’m sure of it. If he’s not still in Little Egypt, he’s across the border in Kentucky…just look for the Katz’s Tobacco signs—”