“The what?”
I pressed the receiver against my chest, muttered You stupid old biddy just to make myself feel better, then told her, “He painted signs, on barns…he’s saying goodbye to the signs,” and as I said the last few words, I wondered at my own choice of words…even as my own artist’s instincts—instincts Gurney and I shared—told me that I had, indeed, chosen my words correctly.
* * * *
Despite the fact that the woman from the rest home had gotten her information from me, she never bothered to call me back when Hobart Gurney’s body was found, half buried in the unmown grass surrounding one of the abandoned barns bearing his loving handiwork; I found out about his death along with all the other people watching CNN that late-fall evening—the network reran the piece about his last or next-to-last sign-painting job, along with an oddly sentimental obituary that ended with a close-up of the “little girls,” whose particular sign the old man’s body had been found under. The camera zoomed in for a close-up of Mish-Mish, with her patchwork face of mixed tan and gray and white, with that peach-colored blotch over one eye, and she looked so poignant yet so real that no one watching—be they cat lover or not—could fail to realize what may’ve been more difficult to realize during that warts-and-all initial CNN interview, which plainly showed how unsophisticated and gauche Hobart Gurney may have seemed to be on the outside (so much so, perhaps, that it made underestimating his works all the easier); that Gurney was more than a great artist: He was a genius, easily on the par of Grandma Moses or anyone of her ilk.
J. C. Suares was the first person to put out a book devoted to Katz’s Cats, as Gurney’s creations were to become popularly known. Many famous photographers, including Herb Ritts, Annie Leibovitz, and Avedon, took part in that collection; I wasn’t one of them, but I did get in on that other collection put together for one of the AIDS charities. Then came the specials on what Gurney would’ve called the “art-fart” stations, and there’s even been word of a postage stamp bearing his likeness, along with one of the Katz’s Cats.
The irony was, I seriously doubt Gurney would’ve truly enjoyed all the fuss made about his work; what he’d created was too private for all that. Not when he’d so lovingly stroked the images of his “little girls” faces in that rental car of mine, and not when he’d so spontaneously shared that cat-size dream of his from his barn-mucking boyhood so many years—and barn cats—ago. But at least for me, there was one benefit from his life, and his work, becoming so public. It gave me an opportunity to find out what really happened to him, without my needing to visit that depressing small town where I’d met him or to actually see his all but empty cell-like adult day-care bedroom.
Some policemen found his body, almost covered by long, dead grass, just below the barn where he’d painted the “little girls”; he was curled on his left side, almost in a fetal position, with both hands covering his face, not unlike a cat at sleep or rest. Supposedly it was a heart attack, but that didn’t account for the abrasions on his exposed face and hands; a rough, red, rash-like disruption on his flesh, which was eventually dismissed as fire-ant bites. Nor did the “official” cause of death account for the blissful look on his face that the policeman in one A&E special described; you don’t have to be a doctor to know that some heart attacks are painful.
Nor do you need to be an expert on cats—especially big cats—to know what a cat’s tongue can do to unprotected flesh, especially when they get it into their heads to keep licking and licking while snuggled together in a pile of warm, furry flesh.
Maybe Hobart Gurney didn’t mean to say good-bye per se during that self-prescribed tour of his creations; maybe he’d just grown nostalgic after seeing the pictures I’d given to him. Funny how he took the album with him, when he’d never forgotten a single cat he’d created, but then again, no one will ever know what drove him to turn a Depression-era job taken despite an aversion to heights into something more than his life’s work. Perhaps my decision to collect photographs of his work ultimately led to his death, which I heard about on the CNN news. But if that is so, I can’t quite feel guilty about it—after all, Gurney hadn’t painted cats in years; true, nothing stopped him from painting them on canvas, but I don’t think that was Gurney’s way at all.
Hadn’t he said that what he was doing was work, something he was supposed to be doing? I doubt that the notion of painting for himself applied to his practical mind, just as I doubt that he could have foreseen a day when his cats would be severed from the very barns on which they lived, to be taken in wall-size chunks and “domesticated” in museums and art galleries all over the country.
Or…maybe he did have an inkling of what would happen, and knew that he wouldn’t have his cats to himself for very much longer.…
And, considering what was written on his tombstone—by whom, I don’t know—I don’t think I’m the only person who maybe knows what really happened to Hobart Gurney, down in the long, dead, flattened grass below the “little girls”…for this is what is carved on his barn-gray tombstone:
No Heaven will not ever Heaven be,
Unless my Cats are there to Welcome me.
All I can say is, I hope it was warm, and soft, and loving, there in the long, dead grass, with the little girls.…
IN MEMORY OF:
Beanie, Ming, Fella, Ollie, Stan, Puddin’, Blackie, Cupcake, Smokie, Prissy, Mish-Mish, Dewie, Rusty, Precious, Puff, Lucky, Eric, Sweetheart, Jack Early Gray, Charlie, Dolly, Maynard, Willie, Gwen, Laya, Spunky, Belle, Stripes, Book, Moo-Moo, Bruiser, Monkey, Goldie, Poco, Butterball, Spooky, Silky, Ladybug, Orangey, Ko-Ko, Frosty, Simba, Rosie, Mrs. T., Mister, Muffin (Bubba), Speedy, Whiskers, Bitsy, Purr-Bear, Kay-Tu, Chloe, Bippy, Brutis, Teddy, Amelia, Elmo, Alphie, Gloria, Woody, Jezebel, Tigger, Pansy, Oscar, April, Peokoe, Meg, Adrian, Sylvester, Baby, Marco Polo, Lovey, Candy, Lola, Lacy, Poopie (Violet), Queenie, Otto, Babykins, Momma Cat, Cutie Pie, Sandy, Beauty, Sean, Chewie, Scooter, Mittens, Taffy, Boo Boo, Clyde, Bailey, Gummitch, Dundee, Chatty, Princess, Pinky, Apollo, Amber, Denise, Callie, Bijou, Squeeky, Cee-Cee, Felix, Boogie, Little Boy, Sugarplum, Tweetie Pie, Ruby, Penny, Fluffy (II), Pumpkin, Casper, Boots, Jet, Honey, Beau, Angel, Mack, Bugsy, Miss Kitty, Katie, June Bug, Cinnamon, Tippi, Gracie, Quinn, Grady, Trudy, Baby Biscuit, Max (and) Mongo, Ebony, Graykins, Fluffer-Nutter, The Dude, Harley, Inky, Bogie, and Chickpea.
THE QUEEN’S CAT, by Peggy Bacon
Once there was a great and powerful King who was as good as gold and as brave as a lion, but he had one weakness, which was a horror of cats. If he saw one through an open window he shuddered so that his medals jangled together and his crown fell off; if any one mentioned a cat at the table he instantly spilled his soup all down the front of his ermine; and if by any chance a cat happened to stroll into the audience chamber, he immediately jumped on to his throne, gathering his robes around him and shrieking at the top of his lungs.
Now this King was a bachelor and his people didn’t like it; so being desirous of pleasing them, he looked around among the neighboring royal families and hit upon a very sweet and beautiful princess, whom he asked in marriage without any delay, for he was a man of action.
Her parents giving their hearty consent, the pair were married at her father’s palace; and after the festivities were over, the King sped home to see to the preparation of his wife’s apartments. In due time she arrived, bringing with her a cat. When he saw her mounting the steps with the animal under her arm, the King, who was at the door to meet her, uttering a horrid yell, fell in a swoon and had to be revived with spirits of ammonia. The courtiers hastened to inform the Queen of her husband’s failing, and when he came to, he found her in tears.
“I cannot exist without a cat!” she wept.
“And I, my love,” replied the King, “cannot exist with one!”
“You must learn to bear it!” said she.
“You must learn to live without it!” said he.
“But life would not be worth living without a cat!” she w
ailed.
“Well, well, my love, we will see what we can do,” sighed the King.
“Suppose,” he went on, “you kept it in the round tower over there. Then you could go to see it.”
“Shut up my cat that has been used to running around in the open air?” cried the Queen. “Never!”
“Suppose,” suggested the King again, “we made an enclosure for it of wire netting.”
“My dear,” cried the Queen, “a good strong cat like mine could climb out in a minute.”
“Well,” said the King once more, “suppose we give it the palace roof, and I will keep out of the way.”
“That is a good scheme,” said his wife, drying her eyes.
And they immediately fitted up the roof with a cushioned shelter, and a bed of catnip, and a bench where the Queen might sit. There the cat was left; and the Queen went up three times a day to feed it, and twice as many times to visit it, and for almost two days that seemed the solution of the problem. Then the cat discovered that by making a spring to the limb of an overhanging oak tree, it could climb down the trunk and go where it liked. This it did, making its appearance in the throne-room, where the King was giving audience to an important ambassador. Much to the amazement of the latter, the monarch leapt up screaming, and was moreover so upset, that the affairs of state had all to be postponed till the following day. The tree was, of course, cut down; and the next day the cat found crawling down the gutter to be just as easy, and jumped in the window while the court was at breakfast. The King scrambled on to the breakfast table, skillfully overturning the cream and the coffee with one foot, while planting the other in the poached eggs, and wreaking untold havoc among the teacups. Again the affairs of state were postponed while the gutter was ripped off the roof, to the fury of the head gardener, who had just planted his spring seeds in the beds around the palace walls. Of course the next rain washed them all away.
This sort of thing continued. The wisteria vine which had covered the front of the palace for centuries, was ruthlessly torn down, the trellises along the wings soon followed; and finally an ancient grape arbor had perforce to be removed as it proved a sure means of descent for that invincible cat. Even then, he cleverly utilized the balconies as a ladder to the ground; but by this time the poor King’s nerves were quite shattered and the doctor was called in. All he could prescribe was a total abstinence from cat; and the Queen, tearfully finding a home for her pet, composed herself to live without one. The King, well cared for, soon revived and was himself again, placidly conducting the affairs of state, and happy in the society of his beloved wife. Not so the latter.
Before long it was noticed that the Queen grew wan, was often heard to sniff, and seen to wipe her eyes, would not eat, could not sleep—in short, the doctor was again called in.
“Dear, dear,” he said disconsolately, combing his long beard with his thin fingers. “This is a difficult situation indeed. There must not be a cat on the premises, or the King will assuredly have nervous prostration. Yet the Queen must have a cat or she will pine quite away with nostalgia.”
“I think I had best return to my family,” sobbed the poor Queen, dejectedly. “I bring you nothing but trouble, my own.”
“That is impossible, my dearest love,” said the King decidedly—“Here my people have so long desired me to marry, and now that I am at last settled in the matrimonial way, we must not disappoint them. They enjoy a Queen so much. It gives them something pretty to think about. Besides, my love, I am attached to you, myself, and could not possibly manage without you. No, my dear, there may be a way out of our difficulties, but that certainly is not it.” Having delivered which speech the King lapsed again into gloom, and the doctor who was an old friend of the King’s went away sadly.
He returned, however, the following day with a smile tangled somewhere in his long beard. He found the King sitting mournfully by the Queen’s bedside.
“Would your majesty,” began the doctor, turning to the Queen, “object to a cat that did not look like a cat?”
“Oh, no,” cried she, earnestly, “just so it’s a cat!”
“Would your majesty,” said the doctor again, turning to the King, “object to a cat that did not look like a cat?”
“Oh, no,” cried he, “just so it doesn’t look like a cat!”
“Well,” said the doctor, beaming, “I have a cat that is a cat and that doesn’t look any more like a cat than a skillet, and I should be only too honored to present it to the Queen if she would be so gracious as to accept it.”
Both the King and the Queen were overjoyed and thanked the doctor with tears in their eyes. So the cat—for it was a cat though you never would have known it—arrived and was duly presented to the Queen, who welcomed it with open arms and felt better immediately.
It was a thin, wiry, long-legged creature, with no tail at all, and large ears like sails, a face like a lean isosceles triangle with the nose as a very sharp apex, eyes small and yellow like flat buttons, brown fur short and coarse, and large floppy feet. It had a voice like a steam siren and its name was Rosamund.
The King and Queen were both devoted to it; she because it was a cat, he because it seemed anything but a cat. No one indeed could convince the King that it was not a beautiful animal, and he had made for it a handsome collar of gold and amber—“to match,” he said, sentimentally, “its lovely eyes.” In sooth so ugly a beast never had such a pampered and luxurious existence, certainly never so royal a one. Appreciating its wonderful good fortune, it never showed any inclination to depart; and the King, the Queen, and Rosamund lived happily ever after.
CHOCOLATE KITTENS FROM MARS, by Mary A. Turzillo
Herschel had eyes transparent as grape-flavored rock candy, which is why I guess I spent so much time wanting to kiss him, as if I were twenty years younger. And he brought me silly, lovely gifts, imported from all over the three worlds.
Such as this. A heavy red satin box, heart-shaped, retro as all get out. It must have weighed five pounds, and unbalanced, as if there were something liquid inside. And when I snipped the darker red ribbon, there they were: three kittens curled up all soft and furry.
Why didn’t I hear the purring until after I cut the ribbon? Herschel could explain it—probably they were in suspension until the scissors parted the grosgrain.
They were tiny, couldn’t have been more than three weeks old. Eyes opened, though. One black, one white, one marmalade-striped.
“They’re too little to adopt, Herschel!” Although I love cats—always wanted to get another one since my first husband died—I was also a little annoyed that he’d taken it upon himself to give me not one, but three tiny dependents to feed, doctor, and clean up after.
“They’re Mars kittens,” Herschel explained. “And don’t worry about litter boxes and all. They only come out when you want to play. Other than that, they curl up in the box and sleep. For weeks, if you want.”
The kittens stretched and yawned and tumbled out onto the carpet to play. The black one sniffed my ankle, the gray put tiny needle claws into the fabric of my jeans and climbed into my lap, and the white plunked itself down on the carpet and started to scream. Herschel picked it up and put it against the lapel of his claret-red leather jacket, where it immediately began batting at his hair, which he lets hang free when he’s not at work.
I turned the box over. The back was printed with three panels: FORTE DARK CHOCOLATE, MILK CHOCOLATE, and BLOOD-ORANGE FUDGE.
“I thought this type of thing was illegal,” I said.
He shrugged. “On Earth, sure.”
“Are these legal even on Mars?”
He smiled slyly. “Mars is a long ways away. The arm of the law is long, but it extendeth not past high Earth orbit.”
“Don’t they have to eat something?”
“Eat, sure, excrete, just a little, you’ll never notice it, and anyway, if you leave the bathroom door open when they’re awake they’re trained to use a people toilet.”
I wonde
red silently how something the size of the palm of my hand could balance itself on a full size toilet seat, but I said nothing. I noticed a neat row of white plastic bottles with tiny nipples tacked to the bottom inside the box, in between where Milk Chocolate and Fort Dark Chocolate had been curled up. “This is the food?”
“Right. A simple syrup. They run on glucose plus a few extra nutrients. I’ll bring you more when that runs out.”
“From Mars. What if the supply runs out?” I tried unsuccessfully to squeeze a drop of it out, then sniffed the nipple. It didn’t smell like milk.
He shifted the white kitten to his other shoulder and reached over to kiss me. “Trust me, Ivy. The supply will not run out.”
We sank back on the couch and petted each other like cats. The kittens jumped all over us, climbing up and tickling my ear with their whiskery little snouts and padding all over our hips and backs. After a while, Herschel drew away and stroked my hair. “Say you like them, Ivy. You do, don’t you?”
“How can I resist? But I worry about caring for them.”
“You don’t fully appreciate Martian technology. Try this.” And he scooped up the black kitten and licked its belly.
“Herschel! That’s disgusting!”
His violet eyes grew wide with pretended offense. “Try it, really.”
“Herschel, I can’t be licking a cat!”
He leaned over and kissed me again, and there was a taste on his tongue, very intense, of strong, rich dark chocolate.
The Third Cat Story Megapack: 25 Frisky Feline Tales, Old and New Page 26