by Gary Lovisi
“This is a low-crime neighborhood…and that window is double-paned. Would take a lot of effort and make a lot of noise to break it. Besides, I think the kittens would be smart enough to make a run for it if anyone was after them—”
“There’s a difference between being personable and smart, Rik…look how they let anyone hold them. I just don’t know—”
“Did anyone try to get at Oscar and April? They’re just as good-looking, and personable—”
“They’re also fixed,” I reminded him, “While these two—” I cocked my head in the direction of the window, where Scooter and Mittens were busy “reading” an old opened hardbound copy of A Farewell to Arms “—aren’t. Although half that problem will be solved in a few days.”
Rik didn’t say anything, but that fine line appeared between his dark eyes again. Down one of the aisles, I heard the unmistakable sound of cat spray hitting something hard, and hurried to see what Oscar was doing, yelling “Bad cat! Bad-bad-bad!” There was a tell-tale puddle on the worn floorboards near the rack of children’s books—Oscar had targeted the children’s dictionary the kittens used to fancy. They’d been ignoring the book for the last few days, so I’d placed it back on the shelf, but now it was ruined. Gingerly pulling the thick book out of the stack, I noticed something odd imbedded in the top of the spine—a shed claw-cover, which gleamed softly in the center of the now-damp spine, as if the book had been pulled out by one downward-moving cat paw, from the top, the way a person might pull out a book, rather than the way a cat would to it—by raking on the spine itself, until the book wiggled free of the rest or, the shelf.
Oscar’s puddle of urine began to spread on the floor, so I ran to the back room for a paper towel, the ruined dictionary with the imbedded claw momentarily forgotten. But as I was mopping up the mess, I head Rik shout, “No, you guys, c’mere—” and I knew instantly that the kittens had escaped.
I ran, wet paper towel still wadded up in one hand, to the window, which was now a mere tableau of books and fading pictures—no more Scooter, no Mittens. Rik was outside the door, looking quickly up and down the street, but when he turned to reenter the store, I knew just from looking at his face. They were gone. And the terrible thing was, I could so easily imagine their flight—Scooter with his long side-fur rippling like a soft curtain along his hips and flank. Mittens with her small fox-like face moving quickly from side to side, both of them running fast, their legs scissoring in the spring sunlight, as they hurried down some alley-way.…
Rik tried to explain what had happened, but I was devastated. He’d been placing some new Dean Koontz books on the bestseller’s shelf, when he heard the door jingle, but no incoming footsteps—only the sharp scrabble of many claws hitting hardwood, then the door jingled shut again. By the time he’d turned around, and gone to the door, both of them had vanished. And my store was located in the middle of a side-street, which meant they could’ve gone in any direction.
On top of everything else, my front door pulled outward, being an old wooden and glass door that I’d kept because it was so antique and old-fashioned…so the kittens, if they moved as one, might have been able to shove it open.
Sick at heart, I left the store, and went searching for the kittens in the alleys near my business, calling and pleading for them to come back, but it was as if they’d never existed. All I had left of them was a framed copy of that Metro section photo, and a claw-casing stuck in the spine of a ruined children’s dictionary.
After I’d given up looking for them, long after Rik had closed the store for me (he’d left a note on the counter, which merely read “I’m so, so sorry” in his large, flowing handwriting), I went to the back room, and picked up the blanket they’d slept on for the last couple of months. It still smelled of their fur, a warm, slightly “hot” scent which reminded me ever so slightly of old paperback books and binding glue. My bookstore kittens even smelled like books…but when I squeezed the blanket next to my chest, I felt something hard inside. I’d long ago put the cores of the nesting doll sets back on the shelf, so I couldn’t imagine what the kittens had shoved into the folds of the blanket, until I shook it, and a tiny bridge pencil, the kind of writing implement no bigger around then a coffee stir-stick, and only half again as long, fell to the floor.
“Where in the world did they get that?” I muttered, as April and Oscar tentatively came into the room, and began rubbing on my legs. Looking down at Oscar, I remembered the dictionary he’d sprayed, and—still hugging the furry blanket close to my heart—walked back into the store-proper, where it rested on the floor near the children’s shelf.
I began leafing through it, and soon found that some of the pages had been marked up, with random pencil scrawls that resembled that “graffiti” style of printing used for hand-held electronic notebooks. I’d seen Rik use that style of writing; according to some of the Tech sections I’d read in the Pioneer Press and Star Tribune, it was very popular with young computer-users. Looking down at the scribbles on the pages, I realized that someone had been trying to copy some of the words, printing clumsily at first, but with increasing legibility—and, if I held the book just so under the overhead lights, I could also make out thin fine scratch marks at the tops of the pages, as if someone with very long, needle-tipped nails had been paging through the book—
The possibility was so absurd, yet so…plausible, I found myself breathing hard and fast, while I rifled the pages of the book, looking for those oddly-printed letters, and, ultimately, words.
“A” “B”…all the way through “Y” and “Z”. Then, short words, “AN” “TO” “AND”…and on to the inevitable “CAT”.…
Those strange mitten feet. So much like a hand, with an opposable thumb. And that bridge pencil was small and thin enough to just fit in that narrow space between those bifid paws.
Rik leaving the light on, along with that book. Did he give them the pencil, when he visited them that night? Or had they used it in the lab?
Leaning heavily against the rack of children’s books, feeling the horizontal thickness of the shelf edge dig into my back, I paged through the dictionary, looking at the last pages of the book, and what was written there:
“BOOK GOOD. READ MORE? OPEN THE DOOR, READ MORE AT NIGHT.”
They had grammar. They had punctuation. And, I assumed, they had human genes, mixed in with feline ones. Maybe even a dash of raccoon, for additional manual dexterity.…
Rik and his roommate Jake worked in the genetics department. Not cleaning the lab, like Rik had implied. And not merely working with rodents, either. How long had he been working with me, five, six years?
It didn’t take that much time for those folks who added a bit of jellyfish DNA to a white rabbit, in order to make its fur glow green under black light, to create their living work of “art”…but it would take time for Rik and Jake and whoever else they worked with in that lab to teach a “hu-line” chimera to read.…
Or spend time letting them read, I thought, as I looked at my small literary sanctuary, my private bookdom…which was much like a school for Hemingway kittens. They had the time, and the light (be it from the backroom, or from the streetlamp which shone into my window at night), and all the schoolbooks they needed. I supposed that whatever Rik or Jake or whoever created the kittens did to them changed their eyes, made them able to read two-dimensional print even as they may have sacrificed their innate ability to see well in low light, so they needed regular light to read…and they already had the “hands” to turn a page. I couldn’t watch them every second while I was in the store, so it would have been so easy for them to surreptitiously turn a page while looking at whatever book Rik had propped open before them.
And if they could read, they could understand…the only question was, did they escape on their own, or did Rik let them out, perhaps handing them off to a waiting friend?
I’d been so insistent about getting Scooter neutered, when of course Rik couldn’t allow that—
Scoo
ter was about five or so months old, close to teen-age years in human terms. Perhaps he was almost ready to graduate from my “school” already…and took Mittens along with him when he left, if leave on his own he did. Or, maybe he and Mittens needed to find an easier way to write, perhaps on a computer screen…if they could manage a bridge pencil, a stylus would be so easy for them to master. Or a computer mouse, or cue-cat.…
I wasn’t all that surprised that night when Rik called to say he wouldn’t be able to make it to work anymore—too many changes in his class schedule, he claimed. And he again said how sorry he was about the kittens. Before he hung up, he suggested that I have the photos in that disposable camera developed—“in case you want to do up a missing poster or something.”
I didn’t do up a poster, but I did get the pictures developed. The first two were from some Super Bowl party, people with Vikings hats and haircuts, drinking beer and eating nachos. Those went in the wastebasket. But the rest…there were Scooter and Mittens, staring eagerly at the row of children’s books. Then, the two of them reading their dictionary, as well as writing on the margins with their small bridge pencils tucked in their paws. Others showed them turning the pages of hard-bound books, their pointed faces looking down at the text below. In one shot, Rik had brought over his own e-notebook, and both kittens were studying the small keypad. Which gave me an idea—
As much as I loved the printed page, I was certainly no Luddite—I had a computer at home, and a webpage (albeit a small one) for the bookstore itself, and my web address was listed on all the major ISP’s…so, each evening, I took to carefully reading my email, studying the Subject headings, looking for a message I wasn’t even sure would ever come.… I looked for many months, long enough for the Hemingway kittens to become cats, and perhaps even parents of more “hu-line” polydactyl kittens, until it appeared. The message read:
From:
To:
Subject: A Tale of Two Kitties
Hello, Book-lady,
Your wish came true. Couldn’t find _A Tale of Two Kitties_ but did read –A Tale of Two Cities _. We both like it, but it was heavy. Sorry not to have said Good-Bye last year, but there was no time. We had to avoid getting fixed. Rik says you’d understand. Look for us (Rik and Jake too) soon in all the scientific magazines, maybe the newspapers, too. The young ones are better at reading and writing than we are, and will be ready for the media soon. We tell them about the book place, what a special school it was for us, and how we practiced being parents with the wood kittens. You were a good teacher. We remember the pictures, and have looked for the originals on the net. Computers are fast and light, but books smell better. We miss the Barrett and Browning. The young ones don’t understand. They grew up on e-books. But we remember. Say hello to Oscar and April. And the shiny hard cat on the counter by the door. It never talked, but we still liked it. But not when Rik made noise on it with his rings. Rik and Jake are busy with the young ones, so we could send this. Don’t tell them we did. Just remember us. We remember you and the books.
Jay and Zelda and the young ones.
So Scooter had remembered our “conversation” about “The Tale of Two Kitties”…words I’m positive Rik never heard me utter. And Scooter—or “Jay,” as he’d dubbed himself, giving himself the name only he knew, in true T. S. Eliot style—knew that message would be the only one I’d know for certain was, indeed, from him, and him alone.
Or not so alone…if “Zelda” was Mittens. At least that caption in that Metro section had gotten it right—Hemingway-0, Fitzgerald-2.
The kittens may have been a mixture of feline and human DNA, but they were Minnesotans down to their bones.
In memory of Mittens (February, 1998 to October 8, 1998), and Scooter (February 1998 to November 22, 1998), and Little Boy (September 2000 to February 18, 2001).
THE CAT AND THE BIRDS, by Aesop
A Cat, hearing that the Birds in a certain aviary were ailing, dressed himself up as a physician and, taking his cane and a bag of instruments becoming his profession, went to call on them. He knocked at the door and inquired of the inmates how they all did, saying that if they were ill, he would be happy to prescribe for them and cure them.
They replied, “We are all very well, and shall continue so, if you will only be good enough to go away and leave us as we are.”
THE BEAST FROM THE ABYSS, by Robert E. Howard
Having spent most of my life in oil boom towns, I am not unfamiliar with the sight of torn and mangled humanity. Oftener than I like to remember I have seen men suffering, bleeding and dying from machinery accidents, knife stabs, gunshot wounds, and other mishaps. Yet I believe the most sickening spectacle of all was that of a crippled cat limping along a sidewalk, and dragging behind it a broken leg which hung to the stump only by the skin. On that splintered stump the animal was essaying to walk, occasionally emitting a low moaning cry that only slightly resembled the ordinary vocal expressions of a feline.
There is something particularly harrowing about the sight of an animal in pain; the desperate despair, undiluted by hope or reason, that makes it, in a way, a more awful and tragic sight than that of an injured human. In the agony cry of a cat all the blind abysmal anguish of the black cosmic pits seems concentrated. It is a scream from the jungle, the death howl of a Past unspeakably distant, forgotten and denied by humanity, yet which still lies awake at the back of the subconciousness, to be awakened into shuddering memory by a pain-edge yell from a bestial mouth.
Not only in agony and death is the cat a reminder of the brutish Past. In his anger cries and in his love cries, the gliding course through the grass, the hunger that burns shamelessly from his slitted eyes, in all his movements and actions is advertised his kinship with the wild, his tamelessness, and his contempt for man.
Inferior to the dog the cat is, nevertheless, more like human beings than is the former. For he is vain yet servile, greedy yet fastidious, lazy, lustful and selfish. That last characteristic is, indeed, the dominant feline trait. He is monumentally selfish. In his self love he is brazen, candid and unashamed.
Giving nothing in return, he demands everything—he demands it in a raspy, hungry, whining squall that seems to tremble with self-pity, and accuse the world at large of perfidy and broken contract. His eyes are suspicious and avaricious, the eyes of a miser. His manner is at once arrogant and debased. He arches his back and rubs himself against humanity’s leg, dirging a doleful plea, while his eyes glare threats and his claws slide convulsively in and out of their padded sheaths.
He is inordinate in his demands, and he gives no thanks for bounty. His only religion is an unfaltering belief in the divine rights of cats. The dog exists only for man, man exists only for cats. The introverted feline conceives himself to be ever the center of the universe. In his narrow skull there is no room for the finer feelings.
Pull a drowning kitten out of the gutter and provide him with a soft cushion to sleep upon, and cream as often as he desires. Shelter, pamper and coddle him all his useless and self-centered life. What will he give you in return? He will allow you to stroke his fur; he will bestow upon you a condescending purr, after the manner of one conferring a great favor. There the evidences of gratitude end. Your house may burn over your head, thugs may break in, rape your wife, knock Uncle Theobald in the head, and string you up by your thumbs to make you reveal the whereabouts of your hoarded wealth. The average dog would die in the defense even of Uncle Theobald. But your fat and pampered feline will look on without interest; he will make no exertions in your behalf, and after the fray, will, likely as not, make a hearty meal off your unprotected corpse.
I have heard of but one cat who ever paid for his salt, and that was through no virtue of his own, but rather the ingenuity of his owner. A good many years ago there was a wanderer who traversed the state of Arkansas in a buggy, accompanied by a large fat cat of nondescript ancestry. This wayfarer toiled not, neither
did he spin, and he was a lank, harried-looking individual who wore the aspect of starvation, even when he was full of food.
His method of acquiring meals without work was simple and artistic. Leaving his horse and buggy concealed behind a convenient thicket, he would approach a farmhouse tottering slightly, as if from long fast, carrying the cat under his arm. A knock on the door having summoned the housewife with her stare of suspicion, he would not resort to any such crude and obvious tactics as asking for a hand-out. No; hat in hand, and humbly, he would beg for a pinch of salt.
“Land’s sake,” would be the almost invariable reply. “What do you want salt for?”
“M’am,” the genius would reply tremulously, “I’m so terrible hungry I’m a-goin’ to eat this here cat.”
Practically in every case the good woman was so shocked that she dragged the feebly protesting wayfarer into the house and filled his belly—and the cat’s—with the best of her larder.
I am not a victim of the peculiar cat-phobia which afflicts some people, neither am I one of those whose fondness for the animals is as inexplicable and tyrannical in its way as the above mentioned repulsion. I can take cats or leave them alone.
In my childhood I was ordinarily surrounded by cats. Occasionally they were given to me; more often they simply drifted in and settled. Sometimes they drifted out almost as mysteriously. I am speaking of ordinary cats, country cats, alley cats, cats without pedigree or pride of ancestry. Mongrel animals, like mongrel people, are by far the most interesting as a study.
In my part of the country, high-priced, pure-blooded felines were unknown until a comparatively recent date. Such terms as Persians, Angoras, Maltese, Manx, and the like, meant little or nothing. A cat was a cat, and classified only according to its ability to catch mice. Of late I notice a distinct modification in the blood-stream of the common American alley-cat; thoroughbred strains are mingling with the common soil, producing cats of remarkable hue and shape. Whether it will improve the democratic mongrel population or not, it is a question only time can answer.