The Golden Cat

by Gabriel King

  Sealink narrowed her eyes and regarded him with interest. If times had changed since she was one of those little boardwalk queens herself, male attitudes sure hadn’t.

  ‘So, babe,’ she said, allowing some of the honey-dripping South onto her tongue. ‘Tell me a little about yourself, and these females got you into such trouble. ’Cause you sure got a way with you and I expect there is a number of tales to tell of their feckless behaviour and lack of moral inhibition…’

  Warm and luxuriant as her coat, her voice could twine round a receptive tomcat like a sweet Louisiana vine. Had her considerable conquests agreed to pool their experience, many would have admitted to not listening attentively to the content of her conversation, bathed as they were in the lilt of those soft Southern vowels, lulled into what might well soon prove to be a false sense of security; for who knew how an independent calico cat with a powerful will and determined ways might deal with a dreamy tomcat off his guard?

  Red’s eyes had become vague and unfocused. He forgot, for a moment, what he had been about to say.

  ‘Hey!’ he said. ‘I—’

  He shook himself suddenly and looked around.

  But Sealink had stalked on ahead, tail up and haunches swaying provocatively. Let the famous love ’em and leave ’em Lothario see what he was missing.

  *

  By now they had arrived in a quieter sector of the old town, where the tourist quarter ran out and the shops and bars dwindled, leaving the streets deserted but for a row of sleeping vehicles and the cats in sole possession of their surroundings. Here, the houses were silent and full of shadow, hidden behind veils of lacy wrought iron and shrouds of vine. Secret courtyards promised steamy shade amidst the heady aroma of bougainvillaea and mimosa.

  Sealink, ambushed suddenly by those ghostly kittens of hers, ducked under some spiked black gates into a leafy courtyard and stared upward.

  It was a tall house, painted as pink as freshly-boiled shrimp. The windows were closed, and in some places so were the dark green shutters. Two storeys of slatted balcony rose above her, supported by iron stilts and brackets fashioned like quarter-wheels. From pots all along the balconies, trailing plants had festooned themselves over the railings and curlicues like party streamers left over from Mardi Gras. In among the pots, chasing dead leaves, tangled up in plants, great lambent eyes and tiny paws, the kittens tumbled. They knew she was there. They rested in their play and looked down at her seriously. She could feel them. Then one by one they faded away and she didn’t see them again in that life.

  The place looked prosperous and well-kept: the house of professional people who cared about their surroundings and made sure their success in the world was apparent to all those whom they expected to gaze through the forbidding gates into this not entirely secret domain. Sealink knew this to be true. She had been here before.

  Red stared incuriously over her shoulder.

  ‘Nice house,’ he said, ironically, as if he should care.

  ‘It is. Shame about the people who live in it.’

  ‘You know them?’

  Sealink nodded uncomfortably.

  She had been an easy mark: one whiff of Louisiana crab-cake and a minute or two of gentle fingers under the chin and she’d literally fallen at the woman’s feet.

  ‘Would you believe,’ she asked Red, ‘that she thought I was a pedigree Maine Coon? Her and her husband, they took me in, put a diamante collar round my neck and called me Minouche.’

  Red snorted. ‘Ain’t people ridiculous?’

  ‘They sure can be self-deceiving,’ she agreed, ‘in their vanity and greed.’

  And this was the story she told him—

  ‘They fed me, and I grew. It was tinned food, hon, and gourmet scraps. I musta gained a good five pounds.’ Sealink smoothed the fur over her belly contemplatively. (Actually, she wasn’t too sure she hadn’t put that weight back on again…) ‘But they deluded themselves about that the same as they’d deluded themselves about my ancestry. Plain truth is, I was carryin’, hon. Their beautiful “pedigree Maine Coon” had been knocked up a week or so before by some mangy boardwalk tomcat just like you, babe. So it was with considerable horror that the female opened the linen closet one morning to discover that “Minouche” had spawned five tiny little Minouches, all over her best Egyptian cotton sheets.

  ‘It was a messy business, hon, but surely no excuse for what followed—’

  ‘I ain’t listenin’ to this,’ said Red. But he was.

  ‘They took those kittens offa me that same morning. For days I quartered the apartment, searching for my babies.’

  On the fifth day, at the corner of the open bedroom door, she’d stopped stone-still, sure she’d heard a distant whimper. It ceased. She’d stood there for some time, her ears rotating and all her will bent on locating the sound. When she had started to search again, the heart-rending whimper returned, at the outer edges of her senses. Whatever she did, she could not place it. Some minutes later she’d realized that it was her own voice she was hearing, a constant, mechanical lament.

  ‘The next day, they took me in a wicker cage to a building downtown.’

  It stank of fear and pain and disinfectant. Inside were animals crouching in boxes and baskets. Those that could see out had turned to stare at her.

  ‘What you in for, honey?’ asked a large Siamese with a bandaged leg.

  This straightforward enquiry had at the time struck Sealink as such a compassionate and motherly concern that she had at once poured out the tale of the loss of her kittens and the inexplicable behaviour of the humans who had brought her here.

  ‘That old Siamese,’ Sealink fixed Red with misery-glazed eyes, ‘she just stared at me in silence for a few seconds. Then she said, “Those’ll be your last, honey. Remember them well.”’

  Red looked hard at the ground.

  ‘All I could remember for a long time was the smell. Whatever I did, I couldn’t seem to dislodge it.’

  She’d licked and licked until fur had littered the apartment and the new scar on her side was raw and red. Then, one hot summer evening, the humans had left a shutter ajar and she’d broken three claws and bruised her head as she fought her way out.

  ‘The next day I searched for my babies. I asked everyone I knew, and a lot I didn’t. I asked friends – hell: I asked enemies’. No-one knew a thing. I looked for days: I knew in my heart they were still alive – a mother knows these things, y’understand? Then one day I couldn’t bear it no more. I hitched a ride on a truck, and left New Orleans for ever. Swore I’d never return. Since then I’ve travelled the world, always on the move: no ties, no commitments. Take a companion here, a friend there and carry on my way. That old Siamese was right: but it’s worse than that. They botched the operation somehow, and though I can’t never have no more kittens I ain’t yet neuter (as I seen you well understand. Red). Back then I tol’ myself, what the hell? Life’s a journey, and I like to travel light. But since those days a few things happened that kind of shook my viewpoint, if you know what I mean.’

  Sealink thrust out her jaw.

  ‘So here I am, back in this cruel city to find those babies, and I ain’t leaving till I do.’

  *

  Twilight saw the two cats back at the deserted Moonwalk. They had, by a stroke of fantastic luck, stumbled upon some redfish heads in an alley yet to be discovered by the starving ferals, and choked down flesh and eyes and scales as if they might never eat again. Above them, the sky had darkened to ultramarine, and the air took on a sultry, tangible feel, as if someone had upturned a bowl over the city, trapping inside it all the oxygen everyone had breathed that day. All along the river’s edge, the insects had come to life: a million tiny chainsaws whining and buzzing. Mosquitoes darted about the shoreline, seeking blood to suck. Dragonflies – hawks of the insect world – whirred after them, their neon glinting green and blue. All around, invisible to even a cat’s eye, the crickets set up their nightly chirring.

  Shamed by the calico�
��s tale of sorrow into a confessionary frame of mind, Red had started to tell Sealink something of his own life.

  ‘I’m not proud of some of the things I done. Treated a few ladies badly in my time; but, hell, I been treated bad enough myself. Fell for a little queen down near the Square a couple of years back. Téophine, she was called. Thought that was a real pretty name at the time. She was all black and white and neat – made me feel like a lumberin’ fool. She was always ready for a chase. She’d nip me and run off, pretend to be alarmed when I followed, then when I caught up, all out of breath, she’d throw herself down on the ground at my feet, roll on her back and twist all around. Then as soon as I got up the nerve to approach her, she’d be all teeth and claws and a flash of white feet. Next thing I knew, she’d be up on a fence laughing down at me. Never knew where I was with her. I guess I was just kinda naïve, didn’t realize what it was she wanted from me. Wouldn’t make the same mistake now…

  ‘Two days later she’s rolling around under the bushes in the park with some old stripy tomcat with frills instead of ears. Thought my heart would stop right there and then. She wouldn’t even look at me after that.

  ‘From then on, I guess I didn’t care much for anyone. Scattered my favours around. Made a few of those little boardwalk queens squirm with pleasure down on the beach when the moon was high and the night was steamy. Left them wanting more and moved along. Probably left a few kittens of my own littered round this city.’

  ‘Don’t you know?’

  ‘They never seem to bear no resemblance.’ Red grinned so that the rising moon was reflected off the lazy eye. ‘Lucky for them, many’d say.’

  ‘And what happened to Téophine?’

  ‘Guess she’s gone, like most of the rest,’ Red answered mournfully. ‘I looked high and low for her when I got back. Thought we were both a bit older now; might see things a bit different. But there ain’t no-one around.’

  ‘I guess we all got to take our share of sadness in this life.’ Sealink mused for a moment. ‘Sure is a changed town from the one I left, though. A lot less friendly.’

  As if to punctuate this remark, a stranger appeared at the far end of the boardwalk. The figure swayed as he walked, as if the world was moving in ways mysterious to all its other inhabitants. The swaying was accompanied by a rhythmic mumbling, which grew louder and more distinct as he approached.

  ‘Dey tink I don’t hear them. But I hear OK. My ears may be old, but I ain’t deaf yet. Dey tink I don’t hear what dey call the Baron behind he back. Young varmints. Tink dey know it all. Dey all call me Baron Raticide in de old days. I kilt dem rats. I kilt ’em all dead. I was a nightmare; dey tell their chirren, watch out for de Baron or he get you in de night! Baron Raticide. Good mornin’ Baron, dey all say, and dey bow and scrape and offer me their finest queens. Now dey call me Ratty. Dey got no respec’. It’s a terrible ting to grow old. Old but not deaf. I hear what dey say. Dey tink I don’t hear ’em. But I hear OK…’

  The stranger’s monologue continued like a hermetic tape-loop, unaffected by all external factors. He was an old black cat, fur gone a dusty chocolate colour from constant exposure to the elements. He shambled past Sealink and Red without acknowledging their presence, watching each paw step with concentration, as if he wasn’t quite sure where his foot might end up if left unattended.

  Sealink grinned. ‘Hey, Baron! Baron Raticide!’

  The old cat’s head wobbled for a moment as if registering some distant sound. Then he swayed on, borne along by his own weird internal rhythms.

  Sealink ran to catch up with him. She bounded in front of him, pushed her face into his. His cataract-filled eyes flickered with life at her scent for a second, then he shuffled around her and continued his walk, still muttering.

  ‘Come on, Baron, it’s me!’

  ‘Another of your “friends”?’ Red asked the calico sardonically, keeping pace with the old cat.

  Ignoring the marmalade, Sealink ran suddenly ahead up the boardwalk and started to – Red could think of no other word for it – dance. She lifted first one front paw, then the other, then her hind feet in the same way; then she started to spin like a kitten trying to catch its tail, all the time howling:

  ‘In the heat of the night

  When the time is right

  And the moon hangs over the river

  Queens make their cry

  And blood runs high

  Hearts start to quiver and shiver…’

  The Baron lumbered over to the dancing calico. Suddenly he was matching her step for step, and as he danced so his movements became fluid and powerful, age and madness lost in another form of lunacy altogether. At last the two cats were whirling together, the Baron’s black shape a shadow to the harlequin patterns of Sealink’s leaping form. Red felt his own feet start to move of their own accord, as the familiar rhythms crawled under his skin, and he began to make his own dance down amongst the boulders on the strand. Meanwhile, Baron Raticide’s cracked old voice rose to join with the calico’s wail for the final verse:

  ‘On midsummer night

  The tomcats fight

  And their howls rise as high as the moon

  Queens make their choice

  Of the fighting boys

  And kittens are coming soon, soon

  The kittens are coming soon!’

  At last they stopped. Sealink was grinning from ear to ear, her flanks heaving with the exertion. The black cat looked changed beyond recognition. A new shine had come into his eyes and there was now a cheerful, indeed rakish, set to his ragged old head.

  ‘Ai, ai ai! It’s the Delta Queen! Laisse les botis temps rouler! I see you remember de old Baron from de good days, eh, cher?’ Sealink started to purr, a rumble from deep within the throat, bone-vibrating in its intensity. Red felt it shiver in his sternum and sat down, his head spinning. Why had he done that? He’d never danced before, was sure he’d never even heard the song; had certainly not been involved in the long-gone midsummer rituals on the Moonwalk.

  ‘It’s good to see you, Baron. ’Cause I sure ain’t seen anyone else I know. Where are they, Baron? Where the hell are the Moonwalk cats?’

  ‘All gone. Dey all gone. Only de Baron left. Dey disappear one by one. The kittens go first. Den one day I come back after one of my lil wanders, and de whole place deserted. A sad city now. All gone away.’

  ‘I’ve come to look for my family, Baron. They took my kittens from me and I never seen them again. How’m I gonna find them if there’s no-one left to ask?’

  ‘You better talk to the Creole Queen, honeychile. She de only one left from the ol’ days. High-tailing it around de Voo Carray as if she ain’t got a care in de world. Got herself a lil group of courtiers, dey don’t seem to have no trouble gettin’ fed. Don’t leave none for de poor ol’ Baron. Not like de ol’ days. Dey call me Ratty. Dey tink I don’t hear ’em. Dey got no respec’. It’s a terrible ting to grow old. Old but not deaf. I hear what dey say…’

  And he was off again, the dull light back in his eye, the sway back in his step. Sealink watched him shamble off into the night: Baron Raticide, a big black cat once lord of the boardwalk, high priest of the midsummer ritual, a proud, valiant tom who had ruled his roost and fathered kittens on every fertile queen from Algiers to the Armstrong Park; now reduced to a mad old vagrant. Looking at his retreating figure, hope withered anew and Sealink felt as if all the world had grown old and tarnished.

  A light breeze was starting to raise peaks and troughs on the oily surface of the river. Red shivered. Despite the red-snapper heads and the crawfish it had been an odd sort of day. Instead of finding Téophine, he’d been bitten by an antsy calico cat and had danced with an old tramp. What was the world coming to?

  Little swirls of dust and bits of rubbish started to blow around the boardwalk. A yellowing piece of newspaper fluttered past and lodged itself against the legs of the nearest bench. Red didn’t even feel like chasing it.

  ‘Come on, babe,’ he called sof
tly to the distracted calico. ‘Let’s go find that old Creole Queen, see what she can tell us.’

  He wandered over and nudged Sealink out of her grim stupor. She blinked once or twice, then turned and butted her forehead against his cheek. Surprised at this sudden rough affection, Red took a step back. ‘You don’t have to knock me out, you know.’

  ‘Seems you just ain’t up to my weight, honey.’

  Dodging in and out of the streetlights on the Moonwalk, the two cats disappeared into the night.

  *

  The yellowing sheet of paper that Red had dismissed as a page from an old Times Picayune was something far more relevant, and more sinister than he could have guessed.

  It was a city ordinance.

  Framed in formal language, it was addressed to the human inhabitants of New Orleans:

  BY ORDER OF THE PARISH OF ORLEANS

  Under no circumstances are feral cats to be fed or encouraged in any way whatsoever anywhere within the boundaries of this city in order to prevent the spread of disease. Transgressions of this ordinance carry an on-the-spot fine of $50.

  All stray cats sighted must be reported to the relevant authorities

  (a number of telephone numbers for the Pest Control Department were listed)

  who will arrange for them to be rounded up and taken to the city pound, where they will be disposed of within 10 days unless claimed by an owner.

  Part 2

  Messages from the Dead

  7

  The Wisdom of Fishes

  Tag sat alone in the oceanarium.

  Outside it was deep night, the sea under cloud, the rooftops of the village tumbling away downhill in shadowed disorder. Inside, the light fell across the side of his face: the fishes slipped and turned, or hung motionless surrounded by tiny glittering motes.

  ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he thought.

  He had looked for Cy in all her favourite places. Nothing. The Beach-O-Mat was closed. The amusement arcades were closed. The docks were deserted, the fishing-boats at sea. Rag-mop palms shook themselves uneasily in the onshore wind in the moonless dark, and the fish-and-chip papers that blew up and down the sea front were empty and cold. He had combed the steep lanes between the cottages on Mount Syon and Tinnery, to find only empty doorsteps and household cats who made off hastily when they realized who he was. In the end, driven by anxieties he could barely express, he had taken the wild road to the windy spaces of Tintagel, where he found himself patrolling the headland crying, ‘Ragnar! Pertelot!’ until his voice cracked. Nothing. Nothing but the wild gorse, the empty church.