Cat Tales 5
On Christmas Day, 1988, Larry the cat existed only in the form of a neatly lettered gift certificate from the man of the house, who clearly had run out of ideas.
The man of the house famously hated cats, regarding them as unnecessary, at best, and at worst, humorles s. He also considered empathy for cats tantamount to betrayal of dogs, and we had one of those.
The gift certificate read: This card may be redeemed for one cat. I get to name the cat. The cat will be named Larry.
I knew what Larry would look like, sleek, gray, and handsome. When the spring kitten collection came in at the Humane Society, I hurried over to pick him out. I plucked out doze ns of grays and assembled them on the floor, and then adde d a few random varieties out of a liberal aversion to stereotyping.
One of the random plucks, a nondescript tortoiseshell, was galloping through the scrum, springing straight up and punc hing the air with a tiny, fuzzy fist. I removed the disruption, stroking it absently, so as to better peruse the assortme nt of gra ys. Eventually, I looked back down at my now- quiet handf ul. The critter was descript, after all: astonishing green eyes and freckled pajamas, belly-side up and limp with joy. I looked at its collar: Female. PAPRIKA.
“Come on, Larry,” I said to the spotted belly. “Let’s go home.”
The dog registered no interest at all in the new addition. I sat in the living room and tried out her ne w name. “Laa-aarry,” I sang out in the plaintive nasal tone the name seemed to require. Instantly, the kitten began a careful, circuitous trek from the kitchen, navigating all available furnishings to avoid the floor and keeping the maximum distance from the dog, who re mained curled up mid-carpet, the ve ry picture of indifference. Eventually, she reached me and stood on my lap, put one paw on a heartstri ng, anothe r on the nex t one up, and then reache d up and tapped my nose, twice. From the re she ambled with confide nce into my heart and began moving furniture around, pulling up the comfy chair. As is often the case, the furniture we nt in easier than it came out.
After some weeks, Larry’s curiosity about the dog had ove rcome her apprehe nsion. No longer a young dog, she had pulled up at crotchety and was heading toward daft. Ignoring the cat had become he r fulltime occupation. But fo r all of that, she still looked rideable. The cat began to stalk her quarry from a high stool, waited, and then launched herself clawlessly into the air like so much flying fabric. The dog would shrug her off without breaking stride.
One day Larry took a few cautious steps outside, trailing the dog, who wheeled back with unc haracteristic alertness. Suddenly, Larry had become an outside cat and an item of great and loud interest. Rode o time! The dog lunged, the cat streaked, and soon both were pinballing madly through the garden.
This scenario was repeated several times over the next few days, always culminating with one pe t in a tree and the othe r in a victory strut. Any solo excursions Larry attempted we re me t with a surreptitious blast from our water pis tol. From Larry’s point of view, it was always either rainy or snarly outside.
She let it be known, from a soft cushion, that she had intended to be an indoor cat all along.
As a consequence, she never got any of the me mos on standard cat behavior. To be sure, early on, answering some primordial urge, she did have a go at the trip-the-human gambit. Unfortunately, she sidled invisibly in front of the man while he carried a plate of food, and he promptly pinne d her tail with one foot and launched he r belly with the othe r. It was sudden, it was noisy, and it concluded with one man horizontal, one dinne r neatly rescued, and a wildly ricocheting kitten, who traveled foreve r afterwa rd in our wakes. Any remaining shred of instinct was trampled out at the same time .
When it came to hunting, for instance, she was all zeal and no talent. Even moths proved elusive. Alerted to the presence of a moth by the cat’s wildly swinging head, the man was invariably driven to counte r her ineffectualness by corralling it and lobb ing it at her, ove r and ove r. Once the moth was damaged beyond airworthi ness, Larry was freque ntly able to stomp it into lint. We did encourage her to try for mice, and from time to time she would collect one, if it were confined, say, to the opened dishwa sher and she had a few minutes to work at it. Eventually she would pluck it out, tra nsfer it, dangling, to her teeth, parade for a bit, then put it down and glance around the room with satisfaction. She neve r solved the mystery of the vanishing mouse, whic h exasperated the man and further de ranged the dog, who certainly kne w what to do with a mouse if she could ever catch one. At seventeen, Larry scored he r first and last mouse kill. She dropped it on a trap. Dangled trap and mouse from he r teeth. Para ded. But Larry was not without skills. She could hear soft fabric being carefully laid out from anywhere in the house. A quilt top, stretc hed out just so for precise measurement, accumulated the cat at once. She had a prodigious
vocabulary, in more than one language. One of them was the sort in which you roll your Rs; another was certainly English. We were able to teach her to shake hands for her afternoon snack.
She was able to teach us to put away the butter. She did have a couple of habits, though, that, from a certain narrow perspective, mine, could be considered naughty. She was extre mely casual about poop. She ran an efficient, lifelong poop-distribution franchise.
Her territory was vast, encompassing any area of the house not otherwise occupied by a litter box.
Deliveries arrived daily, in no discernable pattern, the work of a rogue Easter bunny. She was never a malicious animal, and in this, too, she had no malice aforethought; in fact, no fore thought whatsoever. The decision to poop and the deposition of poop we re nearly simultaneous events. And if this resulted in a random turd rolling up against her food dish or in her cat bed, well, she was not one to lose sleep over it . . . or, for that matte r, right on it.
She also loved our furniture, loved it to ribbons. But in the absence of anything upholstered, she had no idea what to do with he r claws, so they remained tucke d away. As a result, petting the cat grew to be a fairly energetic event. During one of these sessions, with the cat flattened, upside-down, fur rumpled into quills, I mused about he r name, which had come to seem exactly right. What in the world would we na me our next cat? “I think we might as well call it ‘Slash,’” the man said. This was a man of big heart and boundless love, which he was happiest inflicting on anyone who could take a good teasing. Any untroubled and unarmed soul was likely prey. He observed the cat and began to ponde r the possibilities. Pat-a-cake was introduced to the unwary ani mal, stretched out against a long lap. Cakes were rolled, pricked, and marked with a B. Larry was not, truth be told, much ena mored of throwing it in the oven for Baby and Me, but she had no idea how a cat could get out of such a gig; and it clearly meant a lot to the big, warm ma n. So cakes were thrown. In fact, neithe r the man nor his new little buddy were ve ry well informed about cat protocol, which became clear to me whe n I overheard hi m singing, “Rooo - oooll ove r!” in an encouraging falsetto.
I rolled my eyes. He was bent over the cat, demonstrating the concept with little spinning motions of his arms. Undaunte d, he continued his tutorial, until the day his request was followed with a heartfelt “Good kitty!” I ran into the room, a scene of elation. The man had the cat rumpled flat, squeezing out a mighty purr. She trade d a rollove r for a good rumpling ever after. After a time, one might happe n to observe, if one approached with enough stealth, the man petting the cat in his lap. “I thought you hated cats.” I smirked. “I do,” he replied. “They ha te this.” Petting resumed. “Really not much of a cat,” he added unde r his breath, with a note of approval.
How far could a relationship go between an unusually good-nature d cat and an alarmingly affectionate man? The two seemed destined to find out, one a lways pushing the envelope and the other content to bat the pe ncil off the table. What were the limits of feline forbearance? One would have guessed, but one would have been wrong, that they might have bee n reached at the invention of Kitty Bowling. Kitty Bowling requi red an expanse of slick flooring and a trio of empty plastic soda bottles. The ball was rolled up and poure d out into the lane, with a precise minimum of gusto, and though she generally righted herself in time to vault the pins, occasionally s he ticked one with her foot. The man was the first to admit that the ball return tended to be pretty slow. He never did pick up a spare. But the ball did return.
The dog, meanwhile, had long since slid into senility and out of the picture, and afte r a cautious ten years or so, Larry began to venture out onto the back porch to have a cigarette with the man. They smoked companionably enough for a few seasons until they we re able to quit; after, Larry was no longer discouraged from coming outside to the patio to sit a spell. A slight warning tone from the humans soon demonstrated the allowable limits. With nothing keeping her from straying off the patio but the expectation that she wouldn’t, he r paws would remain poised precisely at the edge, head fully turtle d out to nibble at a blade of grass. When we called, she trotted back inside. Neighbors seemed incredulous. But then, they also took the hand-shaking routine to be ve ry clever, not realizing how long it had taken to break her of shaking with her left hand.
All went well for over seventeen years, with Larry and me sharing the burden of a man’s boisterous love, until the day she appeared to lose interest in her food. She still bounded into he r snack chair and shook hands, but the treat remained untouche d.
Decline was rapid. After a few days, we took he r in to the doc tor, who had nothing good to say. An array of punishme nts, pills, needles, was offered to keep he r “comfortable” for another few months. We went home.
Two days later she was two days worse. I was not interested in seeing what the fourth day would bring. As it turned out, I loved he r enough to make a deal with the devil, with whom I already had a working relationship, but too much to make the deal with the veterinarian. We brought her in one last time. All the next day the furniture in my heart was on the move again, crashing about. The man of the house was faring no better. “Damn cat,” he gasped, honking. “I hate cats.” It’s a cat’s last clever trick. The most unlikely things yank out a sob, an unmolested quilt top; a single, tiny, final turd, left precisely in the center of the litter box.
We try to coax her into the past tense, but still she remains just in the next room, about to stroll in. Some times, apparently, the past tense resides in the future. Slash has yet to be conceived.