Writer's Lap Cats

I'm involved in a difficult project right now -- a project so challenging, I may never succeed in my efforts to bring it to fruition.

I'm not talking about actual writing this time, however challenging it is. And writing is, to be sure, very challenging. I'm making revisions on a novel I've written for adults. I thought I was finished with it two weeks ago. After numerous beta readers had weighed in, after umpteen revisions and rewritings, I even sent it off to my agent. Then I happened to reread one paragraph and found, within it, both unnecessary words and a small plot hole. So, I'm clipping and tweaking yet again, because if I found these infelicities in just one paragraph, there's no telling what horrors lurk in the rest of the manuscript. And yes, it's hard work. But my newest project is harder still.

I'm not talking about teaching either; although I find my small class absorbing, time-consuming, and exhausting. We've been working on graphs lately, and how to write simple sentences comparing statistical data. This ought to be straightforward, but I find breaking down the concepts into understandable chunks quite difficult. My students have also been scratching their heads on the finer points of English idioms, and how you can get something half right, but still manage to fail entirely in getting your ideas across. Consider that machines can break down, but couples can break up; that thieves break in while wars and skin break out. Consider that when you arise in the morning, you get up, but when you alight from a vehicle you get down. Then consider that people sing songs about getting down and getting it on and even, occasionally, tell others to get with it, which is all very mystifying if you are comparatively new to English. If you're already preposition-challenged, English phrasal verbs are hell on earth. Still, teaching them is no match for this latest challenge I have taken on.

I'm not talking about translating either -- which mercifully has been put on hold for a while, and let's hope that it stays that way for as long as possible -- and I'm not even talking about raising teenagers. Teenagers who might want to go to rock concerts in far away cities in the middle of the school week, for instance, when there are no reputable parents prepared to collect them, at midnight. Teenagers who almost certainly have to be nagged about homework assignments, household chores, and putting away their laundry.

No, this challenge is greater than all of these things: I am trying to train my cats to be lap cats. Specifically, a writer's lap cats.

My last cat was the perfect writer's lap cat. She would sit for hours on my lap, occasionally getting her head between my hands and the keyboard, but generally behaving herself and offering me nothing but slavish devotion and love. She had a few tiny bad habits: she drooled (disgusting until I got to know her); she brought me no end of dead rodents (which occasionally interrupted my work, especially when they weren't quite dead and managed to crawl under furniture to die in peace). But by and large, she was a huge help. Whenever I got rejections, she gave me her shrewdest, canniest look: she would stare up at me and in her eyes I would read How can you let this stop you from writing? Don't you realize what a gift you have, oh wondrous one? Her purrs soothed and comforted me.

Sadly, my current cats do not have her writer's lap cat skills. Occasionally, one of them will jump up on my lap. This would be encouraging, if only he or she would sit down, curl up, and start purring. But for some reason, they don't do this. Instead, they remain standing, blocking my view of the keyboard and screen. They then turn their backs to me, tails held high, presenting a view of themselves I would rather not become acquainted with. The male drools; the female meows incessantly. They both scratch furniture to get attention, they both hunt, and they both insist on bringing me their prey. On the rare occasions they have been with me during periods of writer angst, what I read in their eyes is Another rejection, huh? Haven't you figured it out, idiot? Get up and get us some grub!

But I am patient and I am stubborn, because those are skills I have had to hone as a mother, as a teacher, and as a writer. When they jump onto the keyboard, I gentle them off it. When they present their bottoms to me, I turn them around. When they scratch to get attention, I let them know, kindly but firmly, that this is Not the Way. Slowly, I am doing what I can to make sows ears into silk purses.

And who knows? It might just work. Especially now that I've got a 2-kg box of special-offer chicken 'n liver cat treats.

Strangers In The Night

Once, long ago, Orihime, the weaving princess, wove beautiful cloth by the bank of the Milky Way. She was so busy with this important job, she never managed to do anything else, such as meeting interesting men. And then one day, Orihime happened to meet Hikoboshi, the handsome young cow-herder, who worked on the other side of the Milky Way. The two fell instantly in love and married.

Unfortunately, once they were married, they were so happy together, they had no time for anything else. Orihime stopped weaving her beautiful cloth and Hikoboshi stopped tending his cows, letting them wander all over Heaven. This caused so much trouble, that Orihime's father, Tentei, separated the two and forbade them to meet. Orihime was brokenhearted and begged her father to relent. Tentei finally gave in and allowed the two to meet on the 7th day of the 7th month -- if they promised to work hard and do all their work.

And so every year, on the 7th day of the 7th month, Orihime and Hikoboshi meet for a delightful day of sweet togetherness that makes the remaining 364 lonely days somehow bearable.

I tell you this tale because of my two cats, Mitzi and Maverick. When we first heard about them, we were told that they were a pair, that they had been together for a few years and had grown used to each other's company. In fact, it may have been that I wanted to hear this and was actually told something else, but this is what I expected when we got them: two companion cats, rather devoted to each other.

Reality has been such a disappointment.

On the day they arrived, we let them out of their cat boxes and allowed them to wander around the kitchen and hallway. The two belted out of their respective boxes, then did all the usual cat things -- jumping onto chairs, darting under tables and work surfaces, sniffing every single item in the room. Every few minutes, they would come within each other's orbit and briefly touch noses as though to say, "You holding up okay?"

But after these fleeting meetings, they split up -- and remained apart all evening.

Later, they returned to their cat boxes. I've never known cats who were perfectly happy to be in their cat boxes; in fact, I've never known cats who would willingly enter their cat boxes, but never mind. They had many chairs they could have slept on together, but they preferred their own solitary little cubicles.

Over the course of the next week, they continued to do this. Even when we allowed them free access to the entire house, they made sure to return to their cat boxes to sleep. Gradually, they began to find their own special places. Mitzi preferred our bedroom; Maverick's favorite spot was the third step down on the staircase.

But never, not once, did they snuggle up together. In fact, if one of them happened to jump onto a bed or sofa the other was on, entirely by accident, their reaction was exactly what you might expect from a fellow train passenger who had wandered into your sleeper by mistake: embarrassed confusion -- "Oh, I'm so sorry, I didn't see you there!"

Even when they join me in the garden, these cats play separately. They do not chase each other, groom each other, bask in the sun together. They lead completely parallel existences. It's like living with a middle-aged feline couple, determined to see their way through a cheerless, though amicable, marriage.

So imagine my shock when last night I walked into our lounge and found Maverick hunched over Mitzi, licking her ear. For almost five minutes I stood there and watched, spellbound, as this took place. Then he jumped off the sofa and found another place to sit, and for the rest of the evening, the two continued their usual let's-ignore-each-other routine.

Who cares if the only reason it happened was because I accidentally dropped tunafish on Mitzi's ear? Who cares if they went against tradition and did this on the 27th day of the 2nd month? For five minutes, Orihime-Mitzi and Hikoboshi-Maverick crossed the skies and met for a romantic rendez-vous and I was there to witness it.

Let us hope the heavens soon get over the shock.

Little Lost Cat

Almost a month ago, we found a kitten huddled by the trash heap in front of our house. The kitten looked lost and hungry. We have a No Pets clause in our lease, but we took the kitten home, promising my husband that we would take her to the local animal shelter as soon as we'd fed her up. Surely the owners wouldn't mind as long as we kept her on the balcony and didn't let her into the house.

It turned out that the kitten had a serious medical problem. You may have heard the expression 'As busy as a cat with the runs on a marble floor'. I can assure you that people who look after incontinent cats are even busier. We couldn't possibly take a kitten to the animal shelter in that condition -- even my husband agreed, though he was probably more worried about our car. We bought kitten chow for her, and we lined a box with newspaper and an old towel for her to lie on. As soon as the kitten was better, we'd take her to the animal shelter.

After two days, the floor of our balcony was so clean from constant scrubbing you could practically eat off it, but the kitten was no better. Her ribs and backbone protruded through her thin grey coat. We took her to the vet who told us that she would need to see the kitten every day for at least a week. She dosed the kitten with worm-killers, saying that she was probably full of parasites.

Boy, was she. I almost wished I had a microscope too, they were that interesting.

My daughter took the kitten to the vet every single day for a week, riding in the dolmuş with the kitten in a carrier bag. The kitten behaved impeccably. We gave her a bath after the worst of the diarrhea was over, and she began to get plumper. Although at first she'd done nothing but sit quietly, paws tucked under her, as though waiting for death, she began to get more playful as her health improved. We discovered that her meow was a little defective, a mere squeak. She started purring almost non-stop, a rich, grainy purr. We gave her a name, bought her a proper litter box and her own brush.

By this time, there was no question of taking her to any animal shelter. (Besides, we'd paid the vet's bill.) Like it or not, the kitten had made herself ours and we were all in love. We figured the owners wouldn't begrudge us one little kitten kept outside.

Three days ago, she disappeared from the balcony. Somehow, she managed to negotiate the roof and jump down to ground level. The entire household went out with flashlights, calling her name. It was dark. We tripped over roots and stones and felt like idiots, stumbling around, the beams of our torches flitting from corner to corner as neighbors peeked out of their windows at us. It was ages before we could bring ourselves to give up. None of us wanted to go back to the house without her.

The next day, my daughter searched for hours, but the kitten was nowhere to be found. Coming home from work to a cold, catless house was horrible. Coming back to a miserable, weepy teenager was even worse.

Every time we passed the litter box we got all misty-eyed. Just looking at the fur in her brush or the rubber string she liked to play with made us tear up.

Last night there was a storm. The thunder sounded like half a dozen giants wheeling trash bins across gravel, bending stainless steel sheets. The wind pounded the side of the house; it raged and whined and moaned. Lighting ripped across the sky; rain and hail lashed and pelted the windows. After midnight, we heard a cat fight outside. It sounded as though a big alpha cat was chewing out a smaller cat: we could hear a tiny squeak of a meow. In the morning we searched, but we could not see her.

This evening, my daughter went out again with her sister, home for the holidays. Half an hour later, they bolted upstairs, crying for joy. They'd found the kitten crouching under a pomegranate tree, hungry and thirsty and purring her head off. She smells like Clearasil and tuna. And she's obviously thrilled to be back.

Wherever we move next, that kitten is coming with us. Tomorrow, we're getting her a collar.

Partial To Cats

I probably don't need to tell you this, but I'm crazy about cats.

When I was little, friends used to bring home kittens and cry when their parents wouldn't let them in the house. My sisters and I never had this problem: our parents brought home kittens all the time. My earliest memories are of cats. Sleeping cats, purring cats, long-suffering cats allowing their ears to be inverted and their whiskers gently pulled, angry, spitting, cats, elderly cats, playful, big-eyed young kittens, sick cats huddled over their water dishes, venerable old toms with quirky personalities, pregnant and nursing cats. When you've got parents who bring home cats and encourage you to do the same, you end up with lots.

Listening to other cat lovers talk about the cat they grew up with, I feel embarrassed: we never had a cat, we had dozens upon dozens. Word got around that we were soft on cats and in the dead of night, cat rejects would be dumped on our doorstep. Tiny kittens with their eyes still sealed shut, sick cats huddled in cardboard boxes, cats with personality problems. Most of them had lusty appetites and gave birth to many kittens. We grew infamous. The people at the county health department knew all about us.

We had marmalade cats, tortoiseshells, white cats, black cats, white-and-black cats who looked like they were wearing tuxedos, tabby cats, Siamese cats, Persian cats, and every conceivable mixture. Some of our cats were feral and anti-social; some were disabled. All of them were dearly loved. And a lot of our babysitting money went to the local vets.

After I left home, one of the questions I asked new friends was Do you like cats? If I introduced anyone to my family, the question was guaranteed to come up. Democrat or Republican, believer or atheist, vegetarian or meat-eater, education, hobbies, family -- all of that could wait. Our shibboleth was simple: Do you like cats? A no resulted in dire consequences. People who gave equivocal answers were viewed as potential converts and subtly tested for cat-loving potential.

I like to think that I've moved on from my family's cat mania. If you prefer dogs, I will be perfectly nice about it. And for what it's worth, I've loved dogs myself and even had a few. But old habits die hard. I can't help it: when I meet people, I still want to know. Do you love cats? Are you one of us?

Once, while conducting a speaking proficiency exam, the colleague I was working with asked the boy we were testing Do you have a pet? This boy had misunderstood some basic questions and was obviously very nervous. He frowned and hunched forward. "Pet?" My colleague smiled. "Like a dog or cat." The boy's face cleared. "Yes," he answered. My eyes opened wide. "Dog or cat?" I almost whispered. The boy licked his lips and smiled. "Cat. I love cat." It was all I could do not to give him a higher grade than he deserved.

Yesterday, a friend sent me 17 Things Worth Knowing About Your Cat. (As you can probably imagine, people send me things like this all the time.) Now, I'm well up on my cat facts; I already knew Hitler was a dog-lover who hated cats and that Lincoln and Robert E Lee were both cat lovers. (For you dog-lovers out there who suspect I'm being catty, I don't think that Hitler loving dogs is a mark against you, I think it's the only good thing I've ever heard about Hitler.) But I didn't realize how passionately Eisenhower hated cats, and I got to thinking about other cat lovers and haters and so I checked out a few more websites.

At first, there were no surprises. Famous cat lovers include Petrarch, Sir Winston Churchill, Albert Schweitzer, Renoir, Monet, Florence Nightingale, The Prophet Mohammed, Anne Frank, Raymond Chandler, Kuniyoshi Utagawa, Dickens, Dr Samuel Johnson, Edgar Allan Poe, The Bronte Sisters, Mark Twain, and Edward Lear -- to name only a few. No doubt about it: we cat people have got some great guys on our side. Other famous cat-haters besides Eisenhower and Hitler are: Genghis Kahn, Alexander the Great, Benito Mussolini, Julius Casear, and Napolean Bonaparte. So far so good, right? Who needs those guys? But then I kept reading and I found some real surprises. Lenin, for instance. Who'd have figured him for a cat lover? (Thank God it wasn't Stalin!) Also, Marie Antoinette, Teddy Roosevelt, and Queen Victoria, cat lovers all. And finally -- (nooooo!) William Shakespeare was a cat hater while Ernest Hemingway was a cat lover. I should point out that I love Shakespeare, but am not particularly fond of Hemingway.

I am absolutely broken-hearted about Shakespeare, but who knows? Perhaps he had an early bad cat experience. Perhaps in time, someone could have gently showed him the error of his ways. And I had no idea that Hemingway was one of us! How could I have missed that? He had 30. Thirty!

I won't give up on Shakespeare, but I am absolutely going to go back and reread Hemingway. I'm bound to have missed something there.

A Lesson Learned

I helped rescue a kitten yesterday afternoon. I was waiting for my husband when I heard it yowling. It was so loud, my first thought was that children must be teasing it; there is an elementary school nearby and kids were everywhere, having just gotten out of class. When I looked out the window, I could see children running back and forth to an air-conditioning unit outside, calling out excitedly. But when I went down to investigate, I saw that the children weren't tormenting it at all: they were trying to free it.

"Poor little thing!" one thuggish great boy with a strong London accent said. He and a friend were trying to move the air-conditioning unit out of the way to get at it. It wasn't easy: it was in front of a strip of paneling that was screwed in. Behind the paneling was a metal vent about half a foot long with a tiny gap where the kitten had probably gotten in.

"It's been in there for a long time!" the boy told me.

"How long?"

He screwed up his face. "Maybe two days. Nobody can get it out. It's scared, like."

"How'd it get in there?" I asked.

A little girl shook her head. "Maybe someone was trying to play with it," she said shyly. Another little boy joined us. He said something in Turkish and the Londoner translated. "Maybe it was trying to get away. Maybe it thought somebody was going to hurt it."

I fumbled around in my bag for a nail file. "Can someone help me move the air-conditioning unit? Maybe we can get this paneling off."

Three little boys immediately volunteered their services. With their help (and a little interference) I managed to get two screws out, but it was impossible to get purchase on the others. Fortunately, they were all rusty and fairly loose: the big boy with the London accent managed to pull the paneling off and another dragged the air-conditioning unit right back, revealing the tiny gap the kitten had managed to squeeze into.

A mother who had come to collect her kids watched us surreptitiously, a look of deep suspicion on her face as we pulled the paneling out of the way. I did my best to ignore her.

"Your arms are long," another little boy said. "Maybe you can reach it."

I did manage to get my hand through the gap, but when I tried to pull the kitten out, it hissed and spat. All I could see of the kitten was its whiskers, and -- occasionally -- its tail.

My long-suffering husband had shown up by this point. "They've told the janitorial staff about the kitten," he said. "Someone's going to come along and see to it later."

I wasn't buying this. I know our janitorial staff and their idea of 'later': I'd spent two hours in a hot classroom, sweating it out with twenty-six miserable kids. The janitors had been told that our air-conditioner didn't work. They were going to see to that 'later' too.

After a long day of teaching, my husband was tired and hungry and sorely in need of a beer, but he knows me. When I told him I would stay until the kitten was freed, he sighed a long sigh. "I'll stay with you."

Fortunately, my husband had his mobile phone with him and unlike mine, it still had credit on it. I called the Kyrenia Animal Rescue. This is a group of wonderful people who spend their free time caring for stray cats and dogs. They get them inoculated, arrange for them to be spayed or neutered, and sometimes pull them down from trees -- or out of holes. The woman who answered the phone agreed to come help. She told us she would be there within twenty minutes.

While we waited, one of the well-wishers crowding around, a fellow teacher, told us about a wounded bird she had rescued from her classroom window. She had managed to catch it, take it to the vet, nurse it back to health, and release it, whole and healthy again. The children around us all listened, wide-eyed.

When the animal rescue woman showed up -- with cat box, gardening gloves, and a bag of cat food -- we all practically cheered.

By this time a modest audience had gathered. We all watched as the woman put on an old shirt, crouched in the dusty narrow space in front of the hole, and tried to urge the kitten out. It took ages; I was amazed by the woman's patience.

At one point, I didn't think it was going to happen. I was tired, hungry and thirsty too; I'd been on my feet since eight in the morning and all I wanted to do was sit down with a tall drink and a book. And then all of a sudden, the kitten was out, a feisty, blue-eyed little bundle of tiger-striped fur. We all cheered as the rescue woman popped it into the cat carrier.

The story doesn't have a traditional happy ending: the kitten was adopted by a kindly colleague, but he cried so much and so loudly at night, she had to let him out, and then she couldn't find him again. She showed up at work tired and stressed after racing around, looking for it.

But if I had it to do over again, I would do just the same thing. I was heartened by those children and their gentleness with the kitten; I was touched by our fellow teacher who had spent so long over what everyone else scoffed was "just a bird"; I was grateful that my colleague had tried to give the kitten a good home. Not every story has a happy ending, but sometimes that itself is a lesson too.

One Of A Kind Cat

The cat knows something's up.

There are piles of books everywhere -- in boxes, on the remaining furniture, along the sides of the staircase. The contents of every drawer have been spilled out and rummaged through; suitcases stand open, and cardboard boxes are to be found every few feet.

On her soft little feet, the cat pads through the maze of boxes and piles of books, inspecting everything, glancing up at us with a question in her eyes. We can't take her with us, and it kills me to see her looking so mystified -- or curled up peacefully in a chair for that matter. She is very much my cat, and I know I'll never have another one like her.

Our living room has been turned into an obstacle course. We seem to have as many CDs as we do books, and boxes of them make getting around the room very hard. The phone rings non-stop, and inevitably it has been left beyond a waist-high stack of boxes.

The cat watches our frantic movement with a censorious eye. She is just waiting for someone to sit down so she can leap onto their lap and be petted. This rarely happens lately; no one has the time to spare.

So she does what any good cat will do when she senses her human enablers have grown a little distant: she brings us gifts. Normally, her favorite time for gift-giving is when I am having my weekly writing group meeting. Engrossed, I sit at the computer, instant-texting, and the cat knows she is not really welcome. So she goes out and exerts herself, and if she is lucky, I hear her hunting call, a low, mournful yowl that always means she has brought me something. If I am by myself, I have two choices. I can continue with my meeting and risk the chance of her devouring her catch messily on our one decent rug, or of her possibly still-viable prey crawling off to die under the sofa, unnoticed for days until the smell reaches our noses. Or I can catch it, fling it outside if it is still alive and unwounded -- or quickly dispatch it if it is beyond salvation. At first, I always tried to liberate the captured animal, but this gets old very fast when you have a champion hunter of a cat. Now I am inclined to let her have her way with whatever poor little creature she has caught; even if I manage to catch it and throw it outside, chances are that she'll only catch it again.

Last night, I was up late packing. In the kitchen, I have boxes of Asian foodstuffs piled high. We never managed to get through all the nori, the dehydrated tofu (I don't recommend this), the wakame, or the dried squid that my kids and husband have purchased in veritable job lots.

I was sitting between two stacks of boxes when I heard the cat-flap snap open, then shut. We generally have it locked on 'no-entry', but the cat has figured out a way to open it anyway.

And then I heard that yowl.

Bear in mind that I was in the middle of a maze. A maze composed of boxes of foodstuffs. Most of the time, the rodents the cat brings in have few places to hide. Sure, they can dive under a dresser, but at some point, they have to come out for food and water. But given the state of our kitchen now, every mouse in Scotland could hole up for five months and raise many generations of healthy offspring. And obviously I don't want this to happen.

We've intiated a non-swearing policy in this household. Bad words ostensibly cost the user fifty pence a shot, so whenever someone indulges in profanity, someone else shouts out Fifty pee! Everybody else was asleep last night or I'd have racked up a fortune.

By the time I got to bed, I'd been all over the kitchen with the broom, trying to ferret out the poor little rodent, half out of its wits with terror. I'd sprained my thumb and whacked my hip on the corner of the table and messed up my knees, crouching and trying to coax the rodent out. The cat got bored halfway through this and went to lie down in the living room. She's lucky she made it through the night.

We're pals again, and she's lying in my lap even as I write. I'll never have another cat like her. Good thing that works two ways.

Intellectual Limitations

I have a painful admission: my cat isn't smart. I have had literally dozens of cats during my lifetime, so I know.

Here is the merest sampling of the smart cats I have known or encountered in my life:

1) My Aunt Irene in Florida had a big bruiser aptly named Bearcat who could open the screen door. Bearcat weighed at least ten pounds and he would leap onto the screen door, climb up to the handle, and manipulate it until the door sprang open. Yes, I personally witnessed this myself and I guarantee you, it was something to see.

2) My cat Dagmar could fiddle with the cold water tap in the bathroom until she got a trickle of water to drink (sadly, she could never be trained to turn it off).

3) In Mexico once, a very skinny cat my friends and I had been feeding suddenly leapt onto our picnic table, seized our remaining half a loaf of bread after watching us closely for a few minutes, and disappeared lickety-split into the brush with it. The sheer speed and audacity of the deed combined with the cat's obvious scheming impressed me almost as much as the fact that this cat was so desperately hungry it was prepared to steal bread.

4) A woman who lived in my apartment building in New York had four cats; three of them had been trained to use the toilet. She almost never had to buy cat litter for them, though she admitted that they did not flush.

Yep, cats can be very smart, no doubt about it.

Sigh.

The cat who lives with us now is indisputably beautiful. She is graceful and sweet and affectionate. But pour her a bowl of food and she will take one greedy mouthful, then run off. Minutes later, she will come back and demand more food. Until I physically place her in front of it, she will not partake -- and once she has had her snout thrust into her dish, she devours it, so I know it's not that the taste has gone off.

In other ways, too, she has shown herself to be a dimwit. Open the door to let her out and she'll stand there staring until you finally boot her out. Sure, all cats do this to some degree; they can't make up their minds to go out or stay in, but my cat takes it to an extreme; it's as though she doesn't realize I've opened the door. If I'm eating cheese, she will hop up onto my lap and after a wholly gratuitous show of affection, she will eagerly begin to look for it, following her nose. So I move the plate of cheese from the computer table to the shelf -- and so help me, for the next few minutes, she studies the spot on the computer table where it last rested and looks utterly mystified. Never does she look further than that spot -- not even when I reach to take a piece of cheese from the relocated plate. I've had cats who would track that cheese as if it were a mouse and have it off me in seconds.

My poor cat. There are times I look at her and wonder how she ever manages to catch a mouse.

I have another painful admission: I've got a thing or two in common with her.

For the last year, I've had the good fortune to belong to an online writing group. Every week we meet via our computers, texting our writing discussions back and forth. I'm a reasonably fast typist, but I've found it a real challenge to post my comments as quickly as some of the others manage this.

Last week, I accidentally hit the return key and sent a message I hadn't finished composing. That's right, folks: until last week I had no idea that you sent messages by hitting your return key. I was so astonished, I admitted this and the obvious question came back to me: How have you been sending your posts? I had no choice but to admit it: for each and every message, I've been using the mouse to click over the 'send' button. If you aren't familiar with texting, this is the equivalent of putting in eyedrops from five feet away.

Poor me. There are times I wonder how I've managed to get this far in life.

No Escape

The other evening, our family had dinner with the family next door. Afterwards, we trooped into their recreation room and admired their son’s hamster, a delightful little creature, fluffy and bright-eyed, with sable patches on her rich, creamy fur. We took turns petting her; we watched, entranced, as she held a single Brussels sprout in her clever paws and rotated it, working at it steadily with her sharp little teeth. The minute we were out the door, it started: Can we have a hamster too, Mom? Pleeeease?

I have told the kids repeatedly that we cannot have a hamster. I have my reasons: hamsters are accomplished escape artists for one, and our cat already keeps us well supplied with rodents. Also, I’m not looking for any more work. It’s bad enough that I have to nag the kids to get them to feed the cat. It’s hard enough getting them to keep their rooms even semi-tidy. The idea of having another creature in this house generating yet more mess and work does not appeal to me one bit, no matter how cute it is. And finally, engaging as they are, like all small animals, hamsters tend to die on you. I speak as one with experience. The backyard of my childhood home was littered with the graves of guinea pigs, dogs, cats, gerbils, and birds, much loved and mourned. I dread the day the cat goes, and I weep over every one of the mice, blackbirds and voles that she drags home. I am not eager for our garden to become a pet cemetery.

Last night our eldest came crashing into the living-room. "Moooom! Look what the cat’s just killed!" She was holding something soggy that resembled a truncated, tailless rat. With sable patches. Yep: the neighbors’ hamster.

I wrapped Mrs Nutkin’s limp body in a tea-towel and patted her dry. No blood – surely that was a good sign? My youngest produced a few peanuts and we put one in front of the hamster. Her nose immediately twitched into high gear and we all breathed a sigh of relief. Mrs Nutkin was one wet, miserable hamster, but she was still alive. My eldest took Mrs Nutkin back to her family.

For a while, we all thought that the little creature had survived her escape attempt unscathed, but this morning we learned that she died during the night.

Today our neighbors asked if their kids could bury her in our garden so that they will be able to come back and visit the grave. Of course, I said yes. But hanging up, I pictured it in my mind’s eye: the clumsy little cardboard box spattered with childish tears. The cookies crumbled into the grave. The pathetic little stones, the crudely labelled marker.

Oh, Jesus. I might as well get the kids a hamster.

My Cat, Hunting Champion of Scotland

My cat is sitting in our veranda just now with a present for me. The reason I know this is because she is using her hunting call. It might be because her mouth is full of fresh rodent, but whenever she catches something, she has a particularly deep, mournful call that resonates across the house. I haven't seen whatever it is she has caught, but I am betting it is a dead vole. If it were a mouse, she would have eaten it already, despite the fact that I fed her only twenty minutes ago.

When my cat has been successful on one of her hunting excursions and the animal is already dead, I sometimes watch her through our front window. With the exception of voles, which must either be very tough or not particularly tasty, she devours her prey 90% of the time. She does this very delicately, but very thoroughly, licking up every drop of the blood and chewing her way methodically through the fur. In the end, all that is left is the tail and what would appear to be the gizzard, if rodents have those. I will admit that I don't get close enough for a detailed examination of the corpse.

If I can get them away from her, I catch the mice by means of an inverted cup and a piece of cardboard slid under it. I then take the little animal by the tail and send it flying over the balcony and into the adjoining hedge with instructions to get the hell out -- as far away from my murderous feline as it can possibly go. I would estimate that I have liberated two dozen mice in this fashion, and my kids and husband have probably released about that number themselves. My eldest kid is the one who managed to prise the neighbors' hamster from her jaws.

When she catches birds, it is so much worse. The mice are cute, but they can be a nuisance in the house. The birds do nothing but enhance the quality of our lives, however, and we have always loved watching them and listening to them sing. Unfortunately, we can no longer do this easily; because of the cat's hunting prowess we have had to put the bird feeders so high up we can barely see them, and the only ones that are really safe are the ones we can attach directly onto the window glass or dangle from the eaves of the house. I bought a bird table a few years ago, and kept wondering why the birds didn't seem too keen on using it. Then one rainy day I happened to see our cat standing poised a few feet from it, every muscle in her body tensed. Suddenly she took a flying leap and, after a few rather ungainly adjustments, was actually IN it. She seated herself, entirely filling the space, and when I called out to her flattened her ears back and gave me a look that clearly said "Yeah? So what?"

I won't give up. I will keep adding bells to her collar, keep chasing her away from the birds, keep setting free the little animals she catches when I can. And sometimes I just have to sigh and accept her contribution to the Circle of Life. In the meantime, I have written her a poem:

My Cat

My cat’s a cruel predator
(though meek and self-effacing)
I sigh and shake my head at her
But I can’t stop her chasing --

-- poor little mice, and great big rats
And tender little frogs
And voles and snakes and baby bats
And lizards under logs

I tell my friends about my cat
They don’t believe a word
(They haven’t seen the mouse, the rat
The frog, the vole, the bird)

I tell my neighbors and they laugh
They don’t believe it’s true
(Until they see her dragging half
a rabbit -- then they do!)

I feed her well, but even so
She's bound to ply her skill
She prowls and stalks just like a pro
Then leaps to make her kill

I yell at her, I stomp and swear,
Shout ‘Leave that poor mouse be!’
She just pretends that I’m not there
And races up a tree

What can I do to make her quit?
I can't remove her claws --
That wouldn’t help a single bit;
I’d have to wire her jaws!

Oh why did Mother Nature make
My little cat so vicious?
I wish for little creatures’ sake
They weren’t all so delicious.

Diana in White Fur

We acquired our cat in the serendipitious way we seem to acquire everything worth having. I had told a friend of ours that we wanted a kitten. That we didn't care about the color or gender or personality as long as it was a kitten. She said that she would look out for one, but that in the meantime we ought to try the Cat Protection League.

Now, I don't know if this is the same everywhere or only in this part of the world, but nowadays, kittens seem to be pretty thin on the ground. When I was a kid, my mother loved cats, and in no time her reputation as a soft touch became all too well known in our neighborhood. Our home soon became a cat magnet and we always had plenty of cats. People brought problem cats to us, and cats that were pregnant, ill or dying were dumped on us as well. Too often we were so swamped with kittens that we were all but begging people to take them off our hands. When we had surplus kittens, we told all the neighbors -- who didn't really need to be told -- and placed advertisements in several supermarkets and the student union of the local university. I promise you that if a kindly, cat-loving family had shown up asking for a kitten we would have tripped all over ourselves to give them one.

What a different reaction we had when we visited our local Cat Protection League! We were told that just because we wanted a kitten that did not necessarily mean that we would get one; that a Cat Protection League volunteer would have to visit our home and vet us as possible cat carers first. "And how old are your children?" one woman asked suspiciously, eyeing them as though they were Alsatians. The proximity of our house to a road, we were warned, would not count in our favor, and did we have a cat flap? Our clothing and appearance must not have inspired confidence: before we left, we were reminded that cat immunizations had to be taken into account, and we would also be asked to make a donation. We decided to wait for our friend to find us a kitten instead.

Weeks passed, then months, but no kittens were forthcoming. Our friend's sister called and offered us two elderly cats. Indeed, she pressed them on us so eagerly that I began to feel very guilty, but I had to stand my ground. We wanted a kitten, and we were prepared to wait for one.

Finally, one day my friend called with good news. Friends of theirs who ran a hardware store had acquired a stray cat who was obviously pregnant. She was a wonderful cat, they claimed, as friendly, docile, and accommodating as anyone could ask for. Would we like one of her kittens when they were old enough to be given away? We could hardly wait!

From time to time during the next four weeks, we eagerly asked about the kittens. Had they been born yet? No? Was the mother getting bigger? Yes, we were told, and eating for eight.

Two months later, though, they still had not been born and the concensus was that the cat's pregnancy had been false. Our hopes were dashed.

"I don't suppose you'd like the cat, though?" asked our friend.

"No," I told her firmly. "We've got our hearts set on a kitten."

"Pity," she told me. "She's not particularly good with other cats and they have to find a home for her."

To make a long story short -- or shorter, anyway -- we took in this cat. And they really were right about her: you have never seen a cat who is more friendly, docile or accommodating. She is an absolute dream of a cat, "white with pink accessories," as my friend described her to us, and as polite as any I've ever encountered. If you don't feed her, she doesn't yowl, she puts on a show: rubbing up against your legs, flipping over in a beguiling way and showing you her belly. We've had cat-haters come over and fall in love with our cat -- that's how wonderful she is.

There is just one problem. This cat is a hunter. Honestly, you've never seen anything like it, and if I weren't so horrified and dismayed, I swear I'd be proud. If we were living out on the prairie where mice and rats were a problem, this cat would be worth her weight in gold. She catches two to three mice a day now. She has had rabbits, frogs, rats, voles, and (sadly) birds. And one awful day, she found our little neighbor's missing hamster...

We'd still like a kitten. For a while, we had hopes that our cat might favor us with one or two, and cat-loving friends have promised to find homes for any leftover kittens we might end up with. Sadly, our cat has sent every promising looking male packing within seconds. Either she has been spayed or she has no wish to become a mother.

We figure it is probably just as well for the rodent population.