THE OLD MAN AND CATS

A newly discovered chapter in the Book of Genesis has provided the answer to the question, "Where do pets come from?"

Adam said, "Lord, when I was in the garden, you walked with me everyday. Now I do not see you anymore. I am lonesome here and it is difficult for me to remember how much you love me."

And God said, "No problem! I will create a companion for you that will be with you forever and who will be a reflection of my love for you, so that you will love me even when you cannot see me. Regardless of how selfish or childish or unlovable you may be, this new companion will accept you as you are and will love you as I do, in spite of yourself."

And God created a new animal to be a companion for Adam. And it was a good animal. And God was pleased. And the new animal was pleased to be with Adam and he wagged his tail. And Adam said, "Lord, I have already named all the animals in the Kingdom and I can not think of a name for this new animal."

And God said, "No problem! Because I have created this new animal to be a reflection of my love for you, his name will be a reflection of my own name, and you will call him DOG."

And Dog lived with Adam and was a companion to him and loved him. And Adam was comforted. And God was pleased. And Dog was content and wagged his tail.

After a while, it came to pass that Adam's guardian angel came to the Lord and said, "Lord, Adam has become filled with pride. He struts and preens like a peacock and he believes he is worthy of adoration. Dog has indeed taught him that he is loved, but perhaps too well."

And the Lord said, "No problem! I will create for him a companion who will be with him forever and who will see him as he is. The companion will remind him of his limitations, so he will know that he is not always worthy of adoration."

And God created CAT to be a companion to Adam.

And Cat would not obey Adam.

And when Adam gazed into Cat's eyes, he was reminded that he was not the supreme being. And Adam learned humility.

And God was pleased. And Adam was greatly improved. And Dog was happy.

And the cat? ...well, he didn't give a damn one way or the other.

I read once that cats are the only animals who accept all the benefits of domestication without assuming any of the liabilities. I like cats. I think I like them because they are a lot like people. They are arrogant, demanding and self-centered, and they are ingrates. So if I like cats, how come I don’t care all that much for people, at least a good number of them? Maybe I would like people more if - after I held the door open for them and they didn’t say thank you - they would, at least once in a while, flatter me by curling up in my lap and purring instead of cutting me off without signaling.

The Black Plague in Europe may have been aggravated by the belief that those with cats were witches. Many cats were rounded up, caged and burned, leaving the rats, host of the fleas who carried the disease, to run free and multiply. Those harbouring cats were many of those who survived the scourge.

A barn cat from a couple of blocks away followed my youngest daughter home not long after my wife and I had separated. We live right next to the high school, and my oldest daughter and her class were that year inaugurating a custom that would endure for four years of high school: building their homecoming float in our driveway, a convenient location, at least for them.

The cat was both sociable and hungry, and so when he arrived he must have thought he had discovered the Promised Land! Twenty or 30 kids to pat and scratch him, and every manner of junk food dropped on the ground here and there for him to eat.

That first night my youngest daughter asked if she could round out the menu with a saucer of milk. I agreed, vaguely aware of what this portended. The next night it got cold and she asked if he couldn't just sleep in the kitchen overnight, just this one night. Well, it was October and not likely to get warmer soon, so you will not be surprised to learn that the cat was in full residence within just a few days.

We named him Bob, as in bobcat. We could have been less original, but my name is Tom and we wanted to avoid any confusion. Some side effects of his sexual orientation caused us to foot the bill for an operation for Bob after a while, and this had the predicted effects upon him: his personality mellowed, his hygiene improved and he stayed to home. I am surprised nobody has offered this simple medical procedure as a solution for many of society's problems.

During the years of separation and divorce, Bob was a great aid in attempting to maintain a home with mother gone, and he was good company for father as well.

Bob still comes to visit but he doesn't live here anymore. Apparently Bob's mission is more complex than we might assume. Next door to me lives a wonderful older woman, a widow. She is full of energy and has scores of great friends, but even now twenty years after he departed, I know she misses her late husband. My children have grown, and don't visit her as often as they used to. So I know she must have some lonely moments.

She loves birds and hates cats, or so she says. As if he recognized her need, Bob set to charming her. He kept her company in her rock garden, sat on her woodpile on her back porch and stared through the window until she let him in. I finally knew something was up when she asked me some advice on what cat food to purchase.

She has had some explaining to do when her family and friends come to visit. Bob has his own chair, closest to the fireplace. She feeds him well, and they keep each other company. He has gotten so heavy that he can't catch birds anymore. So everyone seems to have been well served by this new arrangement. And I admire Bob. He is more sensitive to people's feelings than we ourselves are.

Bob has been an amusing study in the limits of deductive reasoning when employed by cats. One day years ago, when my youngest daughter was only about eight years old, I was on the telephone. I have always been annoyed when someone tries to talk to me when I am talking on the phone, all the more so when they somehow figure that speaking in a low voice while I am trying to carry on another conversation will be less of a distraction.

So it was with annoyance that I reacted when she started tugging on my sleeve, explaining something to me while I was engaged in conversation. Somehow though the words "Bob's sitting on the birdhouse" penetrated, and finally I saw that she was pointing across the street where one of my neighbors had a birdhouse mounted on top of a pole that was probably five feet high. Somehow Bob had managed to perch upon the small gable roof of that birdhouse!

There this large cat sat, maintaining a vigil, aimed in the same direction as the little hole that served the birdhouse as a front door. I imagined that he must have observed birds coming and going through that little hole, finally deducing that if he could just climb up there with his mouth opened in the same direction, they might just fly directly into his mouth.

A good plan in theory, but Bob - for all the carnage he has wrought upon the rodent population in this neighborhood - to my knowledge has never yet caught a bird.

Another example of Bob's logic was demonstrated during the coldest part of the winter. He spent his youth as a stray, and so is not unfamiliar with the North Country's mid-winter conditions, and he has never shied away from them.

But there is a point at which even the hardiest cat gets cold here in northern New Hampshire, so occasionally we would look outside and see he was eager to come in. We would open the kitchen door and in would rocket Bob. As he burst through the door he could feel the warmth of the fire in the woodstove in the kitchen. As he shot through the kitchen his body began to warm, the chill still deep in his bones. It must have seemed obvious to a very cold cat on the move that, the deeper into the house he got, the warmer he became. And so we became accustomed, during the coldest weather, to open the door and witness Bob shooting through the kitchen, speeding through the dining room, only stopping in the front foyer when he ran out of house.

I had always wondered whether, if we had managed to get the front door open in time, he might not shoot right through the entire house and back out the front door, in his frenzy to warm up!

We have welcomed other cats in as well. Scooter Magruder was just a kitten when my youngest daughter, then only ten years old, sneaked him into the house and raised him for several days in her closet with a shoe box filled with kitty litter for a bathroom.

Finally I discovered him one morning when I charged up the stairs unannounced to warn everyone that they were late for school, and caught her there in the hallway holding and petting him. Ever resourceful, without a moment's hesitation, she thrust him toward me and said, "Happy Father's Day, Dad!" She was off by a more than a month, but she didn't miss her real mark. Scooter stayed.

Our current cat was also just a kitten when I saw her tossed unceremoniously from a passing pickup truck into the school parking lot. I rushed out and rescued her. By this time we had run out of names, so she became just plain "Sweetie." She is certainly not the smartest of the lot, and her seemingly limited intelligence has earned her some less flattering names from time to time, but sweet she is, so she stayed too.

Several years ago Sweetie discovered she could climb up a tree in front of my house, get onto my verandah roof, and walk over to within several feet of my bedroom window. The first couple of times she did this, and started meowing around 4AM, I reached out and brought her in. Finally one morning I decided this was becoming a little too habitual, so resolved to ignore her. The next thing I knew there was this huge metallic clatter. Growing impatient with me, she had decided to resort to some self-help and jump into my bedroom, since I would not pull her in. In the early morning light, she had failed to take account of the fact that there was a screen on the window. So there she was, attached spread-eagle to my screen like one of those Garfield toys with suction cups clinging to the inside of a car window.

I was unable to rescue her from her calamity though, since - if I had opened the screen - the combination storm window would have peeled her off like a squeegee. My only other option seemed to be to get up at this ridiculous hour, rummage up a ladder and climb up to get her. Then a third option occurred to me: cats must have nine lives for reasons just like this. So I went back to bed. Somehow she eventually managed to contort herself and leap backwards back onto the porch. Whether that used up some of her inventory of feline lives, I do not know. I will however testify to the fact that she is smarter than I had previously given her credit for: she did manage to learn not to bother me at that hour any more.

Here you see the triumvirate: The PsyMan on the left, Sweetie in the middle, and Figgy to the right.

The careful reader will have noticed that my youngest daughter has been responsible for two of the cats who have joined the household. Make that three. She is now a senior in college, but still brings them home. Last fall her roommate brought home a small kitten that a visiting professor had found at a construction site at the airport, and had brought to a lecture with a plea for someone to take it in.

The result was Simon, a tiger kitten. My daughter and her roommate looked in vain for a new arrangement for Simon, but then Christmas was upon them and so we opened our doors once again. Simon flew home to New Hampshire, and a good traveler he was. My daughter and I were amused by the fact that Simon was only about 3-1/2 months old but had now flown upon an airplane. Then I thought out loud, "But he was found initially at an airport. Who is to say he didn't arrive there on an airplane as well?"

Simon (nicknamed The PsyMan) is living, running, leaping testimony to the effects of testosterone. He is the only male cat in the house, Bob having moved out years ago as described above, but the energy level and the aggressiveness are unmistakable. Sweetie is nearly ten now, and has little tolerance for his tomfoolery, so the victim of his practice assaults is Figaro. I forgot to mention Figgy. She was a quiet addition to the household who arrived with my beloved Terrie last summer. Also a tiger, and once lithe and beautiful, she has decided that New Hampshire is a good place to live indoors, and so she has gotten fat. Therefore, her days are spent trying to figure out a warm, private place to avoid Simon. And Simon's are spent trying to find Figgy.

Unless something attracts his attention first. There are two computer printers and a fax machine here, and these demand his regular attention. He is clerk of the works in the desktop publishing department, and is determined to get his arm inside and figure out how these devices work.

And, he is a cat of course, so I should not have been surprised the other morning when, after noticing a slight tug on the computer mouse in my right hand (I thought the wire had snagged on something), all of a sudden I observed my mouse go shooting out of my hand and over the back of the desk. Simon had caught his first mouse!

On High Cats and Low Cats...

That's a high one up there.

Someone who worked for me once told me that his grandmother, a true Yankee from the northernmost part of Vermont, contended that there were “high cats” and “low cats.” Some cats could not be kept off counters and tabletops, might be noticed on top of a cupboard staring down at you at any given moment. Other cats seemed contented with the floor and would seek out warmth next to the woodstove, rather than at the higher elevations to which the heat would rise.

Bob, for his part, notwithstanding his effort described above to disguise himself as a birdhouse, would seem to be a low cat. He did not even care to go up on the third floor of the house. In fact, he was an infrequent visitor to the second floor. And even on the first floor, that is pretty much where he remained, on the floor.

Early evidence would suggest that Simon is a high cat. Working on the greenhouse one day, Terrie noticed him peeking over the rooftop, perhaps ten feet above her. A few days later, painting the porch, she found him sitting nonchalantly atop her tall stepladder, looking down at her and the can of paint perched precariously just below him on the ladder’s shelf. And certainly Simon knows no compunction about grazing on the counter, a habit I find a bit offensive, considering where his feet have been and that food is prepared up there.

But then Simon discovered my neighbor’s old butternut tree which provides a highway to the top of the world, the cupola atop our barn. He has been up there several times, apparently goaded on by the squirrels who live up there. One day I spotted him yawning as he sat on the narrow parapet that encircles the cupola; and just the other day he sat casually astride the ridge pole of the barn, first surveying his domain, then cleaning himself.

I am skeptical that there is an afterlife, and even more doubtful about reincarnation, but if we do come back after death and have anything to say about it, I would come back as a cat. The idea of sitting in a warm sunny window to sleep most of the day, to be fed and patted when I wanted to be fed and patted... what could be more perfect? Except for the mice. I would not want to eat the mice.

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