Synanon Kid: A Memoir of Growing Up in the Synanon Cult

by C. A. Wittman

  Once I felt that I had hiked far enough, I sat down in the grass and pulled the mewing cat from my pocket, snuggling it under my chin as hot tears gathered in my eyes and splashed down, dampening its fur.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered into its warm little body.

  Carefully I placed it into the box with the blanket, which I scrunched up for a nest.

  Hoping for the best, I left it.

  Later that evening the wind picked up, and to my horror rain began to pelt down onto the bunkhouse. The storm grew stronger, and I lay in bed sick with the thought of the kitten outside. During the night the wind howled and rain pummeled the building, at times with such force that it sounded as if it might break through the roof.

  The next morning, instead of going to breakfast after inspection, I ran directly up the hill to where I had left the kitten. The box had blown on its side. The blanket was soggy in the flattened, wet grass. The kitten lay still next to the blanket, its fur matted and slick against its body. I squatted, scooping it up, and found it was still alive.

  It mewed weakly in my hands as I blew warm air onto its cold little body and then slipped it under my shirt to transfer some of my body’s warmth to it. For a long time I sat on the damp ground trying to come up with some kind of plan. In the end I knew I could do nothing. There was nowhere to keep it safely, no place where it wouldn’t soon be discovered. I removed the kitten from my shirt and kissed its head. I had given it some warmth, and it was quiet.

  Righting the box, I placed the cat inside it and walked away, not looking back.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  A Secret Zoo

  “Hey,” Melissa said.

  I lifted my chin. I’d been lounging against an apple tree in the small orchard next to our dorms, watching her head toward me. Tall for her age, she took long strides, her usual dreamy expression out of synch with her habitual swift gait. Mentally, she always seemed to be somewhere else, her brown bushy brows creased in thought.

  She eyed me for a minute, then said, “I’m starting a secret club.”

  “Yeah?”

  “It’s for ugly girls. There’s three of us so far, and I wanted to ask you to join. You’re the ugliest one in the whole school, and I thought you should be in it.”

  There was no malice to her words, and I wasn’t offended. I’d been told how ugly I was almost every day by one kid or another and had accepted it to be true. In my view, Melissa was stating a fact.

  “Who’s in it?” I asked.

  “Me, Laurie and Lacy.”

  Lacy was a dour, heavyset girl, one of the few kids who had a weight problem despite the active lifestyle of Synanon. She could be a bit snippy, and I didn’t particularly care to be around her, but the club idea intrigued me as did the fact that Laurie had said she’d join it. A lot of the kids had been starting clubs. One girl had started one called Butterballs, a group for kids who were struggling with their weight.

  “We’re going to have our own zoo,” Melissa said.

  “What kind of animals are you going to keep?” I asked.

  “Some of us just got some baby chicks and a duckling and we were thinking of catching some cats and taming them.” Her green eyes locked with mine. Now I knew why the club was a secret.

  “If the demonstrators find out, they’ll take them and kill them,” I said.

  “I know,” Melissa said, “but they won’t find out. We found a place that nobody knows about. That’s where we’ll keep all the animals.” She waited, letting me mull it over.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Melissa grinned, flashing her long sharp incisors, and slapped my back. “Thanks,” she said. “I thought I could count on you. It wouldn’t be right if you weren’t in it. We’re all picking code names. Laurie’s going to be Spike. I’m Bear. Lacy’s still deciding. I thought maybe you could be Foxy.”

  “Yeah, okay.” My code name meant little to me.

  Later that day the four of us met in Melissa’s (Bear’s) room to brainstorm about how we would start the zoo. We discovered that among us we owned six chickens, one duck and zero cats.

  It was clear from the start that Bear was the leader. “We need to work on clearing the area and getting it ready for the animals,” she said. “Me and Lacy can get a hold of some cages and a few shovels, maybe a hoe.” She wrote this down in a notebook she had on her lap, then glanced at Lacy.

  “We’ll be in charge of that,” Lacy said. “Spike, you’re good at catching cats; let’s capture three, maybe four of them.”

  “Where are you going to keep them?” I asked. “If they’re wild, they’ll just run away.”

  “We’re going to get extra cages for the cats,” Bear said. “Foxy, your job is to help Spike catch cats. We all need to pitch in some money for cat food too.”

  “We should buy the food before we catch the cats,” Spike said.

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Bear said.

  “How are we going to get a bag of cat food on the bus without anyone noticing?” I asked. “They check everything.”

  Bear stared at her notepad. “We’ll find a way to get around it.”

  Every so often we kids were taken on field trips to the Petaluma Public Library and the Alpha Beta, a supermarket. We always arrived in a yellow school bus, filling the store in our unisex outfits and military cuts, mostly unaware of the stares of other shoppers as we explored the aisles, looking for our favorite treats. When we boarded the bus to return home, we opened our bags for the driver to look inside for contraband items. Bulky cat food would definitely be a challenge.

  We kept the meeting short, taking a walk afterward to the secret place where we planned to have our zoo. I was surprised at how close it was to the dorms. None of us had played in the area, even though it was just a short way along a foot trail that ran mostly level and culminated in a quick, easy climb over an embankment to our spot. A small hill sloped down to a narrow clearing bordered by a thicket on one side and inlet of stream on another. Charged with the excitement of our new club, we ran down the hill, laughing, and explored everything in the vicinity.

  For the first few weeks we focused on preparing the area where the cages would be kept. Sticks, branches and leaves were cleared away, tarps erected and shelves made to keep supplies. Cages were set on the ground, layered with more tarps and old blankets that we brought out to line the bottoms. The tarps and the nearby thicket and overhanging trees would provide protection from the elements.

  Finally the day arrived for us to move the first of the animals into their new homes. These were the chickens and duck. As their baby fluff was molting and adult feathers growing in, we thought they would have a better chance of survival outside. We housed several chickens to a cage. The duck had its own home.

  Eager to see how our residents had fared during their first night in our zoo, we ventured out and were relieved to find them sleeping, the chickens nestled against one another and apparently contented, warm and dry.

  With the next field trip to the supermarket some weeks away, we focused on the animals we already had secured, feeding them once or twice daily and occasionally releasing them from their cages to run about under our supervision. As the chickens and duck grew in size, they remained relatively tame. All of the chicks turned out to be hens. One all-white chicken that we named Vanilla would actually come when called and even climb into the lap of whoever had beckoned her, laying her head affectionately against that person’s chest.

  Every chance I had, I went off to our little zoo on my own or with another club member. We began taking the chickens and duck on walks through the thicket, a lush quiet world of overarching branches that provided natural tunnels. Red and yellow leaves in various stages of decomposition carpeted the ground. The air was heavy with the scent of damp earth. At times I imagined myself in an otherworldly realm like the characters in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

  During these strolls our chickens usually ran off to scratch and peck at newly discovered,
previously unharvested plots in their quests for bugs and worms. We didn’t want them to wander out of sight, so we repeatedly rounded them up.

  They weren’t the most obliging when it came to doing what they were told, but the duck apparently understood what we were trying to do and took on the job of keeping the chickens in order by loudly squawking and running after stray hens, nipping at tail feathers and herding wayward strays back to the group. He took his responsibilities so seriously that we started calling him Sergeant Deedle.

  A month into our project, the demonstrators announced that there would be a field trip to the library with a stopover at the supermarket. Over the weeks we had been saving our money and giving it to Bear. An emergency meeting was called for the four of us to work out a plan.

  “Sometimes the doors to the bus are left open,” Spike said. “We could put the cat food under a seat and then get off the bus before anyone else gets on.”

  “What if I sit at the back of the bus and open a window and one of you hands the food up to me?” Lacy suggested.

  Bear sat chewing on her eraser. “We should put the food in other containers like cracker boxes. Dump out the plastic packages of crackers and pour the cat food in.”

  We agreed that that was the best idea and it was exactly what we did, buying an amount of cat food we roughly calculated as sufficient to last until the next supermarket outing.

  Once we had the food, Spike and I were ready to capture the cats. We’d seen a young tabby hanging around the bushes along our walk from the dorms to the Shed. Though not as wild as some of the other feral cats, the tabby was still skittish.

  Over the weekend we decided to catch the tabby. We saved bits of chicken in our napkins from lunch and shoved the greasy lumps of paper in our pockets. We gathered twine, a cardboard box and one of the metal cages from the zoo. Spike made a hole in the side of the cardboard box and tied the twine at that hole.

  We deposited the bits of chicken on a somewhat protected area of dusty ground not too far out in the open and set the cardboard box on its side, near our bait. Satisfied with our preparations, we hid as best we could in the bushes, lying on our bellies a short distance from our trap for a good half hour until Spike gave me a little pinch. Something was stealthily creeping through the bushes next to us. A moment later we saw not the tabby we had been expecting, but a gray cat stretching its neck, sniffing at the air. We waited for what seemed like slow minutes before it finally crept inch by inch toward the meat.

  Spike’s fingers tightened on the string, her face and eyes firmly set in full concentration. The cat was now almost upon the chunks of chicken, its neck stretched as far as possible from the rest of its body. I’m not sure what caused it to look in our direction, but the wary gaze of the green eyes caught sight of us. The cat froze. After a long minute it sniffed at the meat again before it made up its mind to go for it. As soon as it was crouched over the chicken pieces, Spike pulled the string. The box slammed down. Silence followed, then one plaintive meow. We jumped up, excited to have our first catch.

  “Okay, you lift the box,” Spike ordered, “and I’ll grab the cat and put it in the cage.”

  “Ready?” I asked.

  Spike hovered over the box.

  “Go!” she said.

  As I lifted the box, her hand shot down, grabbing the cat by the scruff of its neck. The creature fairly exploded into a bristle of gray fur that stood erect all over its body, claws ejected from the padded feet, lips receded so far off the teeth that the cat looked like a face of fangs with popping eyes. It made loud hissing noises and tried to flip itself to get at Spike’s face, but she managed to keep the writhing ball of fury at arms’ length and shoved it in the cage.

  I reached over and shut the door.

  The cat flung itself against the bars, hissing and yowling. After a minute it went into shock, huddled at the center of the cage, panting out its fright.

  Assured that the cat had spent itself, I carefully latched the door and threw a blanket over the cage so we could transport it without anyone seeing what we had. A few days later we caught the tabby and named him Tiger.

  We kept the two cats in cages for a few weeks, their waste collected and emptied from bottom sliding trays while they watched us in stiff wide-eyed distrust. Gradually they became tame enough to sniff our fingers without recoiling when we opened their cages’ doors to deposit food and water.

  One day Bear decided we should leave the cage doors open, allowing the cats the option to explore. This turned out to be a slow process that required much sniffing and inspection of the open doorway. Little by little, they came out and explored the encampment. Any sudden movement from one of the hens or duck sent them darting back into the safety of their little jails.

  Eventually the cats allowed us to pet them while they lay in a flattened position. Another few weeks and they were scampering about playfully, using the trees to sharpen their claws and following us when we took the fowl for a walk. After a few more weeks they were tame enough to sit in our laps and purr.

  With four of us running our little zoo there was always someone there to take care of things. Our biggest concern was having enough cat food on hand. We never exactly knew when the next trip to the supermarket would happen, and when the food ran low we had to ration servings for every other day, reasoning that the cats could catch rats and mice as they had when they’d looked after themselves.

  Bear decided to ask her mom, who didn’t live in the commune and for some reason was allowed to visit on a regular basis, to buy cat food for us. I had accompanied Bear a few times on these parental visits. Her mother, who reminded me of Chrissy Hinds from The Pretenders, usually spent the first ten minutes or so of their time together pinning Bear against her car or a wall while she examined her face and squeezed at all her blackheads and whiteheads. The next time her mother came to visit, she brought two medium-sized bags of cat food concealed in a black rubbish bag.

  I spent every spare moment at our zoo. In our secret spot there was no radio blasting games of people screaming at one another or capricious adults who could change the course of a child’s day or week on a whim. There was only nature and the animals, and I sat easily for an hour or two at a stretch just watching them. The other girls felt the same way. We started to make plans to set up tents so we could sleep at the zoo on some weekends and to acquire a camping stove and canned food for our meals. The possibilities seemed limitless.

  Spike caught another cat, a silver-colored kitten with a white underbelly and large blue eyes. We couldn’t wait to tame her so we all could begin holding and petting her. We called her Misty.

  We had created our own little world and we managed to keep it secret. One afternoon I lay stretched out on the grassy embankment in the noonday sun next to Bear. Sergeant Deedle fluffed his feathers in the warm rays. The chickens pecked at the ground. Tiger raced halfway up a sapling.

  “It’s going to rain when Tiger dies,” Bear said.

  “What?” I turned to look at her.

  She gazed toward the animals, but seemed as if she were looking through the scene.

  “When Tiger dies, it’s going to rain,” she said.

  I picked at some grass and tried to mentally brush off her comment. Why did she have to ruin the mood? Say something so morbid? What was Bear talking about anyway? I tried to focus on the animals, but couldn’t. I turned on my belly, worry prickling its way through my thoughts.

  “Why did you say that?” I asked.

  Bear looked at me, her green eyes glazed. “Because it’s true.”

  Our private world began to unravel when we added another club member and then two more turned up. Soon a small group of kids was privy to what we had built and wanted to participate. It all came crashing down when one of the boys, Donny, impressed with Spike’s cat-catching skills, tried to catch a feral cat himself and the animal ripped apart his hand with its teeth. By then, some of the adults had gotten wind of our zoo, but were turning a blind eye. That all chang
ed when Donny had to go to the doctor for stitches. It came out in the games that we were catching cats and keeping them as pets and that not only had Donny tried unsuccessfully to catch a cat, but a few of the other boys had done so as well.

  Someone could get seriously hurt; wild animals sometimes carried rabies, we were told.

  Immediate action had to be taken.

  “Kill the cats, all of them,” one of the demonstrators ordered.

  Again this job fell to Buddy and a few of the other young men.

  Mayhem broke out among us children as we begged and cried for our cats’ lives to be spared. Some of us appealed to logic, asking about Orangie, a cat that had hung around the dorms for years and never bothered anyone.

  The demonstrators herded us into our bunkhouses and demanded that we stay inside. One of the newer club members had been bringing Misty around our dorms, and the kitten now sat on our back porch by the double glass doors, mewing plaintively.

  I reached for the door handle as the first shots rang out, resulting in an uproar of sobbing and screaming from the children. One of the demonstrators grabbed my hand, pulling me away from the door. I ran to my room and threw myself on my bed, covering my head with my pillow to block out the sounds of the distant shots.

  “Please let them get away!” I prayed out loud. “Don’t cry, don’t cry,” I scolded myself and bit down on my fingers to distract my thoughts.

  More shots.

  It seemed to go on indefinitely.

  The cats will be scared; they’ll hide, I reasoned to myself.

  Two hours later quiet returned, and we were given the all-clear. Children ran out of the dorms, dispersing every which way, seeking to know which animals had died and which had been spared.