by Jessie Haas
Nearing Gloria, James saw as freshly as the first time her round bright face, so full of strength and cheer. The camera lifted briefly; she took another picture of him. Then she snapped the case shut and switched the strap to her shoulder. With the camera she put away the something in her manner that said she was at work.
“Tell me,” she said, “all about it!”
“Later,” said James. “When you show me your pictures.”
EXTENDED FAMILY
THE SUMMER FOLLOWING Puttins’ death was long and angry.
My father was always home—the worst thing about a parent who is also a teacher. He golfed. He kept a keen eye on the depth of the lawn and ordered someone to mow whenever it exceeded half an inch. He organized us to help Mum clean the spotless house. He read ugly, depressing books by B. F. Skinner and tried to push them onto me.
That summer I couldn’t bear to disagree in silence. That summer I knew I was right, at least more right than he was, and I couldn’t stand not to tell him so.
That got Greg mad. He cares about keeping the surface smooth, so he can glide beneath and tend his own affairs. But when one of us quarrels with Dad, he gets super-alert to disobedience and disrespect. Greg found himself curtailed.
“Why can’t you just keep your mouth shut?” he kept muttering to me that summer. “Kris, keep your fat mouth shut!”
He sat beside me at meals and kicked me, until I sang out loud and clear, “Greg, why are you kicking me?” Once was always enough.
Aunt Mil was often the subject of the quarrel. I spent too much time with her, she was the source of my cockeyed ideas, she was a sentimental and senile old woman who doted on cats to an unhealthy degree … on and on.
One afternoon I was discussing with Mum—or rather, to Mum, who heard one word in ten—Aunt Mil’s refusal to think about getting a kitten. “She keeps saying she’s too old,” I said, “and she doesn’t want to get started loving something new. But I think it would do her good to have a kitten. She’s dwelling so much on the past right now, she should have a little thing that doesn’t have a past, only a future—”
“What kind of a future?” asked my father, coming out of Beyond Freedom and Dignity in his alert way. “The first thing you’ll do is take the poor creature to be surgically sterilized, thereby depriving it of its main function in life. What kind of a future is that?”
“They don’t care about that,” I said. “They don’t miss what they’ve never had.”
“Ah, Kris! Would you allow that argument if we were discussing, say, slavery?”
“That’s different!”
“Of course it’s different, but the argument is just as specious.”
He was right about that, maybe, but his analogy didn’t fit the case. He’s expert at that sort of arguing; unbeatable if allowed to frame the issue in his own terms.
He went on. “It’s a bit sickening, I find, the way you pet lovers take despotic control of an animal’s life in the name of kindness. Why shouldn’t a cat live a raucous, fertile life and die young? It’s the natural way.”
“Why shouldn’t you and Mum have thirteen kids instead of only three? That’s natural too!” My voice was high and shaky with anger. Dad smiled calmly.
“The difference is that we made the choice ourselves.”
“Animals can’t make that choice, but why should their health be put in jeopardy because of that? Why should they be allowed to overpopulate?” I saw him flinch and knew I’d found my fighting point. “You always talk about those Third World countries and how they should be made to control their birthrate. Isn’t it the same thing?”
It wasn’t the same; I saw that even as I spoke. People can understand the concept of birth control, and do something about it. Animals apparently cannot. I was arguing as he does, from a false analogy. It worked as well for me as it did for him.
He glared at me speechlessly for a few moments. “Young lady,” he said finally, “I suggest you go out and trim the hedge, as I told you yesterday, instead of lazing around in here being disrespectful.”
One for me!
When I came in an hour later for a glass of lemonade, he looked up from his book and said, “It’s called pedomorphy, Kris. All domestic animals are selectively bred never to grow up, so humans can dominate them. Now I know what I’d call that if it were done to people.”
“They grow up!”
“Oh, yes, but they stay cute, don’t they, the dear doggies and kitties! They keep their round skulls and their big eyes, and they love to play. It’s a mother’s dream, isn’t it? ‘Oh, if only they’d stay at this stage,’” he quoted squeakily. Mum, knitting on the couch and watching her soap opera, flushed.
“I don’t see why you should care,” I said. “That book you’re reading says freedom and dignity don’t exist even for humans, so why should you care about animals?”
“I don’t care,” said my father smugly. “It’s a matter of aesthetics. If we must have sappiness and baby talk in this world, I prefer it confined to real babies and not made-up ones.”
One for him.
I couldn’t deny the truth of it. Put the average dog beside the average wolf and the difference is clear. The dog is a foolish adolescent, the wolf a clearheaded, independent adult.
With cats it isn’t so simple. They’re capable of switching on and off, like people. But they aren’t the same as they would be naturally, on their own.
“So what?” said Aunt Mil when I told her about this argument. “You’re not the same as if you’d never met me, are you? And you’re not the same as if you lived in Ohio, or went to boarding school. It doesn’t mean a thing.”
“No?” I didn’t find that totally comforting. I like to think it means something, that I am who I am.
Still, since we live in town, for instance, I’m not horse-crazy, though I go riding whenever I can. I even cultivate friendships with people I might otherwise ignore, if they happen to have horses. This is one way circumstance has formed me.
This afternoon, we were driving to the farm of one of these people, Karen Blake, who isn’t very interesting but does have a couple of Morgans. Unbeknownst to Aunt Mil, she also had a litter of kittens the right age for adopting. As I had it planned, Aunt Mil was to hang around in the company of the kittens while Karen and I rode. By the time we got back, it would be all over. At least one kitten would come home with us.
Karen had the horses tied out front when we arrived. Aunt Mil went to their heads and talked to them. “My father had a team of Morgans,” she told Karen. I remembered them from the photo album: a cheeky-looking pair, with ears always going two ways at once. The girl in the shapeless white dress and tousled hair, always somewhere near, was little Millie—Aunt Mil to be.
It was pleasant to see how she treated the horses—rather brusque, rather bossy. “Yes, I know you’re silly,” she told Star, who was sniffing her face and rolling big brown eyes. “Of course you’re a pig,” she said to Beauty, who poked hopefully at her pocket. Star and Beauty—those names tell you a lot about Karen Blake.
Karen was fussing around in the shed getting brushes. The horses kept an eye on her, and when she passed the grain barrel, Star flung up her head and nickered loudly.
“It’s all right,” Karen called. “Mother’s coming!”
It was the sort of thing I was used to from Karen. Alone, I never would have given it a thought. But I chanced to be looking at Aunt Mil, and I saw an expression of almost physical disgust cross her face. For a second she looked nauseous.
Karen bustled up, chattering. “Poor Star, did you want your Mummy? There, baby, Mummy’s here—”
“Kris,” said Aunt Mil in a faint, throttled voice, “I think I’ll go do some shopping. Pick you up in an hour.” And before I could utter more than a half syllable of protest, she was gone.
I turned back to Karen, still babbling of mummies and babies to the horses, each of whom weighed ten times what she did; fat, frisky, bursting with greed, and entirely self-centere
d. Even as I looked, a beautiful fluffy kitten toddled out from under the shed stairs. They’ll be here when she gets back, I thought. But I no longer felt hopeful, and for once the horseback ride seemed more chore than pleasure.
We returned from our ride to find Aunt Mil waiting in the car. She waved and called, “Take your time, Kris!” Then she went back to her newspaper. Unobserved, the kittens rolled and skirmished in the shed. With their wild ears and wicked, glaring eyes, they looked murderous; crouching, wiggling briefly, and then launching themselves on one another, biting down through the billowing fluff of stomachs, necks, and haunches with their tiny, needle-like teeth. It was an orgy of slaughter, and all wasted. Aunt Mil wouldn’t even look.
As I started to lead Beauty to the pasture the mother cat came padding up the driveway, slow and heavy-bodied, bringing a mouse. She called to the kittens with her mouth full, and they didn’t hear her till she was quite close. Then they all trotted toward her, their thin tails bent so far over their backs that the tips almost touched their ears. It was a funny caricature of the way a confident cat greets you, tail as straight as a flagpole, like a giggle or a big goofy grin instead of a hello. It seemed to express the utmost confidence, as you would expect between mother cat and kittens.
She dropped her mouse, and the kittens sniffed it dubiously, looking at her. Awfully big and hairy, wasn’t it? What are you supposed to do with this?
Mama made no attempt to teach them. She stretched out on the driveway and yawned a wide pink yawn. Tough work!
Aunt Mil drove me back to her place, where I was to mow the lawn and start scraping the back of the house. This work, and the generous wage she pays, are the reasons I’m allowed to spend so much time with Aunt Mil.
Robert stood up to greet us as we got out of the car, stretching his back legs out behind as if they were caught in molasses. His fat tiger-tail nearly touched his shoulder blades, and he looked straight into our faces, his eyes yellow suns of love and trust.
“He thinks you’re his mother,” I said.
Aunt Mil’s hand froze under Robert’s white chin. Still bent over, she looked up at me.
“He and I both know the difference,” she said.
Her eyes held mine. I saw they were a little bloodshot in the corners; old eyes. Angry eyes. She was facing me down the way Dad does sometimes. With Dad the issue is dominance. I never look away, and now, startled, I held Aunt Mil’s gaze until her attention was claimed by Robert. She completed the chin scratch to his satisfaction and straightened up, moving away from me as she said, “This girl Karen doesn’t seem to be a good influence.”
From a parent that would have sent me through the ceiling. From a parent it wouldn’t be unexpected. But Aunt Mil has been in the habit of treating me as a rational being.
Following her into the house, I said, “I didn’t mean you thought it.”
I received no reply, not even a look, and I said no more. My voice had sounded so conciliatory. I felt like a scolded child who seeks an approving word, no matter how irrelevant. So I shut up, went out, and mowed the lawn, then scraped paint for an hour. Inside, I heard Aunt Mil vacuuming and washing dishes. All the time I scraped, I waited for her to come out. She didn’t. Robert came instead, to climb the ladder and sit on the little paint shelf, blinking chummily.
After an hour I put the ladder away and went inside. Gingersnaps were in the oven, but Aunt Mil looked stern and remote. Again I wanted to ingratiate myself. Instead, I told her, “I have to go watch the house. No one’s home tonight.”
“I thought that didn’t matter,” said Aunt Mil, but not quickly or warmly enough.
“I need to go to the library too,” I said. When she didn’t press further, I left.
Other people run to the candy store or shopping mall when hurt and uncertain. I run to the library. Today was Saturday, which meant short hours, and I arrived with only fifteen minutes to spare. I went to my favorite section, and the books I chose were old friends. They were certainties, and they were chosen by weight and shape, the maximum number that fit in the bike basket.
Home, to let myself in with the hidden key—placed where every thief ought to look first, under the rubber mat. Home by myself, to the forbidden luxuries of ice-cream sodas for supper, of lying with my feet on the sacred sofa, and of reading six animal books straight through without paternal comment.
As with most forbidden luxuries, they proved cloying. Ice-cream sodas leave a sensation of tooth decay, the couch becomes uncomfortable, and six animal books mean six sets of assumptions, six different ways of being made to feel uneasy.
I got up and brushed my teeth, thinking of telepathic German shepherds and the blind instinct of beavers building dams, the issue of animal consciousness, the way pets manipulate owners by playing sick …
Oh, dear! Maybe I should become a plain old veterinarian; deal with animals’ bodies and forget about their minds, if any.
I could think of no more forbidden pleasures I felt like engaging in. Under other circumstances I might have biked over to Aunt Mil’s. I wouldn’t have minded a gingersnap and some rational conversation. Now I turned on the television and checked out all the boring channels, turned it off again, and roamed through the empty house, sad and full of wishes.
On the kitchen table lay the spare key. Better conceal it again, so the burglars can find it and not have to smash a window. I snapped on the yard light and stepped outside.
A sound came from near the hedge, and then a listening silence.
I went cold, as if dashed with a bucket of ice water. Nine o’clock in the suburbs, house lights all around—I should jump inside and lock the door; call a neighbor, call the police. Yet I stood rooted with all my senses wide, like a traveler beside a lonely campfire, waiting.
The sound repeated, and my eyes flew to the spot, halfway down the hedge from where I stood. Small white feet, enormous white whiskers—oh! Cat!
I relaxed so quickly that I sat down plunk on the cement steps. The feet vanished out of the circle of light.
“Oh, don’t be afraid! Here, kitty!”
I heard the nice-nice, high-pitched sound of my own voice, as if with my father’s ears. Gag!
We pitch the voice instinctively higher when speaking to babies, and with good reason, science now tells us. The little things actually respond better to baby talk. But why do it with cats? Was there a parallel?
I could see again the two white semicircles of toes.
“Hi, cat,” I said, trying to speak normally. “What’s up? You live around here?” Flat, regular people voice. It sounded dumb, and the cat moved no closer.
“This isn’t an animal house,” I said, going up the scale a little. “Nothing to feed you. No food for kitties!”
I must have glanced away for a second, though I didn’t think so. The cat now sat full in the light, as if she had moved forward without getting to her feet.
She was a trim little half-grown kitten, black with white bib and whiskers. Her white paws were placed primly side by side. Her slanting eyes never left me for an instant, even when her face split wide in a sharp-toothed yawn.
Kitten for Aunt Mil! In a split second I played through the laborious taming, the presentation, the apology and reconciliation, and the growth of the kitten into a cat of fragrant individuality.
“Here, kitty,” I called, and stretched my hand out coaxingly. The kitten vanished out of the light.
Well, just sit and call. She’ll come again. She had moved in synchrony with my advances and retreats, as if bound by a magnetic field. So I sat back on the steps and called sweetly, full of confidence.
The wait stretched long. The circle of light remained empty.
After a time I began to feel deflated, and the cement steps grew hard. I pushed the key under the mat, getting ready to stand up and still looking out at the lawn. Then something made me glance into the shadowed breezeway. Not twelve feet away sat the little cat.
She seemed unlikely to be startled now; settled down, paw
s folded, watching. How long had she been there? I imagined how quickly she must have nipped around the back of the house, running low to the ground in the drip line under the eaves, outwitting me.
We studied each other like a pair of philosophers, each awaiting the other’s pronouncement on Life. The kitten spoke first, lips drawing back just enough to emit a threadlike cry. It didn’t seem to be a plea for anything, just a comment.
“Ridiculous,” I told her. “Cats are just gene machines. They don’t have anything to say.”
She cried again, narrowing her eyes at me in a smug expression.
“You can’t make choices, you know. You run totally by instinct.”
The kitten’s third comment was identical to the first two.
“Okay, suppose I said you’re a higher being and you can communicate telepathically? Hmm?
“I’m waiting.”
Before the kitten’s message could burst full-blown upon my brain, I heard a call out across the backyards. “Thea! Thea!” The kitten’s black ear twitched.
“That’s you, isn’t it? I thought you were a waif.”
“Thea!” called the voice—a hushed, young male voice trying to shout softly, to reach the desired ears and no others. Flick! went the kitten’s ear in slight annoyance.
“Aren’t you going to go?”
The caller had now turned up our street. I could hear the stifled irritation in his voice, and also the anxiety. The kitten glanced out the opening of the hedge for a second, then turned away. She aimed her tiny face at me and began to purr, like an air conditioner coming on.
“Pretty hard-hearted, aren’t you?” But I was hard-hearted myself, and instead of rising and calling out, I waited on the steps. “Thea, dammit!” said the voice, and then a blond head, shining in the streetlight, peered cautiously around the end of the hedge.
“Brrt!” cried the kitten in a tone of glad surprise. She jumped to her feet and ran to him.
I stood, too, happy to get up off the hard cement. “She heard you all the time,” I said.
The boy looked up in surprise. The kitten was rubbing around him ecstatically, rising on her hind legs to push her head into his hand and purring loudly.
