“Did you see that simper on her face?” I whispered.
“Hold her up,” Max instructed. He was combing our Japanese Bobtail. She had a remarkably thick coat, even though she was a shorthaired cat. Her hair lay close against her body, but sometimes her britches tangled and she didn’t like the comb running through them.
“It’s okay honey,” I told her. “Daddy Two will be finished soon.”
“It’s Daddy One,” Max corrected me with a grin.
“No. You’re number Two. You’re the big, dark, solid one.”
“That’s gross.”
But he smiled. He was a good-humored sort.
Jokes like this made it easier to cope with the loss of Rusty Halo, a ruddy Somali who had been kidnapped in a nasty co-ownership dispute. We had adopted him as a kitten, thoroughly charmed by his back flips and other antics, and his sweet face. He was our first Somali and our first show cat. Our dog Reva, an ancient German shepherd, had raised Rusty as her own, even nursing him as if he were the puppy she’d never had. Rusty developed the most peculiar habit of sucking on the tips of her ears. She would lie there with her ears straight out to the side, while he nursed and purred and kneaded into the thick fur around her cheeks. Max and I thought he would outgrow it, but at a stretchy eight months of age, he was still doing it, and Reva still allowed it. The two of them were inseparable. They slept together and would even eat chicken from the same bowl. We were a family verging on euphoria.
Roxanne had proceeded to ignore Rusty until he turned eight months old and began wowing the judges in championship classes. After that, she started wanting to handle him herself and taking him home to groom and breed him. Then one weekend she just stopped bringing him to shows.
At first we couldn’t believe it. Then after the third show, and no Rusty, it began to dawn on us that we might never see him again.
Things got ugly fast. Max had put his fist through the wall of our hotel room that night. I couldn’t eat, and I started smoking again. I dropped fourteen pounds that first month. Max lost his job driving cabs due to his sleepless days. He couldn’t handle the hours anymore. We contacted the police, and the show committees, and the directors at CLAW, but everyone said the same thing: Because Roxanne was his legal co-owner, she had the right to keep him.
We filed a lawsuit against her in small claims, but she bumped it into civil court, full well knowing that we couldn’t afford that. We were barely getting by on my paltry schoolteacher’s income. We were forced to drop the suit. Roxanne Moore had effectively ruined our lives, at least temporarily, and we couldn’t do a thing about it.
We would rather Rusty had died. Not knowing what she had done with him was torturous.
Coming back to the shows was Max’s idea. We thought eventually, Roxanne’s greed would overcome her and she would either bring Rusty out again, or someone in the cat fancy would hear of what had happened to him.
Obviously, if we were going to continue showing, we needed a cat. Instead of a Somali, we went with the Bobtail, a darling white female with black patches. She had one blue eye, and one gold, and when she was little she garnered lots of attention from passersby. Reva was so grateful for this new baby, immediately adopting her. The kitten, after an initial panicked hissing phase, quickly adapted to the constant grooming and mothering by the big dog, and nestled in with her at naptime, much as Rusty had.
The kitten’s short hair was much easier to groom than Rusty’s had been, so there wasn’t much to preparing for a show. We read up on the breed standard and thought we understood what the judges would be looking for. Even from the beginning, our Bobtail kitten was very distinctly Japanese. She had high cheekbones, slanted eyes, and a wonderful pom-pom tail. Her hind legs were longer than the front ones, but they angled so much that her back remained straight. She was very lean, trim and agile. She was like a work of art; a haiku or an ink painting. Max and I were both completely smitten with her.
We hadn’t come up for a name for her yet. “How about Geisha?” Max had suggested. Apparently it was the only Japanese thing he was familiar with.
“No, too slutty. Besides I don’t like the way it sounds like you’re spitting. Or your tongue is too thick, like you’ve just had a root canal or periodontal work.”
We had searched online for Japanese words but nothing seemed to fit the bill. We were calling her pet names, like Dolly and Sweetie and Sugar. She didn’t mind. She answered to anything.
That first Saturday morning, when Roxanne saw us in the show hall with the new kitten, she marched over to us in a display of rage I will never forget.
“I thought you two were gone for good,” she hissed.
Instinctively, I held the new kitten close and turned away from her. But Max, who had been sitting in a chair browsing through the job ads, threw down his paper and jumped up to face her. She was taller than he, but he stood to his full height and snapped back. “It’s a free country, in case you haven’t noticed! We have every right to be here!”
“Fine! Have your fun. Knock yourselves out. But you boys keep your mouth shut about me, or I will see you in court!”
“Where is Rusty?”
“Rusty is my cat as much as he is yours!”
“Where is Rusty?”
“That’s really none of your business!”
“Where is Rusty?”
“Whatever I have done, I did legally. And I see you’ve already replaced him anyway! With a bobtail, of all things!” Her lip curled up on one side in a contemptuous sneer.
“She’s not a replacement. You know nothing could replace him.”
“Oh yeah, your hearts are so broken over him!”
“Get out of here!” Max snarled.
“Oh, grow up, Max!” she shot back. “And I’m warning you. Don’t you mention my name to anyone here. Don‘t talk about me. Don’t look at me. Don’t even think of me!”
“You’re a kidnapper and a thief!” Max pointed a finger at her for emphasis.
She slapped his hand away. “If I hear that out of anyone else’s mouth, you will be getting a call from my lawyer!”
Max turned to me, holding up the offended hand. “Did you see that? I believe she just assaulted me.”
“Tell that to someone! I dare you! I’ll have you in court for slander so fast your head will spin!”
She turned and hustled back to her cage. I turned to Max. “I’ve got a name for her!”
“Oh, I can think of a few things to call her,” Max said.
“No, not Roxanne. The kitten.”
He turned to me, shaky, upset. He was even breathing hard. But his face softened when he looked at the kitten, still cradled in my arms. “What is it?”
“SoSuMe.”
There was a pause for two beats as he processed it, and then he burst out laughing.
SuMe, as we called her, was a joy, but she wasn’t Rusty. Rusty Halo had been the ultimate show cat, and SuMe was a little flighty. Max thought it was her gender. I thought it was just her nature. She had had the same upbringing as Rusty, having been exposed to many shows at an early age. I thought that’s probably how it was with show cats – you can do everything right, but some just have it and some don’t. SuMe was still getting by though. She was darling with the black spotted coat, the odd eyes and the short quirky tail. She had earned her championship ribbons and was now on her way to a Grand Champion title, having started off with a decent sixty points in her first show. Only one hundred forty left to go. Now she was poised on the grooming cart, batting at the feathered stick Max was holding.
I turned to him. “Did you look at the show catalog?”
He nodded. He knew what I was talking about.
“She’s over there.” I pointed across the hall. I could see the girl taking the Somali out of its cage. She was smiling, hugging the cat. “Oh God, it makes me sick!”
“Who is that girl?” said Max.
“I don’t know.” Holding SuMe under one arm, I flipped through the catalog. “It says here he
r name is Cecelia. Cecilia Fox. It’s another one of Roxanne’s co-ownerships! And get this! The cat, named Kenya Strut, is a son of our Rusty Halo! Poetic, isn’t it?”
“Kenya Strut? That was one of the names you came up with.”
“Yes, I know. Rattling off clever names to Roxanne. Remind me next time to keep my mouth shut, just like she said. Oh, look how she loves him!”
Max followed my gaze and we watched quietly as poor Cecelia hugged and kissed the helpless and happy Kenya Strut. Both of us were silent for a while, both picturing someone else going through the grief and despair that we had been through a year ago.
Finally, Max spoke. “We should do something.”
Chapter Five
Andrew Gilbert
Thursday Afternoon
“Where did you get that pen?” Dennis asked. He was standing next to Hotsy’s cage, eating a corn dog.
“From the Mouth Breather.” I didn’t tell him that I had seen the end of it peeping out of her backpack, and hadn’t been able to resist lifting it.
“Let me see that.” He took it and held it up, examining the image on it. “Is that Kenya?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“I’d like to know where she had that done. I’d like to do one of Hotsy to hand out to potential kitten buyers.”
“I can ask her.”
“Yes, do that. Hey, by the way, I noticed Cecilia benched right next to you. How are you two getting along?”
“Oh, she’s all right. Kind of a freak, but she has a rather twisted sense of humor that I like.”
“She needs a major makeover. She has a nice complexion, but that hair! Ugh.”
“Yeah, and she needs to learn to keep her mouth shut,” I said.
“I thought she was quiet.”
“No, I mean literally. The Mouth Breathing thing. She watches everything my aunt does, and just sits there with it hanging open.”
“It’s so obvious that she’s jealous. Roxanne has all the glamour that she will never have.”
I looked at him. “You think Roxanne is glamorous?”
He squirmed a little. “Well, in her own way. She’s flashy, you know?”
I felt my face beginning to warm and tingle. “No, I don’t know. I think she’s vulgar.”
Dennis laughed, showing his gleaming, perfect teeth in his tanned Malibu Ken face. “Now you sound jealous.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
But when he looked at me, smiling, I caught my breath. Dennis was a brown-eyed Brad Pitt. He was a cat show photographer whose work was mediocre, but he had no shortage of clients. Women just melted over him. I often wondered what he was doing with a skinny guy like me. He was a Taurus though, beautiful himself, attracted to beauty but not obsessed with it.
“Are you hungry?” He leaned against the top of Hotsy’s cage, nibbling the corn dog.
“Ugh. The show hall food is so disgusting. I don’t know how you can eat it.”
“I wouldn’t try the pizza. The crust is all curled up and the pepperoni is shriveled. But these corn dogs are great. Eating is fun! You oughta try it sometime.”
“Funny.”
“Anyway. All kidding aside. I am a little concerned about this habit of yours.”
“What habit?”
“The stealing. I know you swiped that pen.”
“Huh?”
“I read somewhere that the condition is sometimes treated with Prozac.”
I stood up and turned away from him. “Aside from my dry winter skin, I don’t have a condition. And I don’t need drugs.”
Dennis reached under the cage and found the plastic bag we used for trash. He tossed the stick from his corn dog in there. “I’m not saying you do. I’m only suggesting – “
“Let’s just drop it, okay?”
He shrugged. “Okay.” He strolled back toward his photography booth.
I hesitated, then followed him. The booth consisted of a set of midnight blue curtains hung on a rack, which separated the space inside from the rest of the show hall. Several metal easels held large photos of cats; some he had taken and some just posters he had glued onto a cardboard backing. A table outside the booth held photo albums and his appointment book.
Dennis lifted the curtain and ducked inside the booth. I followed.
Even when they were veterans of the showing world, cats being photographed could easily be spooked. It was important to try to keep the surroundings as calm and still as possible. Inside the booth was a table covered with black fabric, and behind it were piled rolls of fabric which Dennis used as colored backdrops. They were all different colors and textures; lilac and canvas and cotton candy. I had selected colors to compliment the different shades of cats – textured mint green to match the eyes of the smooth Havana Brown, silky sky blue for the shaded Silver Persian. I had made a chart up for Dennis, from a color wheel I had found in an art supply store. I sat up until 3 am one morning writing a list of suggested colors for the various breeds. I suggested textured backgrounds for the shorthaired breeds, smooth backgrounds for the long coats. I had become immersed in the concepts of contrast and lighting and the artistic side of it all.
Naturally, the cat owners always had their own opinions, usually wrong. They picked the most garish things imaginable. I cringed when one woman insisted on photographing her pure black Exotic Shorthair against a stop-light red background. Why Dennis even had this red fabric, I couldn’t understand. It was vulgar. Black cats were so difficult to photograph anyway! Special lighting had to be used, and the cat’s features often disappeared, leaving a most vexing silhouette effect. I tried to suggest something other than the red, like a smooth tan or pearl grey.
But the lady wouldn’t have it. She just kept looking at Dennis, completely ignoring me. In his suave way, Dennis gave her what she wanted. He didn’t care.
So I butted out. But I was sure to look at the proofs when they came back, and I had been correct. The effect was blinding.
Near his bag of camera equipment, Dennis kept a basket of cat toys; feathers and furry mice rigged up on long fishing lines, so that he could hold the toy while operating the camera at the same time, at some distance from the cat. The owner sat on a chair near the table and tried to keep the cat from jumping off.
I had searched antique stores and yard sales for doll furniture, and had acquired an assortment of tasteful décor that Dennis used as props in his photos. An old mirror in a curving brass frame. A velvet daybed. A beautiful wicker basket. I was always trying to come up with attractive features and ideas to make his portraits better, although it probably didn’t matter.
Dennis sat in a chair and dug through a large bag of camera equipment. He pulled out a box of film and peeled it open.
“Digital is the wave of the future, but nothing will ever replace 35 millimeter,” he said.
I was surprised and charmed that Dennis stuck to the old fashioned photography methods. I didn’t comment that his photos came out blurry due to his insistence on manual focus combined with a quick-moving cat.
Dennis was not, however, entirely opposed to modern technology. He and I had met on FriendsFirst, an internet dating site. His profile contained merely his photo and a question mark. Judging from his looks, I’d guess that was all he needed. But he had written me first, saying he was intrigued by my catch phrase, “We can have it all!”
“Hi,” his first contact had said. “Cappuccino?”
“When and where?” I’d shot back.
That was all it took. He stepped into Starbuck’s one brisk November afternoon, in his Calvin Kleins and his dark Ralph Lauren jacket. At least, it could have passed for a Ralph Lauren at the moment. I’ll never forget how he looked, pausing in the doorway with the sun coming in behind him, framing him in an arc of gold, giving each stray hair an edge of brightness.
Now he sat examining his camera, whisking dust off the lens with a soft brush, blowing softly on it. He pretended to be unaware of his beauty, but was completely graceful in a met
hodical way that told me he knew. Oh, he knew.
“The Big Wigs were asking for you earlier,” I said.
He paused. “The Big Wigs?”
“Yeah, you know, the nasty big-haired mother and daughter team with the Persians. Ugh.” I shuddered. “They scare me. Anyway, they want their cat’s picture done.”
“Did you have them write it down?”
“Yes, they are on your schedule there.”
“Good boy!”
I felt a flush, a little humiliation, pass over me. “Please, Dennis. I’m not a dog!”
He threw up his hands. “Sorry!”
He started away again. I followed. “Anyway, they want me to come fetch them when you have time to do the shoot. Wait a minute – Did I just contradict myself?”
“Huh?” He was sifting through receipts.
“Did I not just tell you I am not a dog, and then in the next breath, offer to fetch something? God, maybe I do have a condition!”
“Oh. Yeah. Who is next on the schedule?”
He could be vacant at times, but he was so easy on the eyes I didn’t mind. He bent to look at the book. “Oh. Robards’ Persian. It says right here. Okay. What color is the cat?”
“She’s white, I believe. But they said they want a blue backdrop. They have this whole setup they want to do with a big poster of the Alps in the background. They’re truly whacked.”
“Well, whatever makes them happy.”
“I’ll go tell them you are ready. Just don’t get too close.” I leaned in to him and whispered, “They have a condition too. It’s called B.O.”
Chapter Six
Ginny Robards
Lost In Time
My daughter Liesl and I had been showing cats for seventeen years. We had started two cat clubs in the area and left both of them. They just hadn’t worked out. Egos took over and people didn’t want to do the work. There were only one or two useful people in every club.
Most people don’t know how much work goes into organizing a cat show. A club has to apply to be sanctioned by CLAW; otherwise no one of consequence will come. Funding is a big issue. Judges are paid for their work, and if they come any distance there are travel expenses and hotel stays. An adequate building had to be found with enough floor space to house a significant number of cats, hopefully a space that was well ventilated but not drafty. The show committee supplies litter – if one is lucky we could find a company to donate food samples and litter. Cages have to be supplied and usually they come with a service to set them up and tear them down. Then there are the judging rings, with portable lights and table coverings and platforms for the cats. Cat toys and disinfectant for each must be available. The rosettes were a huge expense. The more elaborate they were, the more they cost, of course. Each ring had at least thirty rosettes, not to mention breed ribbons – best of breed, second best of breed, best of color, and so on. A club tried to provide gratuities – little perks for each judge. There were muffins, drinks, maybe a house plant (always the type non-toxic to cats, of course!) or some type of gift for the judge to take home as thanks.
Nancy J. Bailey - Furry Murder 01 - My Best Cat Page 3
