During this season of the long rains.
—WELDON KEES | 1948 |
BLUEBELL REGAINED
* * *
BRENDAN GILL
If, in the past, we’ve seemed partial to reports of the various kinds of misadventures that befall the human inhabitants of this city (what happens to a man who finds himself locked in an office building late at night, what happens to a couple marooned on a desert island in the East River), it isn’t because we lack interest in the misadventures of the animal inhabitants. On the contrary, our curiosity about them mounts with every passing year, in proportion to our bewilderment at their managing to survive here at all. Surely, we’ve reasoned, if a city built by human beings for their own occupancy is so often a hazardous place for them to live in, it must be a hundred times more hazardous for dogs, cats, and other pets, who had no voice in designing the city and only dumbly consent to reside in it out of devotion to their masters. Yet how little we learn of the adventures, some with happy endings, others with sad, that the poor creatures go through! Had they the knack of speech, how instructive their reminiscences might be!
The above is by way of introducing what is, considering that it came from human beings, a fairly full account of an adventure that recently befell a cat named Bluebell. A three-year-old white cat who lives in Scarsdale but whose adventure took place on the upper East Side, Bluebell belongs to a girl named Jean, who is four years her senior and received her as a gift from the family butcher. Bluebell loves the cozy security of cars and often takes cat naps in them. Late the other afternoon, having spotted a secure-looking Oldsmobile outside a neighbor’s house, she entered it through an open window and curled up on the back seat for a snooze. The car was owned by the neighbor’s mother, who lives in New York but nearly always spends the day in Scarsdale. Her visit concluded, the lady got into the car and drove back to town, unaware of Bluebell on the back seat. She left the car in front of her apartment building, on East Seventy-ninth Street, between Lexington and Third. A garage attendant picked up the car that evening, and another attendant brought it around the next morning, in time for the day’s run to Scarsdale. As the lady got into the car, she noticed Bluebell on the back seat, awake this time and hungry. Assuming that Bluebell lived in the vicinity and had hopped into the car a few moments before, the lady shooshed her out onto the sidewalk. Bluebell, who had never thought of New York as a nice place to visit, much less live in, reluctantly gave in to being shooshed.
Meanwhile, Jean was desolate. She had first missed Bluebell about seven the previous evening, when the cat failed to show up for her evening meal. After a hasty search of the neighborhood, Jean had gone home, had drawn a picture of Bluebell, to show to strangers, and, accompanied by her mother, had undertaken a second, and more thorough, search. No Bluebell. The next afternoon, Bluebell still having failed to show up, Jean drew a better likeness of her and, with her mother, made a third desperate search. Again no Bluebell. Early the morning after that, the lady in New York telephoned; she had just heard from her daughter that the little girl next door had lost a white cat, and was it possible that …? Jean and her mother thought it was. Armed with the two dishes from which Bluebell was accustomed to eat and drink, they drove straight to Seventy-ninth Street. All they had to go on was that a certain cat had been shooshed out of a certain car on a certain block at a certain hour the day before. Gallantly, they set off along Seventy-ninth Street, Jean showing her drawing of Bluebell to apartment-house doormen, delivery boys, and the like, and her mother rattling Bluebell’s two dishes—a sound that had always brought her racing. They came on a doorman across the street who remembered seeing the white cat shooshed out of the car. To the best of his recollection, the cat had headed east, so Jean and her mother headed east, too. In the very next block, they met a doorman who had made friends the day before with a cat that looked like Jean’s drawing of Bluebell. He had given the cat a saucer of milk at lunchtime and, when he went off duty at four, had handed her over to a friend of his who ran a fruit-and-vegetable store on the corner of Eighty-first Street and York Avenue and who loved cats.
Jean and her mother hurried to the fruit store. The proprietor said yes, he’d been given the cat by his friend the doorman—a nice cat, just like Jean’s picture—and had passed her along to a lady customer. He didn’t know the lady’s name, but he was pretty sure of where she lived. He marched Jean and her mother up and down Eighty-first Street between First Avenue and York Avenue, a block that consists mostly of old brownstone cold-water flats. At an upper window of one of the brownstones, he recognized the face of a lady who, he told Jean, was a friend of the lady he had given the cat to. He shouted up to the lady to ask her where her friend lived, and the lady pointed to the house next door. Entering the house next door, Jean and her mother learned that a new cat was in residence on the fourth floor. Up they dashed to the fourth floor, knocked on a door, and, when the door was opened, beheld, in a cardboard box by a kerosene stove, the cynosure of five entranced children, Bluebell. “She’s just eaten a mouse!” the children cried. Bluebell, who, as far as Jean and her mother knew, had never eaten anything less dainty than chopped kidneys in her life, was looking extremely pleased with herself. Jean’s mother explained the situation to the mother of the five children and gave the children as much change as she could find in her purse to help assuage the pain of their loss. Then Jean bent down and gathered up Bluebell. From the moment she and her mother started looking for a lost cat in the midst of the biggest city on earth until the moment they found her, exactly fifty-eight minutes had elapsed.
| 1954 |
(illustration credit col20.2)
KIKIMORA
Fiction
* * *
JEAN RHYS
The bell rang. When Elsa opened the door, a small, fair, plump young man advanced, bowed, and said, “Baron Mumtael.”
“Oh yes, please come in,” said Elsa. She was aware that her smile was shy, her manner lacking in poise, for she had found his quick downward and upward glance intimidating. She led the way and asked him to sit down.
“What a very elegant dinner suit you are wearing,” said Baron Mumtael mockingly.
“Yes, isn’t it? … Oh, I don’t think it is really,” said Elsa distractedly. “I hate myself in suits,” she went on, plunging deep into the scorn of his pale blue eyes.
“The large armchair is of course your husband’s and the smaller one yours,” said the Baron, quirking his mouth upward. “What a typical interior! Where shall I sit?”
“Sit wherever you like,” said Elsa. “The interior is all yours. Choose your favorite bit.” But his cold glance quelled her, and she added, twittering, “Will you … Do have a drink.”
Bottles of whiskey, vermouth, and soda water stood on a red lacquered tray. “I’ll have vermouth,” said Baron Mumtael firmly. “No soda, thank you. And you?”
“A whiskey I think,” Elsa said, annoyed that her hands had begun to shake with nervousness.
“How nice is ice on a hot afternoon in London. Are you … Have you lived in America?”
“No. Oh, no.” She gulped her whiskey-and-soda quickly.
“Charming,” said Baron Mumtael, watching her maliciously. “Charming. I’m so glad you’re not an American. I think some American women are a menace, don’t you? The spoilt female is invariably a menace.”
“And what about the spoilt male?”
“Oh the spoilt male can be charming. No spoiling, no charm.”
“That’s what I always say,” said Elsa eagerly. “No spoiling, no charm.”
“No,” said Baron Mumtael. “None. None at all. Will your husband be long, do you think?”
“I think not. I think here he is.”
After Stephen came in, the tension lessened. Baron Mumtael stopped fidgeting and settled down to a serious discussion of the politics of his native land, his love of England, and his joy at having at last become a naturalized Englishman.
Elsa went out of the room to put the finishing touc
hes to the meal. It was good, she thought. He would have to appreciate it. And indeed, the first time he addressed her, after they sat down, he said, “What delicious food. I congratulate you.”
“It all came from various shops in Soho,” Elsa lied.
“Really delicious. And that picture fascinates me. What is it supposed to be?”
“Paradise.”
A naked man was riding into a dark-blue sea. There was a sky to match, palm trees, a whale in one corner, and a butterfly in the other. “Don’t you like it?” she asked.
“Well,” said Baron Mumtael, “I think it’s colorful. It was painted by a woman, I feel sure.”
“No, it was painted by a man,” said Elsa. “He said he put in the whale and the butterfly because everything has its place in Paradise.”
“Really,” said Baron Mumtael. “I shouldn’t have thought so. One can only hope not. Please tell me which shop in Soho supplied the guinea fowl and really delicious sautéed potatoes.”
“I’ve forgotten,” said Elsa vaguely. “Somewhere around Wardour Street or Greek Street. I’m so bad at remembering where places are. Of course you have to fry the potatoes up with onions and then you get something like pommes lyonnaises.”
“The fact that you cats were considered sacred in ancient Egypt cuts no ice with me.” (illustration credit 22.2)
But Baron Mumtael had already turned away and was continuing his conversation with Stephen about the next war. He gave it three months. (It was 1938 and he wasn’t far wrong.)
The black cat, Kikimora, who had been sitting quietly in the corner of the room, sprang onto his lap. The Baron looked surprised, stroked the animal cautiously, then sprang up and said, “My God! She’s scratched me, quite badly.” And indeed there was blood on the finger he was holding up.
“I can’t think what’s come over him,” Elsa said. “I’ve never known him do such a thing before. He’s so staid as a rule. You naughty, bad cat.” She snatched him up and flung him outside the door. “I’m so very sorry.”
“Elsa spoils that cat,” Stephen said.
“I think,” said Baron Mumtael, “that something ought to be done about my finger. You can’t be too careful about the scratches of a she-cat. If you’d be so kind as to let me have some disinfectant?”
“He’s not a she-cat, he’s a he-cat,” said Elsa.
“Really,” said Baron Mumtael. “Can you let me have some disinfectant? That is, if you have any,” he added.
“I’ve got Lysol and peroxide of hydrogen,” said Elsa belligerently, repeated whiskeys having given her courage. “Which will you have?”
“My dear Elsa …” said Stephen.
She left them and locked herself in the bathroom. When she came back, Baron Mumtael was still holding his finger up, talking politics.
“I haven’t forgotten the cotton wool,” she said.
At last the finger was disinfected and a spotless white handkerchief wrapped round it. “One can’t be too careful with a she-cat,” Baron Mumtael kept repeating. And Elsa, breathing deeply, would always answer, “He’s not a she-cat, he’s a he-cat.”
“Goodbye,” said Baron Mumtael as he left. “I shall never forget your charming evening’s entertainment. Or your so very elegant dinner suit. It’s been quite an experience. All so typical.”
As soon as he was out of the door Elsa said, “What a horrible man!”
“I didn’t think so,” Stephen said. “I thought he was rather a nice chap. It’s a relief to meet somebody who doesn’t abuse the English.”
“Abuse the English?” said Elsa. “He’d never abuse the English. It must be comforting to be able to take out naturalization papers when you find your spiritual home.”
“You hardly shone,” Stephen said.
“Of course I shone. He brought out all my sparkle. He was so nice, wasn’t he?”
“I didn’t notice that he wasn’t nice,” said Stephen.
“No. You wouldn’t,” Elsa muttered.
She went into the kitchen, caught up the cat and began to kiss it. “My darling cat. My darling black velvet cat with the sharp claws. My angel, my little gamecock.…”
Kikimora purred and even licked a tear off her face with his rough tongue. But when he struggled and she put him down he yawned elaborately and walked away.
Elsa went to the bedroom, took off the suit she had been wearing, and with the help of a pair of scissors began to tear it up. Stephen heard the rending noise and called out, “What on earth are you doing?”
“I’m destroying my feminine charm,” Elsa said. “I thought I’d make a nice quick clean job of it.”
| 1976 |
OLD WOMAN
Fiction
* * *
IVY LITVINOV
To most people the Miss Gullivers seemed the same age. One of them was known to be older than the other, but which only the insurance man knew. They weren’t so very old—not seventy or eighty or anything like that. Sixty something, you know, going on for seventy. Old ladies. And they weren’t so very much alike, really. One had light-blue eyes and prominent teeth and the other wore spectacles and had a mole on her chin, but people bestowed Miss Jessica’s teeth on Miss Madge or Miss Madge’s mole on Miss Jessica in the most callous manner and still could not remember which was which. Nobody ever looked at them longer than it took to register: “The Miss Gullivers,” or if either of them was met separately: “I saw one of the Miss Gullivers in the post office this morning.” Even a distant relative who lived in Huddersfield did not know one from the other, and when, on one of her infrequent visits to London, she knocked at the door of her cousins’ house was liable to say indiscriminately, whichever opened to her knock, “You get more and more like Jessica every day.”
It had not always been like this with the Miss Gullivers. They had been Jessie and Maddie to their father and mother, and nobody ever forgot that Jessie was the elder. All through their childhood Jessie was the clever one and Maddie the good one, the sunny-natured. When they went on errands and later to day school, it was always Jessie who chose the side streets to be taken and Maddie who had to follow, with rage in her heart, and when it was Maddie who asked, “May we paint?” or “May we play with plasticine?” the choice was always Jessie’s. It was Jessie who chose the books at the library, and Maddie had to read Little Women and Eric or Little by Little when what she really would have liked was Black Beauty.
There was even an air of ambiguity about the Miss Gullivers’ cat, for though ten years old, Nelson had the spurious youthfulness that dependence on others and constant petting sometimes give to the aged. And why should a rich tab of matronly appearance be called Nelson and yet be invariably referred to as “she”? Nelson had come into the world on Trafalgar Day in a set of five kittens, all reported by the milkman to be boys and distributed among friends and acquaintances on that understanding. When, almost simultaneously, they produced five kittens apiece, there was consternation in five London households. Nelson had two families in little over a year and the Miss Gullivers felt they could not face a lifetime of finding homes for kittens every few months. But the prospect of periodical massacres of the innocents appalled their cat-compassionate hearts, and the milkman, called in for consultation, advised them to send Nelson to the vet. After much heartburning this was done, half a crown extra being paid for an anesthetic, and Nelson came back insured against kittens. Till then she had been as playful as a kitten herself, but she soon fell into staid dozing ways, scarcely looking up when a ping-pong ball was bounced under her nose and turning disdainfully from her clockwork mouse. And yet her mistresses had their work cut out to keep her away from the goldfish bowl, and she would sit for hours on the windowsill gazing at the sparrows flitting in the branches of the old sycamore tree in the yard, untucking her folded paws now and again and fidgeting uneasily. A curved breast feather poised on the carpet, a speck of slowly wavering fluff in the air aroused sleeping reflexes, and Miss Jessica and Miss Madge would cling to one another when their ido
l leaped from her statuesque repose to lunge at the fluff in midair, or pounce stiff-legged on the rocking feather. But her predatory instincts were moribund; she never again brought a dead bird or a quivering mass of frog to lay at the feet of her mistresses.
Nelson soon lost the delicious greed her slaves had ministered to with such joyous ardor. She never seemed to have an appetite, and the infrequent visitor who happened in while Nelson was being coaxed to eat was admitted by Miss Jessica (or was it Miss Madge?) with a finger held to her parted lips, while Miss Madge (if it was not Miss Jessica) might be discovered with her knitting held rigid on her knees. Looking round, the visitor saw nothing but a cat lapping cream from the far side of a saucer on the floor. Only when it turned away, languidly licking its chops, and sprang powerfully up to the top of the sofa, did Miss Jessica (or perhaps Miss Madge) move a chair for the visitor, explaining with a deprecatory smile that the least thing put Nelson off her feed.
“Dolly—Gregory Strong, author of ‘A World History of Cats.’ Need I say more?” (illustration credit 23.2)
The fourth member of this not so jocund company was Silver, the minnow. The leaden-stepping hours paid out in seconds by the grandfather clock in the drawing room ground the wrinkles ever deeper into the Miss Gullivers’ faces and even seemed to weigh upon Nelson’s more resilient frame. But what has the heavy plummet’s pace to do with a two-inch minnow darting a million million times from its tiny thicket of waterweeds, plunging back again just when it seemed it must stub its blunt nose against the side of the bowl? Silver’s eye remained firmly protuberant, no crow’s-feet marred the surface of its shining armor, its taut contours were immune to the flabbiness of age. Visitors sometimes expressed surprise that the Miss Gullivers did not keep a budgerigar. A bird would be no less suited than a fish to coexistence with a cat, and would surely be a more rewarding pet. But Silver had been “sent” to them, left by an unknown hand in a jam jar on the back doorstep, and they had not had the heart to send him back. Besides, where was there to send him? So they brought the jar in and set it on the scullery floor. Nelson was on the spot immediately, though, just before, they had searched the house for her in vain. Fascinated, they watched her dip her paw into the jar, withdraw it sharply, and shake off a few chill drops. She licked perfunctorily at the pads under her claws, never removing her arch, ferocious gaze from the tiny silver boomerang in the jar. The second time the paw went deeper into the water and came out loaded, but the moment the harsh air entered the minnow’s gill chambers it shot upward and dropped like a stone back into the jar. Nelson made another tentative dab at the surface of the water, but a tiny jet splashing up and falling in a drop on her nose seemed to discourage her. Annoyed and puzzled (Miss Jessica and Miss Madge knew and could interpret all Nelson’s expressions), she drew her paw toward her for a short, sharp lick, set it down daintily, and minced out of the scullery. Miss Jessica made the revolting suggestion that the minnow should be boiled for Nelson’s tea, but Miss Madge knew she didn’t mean it. She had said it just to tease her sister. Miss Madge understood this from the way Miss Jessica picked up the jar and shooed Nelson (who had come back again and was looking on with blazing eyes) into the back yard.
The Big New Yorker Book of Cats Page 39
