Sex and the Kitty

by Nancy the Cat

  The cat’s owner, an artist himself, had coauthored a series of paintings entitled Cat: Reinvented, in which the cat had, “using his paws as tools, had through the medium of gouache, expressed the fundamental angst of the feline condition.”

  It sounded ludicrous to me, but when I read that the entire collection had been snapped up by Charles Saatchi, I decided I should keep an open mind regarding artistic merit. Who was I to argue with the informed opinion of the art establishment?

  The cat went by the name of believing that a conventional name functioned as a label, which in turn would stifle his creativity. Pretentious, undoubtedly, but I was beginning to realize that this went with the territory where art was concerned.

  I dropped an e-mail at theartistformerlyknownasfluffy@ catpainter.com, expressing my admiration for his work and wondering if he might need a model for his next project.

  As I finished the e-mail, Princess walked into the living room and hopped up onto the sofa.

  “Princess, have you ever been an artist’s model?” I asked her.

  “A what?” she said, looking at me blankly.

  “A model for an artist. You know, having your portrait painted.”

  She ruminated for a few moments, mulling the concept over in her mind.

  “No, I haven’t,” she said. “I don’t think my target demographic is into fine art. Photos, calendars, glamour, yes. Paintings, no. First rule of modeling, Nancy: know your audience.”

  I was taken aback by the astuteness of her reply. Maybe there was more to being a glamour puss than I had given Princess credit for.

  I jumped down from the desk and went into the bedroom to get something to eat. I picked a few morsels of dry food from my bowl, keeping one eye on Oscar. He was on the other side of the room lining up various objects next to his bed: a toy mouse, a tennis ball, a roll of Scotch tape. He was staring at them all intently, taking meticulous care over the positioning of each object.

  “Oscar, have you got OCD?” I asked, swallowing my last mouthful.

  “No, of course I haven’t,” he replied with a scowl. “I’m practicing.”

  “For your next trick?” I said.

  He stopped what he was doing and looked at me.

  “How many times do I have to tell you, I do not do tricks. I am a psychic, not a magician.”

  I was dying to ask him why he needed to practice, if he was psychic, but instead I said, “Well, I can’t wait to see the result.”

  “All in good time,” he murmured.

  I went back into the living room and jumped up onto the desk. I was thrilled to see a reply from in my in-box. It was a brief message, in which he said that he was taking a break from painting at the moment, but that his owner was working on his next cat-themed collection and would be interested in finding a new feline creative partner. He suggested I come to the studio to meet them both.

  “Wow, that’s lucky!” I said out loud, although I could hear from her snuffly snores that Princess was asleep on the sofa.

  I left the e-mail open on the laptop and curled up opposite Princess on the sofa to wait for Helen’s return.

  At about three o’clock I heard Helen’s key in the lock, shortly followed by her voice. She was talking on her mobile phone, and she sounded cross.

  I sighed, wondering if she had any emotional setting other than angry.

  She dropped her handbag inside the front door and kicked off her shoes, then went into the kitchen and put the kettle on. I tried to suppress the nervous flutterings in my stomach. Would Helen be annoyed that I had found myself a job?

  She carried her cup of coffee into the living room and sat down at the desk. She lit a cigarette, inhaled deeply, then turned to her laptop. I held my breath as she looked at the screen, evidently reading my e-mail.

  She looked at me and said sharply, “Nancy, is this yours?” and I smiled and nodded.

  “Artist’s model,” she said, then paused. “Good idea. Could be a lot of money in that, if we can copyright your image. I’ll send this guy an e-mail and sort something out.”

  Was that it? I couldn’t believe that Helen had accepted my suggestion so willingly. Surely the omens were looking good for the letter “M.”

  The following morning, I climbed into Helen’s trunk and we set off for east London. The studio was in a converted warehouse in Hoxton, which from the outside looked unfit for human habitation, but of course the shabby exterior was misleading, and the interior had been fully renovated while maintaining an air of industrial functionality. Helen and I took the trade-style elevator to the top floor and walked out into an open-plan studiocum-living-space.

  ’s owner, the artist, was the first to meet us. He was a somewhat oddly dressed young man, with what looked like four different haircuts on his head and an apparently random selection of clothes on his body, all of which seemed either too small or too large for him. Helen stepped forward to shake his hand, and they began to discuss the terms of our arrangement.

  While they talked, I walked across the studio to a huge floor-to-ceiling window through which sunlight was falling in great shafts. In one of the shafts of light, spread-eagled on a drawing board, was

  “You must be Nancy,” he murmured, hardly moving a muscle as he looked me up and down. I nodded and opened my mouth to return the greeting, before realizing that I wasn’t entirely sure what name I should use.

  “I really love your work,” I stammered.

  I surveyed the various canvases stacked around the room, but in all honesty was unable to tell which had been painted by the cat and which by the owner. I looked over at Helen, who was full of smiles and charm toward the artist. He was blushing slightly and laughing at her jokes. In that moment, I found a new respect for Helen’s professional abilities.

  Helen and the artist started to walk toward us and I noticed as they did so that the artist’s shoes did not match.

  “Let’s have a look at you, then,” he said to me, placing his hand under my chin and turning my face from side to side.

  “Okay, she’ll be fine,” he said to Helen. “She’ll need to move into the studio for a couple of weeks while I work.”

  “Perfect,” Helen said. “I’ll get those contracts in the post.”

  From now on, it seemed, I was to be an artist’s model.

  Once she had gone, the artist walked over to another part of the studio to prepare his materials, or possibly to look at himself in the mirror and rectify the mistakes he had made while getting dressed.

  I was now alone with who was flat on his back on the drawing board, his eyes shut and his paws lolling over the edges. He appeared to have forgotten that I was there.

  “So what does being an artist’s model involve, exactly?” I asked.

  “Oh, don’t worry, you won’t be doing any of the creative work yourself. Leave that to the experts. All you have to do is be yourself, sit still, and try not to get in the way.”

  Realizing that I would not be expected to wade through paint was a great relief.

  I pictured myself immortalized on canvas, like one of Stubbs’s horses or Velázquez’s dogs.

  Over the next two weeks, I spent many hours “being myself ” in the name of art. The first time I modeled I was nervous, of course. The artist had placed a velvet cushion on a plinth next to a small storage heater, and as I had a final wash behind a bamboo screen I felt a few butterflies in my stomach. But like a true pro, I slipped my collar off and emerged from behind the screen without a backward glance. I assumed my position on top of the plinth, where the warmth from the heater quickly made me fall asleep.

  In the breaks between modeling I explored the studio, and I discovered there were some perks to a bohemian lifestyle. There was certainly a lot less shrieking in the studio than in Helen’s flat, and fewer rules regarding where I was allowed to sleep. There were also numerous canvases stacked against each other, which I could explore, and random objects including bicycle wheels hanging from the walls to provide me with exercise. Like
Helen’s flat, there was no access to outside space, but I was impressed by the toilet facilities—a sleek chrome litter tray, designed by Philippe Starck.

  An old-fashioned iron birdcage dangled tantalizingly from the ceiling in one part of the room, and I spent many hours launching myself at it from different angles, desperate to see what was inside. observed my efforts with his usual enigmatic smile (which, to be honest, was beginning to grate on me). I finally managed to springboard from the back of a rocking chair and catch hold of the filigree detailing on the side, where I held my position just long enough to see that there was nothing inside except a solitary egg glued to the perch. I lost my footing and dropped to the floor, to the sound of a derisive snort from

  “You could have told me there were no birds in there!” I protested, but he merely raised an eyebrow at me.

  “It’s art, darling; of course there are no birds in there.”

  “Doesn’t look much like art to me,” I muttered.

  “Surrealism, dearie. Haven’t you ever heard the term?”

  I wanted to say, “Haven’t you ever heard the term ‘pretentious windbag’?” but I held my tongue.

  A routine emerged whereby I would spend the days napping on my plinth cushion, eating, washing, and napping again while the artist busied himself in the studio and slept on the drawing board. I chose not to look too closely at the work in progress, preferring to save the “big reveal” for the opening night of the exhibition.

  A couple of days before the launch a delivery of catalogs arrived. The artist ripped open the box excitedly and began to read out the explanatory notes for Cat: Deconstructed.

  “ ‘An exploration of the human in juxtaposition to the feline, of our shared mortality and visceral natures,’” he read aloud.

  It sounded like gobbledygook to me, but the artist was pleased, and I couldn’t wait to see the paintings on display.

  The day of the opening was marked with excitement for me, an apparently blasé indifference for and a complete nervous breakdown for the artist. The gallery sent several vans to transport the “pieces” (as I had learned to refer to them), and once these had all been dispatched, the three of us set off for the gallery in the artist’s car.

  “Not a bad turnout,” he muttered as we approached the gallery’s entrance.

  The sound of clinking glasses and a hubbub of voices was coming from inside. As we walked into the lobby the assembled crowd greeted us with an impromptu round of applause. I was not surprised to see various people dressed in the same manner as the artist, that is to say, in clothes seemingly selected at random from the contents of a recycling bin. I deduced they were probably artists, too.

  I helped myself to some canapés that were being handed round by waitresses in the lobby, before proceeding through a door into the exhibition room.

  My first inkling that the exhibition might not be what I had anticipated came as I walked through the doorway.

  I know that smell, I thought. That smells like ... litter tray!

  Refusing to believe my nose I followed the crowd into a large, square room, which was painted white from floor to ceiling. Sure enough, the first sight that greeted me was the contents of the Philippe Starck litter tray I had been using for the previous fortnight, laid out on the floor in mounds of varying size and consistency. Stunned, I read the explanatory card placed alongside the display:

  “An exploration of the human impulse of revulsion toward our own animalistic functions.”

  As if that made things any clearer!

  I looked up to see how the humans were reacting to this assault on their senses, and although a few of them were pretending not to have noticed the stench of feces and ammonia, and were looking with rapt concentration at the “art,” I also saw that several of them had instinctively recoiled, to busy themselves with their catalogs and champagne.

  Working my way around the exhibition I encountered humiliation heaped upon humiliation. Beyond the—excuse my language but I believe in calling a spade a spade—piles of cat shit, I discovered a Perspex cube containing clumps of my fur, and a row of petri dishes in which my nail clippings had been suspended in formaldehyde.

  On a plinth in the middle of the gallery were the remains of a mouse I had caught at the studio. It had been reassembled, but with its limbs and head reattached in the wrong places, so that its face was poking out of its armpit, and instead of a face it had a tail. Averting my eyes, I looked up to see a hairball I had coughed up a week previously and discreetly pushed under a rug. It had been attached to an invisible thread and was hanging from the ceiling, where it twirled in midair like a monstrous disco ball.

  Dodging the legs of the guests, I ran out of the room and found helping himself to a smoked salmon canapé in the lobby.

  “But where are the paintings?” I spluttered with, I think, admirable understatement.

  “Paintings? He’s moved on from them,” mumbled through a mouthful of blini. “Canvases are so last year. He’s all about installations now.”

  “But why didn’t he just use your ... installations? Why did he have to use mine?” I wailed.

  “Something about creative renewal. Dunno, really. You know what these artists are like. Besides, I didn’t really fancy it this time.”

  At this point our dialogue was interrupted by a scream, followed by a crash and then a collective gasp. Part of me wanted to run, but, unable to overcome my innate feline curiosity and believing (wrongly, as it turned out) that things couldn’t get any worse, I slunk back into the exhibition room to see what had happened.

  It appeared that one of the waitresses had been moving around the room, offering a tray of champagne flutes to the guests (who had no doubt realized that getting drunk was the best way to cope with the stench). However, the waitress had unwittingly strayed into the installation, whereupon she had placed a foot in mound number 3 of my “exploration of the human revulsion impulse.” At this point the poor girl—possibly through embarrassment at having damaged the art, but more likely because she had experienced her own personal revulsion impulse—skidded, lost her balance, and sent her tray of glasses flying through the air so that they had landed, at great volume, among the nail-clipping petri dishes.

  Meanwhile she executed some impressive (one might almost say feline) acrobatic maneuvers, before landing in a heap on shit mounds 4, 5, and 7.

  As I skulked out through the lobby I heard her sobbing, “Next time you want me to work for an artist who deals in cat shit you’ll need to bloody well pay me more money.”

  Honey, I thought, I couldn’t have put it better myself.

  CHAPTER 20

  Bancy

  Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

  —Oprah Winfrey

  I’m sure Princess would love to, but she’ll be at a photo shoot for her new range of collars.”

  I was in the bedroom, listening to Helen talk on the phone in the living room, and sighed. Another job offer for one of the other cats. I was getting used to this; it was now early October and for weeks I had done nothing but lie listlessly around the flat, waiting for some work to come through. I had jumped to attention every time Helen’s angry-cat ringtone had gone off, but it had never been an inquiry about me. Today, it seemed, was no different.

  “I do have another female cat on my books at the moment,” I heard Helen say, and my ears pricked up.

  “She’s no glamour puss, but she’s available at short notice.”

  I rolled my eyes—charming!

  “Pretty? Well, she’s got a certain girl-next-door charm. Okay, great, I’ll tell her to be ready for six p.m.”

  I headed into the living room, wondering what humiliation Helen had in store for me.

  “Oh, there you are,” she said. “I’ve got a booking for you. It’s not a job, exactly, but it’ll be good for your profile.”

  “Go on,” I chirruped.

  “It’s
the PAFTAs tomorrow night—the Pet Animals in Film and TV Awards. The Baron has been nominated for his latest commercial and needs an escort for the evening. His agent was hoping to book Princess, but she can’t do it.”

  I pretended not to hear the last sentence.

  “They’ll send a car for you tomorrow at six,” Helen continued, jotting the details down in her diary. “Try and smarten up a bit,” she added. Then she reached for the cigarette packet, and I knew my briefing was over.

  Last-minute substitute or not, this was proper A-list stuff: the PAFTAS were the biggest awards in the animal acting world.

  I walked back to the bedroom in a daze. Princess was lying in her bed, flicking through a celebrity magazine.

  “Princess, I’m going to the PAFTAs tomorrow.”

  “Good for you.”

  “I’m escorting someone called the Baron. Do you know who he is?”

  She gave me an incredulous look and said, “Of course I do. Don’t you?”

  “Um, I’m not sure.”

  She flipped through her magazine, evidently searching for something, before pushing it across the floor toward me.

  “That’s the Baron.”

  On the page in front of me was an advertisement for Kit-e-Licious, featuring the orange-and-white tom whose face had filled my dreams for as long as I could remember. I stared at the page, openmouthed, as the room started to spin around me.

  “His full name is Baron Romeo III, but everyone calls him the Baron,” Princess explained, mistaking my dumbstruck expression for ignorance.

  “But, do you know him? How ... I thought his identity was a secret,” I spluttered.

  “I’ve met him at parties a few times. It’s no secret in the industry,” she said nonchalantly.

  “Well, what’s he like?” I couldn’t believe how blasé Princess was being.

  “Talented. Ambitious. Word is he might be heading for Hollywood soon.”

  “Oh, my god,” I said, looking at the advertisement again.

  The Baron’s face grinned at me from the page of the magazine. In just over twenty-four hours I would be escorting him to a star-studded awards ceremony! I was overcome by light-headedness and climbed into bed to lie down.