Sleeping With Cats

by Marge Piercy

  It was humiliating to be seen in public during these weeks, but a certain amount of business traveling was unavoidable. One eye was shrouded in a metal cage and bandages and my face was swollen and distorted. I am not vain. I had always taken my appearance pretty much for granted, but I found it embarrassing to walk into a public rest room and have teenage girls look at me and go, Yetch! Which happened.

  About a week after my episode of atropine poisoning, Hurricane Bob hit the Cape with devastating winds and associated tornadoes. A swath was cut through the center of town, taking century-old maples and oaks and breaking them off or uprooting them and bashing in houses. Tangles of live wires swarmed buzzing and sparking over the streets and roads. We were on the side of the hurricane with tremendously high roaring winds but little rain. We cowered in the house with the cats. Occasionally I would go to the window, crisscrossed with masking tape, and hold Colette up to see. Even I could watch the wind blowing the trees sideward like inside-out umbrellas, watch the branches going past like javelins. The wind bombarded us, shaking the house and deafening us. Human helplessness is what you most experience. We were not hit badly, except that we were without power for six days and lost trees, including our best apple tree and one of the sugar maples. Without power, we had no water. I had filled many containers, but we ran out by the third day. We have a gas stove, so we were able to cook—which meant we cooked all we could the first couple of days, since the freezer went, of course.

  Friends in the National Seashore had power. We were able to store some of our frozen vegetables and meat in their freezer. We also took a bath there one day. We could not work. We took walks, but even that was hard, with so many trees and power lines down. It was hot and dry and itchy. Because it was mid-August, the town was eerily full of tourists still on vacation in a place without electricity, toilets, running water or stores. At night, there were no lights, no sounds other than natural ones. Foxes, coyotes, raccoons took back the Cape. There were huge fights at night in our compost pile, where we had thrown the rotting food we had to discard. Our garden had survived reasonably well. After the first two days, we were vegetarians living on what we grew.

  One night I was wakened by Jim Beam growling, making fierce and frightened noises from a crouch on my dresser, fur raised. I went to the window to see what he was looking at. A huge coyote was standing on the porch not four feet away, visible in the moonlight. My impulse was to be perfectly still and simply watch, but I remembered what our biologist friend had said: you must make a lot of noise and scare coyotes away, or they will be fearless and return often. And kill and eat your cats. I made so much noise, Ira leapt from bed, anticipating a fire or worse.

  It was hot after the hurricane and parched. The trees on the outer Cape were denuded. Everything from waist height down was green, but above that, it was barren November in August. Time slowed to a trickle. During this period of office operations three times a week, I wasn’t supposed to bend over, lift anything. But Hurricane Bob had knocked down a huge pine tree across the path. Trees were down, and until someone could come with a power saw, the only way to leave or enter the house was to crawl under them. The only way to get water was to go to the dump with two buckets and stand in line with three thousand residents and ten thousand summer people to get both buckets filled from the water truck.

  We were filthy. Going to the bathroom meant going into the woods with a trowel, and there was little water in which to wash your hands then or any other time. We ate off paper plates and drank from paper cups, but we had to cook in pans, and they must be washed. I have written about this period in the afterword to City of Darkness, City of Light, explaining how being in a world without power enabled me to enter the eighteenth century. It made people’s lives vividly real, how difficult were minor things we take for granted. We lost a good friend. During the eye of Bob, he went outside and saw that the house of another friend in the havurah had been half leveled. The huge sign of the motel across the street had chopped into the house, smashing it. When Arne saw that, his heart stopped. He died instantly. The irony was that the friend was not injured. He happened to have gone into the kitchen and was standing at the far wall when the roof flew across the street. That fall, we put in a generator that cost as much as a used car. Now when the power goes, we have electricity at least for a couple of days, longer if we use it only certain hours for running the most essential things.

  Most of the birds were gone. It was a couple of years before we saw goldfinches again. The crows survived and visited us frequently. The few locust trees left rebloomed, the long flowing grapelike white fragrant panicles that announce June hanging on the trees in October, along with lilacs blooming over the scarlet Virginia creeper in its fall foliage. We had an efflorescence of mice. Deer were always at hand. Those of us who live here found a new friendliness. Usually we locals never see one another during the summer, but now the Cape people operated as a society apart—or within—ignoring the summer people and helping one another in extraordinary ways.

  After the last of the glaucoma procedures, I had to wait a month for a cataract operation. When He, She and It came out, I could not tour and could give only readings from my poetry—because I have memorized many of my poems and could perform them, but I could not see to read from the novel. I was cautious about discussing the extent of my problem, because I needed money, and I could do poetry readings just fine. Finally, the cataract operation was performed. I had hoped for good vision in my left eye, after all that pain and difficulty. However, the optical nerve had been injured and I am blind in the center of my left eye. I put off surgery on the eye I see with, my right eye, for four years, as long as I could.

  For those four years, I had to wear a very strong bifocal contact lens in my right eye, but because of the size and thickness of it, I could only keep it in for six hours. Then I would put on glasses with the left lens opaque. Not only did they look weird, but it hurt to wear them. I had no depth vision and constantly stumbled. A headache kicked in as soon as I put the glasses on. Basically it worked out much better if between the first six hours and the second, I lay down in a darkened room. I was still using a lot of medication in both eyes and that was one of the convenient times to put it in. But if you have ever traveled on business when you must lie down for an hour to an hour and a half in the middle of the day, you may have some notion of the problem I faced. Nobody ever understood. They thought I was a prima donna, a secret drunk. “Oh, you have to take a nap?”

  I kept writing on my large monitor. The cats formed a tight bunch, a solid cat family, staying as close to me as they could. Oboe would sometimes try to herd me, like a sheepdog with a recalcitrant sheep. Not one night passed during this period that I did not lie awake in the darkness and contemplate blindness, total and unforgiving. I thought constantly of the operations ahead of me, and I quailed. So much to go through, pain and disability, and last time the results had been disappointing. I knew that with any eye operation, I could lose my sight entirely, so I put off doing anything about the right eye as long as I could manage. The world was brown with cataract. Almost nobody besides Woody and my eye doctors knew how bad my vision was. I faked it. I bluffed. I had to make a living, which means doing gigs—readings, lectures, workshops—but toward the end, I could not travel alone. I got on the wrong plane because I could not read the gate numbers. Woody had to travel with me the last months. Fortunately, computers can print out poems in sixteen-point type.

  My own ophthalmologist, Dr. Gorn, had taught a student who recently developed a different and far superior operation that did glaucoma and cataracts at once and got good results. Finally I had that done on my right eye. When the bandages came off from that single operation Dr. Shingleton performed, it was a miracle. I have decent vision so far in that eye. There is no cure for glaucoma, and I still face the likelihood of eventual blindness. But I am less afraid. I have been given some time with adequate sight.

  I will always remember too my joy when the bandage came off m
y right eye, and I could see colors clearly, could see Woody’s face again, could see my cats. The poor bastards had been stepped on and tripped over and barely played with. Yet they were loyal all through my trials. Friends who had been close dropped away, while others were immensely caring and helpful. Even Woody was not always there for me. But the cats were. My cats are not a substitute for lovers or children or friends, as people sometimes say, but precious for exactly what they are, a real and ongoing emotional connection that was sometimes all I had besides my work.

  Now, the world seemed to me utterly peeled and shining, beautiful beyond expressing it. I could again find out what people and landscapes, the garden, the ocean looked like. I felt I would never have enough of gaping at an oak tree or a sunflower or a cardinal or my love. I do not take sight for granted. I rejoice in it. I am grateful for it. I love seeing. To have vision is a blessing I will cherish as long as I can. I am forever staring at things and drinking them in, a white speckled lily I have grown, an orange tomato, a swallowtail butterfly, Efi’s eyes, which are the clearest darkest blue, bladder wrack on the ribbed sand beach, the different colors of the sky in winter and spring and summer and fall.

  Our involvement in the havurah began to diminish. The death of the fishing industry on the Cape meant that Helaine and her husband, Mike, could no longer make a living. They moved to Hawaii, near their daughter. Several people in the core group left the Cape. Retired men who were more affluent and who came from reform synagogues in suburbs took over the havurah, ran it far more efficiently and “correctly” than we ever had. We go to occasional services but find that it does not feed us spiritually. It is run by men and much like the Judaism I rebelled against. There is no interest in less sexist god language or new forms of prayer. It’s rather dry.

  We began letting the Korats, Dinah and Oboe, go out in their harnesses on long ropes when we were outside. That enabled them to explore without danger. Colette, who had a well-developed sense of humor, thought it a great joke to sit on one of their ropes and hold on. She had many little jokes she would play on them, and sometimes on us. Occasionally she would take a pen and hide it and then sit watching me look for it.

  I believe the cats read this manuscript at night when I am sleeping. I wrote that paragraph about Colette yesterday. This morning as a break, I took Efi out to walk around on her leash. Oboe appeared and grabbed the leash. Then he sat on it, just as Colette used to. But his intention did not seem to be to tease her. He was not pleased I had dropped her leash to pull bindweed off the phlox, and decided to take matters into his own paws. He is often concerned when she is on her leash and attempts to instruct her where to go and not to go. He herds her, in other words.

  Then Max appeared out of the underbrush and watched, then pounced. He enjoyed sitting on the leash for a while, then he improved on the prank. He pulled the leash, using his teeth and claws. Efi came up to him and he began licking her. Then he let the leash go. Then he brought her to him again. Efi viewed this all as a game. She is fond of her leash and will sometimes yank it out of the drawer and try to slip into it so that perhaps she can magically go outside.

  I have been watching Oboe’s herding behavior, which I believe to be unusual in a cat. This morning, a gorgeous clear August morning with a wind from the north bringing a little energy, we took a four-mile walk in Truro along old railroad tracks to the bay and back, returning to a strawberry pancake breakfast. As I was clearing, I heard Oboe outside. I went to see what was wrong. I found him yelling at Malkah, who had walked, he thought, too close to a neighbor’s house. He was circling her, bellowing. Finally he herded her back to the porch. Her docility with him is amusing. He led her then to the terrace by the gazebo, which he considers safe, and they stayed there together until they both came in for a late breakfast.

  I imagine him observing Jim Beam through all his years as top cat and thinking, “I could do it better.” Indeed, Oboe is the most courteous, gentle, responsible top cat I have ever observed. He does do it better. He has come into his own, and shines with inner strength, even now, when he is supposed to be dying, even now in his bony old age.

  DIGGING IN

  This fall you will taste carrots

  you planted, you thinned, you mulched,

  you weeded and watered. You don’t

  know yet they will taste like yours,

  not others, not mine.

  This earth is yours as you love it.

  We drink the water of this hill

  and give our garbage to its soil.

  We haul thatch for it and seaweed.

  Out of it rise supper and roses

  for the bedroom and herbs

  for your next cold.

  Your flesh grows out of this hill

  like the maple trees. Its sweetness

  is baked by this sun. Your eyes

  have taken in sea and the light leaves

  of the locust and the dark bristles

  of the pine.

  When we work in the garden you say

  that now it feels sexual, the plants

  pushing through us, the shivering

  of the leaves. As we make love

  later the oaks bend over us,

  the hill listens.

  The cats come and sit on the foot

  of the bed to watch us.

  Afterwards they purr.

  The tomatoes grow faster and the beans.

  You are learning to live in circles

  as well as straight lines.

  TWENTY-THREE

  THE WAY THINGS STAND (AND SIT AND LIE)

  Ten years ago, the grounds reached the farthest extent of cultivation. We cannot manage more. Much of our land is just as it was years ago, pinewoods giving way to oak, but an acre is devoted to gardens. Now we keep up what we have created and tweak it a bit, put in bushes to increase the screen, take down a tree shading vegetables, add lilies or daylilies, let something spread freely or cut it back, replace a storm-broken arbor. We are always deciding what is worth growing. We luxuriate in red, blue, yellow and white potatoes, wax, purple, green and striped beans and seven kinds of lettuce. For years, I was convinced that eggplants weren’t worth the bother. With the new hybrids, we again grow gorgeous eggplants. What we do not grow is corn. Robert and Wayne fought a protracted war with raccoons, erecting an enormous cage for corn. They played radios at night. They set have-a-heart traps. Always the night before we were to harvest, the raccoons raided the patch. Nothing entered the traps except a skunk.

  The raccoons piss me off sometimes—as when they picked the ripe grapes last year before I could. By and large, I like having them around. They’re feisty creatures. We take in the bird feeders most nights in the winter so they don’t eat all the sunflower seeds. Sometimes they throw a fit on the front porch and break the pots stored under the table to show their resentment. I don’t mind their digging in the compost pile—no matter how deeply we bury lobster shells, they find them—any more than I mind deer nibbling on the shrubbery in hard springs. They were here before us, and they have rights. I enjoy a good relationship with the crows. When they’re hungry, they put on raucous air shows outside my window till I give them cracked corn. One of my first acts upon moving in was to sacrifice to them the remains of a leg of lamb and to protect them from a couple of guys who liked to shoot at them. They teach their young to fly on our land, always a noisy day of shiny black choreography and a great deal of shrieking. They do not touch our crops.

  Last winter I had a relationship with a particular crow, a sentinel. She—who can sex crows?—came every morning to check out the compost pile to see if there was anything worth summoning her band. Then she would watch me exercise on the treadmill. I think it amused her. She would perch right outside the window of my office. Once in spring I heard her sing. Several times I have heard the crows sing, and it moves me. Once or twice I have sunk on my knees to listen without realizing it. They are operatic. They remind me of Cho-Cho, with her little daily mew and her immense contralt
o when she was singing with another cat at night, through the screen door. “Caw” is hardly their only cry.

  One night I had just returned from a series of readings in California and was suffering jet lag. It was the full moon of November, a mild night so I had opened two windows. Unable to sleep, I lay trying to relax when I heard the great horned owl, deep and resonant from very close. Right outside my bedroom is a good-sized Japanese dogwood, where she was clearly visible in silhouette. I became aware of an echo. Strange. You might get an echo sometimes at the front of the house, because there is a hill across the road, but on this side, the woods slope down to a freshwater marsh around Dunn’s Run that feeds into the Herring River. What could cause an echo? She went on calling, mournfully, monotonously, commandingly: Who, who pause who who who. The echo persisted, higher pitched. I stood by the window. The higher-pitched answer continued, and then he arrived, her prospective mate—among the raptors, the male is smaller and has a higher-pitched voice. He alighted on the bough a few feet from her. They stared at each other and shuffled around. This went on till I went back to bed. Then I saw him fly off. So much for bird-watching at midnight. I was dozing when he returned. I got up again, nosy as ever. He had something in his beak, mouse or mole or vole. Again he alighted on the bough and did a shuffle dance before her. Finally he offered her the rodent. She accepted it. She ate it and then silently they flew off together to consummate their relationship.

  Living here, I am seldom bored. There is so much to observe, to interact with, to understand—or attempt to. In different seasons we take different walks, on the beach, in the dunes, in the woods, by the ponds, near the saltwater or freshwater marshes. I want to live out my life here; I want to die here and become part of this fragile land. Our water supply is hull shaped, able to be contaminated by commercial carelessness, as one of the well fields in North Truro was poisoned by leaking gasoline. Drought this year has taken a toll. How will the alewives swim downstream to the sea, since the little rivulets and streams between the ponds have run dry? A hurricane stronger than Bob could take out our house.