And Silky began to act like a kitten again.
* * * *
Come December, Arlene guessed that Silky had to be going on ten months old, but he just wasn’t growing. True, his body had no more hollow spots, and sleek muscle had covered the painful bone, but he just wasn’t any bigger. Even Puff and Fluff grew; they were close to his size after a month in her house. And it was too cold out to go lugging him to the vet just to have her tell Arlene that she had to expect mutant cats to be different. (Dr. Hraber already called Silky “Bug-Eyes” in honor of his still-bulging eyes.)
Arlene had already held off getting Silky neutered; occasionally he sprayed near his pan, and attacked at least one of the dogs each day, hugging with his big-toed funny paws as he chewed on a big floppy ear, but Arlene kept hoping that he’d get a late growth spurt and fill out properly. Even as she knew in her heart of hearts that he was done growing. He hadn’t gained weight since November, and nothing about him had changed since October. (On Halloween some children who came Trick or Treating spied him looking through the window and asked—albeit innocently, “Is that a Spuds Mackenzie cat?”)
Once she’d gotten over her fussing and fuming, she had to admit that Silky did resemble the tiny-eyed dog in the beer commercials. But she never loved a cat more than Silky, not even beautiful, patient Guy-Pie, Lord rest his soul. Silky was always there, showing up in the oddest places; at her elbow while she rolled pie dough, on her lap when she went to the bathroom, dropping down onto her shoulders from on top the high bookcases flanking the front door, purring all the while.
Puff and Fluff took up some of Silky’s time, but not all of it; every night, he curled around her head on the pillow, strange soft paws gently kneading her thinning hair. No other cat was allowed on the pillow—on the bed yes, the pillow never—but Silky rested there as if he belonged in such a high up, exalted spot. He reached inside her and filled the hollow spot left after Guy-Pie’s passing, filled it and then some. Long after he’d chosen her for his Mama, she chose him to be her Best Boy. She still loved the other cats and dogs, in her own way, person to animal. Silky was…different. Not only in looks; she’d long ago gotten used to his looks. In spirit, in soul, he was different.
But it wasn’t until that January that she learned just how utterly different Silky was from other cats.
* * * *
Arlene was making hamburgers in the kitchen, from meat she’d found and oatmeal, onions and spices she’d bought. Knuckle deep in the gooey reddish mixture, Arlene heard the cats doing something in the living room—something noisy enough to hear, but soft enough not to be easily identified—and yelled out, “Cats, you be good, hear? Or no supper tonight!” (She never made good on the threat, but it nonetheless usually worked.)
The noise continued, a puzzling muted wooden thump (like someone pounding on a board with a wool-wrapped hammer), then a long silence, then a sound of contact followed by all of the cats running around. Quickly mashing the meat and seasonings together, then placing the bowl of unshaped hamburger in the oven—she knew better than to leave anything edible on the counters—Arlene ran her hands under the tap, and flicked off the water from her fingers as she stomped into the living room: She was about to say something, yell something, when she noticed the odd way the cats were sitting around the front door in a wide semi-circle; all facing the two bookcases flanking the door. All the cats…except Silky. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a blur of white and black; Silky bounding from the floor to the chair by the window to the top of the bookcase between window and door.
The other cats (as well as a couple of the smaller dogs) were watching Silky intently, as if they knew what was to come next. Arlene watched too, as Silky positioned himself on the bookcase, back legs tensed as if he intended to jump onto something higher than the bookcase then wiggled his whipcord body, tensed all over, and leaped into the air—
—and didn’t come down on the other bookcase, but kept going up in a graceful-beyond-imagining arc, his funny clawless feet spread until the skin was stretched taut between his metacarpals, and his huge, delicate, wind-cupping ears grew large, swelling out like a windbreaker sometimes does in a strong wind, billowing out above his tiny wedge of a head like miniature sails—and he was suspended there, in the air, for what had to have been seconds, until he turned his head and changed course to a point between the two bookcases, and still he didn’t come rushing down, but floated, as easy and gentle and beautiful, oh God so beautiful, as a dandelion seed freed by the wind to drift on the invisible currents of the air.
Arlene stood numb, watching as Silky settled gently to the ground on all four feet, making only the slightest amount of noise. Just enough to have been puzzling when heard from afar. Afterward, he and the other cats ran around the room, in sheer excitement over Silky’s incredible feat. And Arlene wished that her knees weren’t knobby with arthritis; she wished she was small enough to run around in circles with her furry children, and had the right voice to bay out loud and purr and—and—she didn’t know what.
It was a sight to howl over, to screech and meaow and cluck over. No human sound, no human word, could express what she was feeling now. It was joy. It was awe. It was more than her heart could keep inside without exploding like a firecracker suspended in a hot July sky.
She bent down and grabbed Silky; painful knees or not, she and the cat danced around the living room, bouncing with giggles and purrs off the walls, the furniture. It was a miracle, as only new, as in brand-new life can be a miracle.
Silky wasn’t a mutant, something to be ridiculed, even if he was a mutation. He was what the Cat had been striving for through the centuries; a creature of the air, a creature dappled by the sun sliding over its warm fur as it glided with the wind. One with the land, one with the air. Matching the startled birds in their flight. Escaping the ground-bound dog effortlessly. In the back of her mind, Arlene had always wondered who could’ve been so cruel as to put Silky in that high window…but he was lighter then, with the same huge ears. Suppose he jumped up, hit an air current, and floated there?
Holding him away from her body, Arlene now understood Silky’s form, its purpose. Webbed feet, to buffer the wind. Sail ears, for the obvious reason. Strong legs, for take-off. Super-flat, super-silky fur, for low wind resistance. Few whiskers, so as not to interfere with the airflow. Small eyes, to keep flying dust out.
Just like the birds, she thought, or the flying squirrels. Her sudden comparison between cats and squirrels reminded her of another species-to-species comparison someone else had already made.
The Cornish Rex cat, named after the Rex rabbit. She’d seen the picture in her CAT BREEDS book.…
* * * *
When Arlene pulled out the worn book and sat down to read it, the animals and Silky quieted down too. Silky was in her lap as she paged through the book, until she came to the picture of the thin curly-haired brown cat. She scanned the next page, picking out the important facts: “discovered in 1950 by a Cornish rabbit breeder,” “Kallibunker was ‘backbred’ with his own mother, which means that instead of trying to mate him with another bloodline they—” “ten years later another curly-haired cat was found near an abandoned tin mine in Devon, England.”
Arlene frowned and backtracked to the part about the “back bred” situation. She didn’t like that, not at all. When Arlene was a girl, her old cat Mammajamma mated with one of her sons. Papa had had to kill the kittens, during school so little Arlene wouldn’t see it. I wonder how many times they tried this “backbreeding” business? she asked herself, as Silky gently kneaded her thigh. Arlene paged to the back of the book, to the index, where she found the heading “Spontaneous Genetic Mutations.” One of the breeds listed there was the Scottish Fold. According to the text, a kitten named Susie was born in 1961 in Perthshire, central Scotland, at the William and Mary Ross farm. Twenty-one days after Susie and the rest of her litter were born, little Susie’s soft ears did a 180-degree flop forward and stayed that way. And a
new breed was born.
The Rosses realized what they had in Susie (did you dance around the barn, making swirls in the straw?), and began to breed her, even though the British Governing Council of the Cat Fancy refused to acknowledge or license the cat on the grounds that the cat couldn’t possibly hear, let alone have its ears cleaned properly. The new breed was banned in Britain as a show breed. Nine years later, the United States recognized the Scottish Fold. By that time, standards of perfection (“‘Objectionable?’ As in—?”) had been established: small, tightly formed ears. Round head with firm chin and jaw. Short nose and neck. Broad nose, large eyes. Short rounded body. Medium legs and tail. Short coat. Coats of all colors, eyes of blue, gold, or green.
Then came a passage which made Arlene hug Silky closer to her pap-like breasts, and bite her lower lip:
…breeding the Scottish Fold is very hard to do. Two fold-eared cats should not be bred together. When they are, the kittens can have tails that are too short, or stiff legs.
Another part of Scottish Fold breeding which can be tricky is knowing how long to wait until a true Scottish Fold’s ears develop the characteristic 180 degree fold. The breeder has to wait a full three weeks before the.…
Closing the heavy book with a muted chuff, Arlene asked aloud, “And after the three weeks are up? What then…the bucket of water in the back yard, or a shoebox full of babies left for the vet to kill?” A part of her mind told her that she was being melodramatic; Silly, where do you think they get the straight-ear cats for them to breed with? But still, what of the kittens who weren’t right? The ones with the less than round heads, or the long tails and hind legs? What of those objectionable kittens? Surely, the breeders simply couldn’t afford to keep the mistakes around, no matter how adorable they might be.
A crinkly ripping sound made Arlene pause in her thoughts, and look down at her feet. Fluff was undoing her running shoe straps, pulling on the long strip of Velcro with his teeth. Fluff was the kitten with the longer tail, the sassy, aggressive one. Arlene wiggled her toes, and both Persians jumped on her feet, hanging on with their short legs. Cute as the Dickens…but objectionable. It’s a rotten, rotten world, isn’t it, fellows?
As if intuiting her thoughts, Silky reached with his left paw to gently caress her chin. The pad was softer than apple blossom petals, and surrounded with a tickly fringe of short fur. Arlene enclosed his paw with her larger hand, giving the paw a light squeeze. Silky blinked his ludicrously, sensibly tiny eyes and rested his wedge head on her chest.
Stroking his velvety ears with her free hand, Arlene said softly, “What’s it to be, Silky-love? I can take you to people who know cats, who really breed them. They’d know, they’d understand. Study you, breed you. Give you a fancy name. ‘Wisconsin Squirrel Cat’ or ‘Ewerton Flyer.’ You’d be in all the cat books, next to a picture of one of your great-great grandkittens.” Silky reached with his other paw to touch her face; Arlene pressed it against her cheek, bending her head low to his. Clear drops of moisture fell on his fur, to roll down slowly.
“But it isn’t fair to all the objectionable kittens, is it? And there would be objectionables, Silky, even from a kitty as perfect as you. Happens all the time…and there aren’t enough suckers like me running around to take them in. And I do hate waste, I hate to see things go unused, unappreciated.” Silky butted his head against hers, as if he understood and agreed. Maybe he does realize, Arlene thought, Maybe, just maybe, he really does.…
When Silky let go of her face and curled up on her legs, Arlene sat stroking his incredible fur for a few seconds, before lifting him off her lap and placing him on Dan’s old ottoman. She then walked over to the phone and dialed a number she knew by heart.
* * * *
Arlene timed it just right; she only had to wait outside the vet’s office for a few minutes, which she did while standing with her back to the fitful wind. And Silky—wiggling because he was hungry—was wrapped in enough blankets to keep him in-the-womb warm.
When the veterinarian’s assistant opened the door at eight o’clock, Arlene shifted the squirming kitten to her other arm as she walked into the half-lit waiting room. Behind her, as the assistant finished turning on the rest of the lights, the woman asked Arlene, “Did you finally decide that Silky had grown enough?”
Arlene uncovered Silky’s head; he yawned and blinked kitty kisses at her. “Yes, he hasn’t gotten any bigger since October…I guess he’s ten months old by now, don’t you think?”
The assistant pushed a strand of her black hair out of her eyes, and paused to rub Silky’s ears as she made her way behind the reception desk. “He sure doesn’t look it, but maybe his momma and father were small cats. Or he might be a—”
Not wanting to hear about the other option, Arlene said, “Poor Silky thinks I’m punishing him…no food or drink since midnight. Had to put him in the bathroom overnight, just to keep him from the other animals’ dishes. We didn’t like that, did we?” She leaned over to nuzzle Silky’s fur with her slightly bulging nose.
“Well, he’ll be happier once he’s healed. It’s hard on an un-neutered male if he doesn’t mate—but I shouldn’t have to tell you that. You’ve had a parade of kitties in here over the years—”
Like Guy-Pie. And Bubba. And Puff and Fluff in a few months. But it’s different with you, isn’t it, Silky? Not just an end to a couple of gonads, is it, boy? But I just won’t be around to take in all those objectionables.… God forgive me, but I won’t be.
The assistant reached over the desk to take Silky from Arlene, saying, “C’mon, big boy, let’s put you in a nice cage until the doctor comes. Oh, what a good boy,” she crooned as Silky butted his head under her chin. After Arlene scratched Silky’s ears and bent down to kiss one of his extended paws, the assistant headed for the back of the veterinary clinic, saying over her shoulder, “Y’know, Silky’s really one in a million. Usually they’re either stiff as boards or clawing the walls at this point.”
And softly, so softly that the assistant never heard her, Arlene replied, “He really is at that, isn’t he?” before she left the office and walked face first into the cutting December wind.
For Sassy, with love,
And for Little Guy (1983-1988), in remembrance
Also in memory of Puff and Pumpkin. Rest in peace, sweet boys.…
—A. R. Morlan, 2010
THE STORY OF THE FAITHFUL CAT, by Lord Redesdale
About sixty years ago, in the summertime, a man went to pay a visit at a certain house at Osaka, and, in the course of conversation, said—
“I have eaten some very extraordinary cakes today,” and on being asked what he meant, he told the following story:—
“I received the cakes from the relatives of a family who were celebrating the hundredth anniversary of the death of a cat that had belonged to their ancestors. When I asked the history of the affair, I was told that, in former days, a young girl of the family, when she was about sixteen years old, used always to be followed about by a tomcat, who was reared in the house, so much so that the two were never separated for an instant. When her father perceived this, he was very angry, thinking that the tomcat, forgetting the kindness with which he had been treated for years in the house, had fallen in love with his daughter, and intended to cast a spell upon her; so he determined that he must kill the beast. As he was planning this in secret, the cat overheard him, and that night went to his pillow, and, assuming a human voice, said to him—
“‘You suspect me of being in love with your daughter; and although you might well be justified in so thinking, your suspicions are groundless. The fact is this: there is a very large old rat who has been living for many years in your granary. Now it is this old rat who is in love with my young mistress, and this is why I dare not leave her side for a moment, for fear the old rat should carry her off. Therefore I pray you to dispel your suspicions. But as I, by myself, am no match for the rat, there is a famous cat, named Buchi, at the house of Mr. So-and-so, at Ajikawa:
if you will borrow that cat, we will soon make an end of the old rat.’
“When the father awoke from his dream, he thought it so wonderful, that he told the household of it; and the following day he got up very early and went off to Ajikawa, to inquire for the house which the cat had indicated, and had no difficulty in finding it; so he called upon the master of the house, and told him what his own cat had said, and how he wished to borrow the cat Buchi for a little while.
“‘That’s a very easy matter to settle,’ said the other: ‘pray take him with you at once;’ and accordingly the father went home with the cat Buchi in charge. That night he put the two cats into the granary; and after a little while, a frightful clatter was heard, and then all was still again; so the people of the house opened the door, and crowded out to see what had happened; and there they beheld the two cats and the rat all locked together, and panting for breath; so they cut the throat of the rat, which was as big as either of the cats: then they attended to the two cats; but, although they gave them ginseng and other restoratives, they both got weaker and weaker, until at last they died. So the rat was thrown into the river; but the two cats were buried with all honors in a neighboring temple.”
ZUT, by Guy Wetmore Carryl
Side by side, on the avenue de la Grande Armée, stand the épicerie of Jean-Baptiste Caille and the salle de coiffure of Hippolyte Sergeot, and between these two there is a great gulf fixed, which has come to be through the acerbity of Alexandrine Caille (according to Espérance Sergeot), through the duplicity of Espérance Sergeot (according to Alexandrine Caille). But the veritable root of all evil is Zut, and Zut sits smiling in Jean-Baptiste’s doorway, and cares naught for anything in the world, save the sunlight and her midday meal.
The Second Cat Megapack: Frisky Feline Tales, Old and New Page 4
