James the Conniosseur Cat

by Harriet Hahn

  That night we had smoked salmon with Laphroaig, and when Mrs. March came knocking, James was his usual self, so when she asked, “Is James here bothering you?” I could reply, “Why, no, he is right on the stair.” And there he was, twitching his tail as if to say, “Come on, you foolish old woman.”

  Mrs. March scuttled away after him.

  As the week wore on, a change came over James. He began to get fat. He had found that the world had not only special delicious drinks, but food as well. Great, wonderful varieties of food. He slowed down, purred more, viewed the news with his eyes closed, and did not demand that we go out as much.

  One afternoon, Lord Henry arrived with a big box. Attached was a card saying, “For Sir James of Baron’s.”

  James managed to open the box at last, and there inside was a wonderful contraption. It was a gorgeous carrying bag made of light, strong parachute nylon, bound in leather and cleverly constructed with holes big enough for paws all around the bottom, and holes big enough for eyes all around the top. A special flap could be draped over the top, and two long leather handles made carrying either by hand or from the shoulder easy. Emblazoned on the sides were the Gothic initials JR.

  James stared; one might even say he gaped. He tried to jump in, but in the week he had been eating, he had changed shape.

  He struggled, twisted, and turned, and at last got in the bag. With some effort, he then got out. He looked at us coldly. Neither Lord Henry nor I snickered. Lord Henry had to cough and brought out his handkerchief and covered his face for a moment.

  James sat beside the beautiful carrying bag, his usual confidence deeply shaken.

  He got up and looked at the larder. He came back and looked at the bag.

  He stomped into the bedroom and jumped up on the dressing table, where he sat down and looked at himself in the mirror and patted his fat cheeks.

  He stood up and looked at his side view. He made a visible effort to tighten his stomach muscles. The effort produced no visible change in his roly-poly shape. He sighed a deep, sad sigh, hopped down, and went into the bathroom. I followed. He stood on the scales, which read almost a stone.

  “James,” I said, “you can stay in Baron’s Chambers and eat your head off, or you can slim down and be a traveling cat. Even if Lord Henry were to provide another bag, you are getting to be too heavy for me to carry.”

  He stepped off the scales, walked to the living room, looked at the bag, and went to stand in front of the larder full of cans of deviled crab, caviar, and patés of all sorts. Two great tears welled up in his golden eyes and rolled down his fat cheeks. With a sigh of resignation, he turned and, patting the bag in passing, headed for the door. I followed and let him out. He did not look back.

  For four days I saw no sign of him.

  Mrs. March seemed distracted when she came to collect the month’s rent.

  “James is not himself,” she said. “He seems to be off his feed. He let that terrible Mr. Parsons stay. He eats scarcely anything, and refuses to use the elevator.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be all right,” I said, but I didn’t believe it. I was really worried about him.

  The next evening James was at the door. A new, slimmer James, more than back to his old fighting weight.

  “Won’t you come in for a little something?” I asked, delighted to see him.

  James entered and went straight to the bathroom, where he hopped on the scales. Just over three quarters of a stone.

  With a great smirk he trotted to the sitting room, jumped into the bag, jumped out, repeated the performance and then trotted over to the larder, which had been somewhat depleted, as Lord Henry and I had been nibbling at it.

  With one swipe of his paw, he swept the cans on the floor.

  Out, he indicated.

  “Have a drink?” I asked.

  A look of horror came over his not-at-all pudgy face.

  “Well, orange juice, then?”

  He nodded.

  I settled with my drink, having given James a glass of orange juice, and was about to munch on some ripe Stilton cheese on a cracker. A gray paw intervened, patting the cracker and cheese out of my hand and onto the floor.

  James shook his head and glared at me, then sat on my hands in my lap while we watched the news with our eyes open.

  CHAPTER 3

  Eventually James thinned down and lost his enthusiasm for running up and down the six flights of stairs that encircled the elevator shaft. Then one morning he greeted me at the door, and came in and patted the carrying bag to indicate that he was ready to try traveling in the great world.

  His request coincided with my need to visit a friend, Helena Haakon, who lived in Brixton. She is a very talented artist who is struggling along doing occasional commissions and eking out her existence with casual jobs of any sort she can find, in between selling paintings or doing illustrations. I was researching a book for a client, and I knew the book would need some drawings, so I had called Helena—who could certainly use the job—and made an appointment for today. I decided to take James along to see her studio, and after making sure it was satisfactory with Mrs. March if I borrowed him for the day, we prepared to set out.

  “We’ve a long way to go, James,” I warned.

  He only tossed his head, jumped in the carrying bag, and snuggled down while I put the covering flap in place. We entered the underground at Green Park station, and as we descended on the escalator I felt a sharp jab at my leg. I looked down to see that the eye holes of the bag were even with the sides of the escalator, and James was getting seasick watching them go by.

  “Sorry,” I said as I lifted the bag so that James could look down to the bottom of the escalator. I heard a deep groan. James had prepared himself for death.

  The platform was crowded, and a group of young people were creating a disturbance to make sure we all knew they were alive. There was some jostling, and I was uneasy for James and tried to protect him from being bumped. Suddenly a girl with black lipstick and bright red eye makeup jumped away from me.

  “That bag has eyes in it, and it hit me!” she cried.

  People stopped and stared at the bag, which was perfectly still.

  “Look,” the girl said as she pointed from a distance. “There are real eyes in there, looking at me!”

  “Come on, there’s nothing there,” said one of the boys, who had a safety pin through his ear.

  “Well,” said the girl, unconvinced, “I saw eyes in there, and they were fierce. Let’s get out of here!”

  The group moved to the end of the platform, as far away from me as possible.

  A sign reading BEWARE OF PICKPOCKETS captured James’s attention. He looked puzzled. I explained.

  We got on the train, which was crowded, and to protect James from being squashed, I lifted the bag onto my shoulder.

  Suddenly, next to me there was flurry of activity. The train lurched and a young man in jeans and a torn sweater began to swear. At the same time, something dropped on the floor of the car. There was more scuffling and bumping.

  “Here, now!” cried a middle-aged man standing next to me.

  The man stooped and retrieved what appeared to be his wallet from the floor while the young man in jeans waved his arms as though to fend off some stinging insects, and moved as fast as he could through the car to the other end. He got off at the next stop.

  The passengers thinned out and there was room to breathe.

  “I almost lost my wallet,” said the middle-aged man. “That punk had lifted it, but then something seemed to bite him and he dropped it. I must be more careful in the future.”

  I heard James cough slightly.

  “I’m sure you should,” I rejoined. “We can’t have guardian angels every day.”

  James purred.

  In due time we reached our stop, after which we walked a short way through the busy streets and came at last to Helena’s door.

  She is a big, blond, handsome woman who loves animals, plants, good food,
good drink, and all things beautiful—including people, whom she regards as, sometimes, the most beautiful animals she knows. Though she has almost no money, she never seems pinched or worried. She is full of love for adventure, and finds it in unlikely places.

  Helena greeted me with pleasure and was delighted with James as he stepped out of the bag with great dignity.

  “Oh, Sir James!” She welcomed him with a sweeping gesture. “The studio is yours.”

  For only a flash of a second he looked a bit bewildered, and then, rising to the occasion, he stalked around the studio, examining the easels and pictures stacked against the wall. Growing more interested, he burrowed into a pile of draperies in a corner, smelled jars of paintbrushes, and tapped the tubes of oil paint lying around. At last he jumped up on a big table where there were little dishes of colored inks, smelled them all, and leaped from there to a model stand, where he struck a pose.

  Helena laughed delightedly.

  “Before we do anything else, I’ll sketch your portrait, you splendid creature,” she decided.

  The splendid creature swelled visibly and assumed his weary-of-it-all expression. Out of the corner of his golden eye he watched carefully.

  Helena put a sheet of creamy paper on the table, and working fast and accurately, she inked in a powerful portrait of James. She used various brushes and colors from each of the dishes, washing one color out in a jar of water before using the next color. She concentrated entirely on what she was creating. No one spoke. James moved nothing but his eyes.

  In what seemed to me no time at all, Helena stepped back from the table. “I think that will do it,” she said.

  It certainly would. A remarkable likeness of James, combined with an intense feeling for the catness of all cats, had emerged on the paper.

  “James, you are a wonderful model,” she said. “I wish all my drawings and paintings came that easily. We’ll frame this for the exhibition.”

  With that, she took the portrait off the table and placed it on a drying shelf, then placed a fresh piece of paper on the table.

  “What’s this about an exhibition?” I asked.

  “I have a chance at last to be seen with some classy company,” said Helena. “Five artists are to have an exhibition at the Bosterson Gallery, on King Street, in about a week. I’ve been asked because Mrs. Bosterson hired me from time to time to serve at her parties, and got interested in me. When I run out of money, I work at cleaning or serving at parties or whatever turns up. In any case, five well-known artists had been asked for this particular event, and at the last minute one of them pulled out, so I got the chance to fill in. Of course, I was delighted. I will hang six pictures. I have four good recent ones. This portrait of James will be the fifth, and I’ll do another in the next few days. It’s a real break for me, because one of this bunch is very famous and runs with a crowd of theater and movie people. There will be reviews and all sorts of stuff. I might even sell one, who knows.”

  I told her how pleased I was as we moved into the kitchen, which also served as consulting room and library, to look at some examples of drawings that might do for my client.

  “Good-bye, Sir James, we leave you now,” said Helena, waving.

  James nodded.

  We sat at the kitchen table and concentrated on our business.

  James jumped on the studio table and, twitching his tail in anticipation, dipped his paw into the red ink and then patted the paper. A red pawprint appeared. He fastidiously dipped the paw in the water, then shook it, and a shower of pink drops fell on the paper. He dipped his paw in the yellow ink, patted again, and looked at the effect. He was delighted with himself. The more ink he got on the paper, the happier he was with the result and with himself. By the time Helena and I had finished our conference, he had created a collection of blobs, pats, sprays, drips, and scratches that covered the paper—and himself—with a riot of color. In the left-hand corner was scratched a shape that might be interpreted as a J if one were so inclined.

  I looked in horror at the mess. Helena’s fine paper destroyed. I was speechless.

  Helena, too, was speechless, but for a different reason.

  She spoke first. “James, that is just what I need for the exhibition.” She laughed her wonderful laugh.

  “Now, really!” I burbled. “This is carrying friendship too far. James has ruined your gorgeous paper, and I’ll bet you don’t have another sheet.”

  James looked at me with disgust.

  “No, I’m not being nice,” she said. “Mrs. Bosterson loves those paintings that are all splashes and splatters. I can’t do them. They mean nothing to me, but she just might buy this one. I shall seriously exhibit it. Now all I have to do is frame these two, and I’m all ready.”

  Helena carefully took the spattered paper and put it in the dryer while James preened around the studio, totally unaware that his gray coat was spattered with multicolored inks. We three got ourselves together and headed for the nearest restaurant for lunch, where Helena and I ate curry and drank white wine, and James, who doesn’t much care for curry, ate crackers and played games with his eye holes.

  As James and I were about to leave for the station, Helena said, pressing into my hand two tickets to the opening, “If you come, we can sit in the corner and giggle at all the other people.”

  Of course, I agreed to go. James accepted with pleasure, licked Helena’s nose, and we said good-bye.

  James bounced all the way home. He played eye games with all the other passengers, and when we arrived at Baron’s he did not wait for Mrs. March to pick him up, but bounded out of the bag and up the stairs, a great artist, fit and in full command of his talent, ready for anything.

  Shortly after five in the afternoon on the day of the opening, James, no longer spotted but certainly ebullient, jumped into his bag, and he and I started off to the gallery, which was just around the corner. There we would meet Lord Henry, to whom I had given the other ticket.

  Sure enough, there were lots of people and some reporters and photographers and a TV cameraman. We presented our tickets and, hoisting James up where he could see, I started around the first of two rooms. I thought Helena’s pictures were far and away the best, but of course I was prejudiced. James permitted me to stop briefly at Helena’s pictures, but he kept urging me on into the next room, and at last we got there through the crush to see Helena standing in front of the portrait of James, surrounded by a crowd of people and a cameraman or two. She waved and gave us her happiest smile. I was headed in her direction, but James scratched my neck, so I turned around, and there on the other wall was James’s painting, matted and framed and looking like nothing so much as a colorful page of blobs.

  Around me I heard, “Marvelous color.” “Look at that subtle pattern.” “A really profound statement.” “How do you suppose she did it?” “It’s sumptuous.” “It will knock the minimalists on their ear.”

  I began to chuckle when I heard someone say, “What a stupid picture! Pictures are supposed to be about something. I can’t understand. How could a young lady like Helena Haakon let this get out?”

  I quickly realized it was Lord Henry.

  “Shh,” I whispered. I put my mouth close to Lord Henry’s ear, and in the confusion around us, I was able to say, “James did it.”

  “On the other hand,” Lord Henry quickly recovered, “it has wonderful color and a profound message.” Lord Henry could not bear to hurt his friend James.

  James lifted his head out of the bag and acknowledged Lord Henry’s compliment. At the same moment, Mr. Bosterson came pushing his way through the crowd and affixed a small red dot to the card on the wall that identified the picture. James’s painting had been sold.

  Helena came up with a reporter who asked, “What about this one? It’s an entirely different style.”

  “I had a lot of help with this one from a friend,” said Helena, laughing, and before I could stop her, she had lifted James out of the bag and draped him around her neck, where
he sat looking regal. Flashguns popped, the TV cameraman took footage, and Helena and James posed. At last she returned him to me, and he rode on my shoulder while Lord Henry manned the carrying bag and we both drank champagne served by charming waitresses, and ate little sandwiches. James, liked the ones with anchovies the best, and he adored the champagne. We all forgot about diets, and at last James, Lord Henry, and I reeled home, where James more or less tottered up to bed.

  So the exhibition opened. There was a moment on the news that evening with James draped over Helena’s shoulder, but this was far less important than the pictures of screen stars and the leading artist. The newspaper critics mentioned Helena in passing as a new talent, but that was all. One of her paintings sold—the painting James had contributed.

  A week after the opening, a little group gathered in my sitting room for an afternoon something after a hard day’s work. The group consisted of Lord Henry, Helena, James, and me.

  Helena was not her usual bubbling self. “After one week, I’ve sold only one picture, and I had to cut the price in half on that for Mrs. B. There is no interest in me at all anymore. A one-day flash in the pan!”

  I had never seen Helena so depressed.

  James, who had been practicing painting gestures in front of the mirror over the bar, jumped down and came to sit on the sofa next to Helena. He gave her a rare affectionate lick on the cheek, and then, using a new strut he had recently adopted, he headed for the door as Mrs. March knocked.

  The next afternoon, when Lord Henry came in, James came in with him, but paced back and forth irritably. Finally, by dragging both of us to the door, he indicated we were to go out right away. Out we went, around the corner, and to the gallery on King Street. We omitted the carrying bag. James was a welcome visitor at the gallery. He nodded to the girl at the desk as we entered, and moved purposefully to his portrait. He leaped up on a chair placed against the wall near the picture, and, leaning over as far as he could, patted the identifying card. Then he got off the chair and patted Lord Henry meaningfully.