he often worked on both me and the garden at the same time.
One day while we were unloading the stones for the garden path off his truck, another truck drove up with the stone bench I had bought at the used materials yard. A man got out to confirm that they were at the right house, while the other man parked the truck. Then the two deposited the bench along with its two pedestals in the middle of the driveway.
“Can you move it to the other side of the house?” I asked.
“That’s not our job,” one of them said, got back in the truck and waved as they drove away.
François and I looked at the bench lying in the driveway. I attempted to lift one end and quickly realized it was too heavy for me to move.
“Pas de problème”—no problem, François said. He climbed onto the back of his truck, where he extricated a two-wheeled handcart from among his gardening tools and then handed it down to me. Next, he hopped down and proceeded to work the bench onto the cart; together we towed it across the gravel patio to the other side of the house. We set the pedestals into the ground and then, in one joint effort, heaved the bench into place.
My wife had been watching from where she was gardening and walked over with her pruning shears in her gloved hand. “Wow! Does it ever look good in front of that stone wall. All we need now is a clump of lavender at each end. When it blooms this summer, it’ll be awesome!”
We all stood back admiring our success when Tabitha walked over, rubbed her chin against the bench and then hopped on to it, as if laying claim to this new object.
Light rain settled in that afternoon, so we stayed indoors to do some household tasks and relax. My wife was reading M.F.K. Fisher’s translation of Brillat-Savarin’s treatise The Physiology of Taste, and I was working on my French with a Georges Simenon mystery.
Tabitha had hopped onto the sofa, curled up on my lap and gone to sleep.
“This is interesting,” Hélène said. “He says that a dinner should move from the most substantial courses to the lightest, while the wines should move from the lightest to the headier and more aromatic.”
“That makes sense,” I said, and went on reading.
“Wow, is he keen on cheese! Listen to this: ‘A dinner which ends without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.’ What a brutal comparison!”
“Ugh,” was all I said, trying to focus on the mystery again. However, the bizarre nature of the comparison stuck in my mind. “Would you like some tea?”
“That would be nice,” she replied, without lifting her head from her book.
As I got up, I moved Tabitha from my lap onto the sofa. By the time I had put the kettle on, Tabitha was curled up on the warm spot where I had just been sitting. I picked her up and put her on my lap. When the kettle came to a boil,
I moved her again, and once again she settled onto my warm spot on the sofa. This time as I returned Tabitha emitted a grumble and hopped onto the floor. I picked her up and put her back on my lap.
“Aren’t you going to pour the tea?”
“Tabitha won’t let me. Maybe you can.”
She poured two cups of tea and put one next to me.
Instead of returning to her book, she reached for the morning Trib and began scanning the pages. Then she laughed. “Here’s an ad in the Personals section. A woman wants to meet a mature man. She gives quite a flattering description of herself and then states that the man she is looking for must be ‘pas de pantoufle’! He can’t be an old man wearing slippers!”
“I don’t quite get it.”
“It’s a French expression for a man who just shuffles around the house and doesn’t do anything. She wants someone young, not an old fart.”
That evening I was setting the table for dinner when Tabitha came in and sat by her empty food bowl. She looked at me while I set the table, then she meowed. I ignored her; she meowed again and didn’t take her eyes off me. I continued with what I was doing. Finally she walked over, wound herself between my legs, meowed and returned to her food dish.
“In a minute, Tabitha,” I said.
“She wants to be fed.”
“I’m getting a bottle of wine from the cellar. Then I’ll feed her.”
I walked away, but Tabitha dashed after me, batted at my leg, bit my ankle and then ran off.
“Ouch!” I said. “Why did she do that?”
“You didn’t feed her.”
I opened a can of cat food, spooned some into a bowl and put it on the floor. We were at the table having dinner when Tabitha walked back into the kitchen. She ignored her food bowl and sat on the floor beside me. Then she reached up with one paw and patted at my wrist.
“She’s poaching. Don’t spoil her.”
I gave her a bit of meat from my plate and she ate it. Then she walked over to Hélène, reached up and patted her on the wrist. Hélène muttered something and then picked a bit of meat off her plate and held it out. Tabitha nipped at it to pull it out of her fingers and let it drop to the floor, where she ate it and asked for more.
“Merde,” Hélène said.
At that moment Myrtille announced her presence with an owlish Siamese meow, followed by vigorously rubbing herself against my leg. Next she went to check out the food bowl and ate what Tabitha was now ignoring. Tabitha watched Myrtille and then reached up and patted Hélène’s hand once more. A détente between the two cats had been reached last summer, but there were still territorial rivalries that surfaced in short skirmishes. Tabitha had staked out the sofa as her space. All the same, Myrtille would walk by, rubbing her tail along the cushion that Tabitha was sleeping on, as if testing the exact boundary. Then she would walk away to curl up on the seat of one of the wicker chairs that was pushed under the kitchen table.
A few days later we were washing up the dishes after dinner when Myrtille reappeared in the olive tree and hopped onto the balcony to stand at the open French doors to the kitchen. She didn’t come in. Odd, I thought, as I got on with what I was doing. Then she turned and walked back over to the edge of the balcony where she meowed and sat looking down the tree.
Hélène stepped onto the balcony to the railing to see what this was about. “She’s not alone.”
I came out. At the base of the olive tree were two young cats, not kittens any longer, but not yet grown to their full size. One after the other, not having acquired the full agility and assurance of adult cats, they clawed their way clumsily up the tree and onto the balcony.
“She’s brought her kittens for us.”
Hélène put a bowl of cat food on the floor. They walked over and ate, pushing and shoving at each other. Myrtille, who last year had what could be called a competitive appetite, just sat nearby and watched. The two young ones stayed long enough for us to pick them up, pet them and then put them down next to Myrtille, who watched every movement. Finally, she led them back down the olive tree. That was the only time she showed us her kittens; she did not bring
