wasn’t all that surprised that night when Rik called to say he wouldn’t be able to make it to work anymore—too many changes in his class schedule, he claimed. And he again said how sorry he was about the kittens. Before he hung up, he suggested that I have the photos in that disposable camera developed—“in case you want to do up a missing poster or something.”
I didn’t do up a poster, but I did get the pictures developed. The first two were from some Super Bowl party, people with Vikings hats and haircuts, drinking beer and eating nachos. Those went in the wastebasket. But the rest…there were Scooter and Mittens, staring eagerly at the row of children’s books. Then, the two of them reading their dictionary, as well as writing on the margins with their small bridge pencils tucked in their paws. Others showed them turning the pages of hard-bound books, their pointed faces looking down at the text below. In one shot, Rik had brought over his own e-notebook, and both kittens were studying the small keypad. Which gave me an idea—
As much as I loved the printed page, I was certainly no Luddite—I had a computer at home, and a webpage (albeit a small one) for the bookstore itself, and my web address was listed on all the major ISP’s…so, each evening, I took to carefully reading my email, studying the Subject headings, looking for a message I wasn’t even sure would ever come.… I looked for many months, long enough for the Hemingway kittens to become cats, and perhaps even parents of more “hu-line” polydactyl kittens, until it appeared. The message read:
From: <HemCats><[email protected]>
To:<Barrett and Browning>[email protected]
Subject: A Tale of Two Kitties
Hello, Book-lady,
Your wish came true. Couldn’t find _A Tale of Two Kitties_ but did read –A Tale of Two Cities _. We both like it, but it was heavy. Sorry not to have said Good-Bye last year, but there was no time. We had to avoid getting fixed. Rik says you’d understand. Look for us (Rik and Jake too) soon in all the scientific magazines, maybe the newspapers, too. The young ones are better at reading and writing than we are, and will be ready for the media soon. We tell them about the book place, what a special school it was for us, and how we practiced being parents with the wood kittens. You were a good teacher. We remember the pictures, and have looked for the originals on the net. Computers are fast and light, but books smell better. We miss the Barrett and Browning. The young ones don’t understand. They grew up on e-books. But we remember. Say hello to Oscar and April. And the shiny hard cat on the counter by the door. It never talked, but we still liked it. But not when Rik made noise on it with his rings. Rik and Jake are busy with the young ones, so we could send this. Don’t tell them we did. Just remember us. We remember you and the books.
Jay and Zelda and the young ones.
So Scooter had remembered our “conversation” about “The Tale of Two Kitties”…words I’m positive Rik never heard me utter. And Scooter—or “Jay,” as he’d dubbed himself, giving himself the name only he knew, in true T. S. Eliot style—knew that message would be the only one I’d know for certain was, indeed, from him, and him alone.
Or not so alone…if “Zelda” was Mittens. At least that caption in that Metro section had gotten it right—Hemingway-0, Fitzgerald-2.
The kittens may have been a mixture of feline and human DNA, but they were Minnesotans down to their bones.
In memory of Mittens (February, 1998 to October 8, 1998), and Scooter (February 1998 to November 22, 1998), and Little Boy (September 2000 to February 18, 2001).
THE CAT AND THE BIRDS, by Aesop
A Cat, hearing that the Birds in a certain aviary were ailing, dressed himself up as a physician and, taking his cane and a bag of instruments becoming his profession, went to call on them. He knocked at the door and inquired of the inmates how they all did, saying that if they were ill, he would be happy to prescribe for them and cure them.
They replied, “We are all very well, and shall continue so, if you will only be good enough to go away and leave us as we are.”
THE BEAST FROM THE ABYSS, by Robert E. Howard
Having spent most of my life in oil boom towns, I am not unfamiliar with the sight of torn and mangled humanity. Oftener than I like to remember I have seen men suffering, bleeding and dying from machinery accidents, knife stabs, gunshot wounds, and other mishaps. Yet I believe the most sickening spectacle of all was that of a crippled cat limping along a sidewalk, and dragging behind it a broken leg which hung to the stump only by the skin. On that splintered stump the animal was essaying to walk, occasionally emitting a low moaning cry that only slightly resembled the ordinary vocal expressions of a feline.
There is something particularly harrowing about the sight of an animal in pain; the desperate despair, undiluted by hope or reason, that makes it, in a way, a more awful and tragic sight than that of an injured human. In the agony cry of a cat all the blind abysmal anguish of the black cosmic pits seems concentrated. It is a scream from the jungle, the death howl of a Past unspeakably distant, forgotten and denied by humanity, yet which still lies awake at the back of the subconciousness, to be awakened into shuddering memory by a pain-edge yell from a bestial mouth.
Not only in agony and death is the cat a reminder of the brutish Past. In his anger cries and in his love cries, the gliding course through the grass, the hunger that burns shamelessly from his slitted eyes, in all his movements and actions is advertised his kinship with the wild, his tamelessness, and his contempt for man.
Inferior to the dog the cat is, nevertheless, more like human beings than is the former. For he is vain yet servile, greedy yet fastidious, lazy, lustful and selfish. That last characteristic is, indeed, the dominant feline trait. He is monumentally selfish. In his self love he is brazen, candid and unashamed.
Giving nothing in return, he demands everything—he demands it in a raspy, hungry, whining squall that seems to tremble with self-pity, and accuse the world at large of perfidy and broken contract. His eyes are suspicious and avaricious, the eyes of a miser. His manner is at once arrogant and debased. He arches his back and rubs himself against humanity’s leg, dirging a doleful plea, while his eyes glare threats and his claws slide convulsively in and out of their padded sheaths.
He is inordinate in his demands, and he gives no thanks for bounty. His only religion is an unfaltering belief in the divine rights of cats. The dog exists only for man, man exists only for cats. The introverted feline conceives himself to be ever the center of the universe. In his narrow skull there is no room for the finer feelings.
Pull a drowning kitten out of the gutter and provide him with a soft cushion to sleep upon, and cream as often as he desires. Shelter, pamper and coddle him all his useless and self-centered life. What will he give you in return? He will allow you to stroke his fur; he will bestow upon you a condescending purr, after the manner of one conferring a great favor. There the evidences of gratitude end. Your house may burn over your head, thugs may break in, rape your wife, knock Uncle Theobald in the head, and string you up by your thumbs to make you reveal the whereabouts of your hoarded wealth. The average dog would die in the defense even of Uncle Theobald. But your fat and pampered feline will look on without interest; he will make no exertions in your behalf, and after the fray, will, likely as not, make a hearty meal off your unprotected corpse.
I have heard of but one cat who ever paid for his salt, and that was through no virtue of his own, but rather the ingenuity of his owner. A good many years ago there was a wanderer who traversed the state of Arkansas in a buggy, accompanied by a large fat cat of nondescript ancestry. This wayfarer toiled not, neither did he spin, and he was a lank, harried-looking
