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.
