The Lesson of the Cat

Image by Caleb Woods

The other morning I saw The Cat.  There is nothing unusual about that.  What is unusual was that It appeared out of nowhere.  I was looking through the studio windows to the hills beyond.  Right below the windows is a solid wood wall six feet high that is half fence and half door. You have to yank on the handle because the door is old, and like many things that are old, it is stubborn, so you yank to pass through, and then you let go, and the door shuts by itself because the ground slopes.  That’s a good thing; otherwise, the handle would be even looser than it is already because of all that yanking.  It’s a reluctant door; it doesn’t want to let you into the hill behind it, but once you’re inside, it ignores you, shutting by itself. 

So, there I was, looking out the windows thinking profound thoughts – so profound I’ve forgotten what they were – when, all of a sudden, The Cat appeared out of nowhere at the top of the gate.  Now, if you’re a cat, and you’re on all four feet, you’re – what – maybe 6 to 7 inches tall? If you’re standing on your hind legs, you’re maybe a foot or a little more in height.  So, 6 feet is 6 times your height. That means if you’re a five-foot-tall person, you’re looking at a solid, 30’ wall.  There is no way we can jump that high.  If we were cats, we could.

So, there I was, thinking these profound thoughts I’ve forgotten when there was a thud! – and then its forepaws – more like hands, really – grabbed the top of the gate, and he pulled himself up and laid flat upon the sharp edge of the fence. He didn’t seem to feel any sense of accomplishment that he had just leaped six times his height. He didn’t look smug, either.  He seemed to take it for granted. 

I refer to him as a he, but, of course, he could have been a she; cats do what cats do equally well no matter their gender.  Maybe we could learn something from that cat. However, I’ll call him a he because I’m a he.  If I were a she, I’d call him a she.  To hell with political correctness.

Anyhow, after a while he stood up and circled around a couple of times, and then stepped onto the supporting board behind the gate, and looked down at the ground, then raised and lowered his head a few times the way cats do when they measure distances before they jump. 

I shifted in my chair to see him better.  I made little noise, for the window was closed, but a cat can hear a mouse walking outside the house, and so it was noise enough for him.  He turned his head so fast to me there was no movement in the turning. His eyes looked largely through the window glass.  He did not blink. Cats never do; that is not the way of cats. I, being safe behind glass, did not blink either.  We looked – I cannot say at – but into each other in our mutual amazement – he upon seeing me in a place he could not comprehend and I upon seeing him atop my fence I could not comprehend climbing without difficulty; certainly, not as rapidly as he (or she).

I moved ever so slightly; he did not, and so, not moving, stopped me. Confident in his command, he looked away, disdainfully in the way of cat’s looking, moved his head up and down in calculation, and leaped to the ground and was gone.

Or so I thought. Having been re-introduced to the world of cats (initially introduced by our own cat long before this one was born), I sensed a movement in the patio.  I turned my head, not in the immediacy of cats but with human slowness, and saw through the open studio door, The Cat, prowling in the bamboo.

He was grey with black stripes. I, having learned the arrogance of cats from our own (and my) first cat, named him Sweatshirt. Of course, I did not say his name out loud; I did not want to insult him.  An insulted cat will never pay attention to you, and seeing Sweatshirt so predominant in the bamboo, I did so want him to pay attention. My desire for his attention and respect for his sudden showing atop the fence and in the patio kept me from moving, and so he considered me the way cats do when they contemplate their prey, deciding if they are going to eat it, leap into your lap for a treat or ignore you. 

Cats are good poker players; they always out bluff you. And so, I waited, holding my cards close to my chest, but even as I did so, I knew Sweatshirt held the winning hand. I had learned that from Grapefruit, our first cat. Grapefruit?  Yes, Grapefruit! When my wife Linda, saw a litter of cats under a car, she leaped out of her own, leaving the door wide open, ran across the street, crawled under the car and grabbed an orange tabby kitten, and brought it home, knowing, in her crazy determination to make life happy, that having an orange tabby would make our lives happy. 

Our daughter, Meredith, being a citizen of the Timeless Age of fairy tales, wanted to call the cat Princess.  “Oh, no,” I said, “she already knows she’s a princess, and we don’t want her to think she’s better than we are.  We’ll call her Grapefruit, because she’s the color of a pink grapefruit, and pink is special too.”  And so, Grapefruit she became for the twelve years she was with us, and when the neighbors heard us calling ‘Grapefruit,’ our insanity was affirmed in a world demanding the sanity of naming cats ‘Princess.’

Grapefruit is gone now, with all the cats who belonged to other people (and they to them), I had named with such loving disrespect, Snot Wad, Dust Ball, Orange Rind, and now, Sweatshirt – “Sweatshirt,” I wanted to call out, but did not, cooing instead, “Here, Kitty, Kitty,” the way you do when you want a cat to come to you more than the cat wants to come to you, “Here, Sweatshirt,” I wanted to say come and stay with me,” but Sweatshirt turned and left the patio in the way of cats who know better than to leap onto laps that cannot contain them.

I see Sweatshirt sometimes around the neighborhood, in driveways or yards, as uncontainable as the past, as peripatetic as the present.  I am grateful to Sweatshirt for his (or her) lesson of cats.