UC Davis Web Journal #1

Cat Stories

Murray Dunlap

There are dogs here.   You know that by now.   But there are cats too.   Lurking at the edges of my story, stealing glances from a darkened room, sleeping in the sun-filled window, padding quiet paws from rug to rug in the dead of night.   Our cat is obese. Twenty-five pounds and socking it away with no end in sight.   Big Fat Frankie.   Little Frankie as a kitten, but that was four years ago.   These days his pin head is the only thing little about him.   Pin-headed, pigeon-toed, knock-kneed, and a dangling belly rubbed raw from dragging the ground.   But I need to tell you about the other cats first.   We'll get to Frankie soon enough.

Heather and I drive from Fairhope to Point Pilot for Joel's baby shower.   Conner and Joel.   Conner is Heather's brother.   Joel is his husband.   Now, Alabama has changed over the last half century, but not so much that two men marry, in-vitro fertilize a surrogate mother, and throw themselves a baby shower without a flood of gossip washing down the eastern shore.   On the way, we pass a teenager dressed up like Jesus.   He wears a crown of plastic thorns, fake blood, and a white sheet wrapped around his hips like a diaper.   He carries an impossibly large wooden cross up and down the boardwalk.   He shouts memorized biblical verses on the evils of homosexuality.   But the boy is sweating and breathing so hard, shifting the cross from one shoulder to the other, that it's difficult to make it out his words. In the time it takes us to move through the stop sign, he drops the cross twice. The blood on his feet is real.  

A mile further we turn into the driveway, and I brake hard to avoid the overturned mailbox.   The box itself had been beaten flat, and all but one pink balloon has been popped or cut loose.   I move everything into the grass next to the garbage cans.   Heather ties the balloon to the branch of a roadside azalea.  

Inside the house, Dave Brubeck and shrill laughter lead us into the living room.   Joel wears a green blanket sewn in the shape of a tree frog on his head while Conner takes his picture. Screw the baby , Joel says, this is mine .   Joel's mother, Mary, laughs so hard her shoulders bounce and her eyes fill with tears.   But she doesn't look at Joel.   Instead, she looks to Molly.   Her daughter sits Indian style on the floor nodding and gesturing and egging Joel on.   Molly purses her lips and croons, Too, too gay. Even for you, Mooky .   Molly holds a kitten in her lap.

A year ago, we'd all come here for Mary's birthday party.   Champagne fogged her etiquette and in short order she told us stories about Joel in his younger, wilder days.   Stories filled with drugs and nudity and evading police.   Stories explaining the nick-name Mooky.   But she also told us her cat story.   It's her story, I know.   But I'll tell you just the same.

Mary used to live on an acre lot outside of town.   The house was small and the land untamed. A tangle of vines and toppled trees created a crosshatch of thick underbrush.   Hector, the cat, claimed the acre.   Hector was one hundred percent Maine Coon.   Big, muscular, and fast.   He hunted at night, producing birds, snakes, moles, and mice by morning.   One acre; no more, no less.   Then Mary inherited her mother's house on the water and moved to Point Pilot.   The house is a beautiful old Bay cottage dating back to the civil war.   But the yard is small.   A few feet of grass on one side, a few feet of sand on the other.   Hector didn't seem to mind.   Mary let him out at night and, as usual, he returned by morning.   But it wasn't long before a neighbor warned Mary that her Tuxedo cat turned up dead.   Attacked by wild animals , the neighbor said. Then another cat.   And another.   We drew a map of the neighbor's yards and property lines and stuck push pins into the crime scenes.   One acre; no more, no less.   Seven cats in all.   Hector kept his acre under careful watch for three years.   Then, without warning, he disappeared.    Hector was fourteen years old, so Mary says he slipped out one night, beyond his claimed acre, to die an honorable death in private.   I made a joke about Achilles, but I won't do it again.

Now there's a new cat: Galen.   He's a foster kitten with a cold, blowing bubbles from his nose.   Mary says: He is Irish and he is lucky .   She brought him home last month when the doctors released Molly from the hospital. Galen is temporary, but it looks like Molly will stay.   From the scar on her chin, you'd think she fell while skating or playing tennis or learning to sail. You wouldn't guess that a Mercedes smashed her Buick and sent her into six months of coma. You'd never know that only in these last four weeks, Molly has regained control of her mind. She's holding Galen and stroking his back.   She's giving him another antibiotic for his cold.   She's nuzzling his ears with her nose.   Mary sits back and laughs, tears welling up and shoulders bobbing.   You can see the release in her face.   You can see the look of a woman who held her breath for seven months, until now, at this very moment, when a girl makes a joke with her words in the right order and smiles and strokes a kitten at the same time without forgetting who and where she is, and that the first breath is the deepest and most remarkable thing a mother can feel when a child is returned to her safely.

Joel takes the frog blanket off his head and passes it to Mary.   She holds it with both hands.   She grips it tight.

 

There are more cats.

When my father married his fourth and final wife, she brought two cats into his home.   Houdini and Hegel.   They were long and sleek and entirely silver.   I couldn't tell them apart, and I'm not sure my father could either, but his wife would spot one in the shadows from across the hall and call out: There's my little Dini.   Why are you hiding?   Come out and say hi to Momma . Houdini would stare for a moment more, then vanish into nothing.   Hegel was more social, according to the wife, and liked to chase toys on a string.   She also said Hegel and Houdini didn't get along at night, and that they could hear hissing and running at all hours.

I should warn you up front, this cat story ends badly.   Hegel, the supposedly older cat, jumped onto Dad's bed at three in the morning.   He tip-toed up the middle, between the two sleeping bodies, and then inexplicably jumped with all four feet onto Dad's chest.   Dad woke suddenly. He was confused.   He shoved Hegel off his chest and into the air.   He searched frantically for his glasses, finding them just as his wife turned on a bedside lamp.   Next to the bed, Hegel lay in the fetal position, dead.   The vet said he was very old and the fright of the incident may have caused heart failure .    It's hard to say , he said with open palms, cats are mysterious .   The wife mourned Hegel for weeks, and it wasn't until Houdini took to sitting in Dad's lap that she forgave him.  

 Of course, this ends badly too.   All my father's stories end badly.  

It seems that some cats, in this case a sleek, silver cat named Houdini, are capable of sensing ailment before human or machine.   In time, doctors would discover a tumor in Dad's liver.   The tumor would expand and spread and turn his insides to rot.   Just as you and I know this, Houdini knew it too.   He would sit purring in Dad's lap, thinking about that tumor, and the next one, and trying to stay as warm and still and comforting as he could.   When Houdini climbed up on the reading chair, he moved paw by paw, slow and deliberate and careful.   He made sure Dad was watching before taking the step from leather to flesh.   This was all he could think to do.

At the shower, we sit in a large circle and pass the gifts around for everyone to see.   We also pass ultrasound photos from the surrogate mother, and baby pictures from those who have them.   Heather digs into her purse and pulls out pictures of Big Fat Frankie.   We have shots of him sitting, lying down, and eating.   This is all he does.   I've tried diets, but he squalls all night to be fed.   If I put down fat-free cat food, he grunts and goes next door to the dog bowl.   The food is far too big, but somehow he'll wedge a chunk of kibble in his teeth and shatter it.   Then he moves methodically, eating all the pieces one by one off the kitchen floor.   I even tried exercise.   I filled a toy mouse with catnip, tied it to a string, and ran around the house with it dragging behind me.   Heather has a picture of this too, but I've asked her not to show it.   At first, Big Fat Frankie caught on to the game and lumbered after me.   I have been told this lasted exactly fifteen seconds.   Then, exhausted, he waddled up onto his bed for the three extra inches of vertical visibility and lay down.   I made three more laps of the house with the dog barking and turning circles before I saw Heather grinning and taking pictures.   Then I watched her feed Frankie goose liver pate with a spoon.   Right now, one picture going around the circle gets bigger laughs than the others.   Joel holds it up for Molly to see, and she shows it to Galen.   He blows bubbles with his nose.   Heather grabs my hand and smiles.

"So who needs a cat?" Mary asks. "The vet called with a new stray for me, and Galen needs a good home.   He's done what he came here for."

Molly lowers her brow and makes a crease between her eyes. "What kind of cat does the vet have?"

Mary flushes red and says, "Maine Coon."

Molly stands and hands Galen to Heather.   Then, as if planned, Mary and Molly break into a secret dance.   They point index fingers skyward and twirl.

Heather drops Galen into my lap.

"We've got room for a skinny one.   Right, Ben?"

On the way home, we crane our necks to see Jesus-boy on the boardwalk.   He's propped the cross against a pine tree, and now free of his burden, sits quietly on a park bench.   I suddenly realize I know him.   I've seen the boy shucking oysters after school at Wintzell's.   It's hard work and he's good at it.   His hands move fast.   I don't know his name, but I pull the car over anyway.

"Is the tirade over?" Heather asks.   She's crossed her arms and looks down on the boy.   "Is that enough hate for one day."

"Who cares," he says, not looking up. "My feet hurt."

"But there are so many more mailboxes in the world," she says.

Jesus says nothing.   His chin shakes a little and his eyes go wet.

"Why are you doing this?" I ask.   I sit down on the bench and place my hand against the cross. It's at least eight feet high.   Heather tries to lift it, but can't.   Her face changes and she turns back to the boy.

"My father calls this the sacred seamless garment," he says. "I look like a jackass."

"No way," Heather says. "Ditch the cross and the thorns and the blood and you look hot."

"It could be worse," I say. "The Roman's stripped criminals nude for extra humiliation before a crucifixion. At least your Dad didn't know that."

"Extra humiliation?" he says. "I'm the one in homemade underwear."

In the late afternoon sun, Jesus-boy's curly hair lights up.   His stomach is full of muscles and his ropey arms and legs turn bronze.   If he could grow a beard, this Jesus would be perfect.

"Am I in trouble?" he asks.  

"Let's make a deal," I say. "How are you with cats?"

Cats are not like dogs, and I won't pretend I don't have a preference.   But I will say this: when a cat finally decides to make an appearance, when he finds the desire to communicate something to the one person who has been carefully chosen as the best equipped to fill his need, you can bet your life that you'll know what he is trying to tell you. The point will be perfectly clear.

Murray Dunlap, a native of Alabama, came to the University of California Davis to work with Pam Houston.  His fiction has appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review, Red Mountain Review, The Hook , and C'ville Weekly. One story received a nomination for Best New American Voices . Book reviews by the author have appeared in Virginia Quarterly Review and New Delta Review.  His first book, Alabama , is currently under review with editors and agents.  Dunlap will move back to the South with his wife before the ink is dry on his California diploma.