A Conversation with a Cat
Author: Stephen Spotte
Date: 2018
Publisher: Open Books
ISBN:
Length: 154 pages
Quote: “This is a work of fiction. I invented the narrative, although the recounting of my surgery and its subsequent effects on my mental state are true.”
[Stephen Spotte. A Conversation with a Cat (Kindle Locations 24-25). Open Books.]
Well...it’s an oddly shaped novel. That’s the first thing. According to the narrative of this book, a man who’s coming off prescription painkillers with a lot of wine and marijuana imagines his cat retelling the whole history of Cleopatra, then telling two short stories about the cat’s own life. About 75% of the book is about Cleopatra, framed by a plausible story of a beach dude and the cat he rescued from a shelter.
I was stone-cold sober while reading this book. Important note: You do not need drugs to have conversations with cats. Not even catnip, which grows near the Cat Sanctuary but which my cats usually ignore. You need to pay attention to their body language and write with an open mind and a whimsical sense of humor. It is my considered opinion that Spotte would have done a better job with this book if he’d been sober while writing it. It reads like the work of a writer who’s not stoned out of his mind, like a minor character in the book, but too stoned to drive or operate heavy machinery.
Anyway,I read this book on the coldest day we’ve had all winter. The hot-air fan was turned to its lowest setting (Comfort Zone heaters have efficient little thermostats), the setting that on other days this year has allowed it to rest at least half the time. This day and the previous night it had been running constantly. My cat Samantha, who is not normally a lap cat, wanted to come in and bask. I brought in her daughter Serena and foster son Traveller, too, to discuss the book in a mostly nonverbal way. The discussion didn't go the way I expected...
Serena: “What...is...that thing? How did it get inside that little flat object? I don’t like it!”
PK: “That’s your reflection in the dark screen of the laptop computer, Serena! Have you never noticed how pretty you are?”
Serena: “It looks like a cat in a place where no cat can possibly be! It gives me the creeps! How did you get that cat, or whatever it is, into that box? Let me out of here!”
PK: “No, look, Serena, it’s our reflections. See me scratching behind your ear?”
Serena: “How horrid of you to have a thing like that in a place where I used to play with your yarn when I was a kitten! Let me out I say! I don’t like you any more!”
PK: “Oh, honestly. Look. No more reflections. I’m turning on the laptop to read this e-book my e-friend sent me. Now you see words, just like the words on my real computer and on all those papers. Is that better?”
Serena: “It’s hot in here. My paws are perspiring. I am not interested in lap poopers or whatever you call that thing, and if it does poop on your lap it’ll serve you right. Maybe if you put it out of the house I’ll come in and hang out with you again some time.”
Traveller: “She’ll freeze out there if she doesn’t have me to play with. Later, ’tater! Lots of love! Mwah!”
Samantha: “Cozier in here without those two, isn’t it?
PK: “Perhaps you can help me write a review of this book. My e-friend wants a review of her friend’s book while it is still new.”
Samantha: “Whatever. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve been in the deep back part of the cellar where it’s not quite so cold, with the earth floor, and my coat is full of dust.”
PK: “That’s all right. You lick, I knit, and we’ll read this e-book. I wish it were a real book but we’ll not complain. It is nice that the Kindle software reactivates when publishers send me e-books. I didn’t know whether it would...Here we are. This writer in Florida was very sick and took a lot of medicine. While he was in the hospital he thought he heard a cat, or maybe it was another patient whining like a cat in the hospital. After he came home he started easing off the pills by smoking marijuana, and suddenly it seemed to him that his cat was telling him a story about a cat who lived two thousand years ago. This cat lived with Cleopatra, a great queen who made her country rich through an alliance with Julius Caesar. Then he died. Caesar had three possible heirs, a grand-nephew he’d adopted, a general who’d made his army great, and Cleopatra’s son Caesarion, who was probably Caesar’s son but was too young and too foreign to be Emperor. Cleopatra tried to keep the good times rolling by working with the general, Antony. That worked for a while. They liked each other and had a lot of money to splash around where it trickled back down to Cleopatra’s people. But then Antony lost a battle and started drinking, then Caesar’s nephew ascended the throne, and Antony and Cleopatra killed themselves rather than be political prisoners in their enemy’s kingdom.”
Samantha: “What stupidity human vanity leads to. Cats certainly wouldn’t kill each other just over the question of who was Queen Cat. And a king cat? It is to laugh.”
PK: “Well, our Mackerel was at least a full partner to Queen Polly, but that was before your time. Anyway, the writer goes on to ask his cat to tell its own story. He lives with a very normal cat. His cat sounds like the type of big lazy black tomcat our little Traveller is growing up to be, except that Traveller loves to cuddle and the writer’s cat, Jinx, never cuddles. He says his cat was caught by some of the kind of people who claim to be ‘rescuing’ feral cats, which means trapping them and sterilizing them. At least they didn’t put Jinx in a shelter right away. Jinx drifted around Bradenton, Florida, eating out of dumpsters. Jinx was born feral but he befriended a homeless man, a failed teacher who was drinking himself to death on the beach. When the police took the man to jail, they took Jinx to a shelter, and there the writer and his wife adopted Jinx. They thought Jinx rolled over because he wanted to be tickled and petted. They found out otherwise.”
Samantha: “Humans should know what they’re getting into, even when cats like Traveller and Serena do like having their tummies tickled—a bit. There are a lot of nerves and reflexes down there. Tickling our tummies can make us want to fight, or have sex, or squat in the sand pit. Most of us try to keep your hands near the nerves involved in the fighting reflexes, and we’ll even try to remember that we’re only practicing for a real fight and not take all the skin off your hands, but you have no idea how difficult that is. Our instincts tell us to practice fighting with other people who have fur. We have to remind ourselves to be careful with your bare fragile skin. It ruins a good practice fight, I think, even if Serena feels differently.”
PK: “What do you think of Jinx’s Human saying cats are not social?”
Samantha: “Why did you call the long-ago Cat Queen Mogwai “Glenn Cunningcat”?”
PK: “Because when she was ill the vet didn’t think she’d be able to walk, but she was able to run, jump, and climb. Once in my grandparents’ time there was a man called Glenn Cunningham. When he was young his legs were badly burned. People thought he would never be able to walk. He was able to run. He ran a mile in exactly four minutes, which was faster than anyone else on Earth for many years.”
Samantha: “Would it be true to say that humans run a mile in four minutes?”
PK: “It would not. Twelve minutes is my best time ever. I know a lot of humans can’t run a mile at all. Some humans don’t even have feet.”
Samantha: “Yes, wheelchairs are one thing I did learn about when I was an indoor kitten in town. But some humans run very fast?”
PK: “Yes; by now a few people have even run a mile faster than Glenn Cunningham.”
Samantha: “So, is that a way humans can understand about cats’ social lives?”
PK: “Possibly. I know most of the cats who’ve been residents here have been very social animals, usually in a nicer way than the average dog or than some humans. I also know some cats are completely indifferent to other cats, some have only one friend, some seem to be drawn into a social cat family like you, and some are antisocial and hostile and mean. Really mean cats are, in my experience, much less common than really social cats, but both are rare. Most cats either have no noticeable social life beyond staying out of other cats’ way, like Jinx, or they have one friend—usually two sisters, or a mother and daughter, rather than a couple, because male cats roam and fight more than females. I thought my first social cat Magic was unique. I used to wonder whether she really was a cat at all. I’m glad to see that she was actually one of a tribe or breed of social cats who hunt and rear their kittens in teams. I’ve known and heard of so many social cats by now that I tend to forget how unusual they are.”
Samantha: “In one way Jinx was like Burr and Tickle. He says that male cats wait their turn, when we want to start kittens, and if anybody claws a male cat’s face enough to damage his skin, it’s likely to be the female. Well, he also says Jinx weighs fifteen pounds. That would make other males want to wait their turn. Burr and Tickle do fight when they meet, to practice and show off their moves, but they remember that they're cousins. Burr’s heavier, like his mother Irene. Tickle’s longer and more agile, like his mother Heather. There are advantages to having either kind of body shape if you know how to work them. So with them it’s not that one backs off because the other would be sure to win a fight; it’s that, although they’ve never been close, neither of them wants to hurt the other. By practicing to use the strengths they have, they're a well matched pair. They show me that my kittens wouldn't necessarily do too badly to resemble either one of them. I know you thought Burr couldn't have healthy kittens, but just look at Serena now!
They don’t really hurt me, either. Well, you know, or do humans know? That writer didn’t seem to know. When a lot of nerve endings are activated at the same time it can be hard to say whether they’re feeling pleasure or pain. You scream ‘Stop! That’s enough!’ and a minute later you want to do it again. We all get on better than some cats do. I have heard of cats who actually hurt each other, though. Some of the others who lived at the house where I was born had been hurt, and old Heather said you once invited a cat to come here and it hurt her sister and her daughter.”
PK: “Yes, I admit it. Sometimes letting cats interact naturally can be a mistake. And even in social cat families you never know for sure that every kitten is going to be a social cat. We had one kitten born here, Paley, who was antisocial and unfriendly in the way Jinx claims to be—never thinking about anything but food or maybe hunting. And Heather’s own daughter, Gwai, was antisocial, even mean; she wasn’t big enough to hurt anyone but she bit hard if anyone tried to pet her or be friends with her. Most of you lot have been such a close-knit family that I imagine that if you weren’t born social cats, the others would have ‘socialized’ you...but it didn’t work with those two kittens.”
Samantha: “Jinx says we don’t think about our friends and relatives after we grow up. He says mother cats nurse kittens for three months and then send them on their way. Well...I didn’t nurse Serena and Traveller for very long beyond three months...but I still do think about them. (Mostly I think they’re a nuisance, but then sometimes, like in cold weather, they are nice to have around.) Jinx says mother cats don’t teach kittens to hunt, that we learn from instinct and practice. Well...my mother could hardly teach me much, indoors in town...but old Heather showed me some moves when I came here, and Burr and Tickle have taught me a lot. And Jinx says male cats are interested in females only when we’re having sex. Well...that’s when we invite them, and that’s about all I ever see of Tickle and I really don't mind if he's not around, but Burr hunts with me, and sometimes we snuggle up in the cellar together when it’s cold. My parents were not a couple, and Heather and her’Meezer were not a couple, but Burr and I are a couple. And so are Traveller and Serena. Only when they're having sex? Hah! Only every minute of every day, they want to be together!”
PK: “I remember Bisquit singing, positively singing, when her daughter Candice caught a mouse. I could tell she was pleased and proud! You, on the other hand, don’t seem to be showing Serena anything.”
Samantha: “What's to show her? She’s bigger than I am. She has Burr’s body shape; if she learned from either of us, she learned from him. But she’s strong and tough, a natural hunter. Whereas Traveller, on the other hand, may never catch anything that’s more of a challenge than that toy mouse he and Serena bat about sometimes.”
PK: “Would you consider yourself a social cat?”
Samantha: “Well...I put up with my half-grown offspring rather than pushing them away. I didn’t slap them, the way Jinx says his mother did. I just walked away and said I was tired of lactating, and let them eat kibble. But I know Heather and Tickle hunted together, and Burr showed me how I could catch more interesting prey when we hunted together, and I suppose it’s nice that the young ones hunt together. Well...Heather was still mourning for her sister, who’d been dead for a year, when I met her, and Tickle still thought that Inky cat hung the moon in the sky, when she’d been sent away a year ago. I’m not sentimental like that. If I think about other cats, except for explaining to you what I’ve learned, I think about the ones who are here now. Heather even threatened to leave you if you didn’t keep Tickle, and Tickle cried out loud when Heather wanted to have sex and he wasn’t invited; I don’t think I’d be like that. It's always fun when Burr’s around but you don’t see me grieving when he’s not. Maybe all cats live in the present moment more than humans do, at least when we’re awake. Certainly our social lives are simpler. I suppose I’ve found a happy medium point. I’m basically a solitary cat but I’ve learned social skills.”
PK: “What do you think about Jinx’s theory that cats absorb knowledge from other cats via telepathy, or from human writing via sitting on it?”
Samantha: “Obviously that writer was dreaming. What kind of knowledge could possibly be contained in human writing? Most of what humans call telepathic communication is body language. Cats use that more than we use words. If you want to call it telepathy you may, but if ‘tele’ means ‘far away’ that’s a funny thing to call the way we communicate only when we’re face to face.”
PK: “Thank you, Samantha. Readers, although I wouldn’t enjoy living with the cat called Jinx, I enjoyed reading his human’s book."
A Conversation with a Cat is written the way a real stoner would be likely to tell the story, with bad language, explicit sex, and marijuana. Some aunts wouldn't want to keep it around the house when their nieces and nephews might see it.
I could have wished that the Cleopatra story would turn out to be relevant to Jinx’s story or his human’s story in some way. It isn’t, which I think is a fault in a novel. If you read it as a blog post, no need for a plot, just a writer becomes interested in a piece of history and also rescues a cat from what sounds like a relatively less horrible shelter, it’s well done; a nice short summary of a story for the ages.
I think Jinx generalizes from himself too much and denies my cats’ reality, but I may also need to remind somebody Out There that there are more cats like Jinx than there are cats like Burr. People read about my social cats and ask "Are they really as interesting as that?" They are, they really are, but whether even the social cats' kittens are going to be as clever, as social, or as friendly as my Purrmanent Residents is still anybody's guess. Sometimes they're not.
Sleeping time is an imperfect way to tell the age of a cat whose scars may make it look old, or whose slim build may make it seem young. Older cats sleep longer and more soundly than young ones do. This can be a good reason to adopt a senior cat if you trust your local shelter. Apart from the fact that senior cats aren't often stolen, they're much calmer and less likely to destroy your stuff than bored, restless young cats might be! Many senior cats actually like being kept indoors most of the time. With cats who've grown up with me, I've observed that after about age six or seven even the ones who didn't like to be indoors as kittens will start begging to be let in for more and longer naps. This is the stage in life where keeping them indoors really is good for their health. Cats who are kept indoors before their time will sleep as much as possible because they're bored, but senior cats really do sleep most of the day; they become less able to bounce right up out of a nap, and need a safe place to sleep in. They are the cats who make super soothing foot warmers. Jinx sounds like a middle-aged cat who'll become more comforting, if less entertaining, to his humans every year.
I like young, active, outdoor cats, though I doubt I'd ever banish a cat from the Cat Sanctuary for growing old and dozy. I like social cats who positively grieve and complain if they don't have a close cat friend. I laugh at the line, "All cats would prefer to be alone with you," remembering how Heather mourned for her family and acted as if she had any idea what she was typing when she pounded on my computer keyboard "66666 byyyy 66666666666"--Heather and her relatives all seemed happiest when they were kept "by sixes," in large extended cat families! But a lot of cats Out There would prefer to be alone with you. Jinx does a better job than my cats do at explaining what life with those cats is going to be like and why, if you're not up to the demands of a social cat family, you should adopt a normal cat today. Preferably a senior cat, plus a kitten it can ignore most of the time as an emergency backup pet.
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