It's always Black Cat Day at the Cat Sanctuary. Here's weary wee Traveller's post, as translated from nonverbal communication:
It's another cold, wet day with just a little snow. Samantha said there were days like that every year, but I had thought we'd had enough of them. I was looking forward to more days when even a few crickets moved around in the cellar, and the human might sit out on the porch and make a lap.
I am a lap cat. Nobody thinks I'm very intelligent, but they have to agree I am lovable. When I see a human even start to form a lap, I start to bounce up into it. I like to roll around on a lap, make sure the human pets and grooms every bit of me except the very back end, then climb up on the shoulder and wrap myself around the human's neck and if possible sit on its head, and then jump back down into the lap and get petted some more, until I fall asleep. That's my talent and vocation. I am not very good at hunting or climbing or racing or the things the other cats do, but I'm very, very good at getting humans into a nice cuddly mood.
Samantha and Serena don't cuddle much. Not with me. Not even with big old Burr, who says he never was the cuddly type either. That is one reason why he likes Samantha. I am completely dependent on humans to meet my snuggly needs. Serena reckons I'll still have to cuddle up to humans, even when we get older and do the sort of thing Burr and Samantha do when the humans aren't looking.
Burr says he hardly likes to do anything when a human is looking, because anything a tomcat wants to do is likely to make humans want either to throw things at him or to pet him, and Burr doesn't want either one.
This weekend the only thing any human did outdoors was when my Human Godmother came out and burned a little trash on the Saturday afternoon. They had all become accustomed to the mild weather during the thaw, and were all grumbling about how chilly it was. "Grumble grumble grumble grumble grumble," they said, and at the end they said "Well it is January."
Serena and I were playing around the Samantha Box. This is an object most humans call a raccoon trap, but Samantha calls it her box. She lets us use it. It has a cold flat slab across the bottom. If enemies, like dogs or raccoons, are chasing you, you press on that slab of metal and a door comes down and locks them out. The trouble is that then you have to wait for a human to open the door. We keep trying, but neither of us is strong enough to open the door and let the other out.
We were playing a game, slapping each other's paws through the box, and Serena accidentally locked herself inside. I went to the human and meowed and put my paws on her knee.
"Yes, I know you like to be petted. Now don't be underfoot," the human kept saying.
"But we want your help! Serena is locked inside Samantha's box!" I kept saying.
If Serena had been telling her I was locked in the box, she would have listened I'm sure, but nobody listens to me. They think a tomkitten can't have anything worthwhile to say.
I gave up. "Good Traveller. Good tomkitten," the human said, continuing to burn trash.
"No, me," Serena said. "He was telling you to look at me!"
"Oh you poor little whiny tomkitten," the human said, not turning away from the fire for a minute, or noticing that she was hearing a completely different voice. Sometimes fire can get out of the barrel but I've never seen that that's anything to worry about, not as bad as being locked in a box when you don't want to be. A bit of paper flies out of the barrel, lands on the cold wet ground, and stops burning at once. Usually the human picks it up and puts it back in the barrel to finish burning.
That didn't even happen. The human watched the fire for about three minutes after she'd put the last piece of trash in. That is about as long as the flames ever keep blazing up. Sometimes she puts in a bit of dry wood, which continues burning after the flames die down and cooks a pot of rice, but not today. She stirred up the ashes to make sure all the flames had gone out. Then she turned around and saw Serena in Samantha's box.
"Oh, was that what Traveller was trying to tell me?" she said.
"Finally! Stupid human!" Serena said, slapping the human's toe. The human didn't want to play, so Serena slapped me instead. I chased her and slapped back, but I soon felt tired, and Serena said I was a boring slow poke.
"You'd be slow too if you felt the way I do," I mewed. I went out in the yard and coughed. I felt sick, but nothing came up. Samantha and Serena had done that a few times, too, last week, but they weren't doing it any more. I'd been doing it all week long. It seems every time I get into a game, or jump, or roll over, or let someone hold me around the body even if my paws are braced on something, I feel sick, but hardly anything ever comes up.
For a Christmas treat I had sardines to share with Burr, but mostly I've been eating kibble lately. I don't actually like kibble. When I first moved in I wouldn't try to eat it, because my first human would give me fish and meat in tins. This human gives us meat or fish that she's cooked with her rice, or kibble, and hardly ever has a tin of anything just for us. I eat kibble because I get so hungry. I am growing as fast as Serena but I suspect I was meant to grow even faster. Even Samantha and Serena understand why I need half the meat we get while each of them eats a quarter. Tomcats are supposed to grow bigger, that's why. But it's hard when, more than half the time, all a fellow ever gets is old dry kibble.
I went down cellar and listened as my human did whatever it is they do all day, overhead.
"I smell horrible," she said. Well, her actual words were "I look horrible," but she looks about the same as usual to me. The truth is that she smells horrible. When humans are sick, no matter how much they clean their skin, their breath smells like filth. And they might be more appreciative of a cat who is still willing to sit on their laps and purr, because purring can help them recover, and if you think humans smell bad when they're healthy--which everyone agrees they do--wait'll you've been around a sick one.
"You are old, Auntie Pris."
"Yeah, right," she said grumpily. "If this goes on another month or two I'll look as bad as I did at twenty-nine!"
"There's no documentation of that."
"I should hope not! I certainly wasn't posing for pictures! Back then I was lucky. This sick-person hair that thins out and breaks off and sticks together in horrible little spikes? In the eighties that was actually a fashion look. People oiled their hair to make it look this bad. And real fashion victims curled it, so you could tell they'd made it look even worse than mere anemia would've done. So at least I wasn't the only one on the street with ugly anemic hair. Now the only thing to do with hair that looks this bad is to put on a head scarf and hope people think you're showing loyalty to your Muslim friends."
"Why don't you? You used to have Muslim friends."
"Yes but they were the kind who thought I should enjoy not having to wear a head scarf as long as I wasn't a Muslim myself. Oh, such enjoyment, when my hair looked like this even an hour after I washed it. So I chopped it off short. This is the wrong time of year to chop it off short. Grumble grumble grumble."
When the senior female humans start talking about their hair they can grumble for a long time. I started to curl up and take a nap. Then I went out and coughed again. I had to go out in case anything came up. Nothing did. It's easy to bring up anything that's in your stomach and shouldn't be, when you are a cat, but I don't understand feeling as if I'd eaten a sick bird when all I ate was that old kibble, and it's already moved down.
"How is it even possible for those little short-haired spring kittens to have hairballs already?"
"I don't think it's a hairball, because Samantha asked for charcoal and it helped her. Charcoal wouldn't have helped with a hairball."
"Maybe just the extra water?"
"Maybe...but Rue's Human says all of her cats, and at one point last summer she had, what, fifteen?--She says all of them vomit when she gives them any store-brand cat food. I was so thankful that mine can digest the Dollar Store's brand, if not Wal-Mart's or the supermarkets' brands."
"Store brands are supposed to be the same as name brands."
"Not necessarily," my human said. "Especially with cat food. It's all a sludge of meat and grain scraps with some nutrient supplements dumped in, but the name brands usually have more meat and some of the store brands are mostly corn. The Dollar Store has one brand of really cheap kibble that they say is for adult cats, which I don't buy, but the kind they say is for kittens is pretty close to one of the cheaper name brands for kittens, so I've been buying it for years. But as humans become more aware of glyphosate, I imagine the farmers had to do something with their poisoned corn...I'm guessing that's what's making him sick. And making Serena, y'know, for her a little bit lazy and grumpy."
A light came on! Serena wasn't feeling good, either. Serena didn't want to curl up with me and take a nap, of course. She never does. All the same I went to her and said, "I'm sorry you're not feeling well either."
"It's not your fault," she said, licking behind my ear. "I'm sorry you've been sick, too."
"So you don't think it's a virus or anything, if they've all had it?" said another human.
"Charcoal wouldn't have helped a virus, and none of them's had a fever. I think there's nothing for it but pay fifty percent more for the name brand kibble. Grumble grumble grumble," my human said. "And John Doe's been ill, too."
"He says it's the same thing he's had for five years."
"Five years. Right. What a suspicious date."
"He is getting close to eighty years old."
"Don't remind me. 'Old' starts when the older generation of your family are gone. John Doe's one of Dad's younger cousins. Anyway, five years is how long glyphosate has been dumped into the food supply as if it were as safe as salt, which even Monsanto's studies show was a major mistake...grumble grumble grumble," my human went on. "And it's how long ago my beloved mate really did have Lyme Disease, except that people are supposed to recover from Lyme Disease, eventually, and every time he's thought he was fit to get out and do something fun, he's been sick again. Funnily enough his setbacks have not coincided with virus going around, but they have coincided with roadside spraying! And it's when they started telling you kids that garbage about going gluten-free giving you only partial relief from the celiac gene; I went gluten-free before I was glyphosate-poisoned and I tell you you ought to be able to work out like Jack LaLanne...reminisce, reminisce..."
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| "Forever" was of course the publisher's little joke, as shown by their blurb about how he's been the icon of fitness "forever." But he was fabulously well preserved at the age of ninety-five, when this book was published. (Well preserved, as distinct from young, which is what he was when the photo on the cover was taken.) |
"Our human has a mate?" I was surprised. "I've never seen him. I've seen a male human who acts as if he wants to be her mate, but all they ever actually do is laugh about it--they don't do the kind of things Burr and Samantha have been doing."
"Old Heather remembered when our human had a mate," Samantha said. "I've never seen him either. I think Heather thought that little object she puts up to her ear made a noise like him, and that's why she's so protective of that object. She said she never saw them actually make baby humans, but they were a pair, all right."
"Do humans stick to one mate for five years when they don't even see each other, then?" I wondered.
Serena said, "I heard her say to her pet object once she'd believe God did not intend her to spend the rest of her life waiting for Mr. Privacy if and whenever she met another Real Man, and that, so far, all she'd met were Insane Admirers."
"What's that?"
"It's a thing she said after a male human talked about her leaving here, leaving us. That's all I know. I don't think our human would ever leave us."
"If I weren't around for five years, would you wait for me and not mate with Burr or somebody?" I asked Serena.
"Well, not Burr, who belongs to Samantha," she said. "Probably somebody. But I'd remember you, if you came back."
The one thing I can do that other tomcats don't do, I now know, is love. That is a social cat specialty. Burr loves Samantha, and I love Serena, and they love us back. Tomcats don't spend their lives waiting while female cats are all wrapped up in themselves and their kittens, but even then, social tomcats like Burr and me come back to visit. If there are no kittens, or the kittens are weaned, we mate with the same female again. We may have more than one family but we love all of them.
But will I get better and be able to stay with Serena? I don't know. A fresh bag of kibble is always an improvement over the not-so-fresh end of the last bag, but if kibble is what's making me sick, will a different brand even help me? A lot of kittens die young, and sometimes when Samantha loses patience with me she says that old Heather said there was an infectious disease all kittens have and we've not even had it yet. I don't know what is going to become of me.
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