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Eyes, cats | |
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The Ecotone wiki site is a collection of essays on "place" and its meaning to the writers. My other bursts of place-idity: Books and place |
My mother hated cats. A woman with considerable firmness of character, she would quite
consistently tell any child who asked why, "Because they're sneaky!" End
of discussion. My father, himself a dog person, never expressed an opinion
that I know of. But in those days, a rural village was a place for dogs
and not cats anyway, so the issue was largely an abstract one. The only felines I knew were a couple of Siamese belonging to an aunt
and a couple other Siamese belonging to an English teacher, and all I knew
of the latter were the stories the teacher would tell about them on a slow
Friday afternoon when the week had gone well. Therefore it was not until I was nearly an adult that I found out how
allergic I am to cats. After an unfortunate and time-consuming episode
involving a "large bolus" of steamed clams with a side of pollen, a
Frisbee and an emergency room, my doctor explained that it takes two
exposures to produce a distinct allergic reaction -- once to set the
immune system, again to trigger it. Eat more clams and die was what he was
getting at, I supposed. But it explains why I once lived for three months
with a dormitory cat and did not suffer noticeably. This was an odd cat, in an odd dormitory: We had a suite in a gorgeous
old building from the turn of the 20th century, replete with wainscoting,
leaded windows and a working fireplace. On account of the last, we had a
fire-sprinkler system hanging from the ceiling, and the cat liked to leap
from the mantel and prowl, squirrel-like, along the pipes a foot from the
ceiling. The pipe over my desk was too small for walking, though, and the
cat occasionally fell. I caught it several times, not always with my
hands. My over-optimistic roommate thought at first that he could take it
out for "walks," but learned otherwise when it left a gross little deposit
on my bed one Monday and again on a pile of my cushions the following day.
It didn't return after Christmas. Around that time I started visiting my uncle and
aunt and their cats for a frigid spring break in the Adirondacks. It was
sort of an anti-Fort Lauderdale, beautiful, elegant and quiet. But
something about their spacious cottage, beautifully paneled in warm pine
and kept toasty by a leaky Franklin stove, always made me choke up and
flee out-of-doors. I loved the silence the woods kept in the depths of the
cold; I liked getting my breath back; but I didn't care much for my nose
and fingers going numb. Then, riding in my uncle's Lincoln through the
darkness on the way back from some trip, one of the Siamese took it into
her mind that she would ride me like a mink stole, and settled around my
neck. I like petting a warm, purring creature as much as the next guy, but I
sort of stopped being able to breathe. I blamed my uncle's cigar, but my
aunt said, "I think you're allergic to cats!" It was a moment of epiphany. Suddenly, my annual spring "cold" stopped
being a matter of poor personal hygiene, as my mother had it, and became
something out of my control, due to pollen and mold. The red welts the
dorm-cat raised when it clawed me, and me alone, made sense. I need only
avoid cats in the future -- and drive myself to the woods. The power of understanding is limited, however. All of a sudden, cats
were everywhere I went -- shedding in a house on an overnight stop;
contaminating carpets where I must sit; crawling unbidden into my lap (for
I am warmer than the average lounge lizard). It was years before I learned
of antihistamines, and I would not have been able to afford them at first,
anyway. My boss once offered me his spare room as
emergency quarters during a blizzard. There was an air mattress on the
floor, and an assurance, "Oh, no, the cat never goes in there, it's too
cold!" And to be sure, it was cold, but the room's door lacked an inch of
the floor and the steady bar of light it admitted was accompanied by a
warm breeze that was heavily freighted with cat dander. I was beyond
congested. It was the most expensive $50 (for a motel room) I ever
saved. My wife's best friend collects cats. She's up to five. This makes
visits awkward. My first house was found to have cat hair an inch deep in the heating
ducts. I took the precaution of having the ducts cleaned, just on
principle, for the door to the cellar had a cat-sized opening in it and I
thought I had seen cat dishes. I can't hate cats, I just can't touch them.
Which is just as well, now, as I look out the back windows of the house
and watch one of the neighborhood's semi-wild cats peek under my backyard
plants, hunting the wily chipmunk, and rub off the paint on the corner of
the garage. The birds that frequent my overgrown yard are a constant
source of fascination to the cats as well as me, but the nests are safe,
since the cats are not hungry enough to climb. Besides, people sometimes
sally from our house waving their arms and hollering
"boogaboogabooga-SHOO!" (This amuses the squirrels but does seem to make
the cats nervous. I can't say they actually run away, but they do leave
promptly, which is good enough.) REVENANT On moist days, So much has changed. Now there's just the heaped possessions |
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