On Cats

  This matter was settled thus: grey cat slept on the top of the bed, black cat at the foot. But it was grey cat who might wake me. Which act was now performed entirely for the benefit of black cat: the teasing, patting, licking, purring was done while grey cat watched her rival: look, watch me. And the tricks over food: watch me, watch me. And the birds: look what I can do that you can’t. I think, during those weeks, the cats were not conscious of humans. They were relating to each other only, like children in rivalry, for whom adults are manoeuvrable, bribable objects, outside the obsession where the children are conscious only of each other. All the world narrows to the other, who must be beaten, outwitted. A small bright, hot and frightful world, like that of fever.

  The cats lost their charm. They did the same things, performed the same actions. But charm–lost.

  What is charm then? The free giving of a grace, the spending of something given by nature in her role of spendthrift. But there is something uncomfortable here, something intolerable, a grittiness, we are in the presence of injustice. Because some creatures are given so much more than others, they must give it back? Charm is something extra, superfluous, unnecessary, essentially a power thrown away–given. When grey cat rolls on her back in a patch of warm sunlight, luxurious, voluptuous, delightful, that is charm, and it catches the throat. When grey cat rolls, every movement the same, but the eyes narrowed on black cat, it is ugly, and even the movement itself has a hard abrupt quality to it. And black cat watching, or trying to copy something for which she has no natural gift, has an envious furtiveness, as if she were stealing something that does not belong to her. If nature squanders on a creature, as she has done on grey cat, arbitrarily, intelligence and beauty, then grey cat should, in return, squander them as lavishly.

  As black cat does her maternity. When she is nested among her kittens, one slender jet paw stretched over them, protective and tyrannical, eyes half-closed, a purr deep in her throat, she is magnificent, generous–and carelessly sure of herself. Meanwhile poor grey cat, denuded of her sex, sits across the room, in her turn envious and grudging, and all her body and her face and her bent back ears saying: I hate her, I hate her.

  In short, for a period of some weeks, they were no pleasure to the humans in the house, and surely no pleasure to themselves.

  But everything changed suddenly, because there was a trip to the country, where neither had ever been.

  chapter seven

  They both had memories of pain and fear associated with the cat basket; so I thought they wouldn’t like to travel in it. They were put loose in the back of the car. Grey cat at once jumped into the front, to my lap. She was miserable. All the way out of London she sat shivering and miaowing, a continuous shrill complaint that drove us all mad. Black cat’s plaint was low and mournful, and related to her inner discomfort, not to what was going on around her. Grey cat was shrieking every time a car or lorry appeared in the square of the window. So I put her down at my feet where she could not see the traffic. This did not suit her. She wanted to see what caused the sounds that frightened her. At the same time she hated seeing it. She sat crouched on my knee, lifting her head as a sound increased, saw the black vibrating mass of machinery passing ahead, or falling behind–and miaowed. Experiencing traffic through a cat is a lesson in what we all of us block off every time we get into a car. We do not hear the appalling din–the shaking, the roaring, the screeching. If we did, we would go slightly crazy, like grey cat.

  Unable to stand it, we stopped the car, and tried to put her into a basket. She went into a frenzy, hysterical with fear. We let her loose again and tried black cat. She was very happy to be in the basket with the lid shut down over her. For the rest of the journey black cat crouched in the basket, her black nose through a hole in its side. We stroked her nose and asked how she did; and she replied in the low sad voice, but did not seem unduly upset. Perhaps the fact she was pregnant had something to do with her calm.

  Meanwhile grey cat complained. Grey cat miaowed steadily, all the way, six hours of driving to Devon. Finally she got under the front seat, and the insensate meaningless miaowing went on, and no talking or soothing or comforting had any effect at all. Soon we did not hear it, as we do not hear traffic.

  That night was spent in a friend’s house in a village. Both cats were put into a large room with a dirt box and food. They could not be let loose because there were cats in the house. Grey cat’s terror was forgotten in the need to outdo black cat. She used the dirt box first; ate first; and got on to the only bed. There she sat, defying black cat to get on to it. Black cat ate, used the dirt box, and sat on the floor, looking up at grey cat. When grey cat got off the bed, later, to eat, black cat leaped on the bed and was at once chased off.

  So they spent the night. At least, when I woke, there was black cat on the floor, gazing up at grey cat who sat on guard at the bottom of the bed, eyes blazing down.

  We moved into a cottage on the moor. It is an old place, which had been empty for some time. There was very little furniture. But it had a large fireplace. These cats had not seen a naked fire. As the logs burned up, grey cat screamed with fright, and fled upstairs and got under a bed, where she stayed.

  Black cat sniffed around the downstairs room, discovered the only armchair, and made it her own. She was interested by the fire; was not afraid, as long as she did not go too close.

  But she was afraid of the country outside the cottage–fields, grass, trees, not enclosed here in tidy rectangles of brick, but acres of them, cut with low stone walls.

  Both cats had to be chased out of the house, for the purpose of cleanliness, for some days. Then they understood, and took themselves out–briefly, though; not further, at first, than under the windows where there are flowerbeds and cobblestones. Then a bit further, to a stone wall solid with growth. Then into a patch of ground surrounded by walls. And from there, on her first visit, grey cat did not return at once. It was high with nettles, thistles, foxgloves; full of birds and mice. Grey cat crouched at the edge of this little wilderness, whiskers, ears, tail at work–listening and feeling. But she wasn’t ready yet to accept her own nature. A bird landing suddenly on a branch was enough to send her scampering back to the house and upstairs under the bed. Where she stayed for some days. But when cars came, with visitors, or people delivering wood, bread, milk, she seemed to feel trapped in the house, and she ran out of it into the fields, where she felt safer. She was, in short, disorientated; she was not anywhere near herself; there was no sense in her instincts. Nor was she eating; it is incredible how long a cat can go without more than a lick of milk or water, when it is disdaining unliked food, or frightened, or a little sick.

  We were afraid she might run away–try, perhaps, to get back to London.

  When I was about six, seven, a man sat in our lamplit thatched room on the farm one night, caressing a cat. I remember him there stroking the beast, talking to it; and the enclosing circle of lamplight made of them, man and cat, a picture I can see now. I feel again what I felt so strongly then, unease, discomfort. I was standing by my father, and feeling, with him. But what was going on? I prod my memory, try to take it by surprise, to start it working by seeing the warm glow on soft grey fur, hearing again his overemotional voice. But all that comes back is discomfort, wanting him to go. Something was very wrong. Anyway, he wanted the cat. He was a lumberman; he cut timber near the mountains about twenty miles away. At weekends he went back to his wife and children in Salisbury. Now one has to ask: What did he want with a cat in a lumber camp? Why a grown cat and not a kitten, who would learn it belonged to him, or at least, to the camp? Why this cat? Why were we prepared to part with a grown cat, a risky thing, at any time, and to a man only temporarily at the camp, for with the rainy season he would go back to town? Why? Well, the answer of course lies in the tension, the discord in the room that evening.

  We made a trip to the camp with the cat.

  High among the foothills of a mountain range, parklike country, with large q
uiet trees. Low among the trees, a nest of white tents in a clearing. The cicadas were shrilling. It was late September or October, because the rains soon broke. Very hot, very dry. Away among the trees, the whine of the saw, steady, monotonous, like the cicadas. Then, an exaggerated silence when it stopped. The crash as another tree fell, and a strong smell of warmed leaves and grass released by the branches crashing down.

  We spent the night there in the hot silent place. The cat was left. No telephone at the camp; but the man rang next weekend to say the cat had disappeared. He was sorry; he had put butter on its paws, as my mother had told him, but there was no place to shut it up, because you couldn’t shut a cat in a tent; and it had run away.

  A fortnight later, in the middle of a hot morning, the cat crept to the house from the bush. She had been a sleek grey cat. Now she was thin, her fur was rough, her eyes wild and frightened. She ran up to my mother and crouched, looking at her, to make sure that this person at least had stayed the same in a frightening world. Then she went up into her arms, purring, crying, in her happiness to be home again.

  Well, that was twenty miles, perhaps fifteen as a bird might fly, but not as a cat would have to travel. The cat slipped out of the camp, her nose pointed in the direction her instinct told her she must go. There was no clear road she could take. Between our farm and the camp were a haphazard meander of roads, all of them dirt tracks, and the road to the camp was for four or five miles wheel tracks through dry grass. Unlikely she could follow the car’s route back. She must have come straight across country, desolate untenanted veld which had plenty of mice and rats and birds for her to eat, but also cat enemies, like leopards, snakes, birds of prey. She probably moved at night. There were two rivers to get across. They were not large rivers, at the end of the dry season. In places there were stones across; or she might perhaps have examined the banks till she found a place where branches met over the water, and crossed through the trees. She might have swum. I’ve heard that cats do, though I’ve never seen it.

  The rainy season broke in that two weeks. Both rivers come down in a sudden flood, and unexpectedly. A storm happens upstream, ten, fifteen, twenty miles away. The water banks up, and sweeps down in a wave, anything from two to fifteen feet high. The cat might very easily have been sitting on the edge waiting for a chance to cross the river when the first waters of the season came down. But she was lucky with both rivers. She had got wet through: her fur had been soaked, and had dried. When she had got safely over the second river, there was another ten miles of empty veld. She must have travelled blind, fierce, hungry, desperate, knowing nothing at all except that she must travel, and that she was pointed in the right direction.

  Grey cat did not run away, even if she was thinking of it when strangers came to the cottage, and she hid herself in the fields. As for black cat, she made herself at home in the armchair, and stayed there.

  For us, it was a time of much hard work, painting walls, cleaning floors, cutting acres of nettles and weeds. We were eating for utility, since there wasn’t much time for cooking. And black cat ate with us, happy, since grey cat’s fear had removed her as a rival. It was black cat who wreathed our legs when we came in, who purred, who was petted. She sat in the chair, watching us clump in and out of the room in big boots, and regarded the fire, flames, red, always-moving creatures that soon–but not immediately, it took time–persuaded her into the belief of what we take for granted, that a hearth and a cat go together.

  Soon she became brave enough to go close to the fire, and sit near it. She ran up on to the pile of logs stacked in the corner, and jumped from there into the old bread oven, which, she decided, would be a better place for kittens than the armchair. But someone forgot, and the oven door was shut. And then, in the middle of a windy night, the mournful cry with which black cat announces helplessness in the face of fate. No complaint of black cat’s can be ignored: it is serious, for unlike grey cat, she never complains without good cause. We ran downstairs. The sad miaow came from the wall. Black cat had been locked in the bread oven. Not dangerous; but she was frightened; and she returned to floor-and-armchair level, where life was tested and safe.

  When grey cat at last decided to come downstairs from her retreat under the bed, black cat was queen of the cottage.

  Grey cat attempted to outstare black cat; tried to frighten her off the chair and away from the fire, by tensing her muscles threateningly, and making sudden angry movements. Black cat ignored her. Grey cat tried to start the games of precedence over food. But she was unlucky, we were all too busy to play them.

  There was black cat, happy in front of the fire, and there was grey cat–well away from it, excluded.

  Grey cat sat in the window and miaowed defiance at the moving flames. She came nearer–the fire did not hurt her. And besides, there sat black cat, not much further than whiskers’ distance from it. Grey cat came closer, sat on the hearthrug, and watched the flames, ears back, tail twitching. Slowly, she, too, understood that fire behind bars was a benefit. She lay down and rolled in front of it, exposing her creamy belly to the warmth, as she would in sunlight on a London floor. She had come to terms with fire. But not with black cat’s taking precedence.

  I was alone in the cottage for a few days. Suddenly, there was no black cat. Grey cat sat in the armchair, grey cat was in front of the fire. Black cat was not anywhere in the cottage. Grey cat purred and licked me and bit me; grey cat kept saying how nice it was to be alone, how nice there was no black cat.

  I went to look for black cat and found her in a field, hiding. She miaowed sadly, and I took her back to the house, where she ran in terror from grey cat. I smacked grey cat.

  Then, when I drove off to shop or to go on the moors, I found black cat coming after me to the car, miaowing. It was not that she wanted to go in the car with me; she did not want me to go at all. I noticed that as I drove away, she climbed on a wall, or into a tree, with her back protected, and she did not come down until I returned. Grey cat was beating her up when I was away. Black cat was by then very pregnant, and this second litter was coming too soon after the first. Grey cat was much stronger than she. This time I smacked grey cat very hard; and I told her what I thought of her. She understood well enough. When I went off driving I put black cat in the cottage, and locked grey cat out. Grey cat sulked. Black cat was subdued; but, supported by us, took back the armchair and would not let grey cat near it.

  Grey cat therefore went out in the garden, which was now a half acre of low stubble. She caught some mice and brought them in, leaving them in the middle of the floor. We were not pleased, and threw them out. Grey cat removed herself from the cottage and spent her days in the open.

  Down a tiny path between stone walls is a little glade, which, once we had cut the grass that filled it shoulder-high proved to have set in its depths a smooth silent pool. Over the pool hangs a great tree; around it grass, then shrubs and bushes.

  There is a stone near the edge of the pool. Grey cat sat on it and looked at the water. Was it dangerous? An expanse of water was as new to her as fire had been. A wind made ripples, which washed at the stone’s edge and wetted her paws. She let out a petulant complaint and chased back to the house. Where she sat outside the door, ears moving, looking down the path to the pool. Slowly, she made her way back–not at once: grey cat could never admit so quickly that she might be wrong about something. First she posed herself, licked herself, preened herself, to show indifference. Then she took a circuitous route to the pool, through the high patch of garden, and down over a rocky bank. The stone was still there, by the water. The water, slightly moving, was there. And over it, the low-hanging tree. Cat picked her way annoyedly through wet grass like an old lady. She sat on the stone and looked at the water. The boughs over her swung and moved in the wind; and again the water washed up to her paws. She withdrew them and sat upright, in a tight close pose. She looked up at the tree, which was in a flurry of movement–that was familiar to her. She considered the moving water. Then
she did something I’ve seen her do with her food. Both grey cat and black cat, when offered food that is unfamiliar to them, will put out a paw and touch it. They prod it, pat it, lift the paw to their mouths and first smell, then lick the new substance. Grey cat stretched out a paw to the water, not quite touching it. She withdrew it. She nearly ran away then: her muscles tensed in an impulse of flight, but she decided not. She put down her mouth and licked at the water. But she did not like it. It was not like the water she drinks from my glass beside the bed, at night; nor like the drops that fall from a tap which she puts her mouth sideways to catch. She put a paw right into the water, held it there, brought it out, licked the paw. Water, right enough. Something she knew, or a variety of it.

  Grey cat crouched on the stone, face held over the pool, and looked at her reflection. Nothing odd about this: she is familiar with mirrors. But ripples washed back and forth and her reflection disintegrated. She put a paw to her picture in the water, but, unlike a mirror, her paw went through it, into wet. She sat up, obviously annoyed. All too much for her, she stalked daintily back to the house, through the wet grass. There, having told black cat with her eyes how much she hated her, she sat in front of the fire, back to black cat, who watched her, on guard, from the chair.

  Grey cat returned to the pool, to the stone. Sitting on the stone, she observed that the tree was a favourite place for birds, who, the moment she left the glade, swooped to the water, drank from it, played in it, flew across it, back and forth. Grey cat now visited the pool for the sake of the birds. But she never caught a bird there. She did not, I think, catch any birds at the cottage. Perhaps because there are so many cats around there and the birds know them?

  Driving around the lanes at night, the headlights are always picking up cats; cats in the hedgerows hunting mice, cats trotting along just out of the wheels’ reach; cats on gates; cats on walls.