Cats In Clover

  ***

  While I stirred clam chowder for lunch and Ginna made garlic bread, it occurred to me that the Colonel and the Corporal might be very different but they also had several things in common. Other than both having me under their paws, that is.

  George liked to lie on the Houseboy's newspaper. Since the editorial page was as necessary as breathing for Ben, I admired the way he denied himself until George decided to move. Henry thought my crossword puzzles were meant for him to sleep on.

  "That explains why we never seem to finish the morning paper until late at night," I said to Ginna.

  "Clyde and Jeremy hate noise," Ginna said. "How about your two?"

  "Well, George reacts to the vacuum cleaner with the same revulsion that Ben has for rock music. But Henry opens one eye as the cleaner passes and goes back to sleep."

  "What happens when you play the piano?"

  "George yowls like a sabre-toothed tiger, paces, and tries to push me off the piano stool. Henry sits looking up at me with such an agonized, pleading expression that I worry about the music hurting his ears."

  "How about Nicky?"

  "He barks at the door until somebody lets him out."

  We were still talking about cat foibles when Ben and Tom came in for lunch.

  "Don't you two ever think about anything but cats and food?" Tom asked.

  "What else is there?" Ginna asked in mock amazement.

  "Hard-working hungry men. Is that clam chowder I smell?" Tom peered over my shoulder as I reached into the fridge. "What are those little green things in the bowl?"

  "Eggs," I said. "Araucana eggs."

  "They look revolting."

  "Once you get the shell off, they look and taste like ordinary eggs," I said.

  "Maybe so, but I'm not eating them."

  "Where's your sense of adventure?"

  "He never has adventures with food," Ginna said, "only with hammers and saws."

  I poured the unadventurous chowder into bowls and we sat down. George and Henry lay in front of the French doors, alert for any bits of clam that might come their way.

  "The Colonel and the Corporal work hard, too," Ben said. "You see what they're doing now?"

  "They're stretched out on the floor, relaxing."

  "You're misinterpreting outward appearances. In fact, they're preventing the sun from fading the new tiles. In a perfect world, they'd be resting instead."

  "Just like Jeremy." Ginna picked up her spoon. "He lies on the clean laundry so no one will steal it."

  "What dedication!" Ben said. "Holly, aren't you ashamed that you haven't noticed these wonderful qualities before? And you call yourself a Cat Person!"

  When I lay down for a nap that afternoon, I noted that the royals had yet another thing in common; they both liked kneading. Henry plumped down on my chest, his back to me, and pushed his paws against my tummy as though it were bread dough, kneading himself into a trance. It seemed an effective way of meditating and I got drowsy watching him in spite of the occasional claw piercing my shirt. George sat on my thighs, kneading hard enough to insert the tips of all his claws into my skin. Finally I rose, much faster than a loaf of bread, and went to the bathroom to fetch the nail clippers.

  George let me clip his claws without any fuss, which was unusual. Often the job required two people, one to hold him still and one to clip. But Henry, when I reached for one of his paws, hunched his shoulders, lowered his head and did his vulture act.

  Not wishing to deal with a mutiny, I put the clippers away and curled up on the bed again. I was happy to go along with Henry's philosophy of 'live and let live' but I pulled a blanket over me in case he decided to have another kneading and meditation session.

  XV - The King's Apprentice

  April slid into May and Ben worked long days in the vegetable garden. I rebelled against my brown thumb status and planted sweet peas along the front of the veranda and tacked netting to the rails for them to climb. Nicky, now almost full grown, followed us everywhere. So did the cats. All three were fascinated by our habit of burying things in the ground and occasionally dug the seeds up again to see what they were.

  When Ben swore at them, I said, "They're only trying to help. Sometimes they put fertilizer in with the seed and bury it again."

  "Well, I wish they'd stop. Steer manure is the only proper dressing for gardens."

  George picked his own spring task, which was to indoctrinate Henry into the ways of royalty. George did not hold with torn T-shirts, drinking beer from the bottle, or laissez-faire attitudes. Cats were superior beings, George most superior of all. He would teach Henry to give up his peasant ways.

  The first thing George demonstrated was upchucking. Henry watched the performance and wandered away, bored. Next day, apparently spurred by the King's enthusiasm, he gave it a try.

  When it was over, Henry had decided upchucking was a phenomenon visited on him by dark powers and, fortunately for our sanity and carpets, his first time was his last. When his stomach began to heave, he looked terrified and tried to outrun the evil thing. With each spasm, he leapt three feet and ran ten, throwing up as he went. By the time he'd decorated the living room, the kitchen, the hall and Ben's den, he'd accomplished more in one minute than George ever had with his carefully orchestrated three upchucks during breakfast.

  I felt so sorry for Henry that I couldn't get angry about cleaning up after him.

  "If George learned to look pathetic instead of arrogant," I said, "he'd have a more appreciative audience."

  "It won't ever happen," Ben said. "George would rather give up all nine lives than look like a wimp."

  He wouldn't accept failure either. If Henry couldn't be taught to throw up, he could certainly learn to be finicky about food and water.

  In this Henry was a credit to his teacher and the two of them worked out a routine that drove us crazy. Henry knew George's food tasted better than his, and George was just as sure Henry had the better deal, though they were eating exactly the same thing. When they decided their own food was acceptable after all, George wouldn't eat his because Henry had contaminated it with his peasant tongue. Henry wouldn't eat his because he was full of George's. Nicky gulped down the leftovers. Ten minutes later George would be back, demanding more food.

  George regarded having Ben feed him at the table as his exclusive privilege, however. When Henry and Nicky demanded equal rights and I fed them bits off my plate, George acted like a fur-covered vacuum cleaner and ate their portions as well as his own. Tired of watching pieces of chicken disappear from under their noses, they'd return to their dry kibble in the kitchen, selflessly saving George from overindulgence and indigestion.

  One day I sat at the kitchen table to eat a slice of freshly baked bread. Henry stared at it disappearing into my mouth, his slanted yellow eyes full of yearning.

  "Want some, Henry?" If George turned up his nose at broccoli, surely Henry would hate unbuttered bread. I handed him a tiny piece. He ate it with obvious pleasure and nuzzled my hand, asking for more.

  George may have approved Henry's eccentricity, but he disdained the bread – after checking to make sure he wasn't missing anything. It was fun feeding Henry because he was so good-natured and I assumed he'd be happy to eat bread any time I offered it to him. I should have known better. Some days he liked bread; some days he didn't.

  When I complained to Ben, he said, "You should thank those cats for making your life interesting."

  "I could stand a little boredom. Including cats who eat what we give them and shut up about it."

  Having achieved success with food, George moved on to water. Although the water in his bathroom water dish was replaced every day, he often preferred a muddy pool in a low, wet corner of the orchard. Bark, leaves and dead spiders must have given the water a rich, unique flavor.

  As far as Henry was concerned, if it hadn't fallen out of the sky it wasn't water and he wasn't going to drink it. With one exception; when one of us had a shower, he'd climb into the bat
htub to lick up the droplets of water.

  "I suppose the shower sounds like rain to him," I said to Ben. "I'm all in favor. If Henry licks the tub clean, that's less housework for me to do."

  "But the soap scum can't be good for his system."

  "If Henry likes it, then it must fulfill some deep primeval need in him."

  Henry's preferred source of water, other than stagnant pools, was the veranda, where the plank flooring was so warped it collected rain in shallow pools. I got tired of drying off his long, thick fur when he insisted on going out to drink for five minutes in a driving rain storm, and fed up with pouring water on the deck for him during dry spells. I didn't mind doing it when he actually drank, but half the time he stared at me as if I was out of my mind. It was hard not to agree with him.

  "Supposing," I said to Ben, "that I buy a shallow dish, the same green as the paint on the veranda? If I put that next to his food dish and make sure he watches me pouring water into it, maybe he'll think that's okay."

  Henry scorned the green plastic dish. One day I found him drinking from the metal watering can Ben kept outside for filling up the chickens' water dish. Next day both cats drank from it, standing on their hind legs and sticking their heads underneath the handle to get at the rusty water.

  I experimented with a plastic watering bucket on the step outside the kitchen and, amazingly, both George and Henry deigned to drink out of it. Encouraged, I put an identical container of water on the kitchen floor, mirroring the container on the other side of the sliding glass door which we'd installed to replace the French doors.

  Both cats drank from that, too. Sometimes. But they still preferred stale puddles of water in the orchard. Nicky's favorite drinking water was out of the toilet. We tried to solve that by keeping the lid down, but he soon learned to flip it up with his nose.

  "Those royals may appreciate gourmet food but when it comes to the wine list, they have no palate whatsoever," I said to Ben.

  "You just don't appreciate the subtle nuances of properly aged water."