Cats In Clover

  ***

  "I'm making beef stew with red wine for tonight," I said, when Ben came in later.

  "George won't like it; he hates onions."

  "We don't have to feed him at the dinner table."

  "Is there any ham?" Ben asked. "He likes that."

  "I ate it for lunch."

  "Cruel! Thoughtless!" Ben teased. "Well, I guess poor George is going to be stuck with cat food."

  At dinner, George got canned tuna fish and ate it from a dish beside Ben's chair. Or rather, he took each piece out of the dish and put it on the rug before eating it. But how could a mere slave complain? Besides, I had no one who would listen. Ben had gone from 'cats are boring' to 'George is wonderful' overnight. He'd become so enamored I worried that my efforts to train George would be canceled out by Ben's efforts to spoil him rotten.

  The Houseboy suffered guilt pangs while he ate his beef stew. "I know the service is bad around here," he said to George. "I'll make you some chicken tomorrow."

  "If you let him out, he can go to the hen house and catch his own dinner."

  Ben shook his head. "George will never get any fresh chicken with Mr. Mighty on guard duty."

  I didn't think we would, either.

  A few moments later Ben said, "The Frasers have a Samoyed bitch. She's due to pup the end of May."

  "The people next door to my Dad's farm had a Samoyed. They're beautiful dogs. Are you going to get one?"

  "I think so. They're working dogs; they were used to herd reindeer and haul sleds. Should be easy to train a pup to keep deer out of the garden."

  "Sounds fine to me. I wonder what George will think."

  "Oh," said Ben, "don't worry about George. The dog will keep him in line, no problem." A pause. "Maybe George is eccentric enough to eat dog food. It would be a lot cheaper than what we're feeding him."

  "Don't change your budget in anticipation of a miracle like that. Our hens really will lay golden eggs before George lowers himself so far as to eat dog food."

  V - Glory of the Chase

  One bright Friday morning in late May I woke up without the help of George's usual meowing in my ear. Wondering where my fur-covered alarm clock had gone, I sat up and swung my feet over the side of the bed. One foot touched a body that was too warm to be a rug and couldn't be George because it didn't yell with indignation. I yanked my feet back under the covers and peered over at something that looked very much like a giant mouse. I poked Ben.

  "I think there's a dead rat on my rug."

  Ben struggled out of bed, fumbled for his glasses and came around to my side. He looked at the large gray-brown shape on the bedside mat.

  "Yes, that's a rat. Don't move; I'll get rid of it." He went downstairs and returned with a brown paper bag for the corpse. "I wonder when George brought that in."

  "I'm just grateful he didn't put it on the bed or lay it out artistically on my chest."

  "That cat still owes us for a set of curtains, too."

  He took the paper bag outside to the garbage can.

  Hunting has always been popular with kings and George was determined to be in the royal swim. Now that he had a handy window portal, he was showing off his championship style. In the last three weeks he'd presented trophies to us almost every day, his tail waving high in triumph.

  "If George were a dog," said Ben, "these kills would be gifts to the head dog, namely me."

  "But George is a cat and a king. He's simply showing his humble subjects that he has superior hunting prowess."

  George did nothing so crass as to eat his trophies. After all, when one has an imperial residence and slaves and is accustomed to Fancy Feast on a gold plate, one does not eat raw bird or mouse. One merely drops them, still bleeding, sometimes still running or flying or crawling, on the living room carpet and awaits, with regal dignity, the adulation due a mighty hunter.

  "Why does he insist on bringing his catch into the house?" Ben asked.

  "I read somewhere that cats bring prey to their humans because they think we're large, stupid kittens and they're trying to teach us how to hunt."

  Ben snorted. "George isn't teaching us how to hunt. He's never had any doubt that we're too slow and stupid to catch anything."

  The week before, we'd started a new game: tossing ping pong balls at George. He obligingly batted them back to us but we always missed. I had to agree that George knew we could never catch a mouse. Bringing his trophies into the house was just his way of bragging.

  "George," I said as I put down his breakfast, "don't show off with any more rats. Please? And eat your food or I'll give it to Mr. Mighty and the hens. They're not picky."

  He sniffed the food and decided it was edible. Peace reigned.

  After lunch, Ben said, "Why don't we try out the pool later this afternoon? It's warm enough now."

  "You try it out. I'll relax in a deck chair with a martini and we'll pretend we live like rich folk all the time."

  Ben went off to weed the garden and fiddle with complicated pool mechanisms. I gave myself an hour in my studio to mull over a poem I'd written about peaceful sunlit May mornings. I'd barely reread the draft when George bounded into the room with grasshopper legs sticking out one side of his mouth.

  "Oh, George, not again!"

  He released the grasshopper, which ricocheted off the walls, the furniture and me, with George in avid pursuit. The grasshopper finally leapt across my desk toward the window sill, George two leaps behind. Papers, books and pens skidded to the floor.

  I'd learned to move fast in order to rescue George's live prey but I could not catch grasshoppers. Nor did I want to stay and listen to the crunching while he ate one. I left, shutting hunter and prey in my studio.

  I went back fifteen minutes later but the grasshopper had vanished and George's face wore a smug expression. The studio looked as if a tornado had been through it. I tidied up, no longer in the mood for literary pursuits, and spent the next couple of hours cleaning house and baking cookies. Ben's son, Gareth, and his wife, Sue, were due to arrive next day to celebrate Ben's birthday and have their first look at our mini-farm. When Ben came in at four, I was more than ready for a break.

  The pool was too small for swimming lengths but Ben splashed and paddled and dove, pretending he was an otter. George paced around the concrete apron, meowing, while I sipped my martini and enjoyed the sunshine. He seemed relieved when Ben climbed out, opened a beer and flopped in the deck chair beside me.

  The Houseboy gave George a doubtful glance. "I wonder how he's going to react to Beanbag." Gareth had mentioned on the phone that he and Sue had adopted an adult Welsh corgi and that the dog weighed over forty pounds.

  "I'm worried about how Beanbag is going to react to George. A ten-pound cat is no match for a heavy dog."

  Sometime after midnight I wandered down to the kitchen to get a glass of milk, not bothering to turn the light on, as I like to wander around in the dark and am blessed with good night vision. An odd shape lay beside George's food dish. I bent for a closer look, then went back up to bed and poked the Houseboy.

  "There's a rabbit beside George's food dish."

  "Don't be silly," he said groggily. "You must have been dreaming."

  "No, I wasn't."

  He climbed out of bed and into his glasses and, to my annoyance, turned on the bedside lamp before departing for the kitchen. A few minutes later he was back.

  "You're right. It was a rabbit."

  "Is it dead?"

  "Yes. I put it in the garbage."

  George's prey was getting bigger and bigger. Maybe the corgi wouldn't be a problem after all.