PUBLISHED BY:
Katzenjammer Eins
Copyright © 2011 by Bill Roberts
We were sitting beside the pool sipping iced Margaritas. The January sun laid golden sheets on our skin, the air shimmered. My sister Kate’s garden folded away towards the sea against which two giant flame trees boiled with Lorikeets. In the sandpit her two boys were loading their truck.
"Do you want one?" she asked. I turned. A child or a lorikeet? But Kate was pointing in the opposite direction. I followed the sweep of her arm and saw her hugely pregnant Siamese cat waddle out onto the patio. "My God!" I said. "When did that happen?"
"I let it happen," she said, "one dark and stormy caterwauling night. For the kids, you know."
"Hmmm."
"I repeat, do you want one? No late orders."
“I’m not ready for . . . a cat."
Kate looked at me over her sunglasses. It was a penetrating look that spoke volumes. She knew I was still not over Jackie. Not completely. Sometimes, not at all.
Now Kate is a wonderful person. She has boundless enthusiasm for everyone and everything and an optimism that will sail cheerfully into the jaws of disaster. If she had been Jonah, she would have said something like 'Well, at least it's nice and warm in here,' and set about tidying the place up. But she can be a bit careless about some things - sort of, let things happen, while she looks the other way. Also, she can be a bit of a bully.
Several weeks went by. I was in a deckchair in the back yard of my share house when I heard a familiar rattle of ancient machinery chugging up my driveway. A door skroinked open and was shut again with a good rattling bang. "God you're lazy!" Kate announced to the neighbours on both sides as she swept into view. "You're lucky," she said. "I moved you to the top of the cancellation list."
I stared at her blankly. Then I noticed the basket in her hand. Alarm bells rang.
“I don’t think so, Katie –“
“I said you were lucky," she cut in, "so now don't push your luck. Take your pick."
She swept the towel from the basket like a magician, revealing five multicoloured pompoms. "You can have any one you like," she said, "except this one. He’s taken.” She pointed to a beautiful tabby, the pick of the bunch. "Oh," she added, "and the neighbour wants this little chap." She touched a tiny black beauty, with pure white paws. My eyes moved on. Her hand curled round a pair that looked like zebra twins. "I nearly forgot," she said. "These two are also reserved."
I looked dubiously at my choice: a scrawny wretch finished mainly in black with whitish streaks and patches. An offset blob of pure white over the nose gave him a kind of crazy stare. The runt of the litter.
"Do you think he'll make it through the weekend?" I asked.
"Oh, he's as tough as nails. He's been dropped on his head twice already, trodden on a few times and even took a dip in the pool.”
“The pool!”
"Jeremy wanted to see if he could swim." She looked at me defensively. "Children are curious," she explained.
I looked at the tiny waif. Already I was beginning to feel protective. Dropped, crushed, half-drowned. He would need building up.
Two kittens had already climbed out onto the lawn. Kate scooped them up.
“They’ve just had their first needle,” she said. “Next one in three months, don’t forget.” And onto my bare midriff she dropped my tiny bundle.
“What, that’s it?”
“What do you want, an owner’s manual?” She strode to her car.
“What do I put him in?”
“Not the microwave.”
A tiny piebald face pushed out from below the towel as she opened the door, fixed its eye on me and mewed. And my little guy bared his needle fangs and let out a feeble response. A choking wave rose into my throat.
He would not drink milk. Instead he stepped on the edge of the saucer and sent the contents swirling over the carpet. I grabbed a wet cloth. As I was scrubbing at the carpet I realised it was gone three o’clock – the girls would be home soon. I had a acquired a cat without so much as letting them know.
I tried the kitten with a piece of raw steak, not interested. What did a kitten eat? And where did they sleep? I was feeling a little out of my depth.
But the girls saved me. Both loved him. Karen found a box in the kitchen cupboard and told me where there was fine red sand at the end of the garden. Megan found a little tin of tuna and the kitten ate a little and then drank some milk.
‘What’s his name?” Megan asked. When I confessed I had no name she immediately suggested Crotchet. Karen wanted Minim. Music teachers. But I did not want a musical cat. Unless something better came to me, his name would be James Gatz. From zero to feline superhero.
So within a few days James was well settled in. He learned in one day how to use the sandbox, how to climb up the doona and get onto my bed, and fall asleep on my chest. The children who came for their piano lessons on the weekend loved him. They chased him, cuddled him and mauled him. And James tolerated it all with total dignity.
But the sandbox. A sandbox can become wearisome. It beats kitty-do on your carpet, certainly. But it demands a refill every evening. It will not tolerate even a single day’s delay. The nightly trip with the shovel began to wear me down. I looked at James. James looked at me, and blinked, and scratched, and chased his tail.
My window was the obvious solution. Getting James up to it was easy, I had only to move the bed close enough for James to hop onto the sill. But it was a meter down to the grass. And James was still very little.
The next afternoon saw my first attempt at animal training. I arranged several cardboard boxes in a spiral up to the sill. James could proceed by a series of small hops from the sill to the grass and back. So with little bits of steak as a lure, I tried to coax him from box to box.
He made a few steps quite willingly: claws in, pull and jump! Easy. But after a few pieces of steak he started to lose interest. He was more interested, when I moved a few boxes, in getting underneath them. Kittens, like young boys, like to hide in dark, confined spaces.
In the middle of this instruction, a little girl came for her piano lesson. She and her mother stopped and watched me. I felt a little stupid. After a while the little girl asked what I was doing.
“”I’m house training my cat,” I muttered.
“You should just use a sandbox,” she announced.
I turned my back on them, waiting for them to go away. Then I brought James back to the bottom box and started again. After some persistence he seemed to get the idea. I was greatly encouraged. He made it to the top box, then hopped onto the sill. Perfect.
Unfortunately, coming down was a different story. James proved very reluctant indeed to come down from the sill to the top box. But I felt sure he would get it in a day or two. I was a patient young man, and James was surely a highly intelligent feline.
That night a wind came up, followed by steady rain set in. In the morning my boxes were scattered around the garden and half of them had collapsed. The spiral staircase idea was a washout.
In the afternoon I found a timber plank in the shed. It was a little narrow, but I showed it to James who sniffed at it and signified his approval with a touch of the paw. I secured it at the base with some bricks, and at the top with old shoelaces and a spare towel, and James scampered all the way up on his first go. Magic!
But again, he would not come down. Going up, he clung to the sides of the plank with his razor claws, but going down, his paws slipped on the surface and he didn’t like it.
In the shed I dug out an old ball of rough twine. Perfect. This I wrapped tightly round the length of the plank, and James was
much reassured. I succeeded in getting him to ascend and descend the plank several times in a row.
Now the sandbox. I fetched it and placed it at the bottom of the plank. James showed his approval by squatting in it then and there. Then I put him on the window sill and coaxed him down to the sandbox several times. He understood it all perfectly.
That night I slept soundly in the utter confidence that James would pass the test.
I woke a little late in the morning and had to rush. James, lying at the foot of the bed, lifted his head and looked around dreamily. I put down food for him and dashed off to work.
When I came home, the girls were sitting at the kitchen table. I sensed a certain tension in the air. The corners