buzzing the street yesterday?
Did someone—
say, that calico
four doors down—
tell you, Stay in, man.
Something is going down.
And though you
are willing to die in
an eagle’s talons
or a coyote’s jaw
or even by car,
you are not going
to let a pack of
house dogs with
their decorated collars and
jingling tags,
bellies full of
Kibbles ’n Bits,
take you down.
Cowards.
Following the pack.
You are more than that,
Boris, and you know it.
Discreetly you slip inside
and listen, silent,
to their hysteria.
7
They told me at
the shelter, Boris,
that your name before
was Hunter.
And I thought, Yes,
a nice upper-middle-class,
designer-label sort of
name.
Not a bad name at all,
though not one I’d choose.
So I named you Boris instead,
and you knew who you were
within a day.
You knew that you
were Boris.
Smart kitty.
But even though you
answered quite nicely,
you let me understand,
over time,
that you had, in fact, been
Hunter and that,
like one of those mysterious men
on the soaps
with the hidden past
that won’t go away,
you were still
that guy.
Because it didn’t take
long for the
half-dead mice to start
swooning all over
the patio,
the beautiful, delicate
birds to seemingly
drop dead on my steps,
the goldfish to disappear
from my neighbor’s pond,
and the one big rabbit to show up.
The dead one.
Hunter.
I’d thought it was
old New England Hunter,
prep-school Hunter,
that particular shade of green Hunter.
But it was hunter Hunter.
Didn’t ring a bell
until maybe the fifteenth
mouse.
Well, someone tried to warn me, Boris.
Whoever named you first.
Remove all bird feeders was
the message.
But I am slow and naive, Boris.
You knew that,
didn’t you,
coming right away
when I first called your name.
So, Boris it is, you must have thought,
tossing your old name tag off the side of a bridge.
But, like those nervous, troubled characters
in nineteenth-century literature,
every now and then
you are that other guy.
That one who lives in the cellar.
Hunter.
8
We heard a new cat
was moving in next door
and we thought,
Oh no.
That cat is doomed.
Boris has been sitting
on the next-door deck
for two years, we said.
He’s tagged it
again and again
with his
instantly portable
cat spray.
Everybody listen
loud and clear:
That is Boris’s turf.
The cat is doomed.
Desperate, we took you to the vet
for some plastic claws.
Nice little fake plastic claws
that stick on over
your lethal ones.
We could not
take the chance
that some night
the new neighbors
who were foolish enough
to move next door
with a cat
(what were they thinking?)
would show up on our steps
with a bag full of
shredded fur and teeth
and eyes
that used to be
somebody named Fluffy.
What else could we do?
But you managed, didn’t you,
Boris,
to still climb trees
with your sharp back claws
while we waited for
the new cat to move in.
Then finally, one day,
he arrived.
Harvey.
A six-month-old
piece of gray dust ball
named Harvey.
On your deck, Boris.
Stupid kid.
We waited to see if
you would tear him
to bits with your teeth.
Annihilate him
with a million plastic jabs.
Drop him
like a mouse at our door
and look for praise.
Harvey, we feared,
was not long for this world.
We were wrong.
Boris, you sly cat,
you poser,
you swaggering
bowl of jelly.
You adopted him.
You adopted Harvey,
and mornings we’d look out
and there you’d be,
teaching Harvey to jump,
teaching Harvey to pounce,
playing chase through
the tall reedy grass.
That deck, that infamous deck,
became where you two
sunned yourselves
after the fun and games,
and we could not believe it.
You liked him, that kid.
Reminded you of yourself
when you were just a
young upstart
looking for a role model.
And maybe you’d heard
Harvey’s sad story.
About being out on the streets
of Nashville,
begging.
He got to you, didn’t he, Boris?
So when the plastic claws
dropped off after
three months,
we didn’t replace them.
By that time you were
going into Harvey’s house
for supper
and sleeping with Harvey
at the foot of their bed
and generally just
being a big pussy.
As Harvey grew,
he looked just like you, Boris,
sleek and gray
and green-eyed.
No one could have told you apart
if not for Harvey’s bell.
And when he moved away, Boris,
you left a big bag of
treats on Harvey’s doorstep
and a note that read
“You’re a good kid,”
and you wished him luck,
one guy to another,
sure he’d be okay:
You taught him
everything he knows.
9
You disappeared
for ten days, Boris.
And for nine of them
I imagined
what it must have
been like for you,
being cornered by a coyote.
The wild fear.
The first broken bone.
The small yellow cat collar
with “BORIS 962–7899”
in Sharpie,
left behind in the leaves.
I hated for you
to have to go that way, Boris.
Though I’d seen what you’d
done to mice
and I knew it was justice.
Still, maybe there was a small part of me
relieved
that I didn’t have to have
a hand in your death.
Because I know what it is
to take a dying pet
on its final journey,
how each passing moment
counts so terribly,
and how that crescendo
toward death
builds and builds
until one can hardly bear
another second of impending doom
and utter end.
I know what it is,
that awful sudden instant
when the breathing stops
and someone is gone forever.
And one wants to die, too, then,
so as not to
feel anymore.
I don’t want
to live that again.
I want everyone I love
to die in sleep,
and preferably
after I’ve left the planet myself.
So, Boris, as I looked
for your remains
beneath shrubs
and in ditches
when the dogs and I
were out for our walks,
I knew that if I found you dead,
at least you spared me
being part of the thing.
You were good enough
to do that for me.
But on the tenth day, Boris,
you came home.
There you were, sitting at the patio door,
waiting for me to get out of bed.
After ten days missing,
you came home.
Skinny.
Hungry.
A bloody front paw.
And as I carried you inside,
I knew
this had been no
mere adventure.
Boris, you had won
a battle.
You had won a battle
in the thick forest where we live,
and there was no witness
to your bravery.
But I know.
I know, Boris,
that somewhere
a coyote wanders,
one eye dangling from its socket,
and tufts of
gray fur in his jaw.
You are keeping closer to home now, Boris,
and that’s good.
Don’t feel sheepish.
Don’t think we care
that the forest
no longer calls to you.
Because you are a fine boy, Boris.
A cat of cats.
You survived.
10
I thought that maybe,
after the last dog
passes away,
I’ll get a condominium.
(Which I’ll prefer to
call an apartment,
though technically
it would be a condo,
even if I cringe
at the word.)
I didn’t want to be
that girl,
the one who
lives in a condo.
I’m the person
who baked bread
in college,
wore long skirts
and boots
and didn’t own
an iron (still don’t)
or nylons (ditto).
I wanted to
be a cool hippie
but I’m not really.
I am too misanthropic
to live in a commune,
and the phrase
“Peace and love”
grates on my nerves.
Still, I have always
known for sure
I am not a condo girl.
Aren’t condos for people
who drive Buicks
and collect glass figurines?
Those people who think
Vegas is a destination
and Friends is funny?
But I am tired.
Tired of weatherproofing
and leaf blowing
and WD-40.
Tired of owning a house.
Wasn’t I supposed to live
in one of those
beautiful brownstones I saw
in 101 Dalmatians when
I was six?
That’s who I wanted to be.
That pretty woman,
that urban chick
with the brownstone
and the cool dog.
Well, where I live
brownstone means
condo,
and that brings me
to you, Boris.
Already I can hear you
saying, No way.
No way are you going to
live with me on the
fifth floor with
just a pathetic little
balcony to sit on
day after day
and not a clue
about how to operate
that elevator out
in the hall.
I want to be a
cool, urban chick,
Boris,
and you want a lawn.
You win.
11
It’s clear by now, Boris,
that we shouldn’t have
bought that kitty video.
Look at what it’s made you:
an ottoman potato.