A Tale of Two Kitties

The Bride of Frankenstein is moving in with me. She’s already here, in fact, she just doesn’t know she won’t be leaving in another week or so.

She was my last big surprise of 2006. On New Year’s Eve, as I stood making light conversation at a party in Milwaukee, wine glass in hand, cashmere sweater sparkling, perky bows on my killer spikes, feelings of warmth and good cheer and “whew, we made it!” in abundance. All enhanced by the anticipation of the lobster dinner still ahead, and the platter of “death by chocolate” brownies I’d brought to share for dessert. With three and a half hours to go until the year turned over, the Packers were ahead 13-0 in the football season’s last game over the Chicago Bears, and after a turbulent year, it finally looked like smooth sailing the rest of the way until midnight. I was feeling very mellow. That’s always a bad sign in the cosmos.

That was right about the time when my younger daughter showed up at her apartment in Madison and found a note from her landlord on the door with an ultimatum: if there’s a cat in the place, either lose the cat or lose the lease. A desperate cell phone call later from child to parent, and my universe instantly expanded to include a spare cat. Oh goody!! Twice the cat hair, twice the litter boxes, twice the reproach in the old dog’s eyes over being displaced yet again.

Mooka, a/k/a the Bride of Frankenstein, is exquisite. Five and a half pounds of slender, perfectly proportioned sinuous feline grace. Wrapped in a short-haired tabby coat of feral taupes and greys and black and cream with the shiny feel of sealskin. Tiny little paws that could be the model for Carl Sandburg’s poetic fog that “comes on little cat feet.” You look at this dainty, mysterious, self-possessed little predator, and you understand completely why the Egyptians worshipped cats. In silhouette, ears pitched forward as she sits, motionless, regarding the rest of the world from the edge of the kitchen table, she resembles nothing less than a statue of the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet carved in stone and standing sentinel in a pyramid at Giza.

Trouble is, another cat already owns my house. That would be Smokey. Smokey joined us as a tiny ten week old kitten nearly two years ago and now thuds around on ham-sized paws at fifteen or sixteen pounds, prowling like a small bear twice that size under his poofy long hair. Judging by his skill at catching mice—and his generosity at displaying them to me as a token of his affection—he is quite a mighty hunter himself. He is a “tuxedo cat,” velvety black with magnificent white paws that look like he dipped them in a bowl of heavy cream, snowy white chest and belly, and a white Elizabethan ruffed collar. His movements stalking are perfect, precise, patient beyond belief. But the fluffy coat just kills the dramatic effect. It’s as though you took Daniel Craig, the fabulously buff latest cinematic James Bond, and set him at a casino table in Monte Carlo in a tuxedo made entirely of marabou feathers. Might as well put him in a clown suit with a blinking red nose. Still, Smokey ruled the roost—and Bandit, the chocolate lab—with confidence and authority. The spare cat has put that world right on end.

You could definitely say that this pair has “chemistry.” The same kind Elsa Lanchester had for Boris Karloff in the 1935 movie “The Bride of Frankenstein” when the monster’s bride—draped in white and sporting a pre-Marge Simpson up-do—was brought to life and finally unveiled to meet her badly-stitched suitor. It didn’t go well then (the bride’s reaction has been called “one of the most famous screams in screen history”), and it didn’t go well now. And both these kids have all their original claws.

We had a preview of this transition last Christmas, when Mooka came home for the holidays for the first time. It started with a lot of hissing and growling and stalking, circling, watching, waiting, pouncing, and ended days later with blood splatters on the kitchen floor. We lived through it—though I cringed the day I saw Mooka’s claws stretching one of Smokey’s eyelids as the pair awkwardly tried to separate after a brief skirmish.

All’s quiet on the battlefront right now, the fighters have retired to the safety of their respective floors of the house. Smokey prefers to hang out in the laundry room, from his perch on the bin full of Easter decorations. When she’s not hanging out in my daughter’s bedroom, full of familiar scents, Mooka likes the safety of one of my closets. At the moment, there are no blood-curdling screams, no “don’t mess with me” warning growls, no wondering whether it’s safe to blindly reach under the bedskirt for a pair of shoes without risking severing an artery. But like all truces and DMZs still in under construction, I know it’s too early to last. I’ll just plan to keep the paper towels handy. And the vet on speed dial.