The Feline Zone

Living with a serial killer is starting to get to me. After three consecutive mornings of stepping out of my bedroom and greeting the day by finding a fresh white-footed mouse corpse on public display, it's now the fourth morning, and I haven't stopped looking around corners for yet another surprise.

Though I shouldn't have to look hard. He placed the last body at the foot of the front stairs, perfectly centered, front paws outstretched in death agony, head thrown back, perpendicular from head to tail to the edge of the bottom step. Hannibal Lecter in a fluffy fur coat when it comes to artful murder and postmortem staging. I pity those poor little mice who think they're moving to safety when they come indoors for the winter!

I didn't remember this much drama or bloodletting from having a cat when I was nine or ten. I recall one summer day when we had moved in temporarily with my grandparents, bringing the family pets. My grandmother was in the back room off the kitchen ironing a shirt when I let Tippy, our black and white shorthair, in through the back door. What I didn't know until then was that Tippy had a fat field mouse clenched in her teeth. The mouse wiggled free as soon as the door slammed, and my grandmother shrieked and flung herself across the ironing board to get her feet off the floor. Tippy pounced on the mouse, I pounced on Tippy as soon as she recaptured her prey, and I threw them both out the door. I still laugh at the thought of Grandma straddling the ironing board with her midsection. Lowbrow comedy, yes. Horror? Hardly.

We moved to a farm up north a few years after that, and I don't remember any fiendish "death art" scenes from our cats there either. I do recall looking across the farmhouse kitchen one day and spying a fat field mouse sitting atop a flour canister on the hutch next to the kitchen table, upright on his haunches and staring straight at me with an air of nonchalance. Obviously the cats we had back then didn't take their "search and destroy" missions too seriously.

My life was pretty much kitty-free after I left home for college a long time ago. Marriage to a man whose entire family was ferociously allergic to cats swept the idea of caving into the kids' pleas for a kitten every time one of their friends did right off the table. Twenty-five years later, though, divorce opened the door a crack...and then a canyon. Three days after I broke the news to my youngest son that his family was dissolving, he started to square his shoulders, get a little color back in his cheek, and look for a silver lining.

"Do you think that now we could maybe get a kitten?"

I smiled. He started to plot. At his urging, I began to call humane societies for kitten availability, but apparently it wasn't quite "kitten season" yet. To keep him out of my hair, I handed him the want ads. I was busy getting ready to paint a bedroom when my son, all of thirteen and more than a little reserved, came to me with an ad circled in the paper. He'd already made the call and had the first conversation with the owner. C'mon, Mom, please call this lady!

There was one kitten left, black with white paws and a white chest, in a small town, twenty five miles away. It was the day before Easter, and another buyer who sounded interested had already promised to come by. But still, she'd keep my number, and if this other person didn't show, we could stop by later that night. All the kids were home for the Easter weekend, and my soon-to-be-ex stopped by to pick them up and take them out to a custard stand for burgers. My son, ever the optimist, elected to stay home "to keep Mom company." Ha!

The "cat lady" called about ten minutes later. The earlier prospective buyer turned out to be a phantom, and the seller was out of patience. My son and I were in the car five minutes later with a written set of directions and a carrying case that most recently had been used to transport the rabbit to have his picture taken at a photography studio. That's another story.

As we rode along and the miles slid by, I voiced all the standard disclaimers. We were only going "to look." There were lots of other kittens out there somewhere to pick from if we didn't like this one. Animal shelters would soon be awash with spare kittens. We were not necessarily going to buy this kitten!!! My son nodded and kept on smiling, his grip tight on the carrying case, his excitement and anticipation an electric, palpable third occupant in the car. As I drove, I realized that unless this kitten had only three legs and a really bad case of mange, we were coming home with this cat. Dear God, please let it be a good one!

As expected, the kitten was tiny and frisky and healthy and adorable. Short-haired too, but appearances later proved to be deceiving. Twenty-five dollars later, the three of us were in the car for the ride home. We stopped at Wal-Mart for a litter box and some Tidy Cat before we even set foot in the house. My son spent the following week of Easter break largely cuddling and man-handling the newest member of the family, with the result that the kitten soon came to regard him as his new mother.

That was four years and sixteen pounds ago. Smokey, as we soon named him, has been altering our routines and our lives ever since. When he grew bigger than the rabbit and started looking at his fuzzy, spotted friend like he might be on the dinner menu , the rabbit went to the local Humane Society. When my daughter brought her new kitten home from college for eight months until she could find a new cat-friendly apartment, the two cats eventually reached a detente...but not before shredding the bedskirt of my new comforter set. When his long, fluffy, black gossamer fur started collecting on the bottom of the creamy white semi-sheer curtain that screened off the big bay window from the road and gave us a little privacy, I recognized a losing battle when I saw one and cut my losses. The curtains came down. I didn't think it was possible for a single cat to produce so much hair...but I soon learned otherwise after the vacuum cleaner intake hose got jammed up, and the utility sink in the basement overflowed from a clogged drain.

Smokey has staked his claim on the furniture as well. His favorite seat these days--when he's not curling up on our of our laps--is an antique overstuffed chair with carved hunting dog heads sprouting from the arms instead of knobs as ornamentation. My father-in-law had collected several of these chairs in his years of antique hunting, and had restored two of them for us. My ex and I spent ninety-five dollars a square yard on the woolen tapestry we picked for the upholstery, which with medieval-styled rabbits and deer romping on a field of navy and bunches of flowers, would have looked right at home at Windsor Palace. Smokey has reserved the chair nearest the crossroads of dining room and living room, and sits preternaturally upright in repose, one arm stretched the length of the armrest, his paw stopping just short of the carved dog head, looking for all the world like a corpulent Orson Welles in those old Paul Masson wine commercials. Adding insult to injury, he's commandeered my favorite pillow as well--velvet backed, with an elaborate needlepointed scene of scarlet-coated fox hunters on thoroughbreds clearing a hedgerow under a bright blue sky. You must admit the cat's got good taste. I derive some dregs of comfort by reminding myself that the chair was never all that comfortable to sit in anyway. And when was the last time I'd really used the pillow?

With my son getting ready to head off for college in a few months, it's been dawning on me recently that I'm going to have the equivalent of a heavy, warm, fur-covered boat anchor in my lap every time I sit down on the sofa for the next fifteen years. Nice on a cold winter night when there's a chill in the living room when there's no fire in the grate, not as wonderful when you're trying to slice into a pork chop while you watch "Law & Order" reruns with your feet up. Even more, though, it's going to be fifteen years of living with an inquisitive, unpredictable, languid, affectionate, unreadable and occasionally sadistic intelligence that's never boring.

The man in my life describes watching a bonfire at night instead of television as "only one channel, but it's always changing." I can safely say that Smokey's got his own single channel going as well, and it hasn't gotten boring yet. And until he decides to quit showing off the spoils of war instead of eating them...I'm just going to have to keep watching my step.