In the meantime, we have a sort of training-wheels cat. She is a feral tabby who makes her home in the driveway area shared by the two apartment buildings next to ours. A man in one building told me that the cat showed up years ago. He began to feed her, and she stuck around.
The cat has pretty green eyes and fur of an orange-brown hue. The man and his young daughter named her, for obvious reasons, "Orangey." (My partner and I, for perhaps equally obvious reasons--oh, those kooky gays!--slang-dub her "Orgy.") Another neighbor, who lives in the second building at the top of a set of wooden steps, also feeds Orangey. "I began giving her wet food," she told me recently, "and now she'll hover outside the screen door and wait to be fed."
This is just about the total extent of Orangey's human socialization, however. Oh, she'll laze on a step in the sun, her eyelids at half mast, her body a slouched mass. But the moment she hears a sound the ears perk, the eyes widen--and she darts off the step and into the safety of the overhung parking spot. (The second neighbor has placed a cat bed and small scratching post there.) Human touch is anathema; it seems she'd rather be clawed by a competitor cat than be petted by a human.
She is not the only feral cat to feel that way, according to a "The Lion in Your Living Room," a fifty-minute cat-themed documentary my partner and I recently streamed on Netflix. In a segment on feral felines, the film notes their aversion to human touch, even when they've been rescued and given a home and steady food. Some take years to adjust to the simplest caress.
But then, as a rule, cats often appear aloof. This drives many dog people to distraction. Dogs are gregarious-seeming and well-socialized. They appear to manifest all the best traits of people: loyal, affable, uncomplicated, companionable. This is true, to a greater or lesser extent, of their guardians, too, although, given human complexity, to say it is always the case is a stretch.
Still, many of these people can't see the point of keeping a cat as a pet. Where's the fun in an animal that doesn't affirm, with every whimper and tail wag, that you are the single most important being in the whole, wide world?
It may be overstating things to say that dog people are extroverts and cat people introverts. But maybe not. Dogs are outward; cats are inward. Only an inward person can understand the true beauty of an animal which actually requires work to understand, and which, to a large extent, is beyond training. By their very nature, cats demand of humans a kind of blasé curiosity mingled with resigned acceptance. Cats are not going to do your bidding, at least on your terms and in your time frame. You might as well just let go of all demands and dig how awesome they are.
In other words, bow down to King and Queen Cat.
It has taken me many patient months to get to the point at which Orangey, sitting on the neighbor's stair, won't bolt when she sees me. I've learned to call her name before I appear to her. I approach slowly and coo to her soothingly.
I knew I was getting somewhere with her sometime last summer. As I coo'd softly over the fence, her bright green eyes went from saucer-wide fear orbs to slowly-blinking satisfied slits. She had accepted my presence. I suspect she now considers my scent non-threatening.
One day recently I prepared to bike around town to do errands. Descending my stairs en route to the garage, I spied Orangey sunning on the usual stair. I decided to see how close I could get to her. I rode into the neighboring apartments' parking area and stopped roughly fifteen feet from the cat. I dismounted, laid the bike on the ground, sat down. Orangey didn't flinch; her eyes stayed soft. I talked to her for a bit, and then slowly climbed back on my bike and pedaled away. I considered the event a victory of sorts.
Life, as Madonna so astutely observed back in 1989, is a mystery. (Everyone, she added, must stand alone, but don't tell that to dog people). The biggest mystery of this mysterious journey is what lies beyond it, when ashes return to ashes and dust to dust, and the spirit floats free of mortal and material bonds.
People adjust to life's unpredictability in a host of ways. To some, it is cheering to be in the company of like-minded souls; this wards off the unconscious terror of the coming void (if indeed a void is what awaits us). Among these types, it would stand to reason, are dog lovers.
For others, contemplation of the mystery is one of the joys of the mysterious journey, and contemplation requires solitude. Among these, I would submit, is where you find your cat lovers.
Oh, there are exceptions which prove the rule, and there may not even be a rule. But if you're given to contemplating the mystery of life and what's beyond it, what better companion than a cat, herself a mysterious piece of the wild veldt right there on the bedspread?
Something of a breakthrough happened today, after I'd finished writing most of this piece.
Having seen Orangey sitting on her step while on my way to the recycling bins, I called her name as I walked back up my stairs. Peeking over the fence separating our properties, I noticed that she'd left the stair and was standing in the overhung garage.
I hailed her once more--and she meowed.
That's right. For the first time, Orangey replied. (Cats, "The Lion in Your Living Room" noted--as have other cat documentaries I've watched--mainly use meows to communicate with humans, not with others of their ilk.)
Orangey then flopped to the concrete and rolled back and forth on her spine. Her legs flailed gaily and her face was a mask of bliss (or so it seemed to me). There was joy in the land, not least because the conversation was now two-way.
And so the mystery of Orangey, and of the life she and I and my partner and all of us lead, rolls on. I may not solve the mysteries--not completely, anyway--but I know the answers await if I'm patient. One could do worse than to be satisfied with slow and steady progress.
Or, as Orangey might put it, "Meow."
And you can put that in your pipe and smoke it. Or, if you prefer, you can scoop it into the toilet and flush it on down.
No comments:
Post a Comment