Cats can be contrary, but always for a reason
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- August 26, 2023
- 456
Cats and I have never really gotten along, which was why when a white-and-gray one showed up one night, I feigned indifference.
This, I reasoned, was as close as I would get to speaking its language since they are, after all, renowned for their arrogance.
I should disclose at the outset that this occurred back home earlier in the month when I was in town for my 50th high school reunion. My wife had arranged lodging for us in an Airbnb, as opposed to a hotel, because the rates for the latter were, well, rather prohibitive.
And it turned out to be one of her best-ever decisions, right up there with marrying me and suggesting that I might be getting a trifle too old to roam around the roof, clearing the gutters every fall.
I’ll keep you posted on that situation as developments warrant.
But as comfortable as our upstairs loft apartment was – tastefully decorated, nicely furnished, with reliable WiFi and excellent water pressure in the shower – my favorite amenity turned out to be outside our host’s home itself, a little crescent of the greenest grass where she had arranged a chair, a table, a footrest and a love seat.
There was nothing showy or ostentatious about the setup; clearly it was an considerate afterthought, owing to the much more grandiose expanse in the back yard proper, a place that put me in mind of “The Secret Garden,” a book Mom read to us as children.
The lady of the house, upon realizing that I had spent hour after hour in that rather forgotten slice of her yard, stopped and spoke.
“Oh,” she said, so kindly, “you must feel free to walk through the gate and enjoy all the flowers and the pond and the fairy lights.”
“Thanks,” I said, emulating the cat I’d met earlier. “I’m fine here.”
In the summer of 1975, three important things happened to me:
I saw the Rolling Stones perform for the first time.
I dated a tall, tan, tawny girl who favored halter tops and cutoffs.
I quit smoking.
“Kissing you,” she said at an early juncture in our sunshine-and-splendor romance, “is kind of like licking an ashtray. So stop it.”
“I assume you’re not talking about me kissing you,” I said, flashing what passed for worldly wit when I was 20. “Am I right?”
“Just … stop it,” she repeated and I knew exactly what she meant.
Toward the middle of August, then, I got pressed into a cat-sitting gig because the woman for whom my brother and I had labored in June, steaming off seven layers of wallpaper so we could paint her living room a heavy chocolate brown, asked me to help her out.
This was after I’d spent a large chunk of my July digging up her yard to create brand-new garden areas where I planted about two tons of shrubs and flowers, as the woman – an art teacher at the college – lazed in a chaise lounge and gave me directions while wearing a floppy paisley hat, sipping on a sweet summer libation.
You’d think I’d have been filled with righteous resentment when she asked me to tend her cats for two weeks, but I knew, almost immediately, truly instinctively, that this was a golden opportunity, one not to be frittered away, a life-changing, important decision.
And so began what I’ve come to recall as my Cathouse Summer – with my impromptu lyrics sung to the tune of “Midnight Rambler.”
True, it was a pain to clean the litter box and also true, it was no fun chasing those two sneaky felines around the neighborhood at twilight after they’d slipped out the back door, but it was all good.
My girlfriend and I had unfettered, unsupervised and utterly delightful access to an entire house for a whole two weeks, the kind of thing that only happened in movies or imagined dreams.
So I was thinking about all that the first time the cat slinked into what I had begun to consider my space, the relaxing slice of green outside the house my wife and I had co-opted for four nights. Initially, I thought it was low-lying fog but that didn’t make sense since I could still see the lightning bugs – which we don’t have down here in Coastal Carolina – as they flickered on and off.
Gradually, through the gossamer haze, the indistinct form took on the spectral shape of a cat, one that gazed up at me expectantly, as if wanting something and unwilling to be ignored or turned away.
I could see (and hear) that it was wearing collar with a tag dangling from it, so I flicked open my lighter and read the name “Denise.”
Then she rolled over on her back and began squirming in the grass.
“You sure don’t act like most cats,” I said, turning up the volume on my transistor radio and taking a swig before I rubbed her belly.
Denise showed up faithfully throughout the weekend and I soon found out she had a fondness for the oldies, particularly Aerosmith, though she seemed to like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Guns N’ Roses, too.
Weirdly though, when a disco track came on, she bolted – gone.
Just like a cat, I thought, popping a top, inscrutably unpredictable.
Mike Dewey can be reached at Carolinamiked@aol.com or 6211 Cardinal Drive, New Bern, NC 28560. He invites you to join the fun on his Facebook page, where memories of home still blossom and the CSN song, “49 Bye-Byes,” remains in heavy rotation because of the line, “You’re just seeing things through a cat’s eye.”