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Maggie the Cat

Maynard rambles on about cats and other stuff

My ears perked up when Barry told me that a cat was living in the bushes next to the office. Call it a hunch.

The office is in something of a concrete jungle. It’s part of a small industrial park fronting on a major street. There’s a dense tangle of brush between the building and the parking lot, maybe six feet deep and twenty feet wide.

It’s not a good place for a cat to live. But if a cat somehow ends up there, it’s not clear where it can escape to.

Anyhow, I had a hunch.

Let me explain my theory of hunches. We’ll start by taking a peek at the human brain.

You know how the normal brain has two hemispheres, left and right. The left brain is plodding and methodical. The left brain is a sensible thing. As opposed to the right brain, which is a jumble of flotsam and jetsam. The right brain doesn’t bother to study out the details; it just leaps ahead. It comes to conclusions without the benefit of explaining its reasoning.

Hunches come out of the right brain. That’s my thinking, anyway.

So I don’t entirely trust my right brain. It can be a bit flighty.

On the other hand, my left brain is so slow that, by the time it gives me an answer to anything, it’s far too late to do any good.

This leaves me with an awkward choice: Would I prefer to follow questionable advice or late advice?

So I do a bit of both. When my right brain tells me to act, I’ll start cautiously along the path it recommends, but I’ll try not to commit. Meanwhile my left brain is desperately playing catch-up. Hopefully by the time anything important happens, I’ll have figured out where I’m going, and why.

That’s the theory, anyway. The practice is something else.

In retrospect, I realize why my right brain perked up when I heard about the cat. I knew this cat was in an untenable position. That it was somehow surviving was a testimony to its resilience. This was a special cat.

Okay, it’s a special cat, but what does that have to do with me? Why should it be my special cat?

That was a question I couldn’t answer. But you know who could answer it? The cat!

I was going to have to consult the cat. That’s what it came down to.

Here I pause to give a few words of background and explanation.

First of all, you need to understand that cats are people. Every cat has its unique personality; its dreams and ambitions, its strengths and weaknesses, its friends and enemies.

Molly the Cat

I never knew any of this until cats happened to me. Molly started visiting my yard in 1993. I don’t recall the details. Maybe I offered her a kind word, or a bit of meat from a sandwich I was eating. I didn’t realize the implications of my casual actions until I came home one day to find Molly had moved a litter of kittens to a planter by my door.

Like it or not, I had a cat. I was stuck.

Molly and I bonded over time. She brought a much-needed element into my life, and I think I gave her something too. I pledged to serve her all of her days, and I kept this promise. When she passed away a year ago, I was terribly grieved.

But I didn’t rush out to get another cat. First of all, Molly could never be replaced. Second of all, how would I ever get the right cat?

One must tread carefully. It’s all too easy to get a cat inadvertently. Molly herself is a case in point. I was lucky with Molly, oh so very lucky.

But let me relate another anecdote, a Tammy anecdote. I know that’s what you boys and girls really want to hear, stuff about Tammy, not stupid incidents from Maynard’s stupid life. Okay, here you go.

So one day, countless years ago, Tammy is walking down the street. And suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, cowering in a bush, she sees a poor sad homeless lost waif of a kitten. So what does Tammy do? She crouches down and calls out, “Oh, you poor sad homeless lost waif of a kitten, come here.” And, to Tammy’s amazement, the poor sad homeless lost waif of a kitten actually ambled over to her. And Tammy had scooped up the poor sad homeless lost waif of a kitten before the enormity of her mistake struck her. Could she put down the poor sad homeless lost waif of a kitten? She could not. Could she give away the poor sad homeless lost waif of a kitten? She could not. There was nothing to do but take it home and keep it forever. Tammy realized that she had, in one thoughtless moment, redefined the entire arc of her life for the next twenty years or more.

Tammy may be smarter than the average bear. But you see how even Tammy can be outmaneuvered by a poor sad homeless lost waif of a kitten. Consider this a cautionary tale.

Taz the Obese Wire-Eater

And not all cats are created equal. Just as you wouldn’t marry arbitrarily, so you cannot pick a cat arbitrarily. Consider the case of Taz the Wire-Eater. Taz was a cat that was briefly under my administration.

It happened like this. After Molly had passed on, I would occasionally stop by the vet just to say “Hi”. I like those people, and I figured that someday I’d have another cat; maybe I’d even get one here. So I’d look in, now and then. And this time — this happened earlier this year, maybe around March or April — the vet took me aside and asked if I’d be willing to take foster care of a cat for a while.

Taz’s story was this: He’d been put out for adoption, and sometime later he’d been returned. I don’t know the details, but the main issue was that he’d come back in a state of advanced obesity. To put it bluntly, Taz was a blimp. He needed to be kept on a strict diet. So he had to be isolated in order to control his food intake. The doc figured maybe he could hang around my house for a while. I said “Okay.”

Taz was a sweet, agreeable cat. I quickly grew very fond of him. He had only one quirk, but in this he was incorrigible. Taz chewed on stuff. It was a compulsion. I tried every trick in the book to direct his chewing in a socially acceptable direction. I got him chew toys and play things, and he liked these, but he’d still chew on wires. I’ve got a lot of wires around here, and I couldn’t have him destroying them. I remember Taz sitting on my desk, happy with me, and then he’d catch sight of a USB cable and start to drift towards it. And I pick up a squirt bottle, and raise my voice a bit. “Taz!”, I say, “What’s going to happen if you eat that wire? What’s going to happen?” And I’ve got the squirt bottle a foot from his head, waving it menacingly. And he looks at me, trying to understand, and then is drawn back to the wire. Chomp! Chomp! Chomp! And I let fly with the squirt bottle and he takes off, surprised.

I kept Taz as long as I could, but I had to take him back. In retrospect, he was just a sweet, goofy cat with lots of heart but few brains. He’d be a perfect cat for somebody. But he didn’t belong here.

So here I was without a cat, and thinking it was time. And then the cat showed up at the office, and I had that hunch.

It was probably a feral cat. Nasty and mean. Barry told me nobody could get close to it.

I go to the office irregularly. I figured I couldn’t get the cat and I probably didn’t want it. The cat would just disappear one day and that would be that. But just in case, I put a cat carrier in my car. You never know.

I saw the cat sometimes when I was there late. When things got quiet, she would emerge from the bushes and sit on the concrete and watch the cars rush by. I would go outside and sit nearby. I put out a food bowl, and encouraged others to fill it when I wasn’t around.

Here’s the thing about cats: You don’t make friends with a cat by chasing after her. The thing to do with a cat is just sit down and look at her from a distance. Relax, make eye contact and hold it, and maybe blink slowly every now and then.

This is not some secret way to hypnotize a cat and make it do your bidding. Cats aren’t that pliable. All you’re doing is giving the cat a signal that you’re willing to be friends. Whether the cat takes you up on that offer is a choice she’ll make on her own.

So when the world was quiet and everyone else was gone, I offered myself to this cat. I did this on a number of days. And I expected nothing to come of it.

But one day, as I was closing up shop and going home — I hadn’t seen the cat; I figured maybe she was gone — and suddenly she came out of the bushes and rubbed against me. And now I was hit by a sudden shock.

Two questions: First, could I take this cat? And two, did I want to take this cat? Because, as I have learned, as Tammy has learned: Once you take the cat, your life will never be the same. This is a big decision.

So I sat down on the ground, the cat at my side, and contemplated. But it was more than I could deal with. So I tried to talk to the cat. “Would you like to come with me?”, I asked. “Come away from all this? But there’s no going back.”

But this was getting a bit abstract. She was probably expecting a food bowl. I should produce that. The wheels turned in my mind.

Could I pick the cat up? I tried, tentatively. She let me do it. That meant I might be able to put her in a carrier. But would the carrier spook her?

I made a point of getting the food bowl. But, as I was doing this, I also took the cat carrier from my car. I set this down a few feet from where the food bowl was to go. With the pieces in place, I set the food bowl down and sat next to it. If she ate, both she and the cat carrier would be within my reach. I could pick her up and set her down in the carrier. If I could accomplish that motion, the rest would be routine.

So she ate and I sat, waiting for her to be satisfied, and my mind was running at a furious pace. But she let up on the food, and I petted her, and then in a smooth motion I took her up and dropped her neatly into the carrier and sealed it, and that was that. In a haze of unreality, I drove her home.

That was about two months ago. And we’ve been bonding ever since. I’ve got to give credit to the right half of my brain here for pointing out the right cat.

In 1830 it was a snug collection of modest one- and two- story frame dwellings, whose whitewashed exteriors were almost concealed from sight by climbing tangles of rose vines, honeysuckles, and morning glories. Each of these pretty homes had a garden in front fenced with white palings and opulently stocked with hollyhocks, marigolds, touch-me-nots, prince’s-feathers, and other old-fashioned flowers; while on the windowsills of the houses stood wooden boxes containing moss rose plants and terra-cotta pots in which grew a breed of geranium whose spread of intensely red blossoms accented the prevailing pink tint of the rose-clad house-front like an explosion of flame. When there was room on the ledge outside of the pots and boxes for a cat, the cat was there — in sunny weather — stretched at full length, asleep and blissful, with her furry belly to the sun and a paw curved over her nose. Then that house was complete, and its contentment and peace were made manifest to the world by this symbol, whose testimony is infallible. A home without a cat–and a well-fed, well-petted, and properly revered cat — may be a perfect home, perhaps, but how can it prove title?

–from Mark Twain’s “The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson”

Thanks and love, Maggie (AKA Magneto AKA Magneato AKA Magpie; I’m not quite sure which is right-er), for choosing me.