ANIMAL LUST
An unprecedented affair
I have never really bonded with an animal. This is largely because when I was growing up, my mother had these horrible scraggly Himalayan cats who whined and shed long grey hairs all day and puked and pissed on all the rugs in the house, due to chronic bladder and stomach problems from the cheap food my mother fed them. Plus, I was allergic to them; they made my eyes swell up. They were utterly nasty-tempered, repellant and mangy cats, who scracked all day at each other like angry old Korean ladies. Their relationship reminded me of “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane,” and they made the entire patio area into a giant heated cat box, the smell of which alone was enough to want to boil them.
I sort of bonded with an English Bulldog puppy one of my ex boyfriends bought, but he immediately started racking up crazily expensive vet bills for terrible gory skin holes (“hot wet spots,” in the parlance of the vet); his eyelid popped out in a red bulb and his sinuses filled with cement. His hip bones, it seemed, were essentially made of Bisquick and were sure to be the next expensive thing to go.
My boyfriend kept threatening to put the puppy to sleep, because the puppy mill had given the animal some truly fucked up, stepped-on genetics and it was costing thousands. I didn’t fully bond with the dog because he was on Death Row. As soon as I fired the boyfriend a few weeks later, the pup went with him, and I didn’t want visitation rights. I just wanted out.
When I was married and lived in Brooklyn, I went to the shelter and adopted a very taciturn short-haired grey cat that I promptly named Luther Vandross. I adored Luther, but Luther absolutely hated being snuggled or pet on. He grew into enormous size, a burly mini-panther, who totally fucking hated me to the point where once when I picked him up to kiss him, he grabbed my face with his claws and tried to bite my eye out. He did come in handy after the divorce. Since Luther would only tolerate my ex-husband, Luther went with him when we split. I learned later that Luther would perch at the top of his staircase and lay in wait every morning for my ex to walk up so he could pounce on him, claws outstretched, fangs bared.
In the neighborhood where I live now, there is a literal epidemic of feral cats. In the politics of a neighborhood strewn with feral cats, there are few ground rules, like, Please Don’t Name Them.
I named all of them.
There are three generations of a feral cat colony traipsing at will across my back patio these days.
The grandfather and patriarch I call Harlem. He’s a really hardcore, bony-faced black cat covered with battle scars, who impregnated the hell out of the neighborhood — most notably, the grandmother, another slender, tired-looking jet-black cat, whom I refer to as Nefertiti Jones. They both look like they should have had walk-on parts in “The WIRE.” They are haggard, with thousand yard stares, and little trust for mankind whatsoever. The life expectancy of feral cats, I recently learned, is only about 5 years. They’re probably around 3, but they look 67.
They had a litter that I was mildly obsessed with, but I wasn’t feeding them so I couldn’t get near them. They were, however, incredibly handsome cats: two tuxedos, and two tabbies. Since then, I’ve named one of the now teenaged tuxedoes Davenport. He has a diagonal white stripe across his face like the Bend Sinister slash in heraldry which signifies a bastard, which is somewhat appropriate.
Then THAT generation of kittens had kittens (“The tomcats around here are so rapey!” said my neighbor) and my roommate Char-O and I became intent on seducing the new kittens because they were unbearably, nose-bleedingly cute. Again, the new litter contained two tabbies and two tuxedoes.
They were all INCREDIBLY shy.
The two tuxedo kittens, a boy and a girl, I named Seabiscuit and Zasu, respectively, in honor of their formal 1930’s attire.
I have been sprawling all over myself like an idiot for weeks trying to get these kittens to like me. And in some ways, it’s working.
We started with cans of “Chicken of the Sea” tuna.
This hypnotized a few of them onto the porch, most notably two of the babies we were most besotted by. When the bravest, most fearless tabby boy made it upstairs to the deck, it immediately struck me that his name was Sinjin (an English truncation of St. John). Since the moment I stared into his crazy green eyes, I have been embroiled in love with this little creature, and hell bent on socializing him. He has the coloring of a snow leopard - all grey, black and white tiger stripes — and astonishing Cleopatra eye makeup.
First I bought a catnip mouse and put it on a makeshift fishing pole, because I’ve found that drugs are a great way to make friends. He enjoyed batting that around a bit.
These kittens are third or fourth generation feral, so if you come near them, they usually run away. If you let your hand get too near them, or brush against them, they flinch like they’ve been electrocuted and then run.
It took a couple of weeks for Sinjin to chill out enough and acclimate enough to our presence to hang out on the deck with us.
A kinesiology professor once told me that I was good with babies because I got down to their eye level to play with them. I decided this could be applied to little cats. When Sinjin came to visit, I started laying on my stomach like a worm and talking to him at his height.
One evening a bit of tuna on my fingers got licked off, and I about lost my mind with glee. It reminded me of the time Luke Perry stuck his tongue in my ear. I felt like I was in The Yearling.
Maybe a week later, he started playing patty cake with me - swatting my fingers. I noticed, after a few swats, he redacted his claws, and my heart grew 42 sizes.
I starting pining for him and worrying if he didn’t show up in the evening. He’s not at all reliable. Sometimes he comes, sometimes he doesn’t.
About a week later, I got the Holy Grail moment I didn’t know was possible.
Sinjin was so obsessed with his face in the tuna, he stopped caring and after a few full body flinches actually let me actually pet him. This was a feeling unlike any other, for me, comparable only to the first time I met my first baby niece. My heart spat rainbow firecrackers and started spinning in its socket.
I’ve pet him many times since — even fed him in the house a few times! But, the boy’s just not that into me. He’s getting bigger every day, has hundreds of lairs in all the back yards, and I suspect he has a few other Sugar Mamas in the neighborhood. Those cats are wild, and it’s hard to keep a gorgeous young man like Sinjin on the porch. It seems like it would be a real shame to cut his balls off so he can watch TV with me, but I made the mistake of NOT doing that with several ex-boyfriends, so I’m leaning towards doing it, if I get the chance.
I HAVE EDITING SLOTS OPEN, IF YOU FINALLY WANT THAT MANUSCRIPT TO LOOK LIKE SOMETHING.
CintraW@gmail.com. Reasonable!
Tomorrow I am starting a band called Bend Sinister.
Nefertiti Jones… starring Tamara Dobson.