It's Like This, Cat (12 page)

In the animal wing a strange-looking dame is down at the end, talking to a sleepy tiger.

"Come on, darling, just a little roar. Couldn't you give me just a soft one today?" she's cooing at him. The tiger blinks and looks away.

The lady notices us standing there and says, "He's my baby. I've been coming to see him for fourteen years. Some days he roars for me beautifully."

She has a short conversation with the lion, then moves along with us toward the small cats, a puma and a jaguar. She looks in the next cage, which is empty, and shakes her head mournfully.

"I had the sweetest little leopard. He died last week. Would you believe it? The zoo never let me know he was sick. I could have come and helped take care of him. I might have saved his life."

She goes on talking, sometimes to herself, sometimes to the puma, and we cross over to look at two otters chasing each other up an underwater tunnel.

"What is she, some kind of nut?" Mary says. "Does she think this is her private zoo?"

I shrug. "I suppose she's a little off. But so's my Aunt Kate, the one who gave me Cat. They just happen to like cats better than people. Kate thinks all the stray cats in the world are her children, and I guess this one feels the same way about the big cats here."

We mosey around a little bit more and then head back to the ferry. I make good and sure I'm ahead, and I get to the ticket office and buy two tickets.

"Would you care for a ride across the harbor in my yacht?" I say.

"Why, of course. I'd be delighted," says Mary.

A small thing, but it makes me feel good.

Over in Brooklyn I see a clock on a bank, and it says five o'clock. I do some fast calculating and say, "Uh-oh, I better phone. I'll never make it home by dinnertime."

I phone and get Pop. He's home early from work. Just my luck.

"I got to get this bike back to this kid in Coney," I tell him. "Then I'll be right home. About seven."

"What do you mean
this
bike and
this
kid? Who? Anyway, I thought you were already at Coney Island."

I suppose lawyers just get in the habit of asking questions. I start explaining. "Well, it was awfully cold over in Coney, and we thought we'd go over to Staten Island on the ferry and go to the zoo. So now we just got back to Brooklyn, and I'm downtown and I got to take the bike back."

"So who's 'we'? You got a rat in your pocket?"

I can distract Mom but not Pop. "Well, actually, it's a girl named Mary. It's her brother's bike. He's away in college."

All I can hear now is Pop at the other end of the line, laughing his head off.

"So what's so funny about that?"

"Nothing," he says. "Nothing. Only now I can see what all the shouting was about at breakfast."

"Oh."

"O.K. Now mind you get that girl, as
well
as the bicycle of the brother who goes to college, home safe. Hear? I'll tell your mother you narrowly escaped drowning, and she'll probably save you a bone for dinner. O.K.?"

"O.K. Bye."

Him and his jokes. Ha, ha, ha. Funny, though, him worrying about me getting Mary home safe, when her own mother doesn't worry any.

We start along toward her house slowly, as there's a good deal of traffic now. I'm wondering how to see Mary again without having to ask for her number and phoning and making a date. Something about telephoning I don't like. Besides, I'd probably go out to a pay phone so the family wouldn't listen, and that'd make me feel stupid to begin with.

Just then we start rounding the golf course, and I whack the handle bar of my bike and say, "Hey, that's it!"

"What's it?"

"Golf. Let's play golf. Not now, I don't mean. Next holiday. We've got Election Day coming up. I'll borrow Pop's clubs and take the subway and meet you here. How about ten o'clock?"

"Hunh?" Mary looks startled. "Well, I suppose I could try, or anyway I could walk around."

"It's easy. I'll show you." The two times I played, I only hit the ball decently about four or five times. But the times I
did
hit it, it seemed easy.

We get to Mary's house and I put the bikes away and give her back her brother's jacket. "I guess I'll go right along. It's getting late. See you Election Day."

"O.K., bye. Say – thanks for the ferry ride!" 

Wednesday night before Thanksgiving I go down to the delicatessen to buy some coke, so I can really enjoy myself watching TV. Tom is just finishing work at the flower shop, and I ask him if he wants to come along home.

"Nah. Thanks. I got to be at work early tomorrow." He doesn't sound too cheery.

"How's the job going?"

"O.K., I guess." We walk along a little ways. "The job's not bad, but I don't want to be a florist all my life, and I can't see this job will train me for anything else."

That seems pretty true. It must be tough not getting regular holidays off, too. "You have to work all day tomorrow?" I ask.

"I open the store up at seven and start working on orders we've already got. I'll get through around three or four."

"Hey, you want to come for dinner? We're not eating till evening."

Tom grins. "You cooking the dinner? Maybe you better ask your mother."

"It'll be all right with Mom. Look, I'll ask her and come let you know in the store tomorrow, O.K.?"

"Hmm. Well, sure. Thanks. I've got a date with Hilda later in the evening, but she's got to eat with her folks first."

"O.K. See you tomorrow."

"Right."

Mom says it's all right about Tom coming, so I go down and tell him in the morning. Turns out Mom has asked Kate to have dinner with us, too, which is quite a step. For Kate, I mean. I think she would have turned the invitation down, except no one can bear to hurt Mom's feelings. Kate's been in our house before, of course, but then she just came in to chat or have tea or something. It wasn't like an invitation.

She comes, and she looks like someone from another world. I've never seen her in anything but her old skirts and sneakers, so the "good clothes" she's wearing now must have been hanging in a closet twenty years. The dress and shoes are way out of style, and she's carrying a real old black patent-leather pocketbook. Usually she just lugs her old cloth shopping bag, mostly full of cat goodies. Come to think of it, that's it: Kate lives in a world that is just her own and the cats'. I never saw her trying to fit into the ordinary world before.

Cat knows her right away, though. Clothes don't fool him. He rubs her leg and curls up on the sofa beside her, still keeping a half-open eye on the oven door in the kitchen, where the turkey is roasting.

Tom comes in, also in city clothes – a white shirt and tie and jacket – the first time I ever saw him in them. He sits down on the other side of Cat, who stretches one paw out toward him negligently.

Looking at Kate and Tom sitting there on the sofa, both looking a little ill at ease, I get a funny idea. My family is starting to collect people the way Kate collects homeless cats. Of course, Kate and Tom aren't homeless. They're people-less – not part of any family. I think Mom always wanted more people to take care of, so she's glad to have them.

Kidding, I ask Kate, "How many cats at your home for Thanksgiving dinner?"

She stops stroking Cat a minute and thinks. "Hmm, Susan's got four new kittens, just got their eyes open. A beautiful little orange one and three tigers. Then there's two big kittens, strays, and one old stray tom. Makes eight, that's all. Sometimes I've had lots more than that."

"Doesn't the landlord ever object?" Pop asks.

Kate snorts. "Him! Huh! I pay my rent. And I have my own padlock on the door, so he can't come snooping around."

We all sit down to dinner. Pop gives Cat the turkey neck to crunch up in the kitchen. He finishes that and crouches and stares at us eating. Kate gives him tidbits, which I'm not supposed to do. I don't think she really wants to eat the turkey herself. She's pretty strictly a fruit and yogurt type.

After dinner Tom leaves to meet Hilda, and I walk home with Kate, carrying a bag of scraps and giblets for her cats. While she's fiddling with the two sets of keys to open her door, the man next door sticks his head out. "Messenger was here a little while ago with a telegram for you. Wouldn't give it to me."

"A telegram?" Kate gapes.

"Yeah. He'll be back." The man looks pleased, like he's been able to deliver some bad news, and pulls his head in and shuts his door.

We go into Kate's apartment, and cats come meowing and rubbing against her legs, and they jump up on the sink and rub and nudge the bag of scraps when she puts it down. Kate is muttering rapidly to herself and fidgeting with her coat and bag and not really paying much attention to the cats, which is odd.

"Lots of people send telegrams on holidays. It's probably just greetings," I say.

"Not to me, they don't!" Kate snaps, also sounding as if they better hadn't.

I go over to play with the little kittens. The marmalade-colored one is the strongest of the litter, and he's learned to climb out of the box. He chases my fingers. Kate finishes feeding the big cats, and she strides over and scoops him back into the box. "You stay in there. You'll get stepped on." She drops Susan back in with her babies to take care of them.

The doorbell rings, and Kate yanks open the door, practically bowling over an ancient little messenger leaning sleepily against the side of the door.

"Take it easy, lady, take it easy. Just sign here," he says.

She signs, hands him the pencil, and slams the door. The orange kitten has got out again, and Kate does come close to stepping on him as she walks across the room tearing open the telegram. He doesn't know enough to dodge feet yet. I scoop him back in this time.

Kate reads the telegram and sits down. She looks quite calm now. She says, "Well, he died."

"Huh? Who?"

"My brother. He's the only person in the world I know who would send me a telegram. So he's dead now."

She repeats it, and I can't figure whether to say I'm sorry or what. I always thought when someone heard of a death in the family, there'd be a lot of crying and commotion. Kate looks perfectly calm, but strange somehow.

"Has he been sick?"

Kate shakes her head. "I don't know. I haven't seen him in twenty years."

There is silence a moment, and then Kate goes on, talking half to herself and half to me. "Mean old coot. He never talked to anyone, except about his money. That's all he cared about. Once he tried to get me to give him money to invest. That's the last time I saw him. He has an old house way up in the Bronx. But we never did get along, even when we were kids."

"Did he have a wife or anything? Who sent the telegram?"

"He's had a housekeeper. Just as mean as him. She'd buy him day-old bread and dented cans of soup because they were cheaper. She suited him fine – saved him money and never talked to him. Well, she'll get his money now, if he left any. That's what she's been waiting for. She sent me the wire."

Twenty years, I think. That's a long time not to be speaking to your own brother, and him living just a ten-cent phone call away. I wonder. She couldn't just not give a hoot about him. They must have been real mad at each other. And mad at the whole world, too. Makes you wonder what kind of parents
they
had, with one of them growing up loving only cats and the other only money.

Kate is staring out the window and stroking the old stray tomcat between the ears, and it hits me: there isn't a person in the world she loves or even hates. I like cats fine, too, but if I didn't have people that mattered, it wouldn't be so good. I say "So long" quietly and go out.

"I always wondered if the poor soul had any relatives." That's what Mom says when I tell her about Kate's telegram. "And now she's lost her only brother. That's sad."

"I think it's sad she never talked to him for twenty years. All these years I've wished I had a brother," I say.

"If it's her only brother, she's going to have to do something about his estate," says Pop. That legal mind, it never rests. I guess he's got a point about this, though. How is Kate going to deal with lawyers, or undertakers, or anyone? She can't hardly stand to
talk
to people like that.