We went back to the tree, and I parted the grass and stared at what, from the color and the sound, I thought might be a Pekingese. The sad song stopped, and slowly and timorously, a full-grown collie unwound itself and stood up. It had been wrapped entirely around the tree trunk and had flattened itself into an incredibly small space. It was a young dog, though full-grown. It stared around, saw that the enemy was not in sight, then with tail tucked under, in total silence, it sped away through a neighbor yard and out of sight. We never saw it again. When we opened the window the cats came out and looked for it and seemed surly about the interference.
That same season, in the following spring, the cats put on a display of thoughtful co-operation which surprised and enchanted us. Though we saw much the same thing happen many times later on, this was the first time we had witnessed it. It was a hot day. Our neighbors had visitors. The visitors arrived with one of those little, unidentifiable dogs which have a shrill yapping bark and which bark constantly, apparently just for the joy of it.
It was a Sunday afternoon, and the constant shrill yapping got on our nerves before it finally began to bother the dozing cats. At last they went out together. There was a gap in the thick, high hedge dividing the property. Roger went strolling casually through the gap in the hedge, came to an abrupt and horrified stop, and arched his back as though to say, My God, a Dog! Thereupon he whirled and ran for his life back through the gap and along the side of the house. The little dog chased him in furious glee. Roger led him past where Geoff was crouched in wait behind a bush. When Geoff sprang upon the small dog, Roger whirled and joined the fun. Between them they did not so much chase the dog back through the gap as bowl him along. The dog screamed. They sat on our side of the gap, washed for a little bit, and came back into the house and stretched out again. In the hot, lazy afternoon the little dog’s whimpers died away, and there was a pleasant silence, a restful silence.
Before we went north for the summer in 1951, we decided to move further down the coast, down to the Sarasota area, where perhaps we could live on the water. Clearwater was beginning to show the commercial results of the enormous population pressure in the Tampa area, and waterfront was already at a premium which had taken it out of our reach. We knew by then Dick Glendinning, the writer, in Sarasota, and Sally. Dick helped us find a rental for the following season, on Casey Key opposite Nokomis. We rented a frame cottage on four hundred feet of gulf-to-bay land owned by Randy Hagerman, one of the owners of the Plaza Restaurant in Sarasota, stowed possessions there, and headed north.
Nine
That was the first summer we spent in the new camp. It was a delight, for people and for cats. The south shore of the lake was more wild than the old shore where the camps were close together. We built on a rock ledge and had a cement deck overlooking the lake. Our road was over eight hundred feet long. It was and is a good place to live and work.
The cat window was in the front, opening out onto the cement ledge of the waist-high fireplace on the terrace.
Later, Roger was to discover that he could leap up under the shield and into the mouth of the flue. This was an idiot performance, and he would stay up in there, peering down, quite obviously very satisfied with himself. When it acquired a heavy coating of soot up in there he stopped. Cats do not voluntarily dirty themselves.
The flaw in the window arrangement was that they reached it from the inside by hopping up onto the glass-topped table in the dining end of the long kitchen, next to the wall of stone which was the back side of the living-room fireplace. Our cats were quite self-effacing about this exit system. Staying close to the wall they would hop to chair, to table, and glide out. By never giving an inch we had managed to train them never to hop up onto the table where the people were eating. They did beg scraps sometimes, but in a mild and mannerly fashion. Roger was the one who came closest to taking advantage. He would sit patiently on an empty chair and then, with the stealth of an awareness of guilt, he would put one paw on the edge of the table. His name said in a tone of accusation was usually sufficient to make him flatten his ears, gulp, and pull the paw back. When this did not work, you could commit the indecency of leaning forward and blowing into his face. He has always despised and resented this. He will stalk away, pausing to stare back two or three times. He manages to express incredulity and resentment. How can you possibly be so crude? Geoffrey never took such violent exception to it.
We did not mind the Piseco window arrangement. In fact, it was handy on those days so cold we did not want any window open. It could be readily reached to be opened for a cat and closed again.
But visiting cats and kittens made it a little less than ideal. I remember one time when Charlie, in momentary confusion, tried to leap from the floor to the window sill. Trouble was, there was a good solid hunk of plate glass in the way. He gave himself a thump that left a little knot on his head. For days he preferred to holler at the door to get in and out. And, summer before last, a visiting kitten, enormously busy, had the habit at mealtime of jumping up into a lap at the part of the table furthest from the window, scrambling onto the table, and charging through the groceries on his single-minded way out.
Roger has always had a precise awareness of his table rights. Circumspect about intrusion at any meal, he will nonetheless leap up onto the table without hesitation, when Dorothy is reading there or writing letters, and spread himself out amiably atop whatever she is trying to do.
Neither cat tried to steal anything from the table. With one startling exception — the time Geoff got hooked on pills. But that comes later.
At Piseco I took wicked advantage of my increasing knowledge of cat psychology to cure Roger of a habit that was slowly driving Dorothy out of her mind. We had one of those sling chairs, or safari chairs as they are sometimes called, canvas with slots or pockets which fit over the four extremities of a frame made of bent and welded metal rod. The canvas was black. Roger thought it the finest invention of man, a perfect hammock to take the curled shape of a somnolent cat. And he left a thick deposit of gray hair against the black each time.
We had learned the curious uselessness of those chemical compounds designed to keep cats off things. One application was enough. They jumped up into the treated chairs, snuffed, moaned softly, jumped down, and threw up.
There seemed no way to keep Rog out of the sling chair. Then I had an idea. With fiendish Dagwood grin, I freed the two bottom pockets and placed them back against the metal rather than hooked over it, and fastened them there with Scotch tape. By then Roger was convinced it was his chair. The next time he leaped gracefully into it to settle down, it pulled loose and dumped him on the floor. He collected himself and strolled haughtily away. The next day he tried it again, with the same result, then never went near it again. A cat cannot abide being made to look ridiculous.
Though you could usually depend upon Roger and Geoffrey to respond in individual ways to the same stimulus, I recall one incident that first summer in the new camp when their reactions were identical. After what I shall call a jolly evening down in Utica with Eugene and Mary Hubbard, we drove back to Piseco, and I brought along Eugene’s soprano saxophone, with a little book of elementary exercises thereon.
We were greeted warmly by the cats. I sat down and put my fingers on what I hoped were the right keys and tried a simple scale. There are few sounds less pleasing than those made by the novice saxophonist, and a soprano saxophone is the worst of all. After a few seconds of frozen horror, both cats began to howl like dogs, giving almost exactly those same ululations as when sad hounds bay at the moon. When I stopped, they stopped. When I began again, they paced about in distress, howling, and then went out through their window into the night. I put the infernal machine away. I tried the next day and the next with the same result, and then I took it back to Eugene. I couldn’t take that much criticism.