His daughter, Fran Brodie, was among the first. She was an interior designer—with strawberry blond hair, a model’s figure, gorgeous legs, and she always wore those high-heeled flimsy sandals, in and out of season.
My plan was to donate the sumptuous Klingenschoen mansion to the historical society and live in the servants’ quarters in the carriage house. I commissioned Fran to furnish the rooms in Comfortable Contemporary. The project called for numerous consultations, sitting side by side on the old Depression-era sofa with furniture catalogues and large books of fabric swatches spread out on our knees.
“No, I don’t want a four-poster bed,” I told her. “No, I don’t want pleated fabric on the walls. No, I don’t want a mirrored ceiling.”
These appointments were always made in late afternoon, after which I was obliged to offer her a cocktail, after which I was more or less obliged to take her to dinner. She suggested a cozy trip to Chicago to visit furniture showrooms.
All I wanted was a comfortable environment in which to live and work. To tell the truth, I had never liked sexually aggressive females, no matter how classy their legs. I preferred to do my own chasing. As for the Siamese, they seemed to sense that Fran was lukewarm about cats. In fact, Yum Yum was patently possessive of me, hovering close and staring with a go-home look in her eyes. That’s a “look” that Siamese do very well.
“Why is that cat following me around?” Fran demanded while measuring wall spaces.
“She’s responding to your magnetic personality,” I said. “Have you thought of a way to display my antique Mackintosh crest?” It was currently leaning against the wall of the foyer—a round ornament of wrought iron a yard in diameter.
“It’s somewhat out of scale, you know. But . . . it might be possible to use it as camouflage for that big ugly radiator.”
A few days later I came home in late afternoon and saw Fran’s car in the parking lot. She had a key to the apartment and sometimes dropped in to take measurements or work on floor plans.
Walking up the narrow stairs I noticed that the Mackintosh crest was no longer leaning against the wall. Good! That meant she had found a way to display it.
“Hello!” I shouted, but there was no reply.
In the living room, the crest was lying in the middle of the floor, and two cats were huddled over it in attitudes of troubled concern.
“What happened! Where is she?” I demanded.
Then I noticed a red light on the answering machine. “This is Fran. Call me at home.”
“Oh, Qwill! You’ll never guess what happened! I had an idea for the Mackintosh crest and was taking it over to the radiator to see how it looked . . .”
“You didn’t try to lift that thing!” I interrupted.
“No, I was rolling it like a hoop, and I stepped on a cat’s tail! There was such a hair-raising screech that I rolled the crest over my foot.”
“I hope you weren’t hurt!”
“Hurt? I broke three toes! A police car took me to the hospital . . . so we’ll have to call off the Chicago trip.”
I was much relieved. I had no desire to traipse through furniture showrooms in Chicago. I said, “Which one of you rascals caused the accident?”
Koko looked noncommittal. Yum Yum was licking her paw and washing her face.
In Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, the author, T. S. Eliot, talks about a cat named Rum Tum Tugger: For he will do / As he do do / And there’s no doing anything about it!
I wish to go on record as saying that Kao K’o Kung is Rum Tum Tugger the Second.
I knew from the beginning that he had his own ideas, but it was not until the episode of the Pork Liver Cupcakes that I could definitely accuse him of Rum Tum Tuggerism.
A friend of ours, Hixie Rice—nice girl but a little wacky—knew a chef who wanted to develop a line of Frozen Foods for Fussy Felines. To promote it, Hixie envisioned a video in which Koko would endorse the product. At the time we were living in the old Klingenschoen mansion with its crystal chandeliers, grand staircase, and K monogram on everything monogrammable.
The synopsis was simple. With the camera grinding at the foot of the stairs, Koko would be shown at the top of the flight. Then he would run downstairs on cue and into the dining room, where a plate of pork liver cupcakes awaited on a K-monogrammed plate. (K for Koko. Get it?)
Hixie was at the bottom of the stairs with the camera; I was at the top with Koko, who was supposed to look alert and eager and hungry. Unfortunately he had just stuffed himself with diced prime rib with a side of Roquefort cheese, and he felt like taking a nap. In fact, he was lying on his side, looking blotto.
Hixie called from the foot of the stairs, “Stand him up on four legs!”
I said, “You come up and stand him on four legs, and I’ll take the pictures.”
With some changes in the scenario and a gentle shove to his rear end, he flew down the stairs and over the head of the photographer.
When I finally grabbed the struggling, kicking model, Hixie was willing to settle for a close-up of him gobbling the evil-looking smear of gray pork liver on a K plate. Koko took one look at it and bushed his tail, looking at the camera with ears back, nose wrinkled, and fangs bared in an expression of utter revulsion. End of publicity shoot.
Despite several attempts, using all the tricks of the trade, Bushy has still been unsuccessful. “I haven’t given up!” he said. “One of these days I’ll get that little devil!”
That’s what he thinks. Koko is a Rum Tum Tugger. Yum Yum, yes. Koko, no!
Bushy, as we all call him, said one day that he’d like to photograph Koko and Yum Yum for a cat calendar. He suggested that I take them to his studio in Lockmaster. I didn’t want to discourage him, so I agreed, and we drove down there on a Saturday morning.
The cats were on the backseat in their usual travel coop with a cushion and a door at one end. I could tell, by the way they both huddled at the back of the coop, that they knew some dire experience was in store for them. I talked reassuringly to them as I drove, but I could feel the bad vibes coming my way.
I had suggested to Bushy that we keep our voices low and leave them in their carrier while we had a cup of coffee and talked about the weather.
This we did. Then, making sure to close both exit doors, we casually opened the carrier door and had another cup of coffee. The cats remained on their cushion.
After a while I said, “You get your camera ready, and I’ll casually draw one out; the other will follow. The whole idea is to stay calm.”
They were both crammed together at the rear of the conveyance, but I reached in and got a handful of fur. It was Koko, bracing himself against the sides of the carrier. He had the strength of an iron vise. No way was that cat going to go through that small door.
“How’re you doing?” Bushy asked quietly.
“Batting zero,” I said under my breath. I and Koko were both very quiet and unruffled. He didn’t protest, just braced himself against the sides of the opening.
“He doesn’t wanna and he ain’t gonna,” I said.
“Leave him alone and leave the door open. We’ll have another cup of coffee,” Bushy said. “He’ll saunter out of his own accord.”
We drank a lot of the brew that morning and discussed every topic in the news, but Koko never sauntered out. He was doing his Rum Tum Tugger act, and as T. S. Eliot said: There’s no doing anything about it!