It's like this, cat Page 7

  Cat hadn't got me into anymore cellars, but I can't honestly say he'd beensitting home tending his knitting--not him.

  One hot morning I went to pick up the milk outside our door, and Cat wassleeping there on the mat. He didn't even look up at me. After I scratchedhis ears and talked to him some, he got up and hobbled into the house.

  I put him up on my bed, under the light, for inspection. One front clawwas torn off, which is why he was limping, his left ear was ripped, andthere was quite a bit of fur missing here and there. He curled up on mybed and didn't move all day.

  I came and looked at him every few hours and wondered if I ought to takehim to a vet. But he seemed to be breathing all right, so I went away andthought about it some more. Come night, I pushed him gently to one side,wondering what I better do in the morning.

  Well, in the morning Cat wakes up, stretches, yawns, and drops easily downoff the bed and walks away. He still limps a little, but otherwise he actslike nothing had happened. He just wants to know what's for breakfast.

  "You better watch out. One day you'll run into a cat that's bigger andmeaner than you," I tell him.

  Cat continues to wait for breakfast. He is not impressed.

  But I'm worried. Suppose some big old cat chews him up and he's hurt toobad to get home? After breakfast I take him out in the backyard for a bit,and then I shut him in my room and go over to consult Aunt Kate.

  She sets me up with the usual iced tea and dish of cottage cheese.

  "I had breakfast already. What do I need with cottage cheese?"

  "Eat it. It's good for you."

  So I eat it, and then I start telling her about Cat. "He came home allchewed up night before last. I'm afraid some night he's not going to makeit."

  "Right," says Kate. She's not very talky, but I'm sort of surprised. Iexpected she'd tell me to quit worrying, Cat can take care of himself. Shestarts pulling Susan's latest kittens out from under the sofa and sortingthem out as if they were ribbons: one gray, two tiger, one yellow, onecalico.

  "So what you going to do?" she shoots at me, shoveling the kittens back toSusan.

  "I--uh--I dunno. I thought maybe I ought to try to keep him in nights."

  "Huh. Don't know much, do you?" she says. "Well, so I'll tell you. YourCat has probably fathered a few dozen kittens by now, and once a cat'sbeen out and mated, you can't keep him in. You got to get him altered.Then he won't want to go out so much."

  "Altered?"

  "Fixed. Castrated is the technical word. It's a two-minute operation. Costyou three dollars. Take him to Speyer Hospital--big new building up onFirst Avenue."

  "You mean get him fixed so he's not a real tomcat any more? The heck withthat! I don't want him turned into a fat old cushion cat!"

  "He won't be," she says. "But if it makes you happier, let him get killedin a cat fight. He's tough. He'll last a year or two. Suit yourself."

  "Ah, you're screwy! You and your cottage cheese!" Even as I say it I feela little guilty. But I feel mad and mixed up, and I fling out the door.It's the first time I ever left Kate's mad. Usually I leave _our_ housemad and go to Kate.

  Now I got nowhere to go. I walk along, cussing and fuming and kickingpebbles. I come to an air-conditioned movie and go up to the window.

  The phony blonde in the booth looks at me and sneers, "You're not sixteen.We don't have a children's section in this theater." She doesn't even ask.She just says it. It's a great world. I go home. There's no one there butCat, so I turn the record player up full blast.

  Pop comes home in one of his unexpected fits of generosity that night andtakes us to the movies. Cat behaves himself and stays around home and ourcellar for a while, so I stop worrying. But it doesn't last long.

  As soon as his claw heals, he starts sashaying off again. One night I hearcats yowling out back and I go out with a bucket of water and douse themand bring Cat in. There's a pretty little tiger cat, hardly more than akitten, sitting on the fence licking herself, dry and unconcerned. Catdoesn't speak to me for a couple of days.

  One morning Butch, the janitor, comes up and knocks on our door. "Youbetter come down and look at your cat. He got himself mighty chewed up.Most near dead."

  I hurry down, and there is Cat sprawled in a corner on the cool cementfloor. His mouth is half open, and his breath comes in wheezes, like hehas asthma. I don't know whether to pick him up or not.

  Butch says, "Best let him lie."

  I sit down beside him. After a bit his breath comes easier and he puts hishead down. Then I see he's got a long, deep claw gouge going from hisshoulder down one leg. It's half an inch open, and anyone can see it won'theal by itself.

  Butch shakes his head. "You gotta take him to the veteran, sure. That'sthe cat doctor."

  "Yeah," I say, not correcting him. It's not just the gash that's worryingme. I remember what Aunt Kate said, and it gives me a cold feeling in thestomach: In the back-alley jungle he'd last a year, maybe two.

  Looking at Cat, right now, I know she's right. But Cat's such a--well, sucha _cat_. How can I take him to be whittled down?

  I tell Butch I'll be back down in a few minutes, and I go upstairs. Mom'shumming and cleaning in the kitchen. I wander around and stare out thewindow awhile. Finally I go in the kitchen and stare into the icebox, andthen I tell Mom about the gash in Cat's leg.

  She asks if I know a vet to take him to.

  "Yeah, there's Speyer. It's a big, new hospital--good enough for people,even--with a view of the East River. The thing is, Mom, Cat keeps going offand fighting and getting hurt, and people tell me I ought to get himaltered."

  Mom wets the sponge and squeezes it out and polishes at the sink, and Iwonder if she knows what I'm talking about because I don't really know howto explain it any better.

  She wrings the sponge out, finally, and sits down at the kitchen table.

  She says, "Cat's not a free wild animal now, and he wouldn't be even ifyou turned him loose. He belongs to _you_, so you have to do whatever isbest for _him_, whether it's what you'd like or not. Ask the doctor and dowhat he says."

  Mom puts it on the line, all right. It doesn't make me feel any betterabout Cat. She takes five dollars out of her pocketbook and gives it tome.

  I get out the wicker hamper and go down to the cellar and load Cat in. Hemeows, a low resentful rumble, but he doesn't try to get away.

  Cat in the hamper is no powder puff, and I get pretty hot walking to thebus, and then from the bus stop to the animal hospital. I get there andwait, and dogs sniff at me, and I fill in forms. The lady asks me if I canafford to pay, and with Mom's five bucks and four of my own, I say Yes.

  The doctor is a youngish guy, but bald, in a white shirt like a dentist's.I put Cat on the table in front of him. He says, "So why don't you stayout of fights, like your mommy told you?"

  I relax a bit and smile, and he says, "That's better. Don't worry. We'lltake care of tomcat. I suppose he got this gash in a fight?"

  "Yeah."

  "He been altered?"

  "No."

  "How old is he?"

  "I don't know. He was a stray. I've had him almost a year."

  All the time he's talking, the doctor is soothing Cat and looking himover. He goes on stroking him and looks up at me. "Well, son, one of thesedays he's going to get in one fight too many. Shall we alter him the sametime we sew up his leg?"

  So there it is. I can't seem to answer right away. If the doctor hadargued with me, I might have said No. But he just goes on humming andstroking. Finally he says, "It's tough, I know. Maybe he's got a right tobe a tiger. But you can't keep a tiger for a pet."

  I say, "O.K."

  An attendant takes Cat away, and I go sit in the waiting room, feelingsweaty and cold all over. They tell me it'll be a couple of hours, so I goout and wander around a lot of blocks I never saw before and drink somecokes and sit and look up at the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge to Queens.

  When I go back for him, Cat looks the same as ever, except for a bandageall up his right f
ront leg. The doctor tells me to come back Friday andhe'll take out the stitches.

  Mom sees me come in the door, and I guess I look pretty grim, because shesays, "Cat will be all right, won't he, dear?"

  "Yes." I go past her and down into my room and let Cat out of the basketand then bury my head under the pillow. I'm not exactly ashamed of crying,but I don't want Mom to hear.

  After a while I pull my head out. Cat is lying there beside me, his eyeshalf open, the tip end of his tail twitching very slowly. I rub my eyes onthe back of his neck and whisper to him, "I'm sorry. Be tough, Cat,anyway, will you?"

  Cat stretches and hops off the bed on his three good legs.

  8

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