The Pleasures Of: Episode 1

Cats!

Because in my earliest memory I am sitting with my arms around two cats -- standing, indulgent -- each almost as large as I am, while my father takes a picture.

And later in childhood I assumed that the cats had raised me. I lived in the back yard and shunned human companionship. There were three cats; we called them Stripey, Furry, and Sylvester. I do not know what they called themselves. There was a neighbor named Rudy; he and Sylvester were great friends and you would see them palling around together in gardens and under hedges.

I assumed they were a kingdom, and I knew that Stripe (to use the less diminutive form) was king, and that his empire extended across many nearby lawns and gardens which he oversaw from his perch or throne on the railings of the deck. I remember long hours spent talking only to the cats about the political issues of the day, I being (of course) Lord Stripe's human vizier.

There was the day when the Orange Cat invaded from beyond the fairgrounds, and prompted the terrible War that consumed our lands for an entire summer, from the ambush near the creek until the final victory at the Battle of the Drainpipe -- a campaign in which, I take some pride in saying, I played a critical role. After that peace came again, and time drifted onward so lazy, such a rich magenta hue, until Sylvester drank anti-freeze and died a yowling awful death.

How much later? In our apartment on Centre Avenue in Pittsburgh we had a little white cat. She was beautiful and cunning and vicious, in that way not greatly different from females of our own species I have loved. She would not let you pet her; she hid from you if you got near but when you turned away she would dart out and bite your ankles; one time she attacked a baby but at night she would curl up and sleep with me. I dreamed of her the other night in a dream in which I saw all my cats -- but she and Sylvester had melded into one. I wonder if, 50 years from now, I will still remember that they were separate beings.

In my neighborhood now there are many cats. They skulk about or loll on the sidewalks, and many come to greet me when I go walking down the street. I may start setting out food for them soon. Or I may not. We shall see.