Secrets of the Cat_ Its Lore, Legend, and Lives - Barbara Holland [41]
I’ve always just dumped the cats on each other, with varying results. Probably no matter how it’s done there’ll be a certain amount of hissing, but I’ve never had a conflict that lasted more than a couple of days. Maybe some of it’s in our minds. Our civilized tradition of hospitality is outraged, and our feelings ache vicariously for the one received so brutally in its new home, like an orphan out of Dickens. The cats don’t feel that way, though. It’s normal to them, this defense of home and privilege against strangers, and then the gradual acceptance of stranger as resident, and the new one has never read Dickens. It knows full well it’s intruding, that its entry-level position is on the bottom, or even in a closet or under the bed, and its job is to cringe and ingratiate, proceed slowly, and look for room for advancement later, seizing small opportunities to encroach.
When there might be real bloodshed, we can put it away somewhere, let things simmer down, try again, keep an eye on developments.
The more cats, the easier; for a longtime only cat a new one is a darker threat than if there have always been plural cats, as a new baby is more upsetting to an only child than to a houseful of children. And young cats are easier. Cats, sometimes grudgingly, are careful of the young, and probably the resident cat will eventually, with some grumblings and backsliding, admit the kitten’s claim on care and lick its head. Especially if we ourselves aren’t taking terribly good care of it. A kitten sobbing in a corner for its mother is a lot more appealing to our cat than a kitten purring on our lap. This seems hard on the kitten, but it doesn’t have our sentimental overview, our dual mind in which we both suffer and redouble our sufferings by watching ourselves suffer, and comparing our condition to the happiness of nonsufferers. It will feel better soon. Pat the old cat, let the new one cry awhile.
Not all cats take to group living. Cats vary. Cats vary so widely that all data is meaningless and the professional classifiers gnash their teeth trying to come up with even a single fact common to all.
Some cats, for whatever reason, are as solitary as their reputation would have them; some strike up close, enduring friendships with other cats and mourn bitterly when they leave or die; some have no use for cats and care only for their humans. There is even unnerving evidence that some nonfamilial cats gather in groups for social purposes.
This goes against everything we think we know. Aside from impromptu gatherings around females in heat, which are marred by loud noises and occasional warfare, a cat should not be a joiner, should disdain bylaws and secret handshakes and cocktail parties. His independence from social entanglements is part of what we like about him. Dogs, yes; dogs hang out together in groups on street corners, socializing and sniffing each other’s rear ends, but they’re pack animals; it’s their tradition to do so. Cats, no.
Just the same, the literature of superstition is full of secret cat meetings. The cats in these tales are usually witches or demons in disguise, or accompanied by actual witches and/or devils, and nobody is up to any good. In the ancient story “The King of the Cats,” the traveler comes across a funeral procession of cats, en route to bury their leader. Since the cat is known to be a solitary, where did these tales come from; what terrified peasant came upon a group of them, and did the unlikeliness of it make it all the more sinister?
Lloyd Alexander claims that his cat Rabbit joined a local club and attended its meetings in an outbuilding in a nearby field; there were perhaps a dozen members, he says, and meetings lasted until two or three in the morning, with occasional all-nighters. Later his young Siamese David formed a group of his own that met in the basement, coming in through a broken window, and these seemed to be the younger cats of the neighborhood. They were neither fighting nor making love, the two accepted