Secrets of the Cat_ Its Lore, Legend, and Lives - Barbara Holland [65]
There’s a recognized cat called the Oriental Shorthair, billed as a knowledgeable blend of Siamese, American Shorthair, Colorpoint Shorthair, and other judicious ingredients, and it comes in exotic colors like Silver and Cameo Smoke, but that’s not what we’re talking about at all. The cats under consideration are black, and accidental. One source refers to a “royal cross,” a splendid black sometimes produced from careful Siamese/Burmese mixing. That’s not it either. I had a black Siamese/Burmese cross once, and she was so abysmally dull I finally got rid of her. Jean Cocteau adored a cat, “a kind of black semi-colon,” the grandchild of his Siamese and his blue Persian, but that can’t be it either.
Most owners of the magic black cats take it for granted that they’re half or part Siamese, but in not one single case have I found a person who could prove it or even reasonably assume it. On the contrary; both my daughter and I, on unrelated occasions, found black kittens born to Siamese mothers and seized on them as certain to be those cats, and both grew up to be as ordinary as cats can be. The magic blacks are all changelings in the cradles of commoners. They come from the shelters; they come in off the streets, ripping furiously at the back door and shouting for admission; they are born among ordinary kittens. The little black cat who lives here now was born in a section of the country where no Siamese genes could be supposed to float among the population; dog and horse country, where any human owning a Siamese would be stoned clear to the county line. Her mother is a dumpy, fluffy, round-faced little person in gray stripes; she herself is one of those cats.
They stand out in a litter. Their ears are large and open, with a bald patch running down to the eyes, and their tails are long and thin. At an age when other kittens look like stuffed toys, they look like six pieces of oiled black string. They seem to mature early. The expression on their faces is extraordinary. They stare into your eyes with peculiar intensity, as if recognizing you in some more penetrating way than you have ever been recognized before. If this is a common mutation or a throwback to an extinct wild type, and if it’s been around for a while, no wonder the Church chose the black cat as a supernatural emissary. Whether or not they’re interested in buying your soul, they’re certainly looking straight into it.
I went to the SPCA to get myself a kitten, and was shown a cage full of them, dozens of them napping and washing and wrestling together. Only one noticed me, and gave a piercing shriek, and climbed the wire of the cage to get as close as possible to my face, screaming all the while and staring steadily into my eyes with that extraordinary recognizing look: where had I been, what had kept me so long? I fell over myself in haste, apologizing, to get the attendant to let him out. That was Boy.
Those cats are exceptionally alert, brave, bossy, curious, and agile, and figure out ways to get into trouble that never occurred to the other cats in the house. They’re clever with their hands, and use their mouths as an extra hand. While still quite small they take over the sacred places of the other cats. They eat like young wolves and get longer and heavier but no rounder; their flesh has a hard, spare, uncuddly quality, lean as cheetahs but weighing like bricks. When the baby fluff gives way to proper fur they look like wrought iron and shine like polished coal. Sitting up straight they have the long back and peaked breastbone of Egyptian statues. Their paws are small ovals on which they balance down the path like tightrope walkers.
With the right person, when they grow up they develop an exclusive, passionately possessive relationship, not always demonstrative but unmistakable. It’s risky to leave them for long periods and criminal to give them away. Laps are not their milieu; they lie on the chest and neck and bite the chin, or simply sit and look at