Secrets of the Cat_ Its Lore, Legend, and Lives - Barbara Holland [76]
I don’t really want his cat, though; it isn’t because of her that I’ve left my checkbook safely at home. There’s no place to put her where I live. Be she ever so adaptable, there is no corner in my house, no chair, no windowsill, that she wouldn’t disgrace by her presence; nothing I own would be a suitable place for Soroko Forever Amber to sit. And what of the doctor? He’s listed as BR/OW, which must mean breeder/owner, which must mean he has a houseful of these, or a catteryful; does he keep them in cages, rows of them in patient captivity, with the thin white flames of their holiness waiting for rebirth or liberation to nirvana?
He seems discontented. Listening, I learn that if the show had been just one day later she would have been eight months old and eligible to show as an adult. This kitten class counts for nothing, doesn’t accumulate the right kind of points; it’s practice only, a waste of his time. He scowls and ruffles the pages of his catalog, his karma roiled and seething.
The judge hangs ribbons from the cages, the doctor goes to get his cat, and I turn away, remembering only later that I hadn’t noticed if she won anything. I think one of the Chartreux kittens beat her, handsome chubby fellows. It doesn’t seem to matter.
Needing solid earth, I go to visit the Household Pets, and speak to them in normal, irreverent tones. There are fewer vigilant owners on guard here, so they’re easier to see. Unburdened by family standards to uphold, they look well fed, these normal cats, and unremarkable, and I’m secretly pleased that none is as stylish as my little black Spider, and none of the black-and-whites has Sidney’s sweet nose and outlined eyes, or his whimsical markings. A spark of competitiveness darts through me; it must be in the air here: I should have brought Spider. Spider would win. I leaf through a booklet they’ve given me to the piece on Household Pets. They’re judged, it says, giving 25 points for their looks, 15 for personality, and 60 for “condition.” A health contest, then. That must be hard to gauge; it’s easy to see how sick a sick cat is, but how do you measure its healthiness on, say, a scale of one to ten? Sickness is relative; health, unless they’ve planned a rope climb and some footraces to assess it, is health. I won’t bring Spider; this is patronizing, a contest for schoolchildren, complete with lecture on nutrition afterward. I can see the point, in a way, of judging how good an Aby an Aby is, how like the perfect Aby, but there’s no way to judge the goodness of a Household Pet; that’s a private matter between pet and person.
The woman with the blue point on her shoulder hurries past again, cat swaying, and I realize to my chagrin that this isn’t a hefty old-time Siamese at all, but a Tonkinese, a new Burmese-Siamese blend. After all the years of narrowing and shrinking the Siamese and sharpening its angles, people must have been nostalgic for the old ones, and turned them backward with Wong Mau’s blood into meatier cats again, with softer fur and gentler faces.
I don’t belong here; I’m out of my depth; I don’t even recognize half what I’m looking at.
I look for and don’t find the highly publicized California Spangled Cat, something that’s been rather a celebrity and appeared on television. Somebody dedicated almost beyond the point of sanity took eleven generations to produce it, working with a Siamese, Silver Tabby, Manx, Abyssinian, Cat of the Nile, Brown Tabby, Malayan Tropical Housecat, and a Spotted Silver Longhair: a veritable cat stew. It has spots. It