Skeeter: A Cat Tale Read online

  While Lisa and I gossiped, Mark petted a few of the champions. After we left, he confided that Lisa was OK, but he didn’t like her cats as much as he likes Skeeter. I was surprised, since Skeet has been such a little hellion lately. What, I asked him, had Lisa’s cats done? My imagination was running wild. Maybe they stole his hubcaps or picked his pocket. They’d have to be pretty extreme to outdo Skeeter.

  “They’re just fluffy,” he answered.

  I was confused. What did fur have to do with it?

  “They sit there like bath mats. They’re just fluffy.”

  I explained that long-haired cats have been bred for laid-back dispositions so they will tolerate the grooming their fur requires. If Skeeter had long hair, we’d be in trouble. We’d have to hypnotize him and put it in cornrows.

  Mark prefers a cat with personality. This is Skeeter, all right. If cats wore bumper stickers, Skeeter’s would read “Question Authority.” He’s everywhere, expressing his opinions, giving and demanding affection, and bending the rules. More than once, I’ve decided there must be two of him.

  Mark thinks I spoil Skeeter. He offers as evidence the cat-toy jungle in my apartment. Skeeter disagrees. He thinks he’s treated like a Marine recruit, citing my refusal to let him climb the Christmas tree. I’m encouraged by their complaints, to tell the truth. I’ve always believed the surest sign I’m on the right track is that everybody is dissatisfied with me for different reasons.

  Like Mark, though, I like Skeeter the way he is. At least I can tell him from the bath mat. Even if he dyes his fur as blue as my bath mat, to trick me, I’ll know him every time. I’ll know because the mat does not hook my ankle with its claws as I walk by, or yowl at my bedroom door at five-thirty every morning. Nor does it curl up on my chest in a warm snuggle or give me kitty kisses with a rough tongue. I’m onto him. He can’t fool me.

  Love,

  Lynne

  December 15, 1999

  Dear Angie,

  I spent most of this morning cleaning the living room. Skeeter, who demands to be lifted when he wants to get on the bed, had somehow removed ornaments from high on the Christmas tree. He had played with them, then abandoned them under the couch. At least, I assume it was Skeeter. They surely didn’t walk there on their own, and I can’t imagine Mark doing something like that.

  Anyway, it reminded me of a visit to a client’s home the other day. As a historic preservation consultant, I get to look at wonderful buildings and then write reports about them. It’s a great job, but it occasionally takes me to some odd places, and this was one of them.

  When I entered the house, a Victorian in downtown Los Angeles, I immediately saw how messy and, well, dirty it was. I pretended not to notice. What else could I do?

  The client met with me in the living room, next to the Christmas tree. She had cats, many cats.

  One of them climbed about two thirds of the way up the tree and scooped a green glass bubble into his paw. Then he lobbed the ornament exactly like a hand grenade, so it exploded right at my feet.

  “Oh,” said my client, “I didn’t think he could climb so high.”

  The cat threw a gold one, missing me by inches.

  “Naughty cat,” she said, without conviction.

  It wasn’t easy to concentrate on the building with this feline terrorist after me. I finished my work quickly, one eye out for ambush.

  Even then, I wasn’t home free—she insisted on giving me lunch. The squalor made this a squeamish business. I managed to eat one bowl of soup, refused seconds, and escaped as soon as I could.

  I had a different but even more curious lunch a couple of weeks ago with an author-illustrator friend of Mark’s. My hostess was fascinating, the place was spotless, and the food was superb.

  But halfway through the meal, she removed a vole from her freezer and passed it around so we could see it—we’d been talking about voles for some reason. She told us she uses frozen animals as models for her illustrations. No doubt this is a good idea, and she doesn’t kill the animals, only puts them to good use if she happens to find one. But I couldn’t help wondering what else she had in there, and whether the frozen zoo was kept separate from the food. I put it out of my mind and finished my soup. And asked for seconds.

  The authors I’ve met so far are nice, but I think they can be a bit eccentric. Not crazy like my client, just different. And that’s fine with me.

  Love,

  Lynne

  December 20, 1999

  Dear Angie,

  Thanks for the package! I’m saving it to open on Christmas Eve. I hope yours arrives on time. This year, I was a little late getting organized. Somehow I didn’t believe it was really Christmas—it’s been much too hot.

  Once I got into the holiday spirit, I wanted to go somewhere nicer than the mall. So I headed up to Beverly Hills. The old downtown is called “the Triangle,” and it’s always beautifully decorated for the holidays.

  This year was no exception—in fact, they’d gone all-out. The store windows glittered with fake snow, and all the street trees were decked with twinkling lights. There was even a group of carolers in Victorian dress, meandering along the sidewalk, pausing here and there to serenade the shoppers.

  I listened for a few minutes, learning, among other things, that the singers had seen their mothers kissing Santa Claus and that they were dreaming of a white Christmas. The latter sentiment was especially believable—the group was sweating it out in velvet costumes better suited to the North Pole than to southern California.

  I did wonder briefly about the completely-secular song repertoire, but learned from a leaflet that the carolers’ services were provided by the city government. So that little mystery was cleared up.

  When I finished shopping, I stopped at a coffeehouse for a snack. The singers were there, apparently on their break. They were lounging around a table at the back, looking wilted and disheartened. After I ordered, I decided to give them a little encouragement, so I went to thank them for their singing.

  Fanning themselves with menus, they perked up and accepted my praise gratefully.

  Suddenly one of the men said, “Why don’t you sing for us?”

  I blinked. “You want me to sing for you?” I was sure I had misheard. These people were obviously professional musicians—why in the world would they want to hear me sing?

  Another man nodded. “We’ve been singing for people all day,” he said. “Nobody’s sung for us.”

  I felt shy for a moment, and then decided to go ahead and do it. I don’t have a great voice, but I’ve belonged to church choirs since I was a kid. I can sing. Besides, they did ask for it. And I wanted to hear one real carol that day, even if I had to sing it myself.

  Discarding “Silent Night” as too obvious, I launched into “It Came upon the Midnight Clear.” Much to my satisfaction, I got all the notes right, even the tricky bit with “Peace on the earth, good will to men.”

  When I finished the first verse, I paused, and they sang the second verse to me. We finished the carol together. The other customers gave a round of applause.

  My order was ready, so I returned to my table. Finishing their coffee, the carolers straggled out to the street and got back to work. Strains of “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Buh-Buh-Blue Christmas” drifted in whenever the door opened, but I wasn’t interested. I was thinking only of our impromptu performance:

  “When peace shall over all the earth

  Its ancient splendors fling,

  And the whole world give back the song

  Which now the angels sing.”

  Merry Christmas, Angie. As long as peace is flinging its ancient splendors, let’s hope it flings some on us.

  Love,

  Lynne

  December 26, 1999

  Dear Angie,

  It’s been another one of those Technicolor Christmases in Los Angeles, poinsettias and bougainvillea against the flat blue sky, bright as Mexico. The palm trees rattle their fronds in the eighty-degree b
reeze like tone-deaf sleigh bells. But I wasn’t surprised when Mark announced his decision to buy an electric blanket at the after-Christmas sales.

  Just the same, I didn’t intend to let him get away with it. “Why on earth would you want one?” I asked.

  “I can’t get my bed warm at night.”

  Mark never can get warm. I don’t use the heater as much in a whole year as he does in a month. He could easily raise orchids in his apartment, and I don’t know why he doesn’t. It would be a nice second income.

  Living with Skeeter, I don’t have any problem getting the bed warm. I suggested that Mark should get a cat instead of an electric blanket. Being a cat person is the only way to luxuriate in fur without getting Greenpeace on your case.

  “Not big enough,” he answered.

  It’s true—Mark is not a small man. One cat wouldn’t do it.

  “What about several cats?” I asked. “Like six?”

  “I don’t want six cats.”

  “What about one big one? Maybe a leopard?”

  Mark has never owned a pet of any sort, and I don’t think he’s about to start now. The leopard, though, was far out, even for one of my ideas. For one thing, it’s illegal to own wildlife in California. Also, there are practical considerations. The quantity of raw meat a leopard would need would probably strain an author’s income. Then, too, the size of the litter box would be daunting. Not to mention that Mark would be hard-pressed to train such a creature. I don’t picture him as a wild animal tamer, I really don’t.

  I was starting to think I needed help training Skeeter, but a book I got for Christmas has decided me otherwise. The book contains careful instructions for getting a cat off your favorite chair. These instructions involve the use of a broomstick, so your hands won’t get shredded. What are they talking about, leopards? My technique with Skeeter is a lot simpler. I approach his chair, scoop him up, and tickle his tummy.

  “Wanna share, Skeet?” I croon. “Wanna snuggle?”

  I plop myself down in the chair with Skeeter on my lap. I pet him some more. He purrs. I haven’t needed a broomstick yet. Maybe I should write a book.

  If I became an author, would I need an electric blanket? Mark’s going to the sales tomorrow. I think I’ll tag along, just in case.

  Love,

  Lynne

  December 30, 1999

  Dear Angie,

  I’m not worried about Y2K and neither is Skeeter. Mark, too, has backed off about it, which is good. I was beginning to get tired of the subject.

  When I first heard about the problem a couple of years ago, I decided that, with all the money to be made in fixing it, everything would be fine. About a year ago, I did get a little nervous. I don’t pretend to be a techie. People everywhere were talking so knowledgeably about what a terrible problem it was, so I started to think, Well, what do I know?

  But then an acquaintance with barely enough intelligence to find her mouth with her fork started sounding as technically sophisticated about it as everyone else. I decided it was baloney and lapsed into my usual apathy.

  Mark did enough worrying for both of us. He bought cases of bottled water—enough to float a small sailboat—and wanted me to go halves on a camping stove. I refused. In my backpacking days, I blew up two of those suckers. I’m convinced I’m haunted by The Curse of the Camping Stove. If the gas and electricity went off forever, I’d learn to make a fire by rubbing two sticks together.

  Los Angeles is either the largest or the second largest city in the United States. I’m not going to match quarters about it at this point. But the idea that the utilities will go off strikes me as bizarre. If they did, though, the emergency services would manage something. There’s even an informal emergency network. After one earthquake, two major breweries started bottling water and giving it away in areas where the mains were broken. A kid, hauling a couple of six packs home, was stopped by a policeman who hadn’t heard anything about it. But some passersby soon cleared up the misunderstanding.

  Skeeter is waiting for midnight, December 31, with some anticipation. He’s indifferent to the coaches turning into pumpkins, but he really wants to see whether the footmen will turn into rats and mice. He’s ready. And he has no trouble finding his mouth, although I haven’t seen him use a fork. Yet.

  Hope your New Year’s is uneventful.

  Love,

  Lynne

  January 5, 2000

  Dear Angie,

  Melissa, my sister, took a basket of fancy foods to her son, Tony, as a New Year’s present. The basket included smoked salmon, oysters wrapped in bacon, a cheese in red wax, an assortment of crackers and marmalade, and several kinds of chocolate truffles. She also included a large box of tissues for Tony’s wife, who has a cold. “Gee, thanks, Mom,” said Tony, accepting the basket. “Now we’re ready for Armageddon.”

  New Year’s Eve passed without incident. Skeeter thought it was the end of the world, but that’s because he doesn’t like fireworks.

  To get his mind off it, I let him “help” take down the Christmas tree. As I removed the ornaments, he watched, fascinated. He pounced on the tree several times as I dragged it to the back door.

  Since he isn’t allowed to go outdoors, I managed the next tasks without interference. Down in the yard, I cut off the tree limbs with pruning shears, sawed the trunk in two, and stuffed the whole mess into the green waste bin. When I returned to the living room, I found Skeeter having a fine time playing in drifts of Christmas tree needles. I tried to sweep them up, but every time I collected them into a tidy pile, he jumped in and scattered them again.

  I went to the laundry room for the dustpan. When I came back, Skeeter looked odd. I peered at him curiously and he guiltily spat out a mouthful of fir needles. It made me think of the first time I ate an artichoke. I hope I didn’t look as ridiculous as Skeeter, but I probably did.

  When I was growing up, our family budget didn’t include fancy groceries. We ate simply. So when a college friend offered me an artichoke one evening at dinner, I had no idea what to do it.

  I covertly watched as she pulled leaves off hers, dipped them in butter and nibbled at the ends. That seemed easy enough. I pulled, dipped, and nibbled too.

  When I got to the choke, though, it was obvious a new procedure was needed. My friend had lost interest in her artichoke. I could see I would have to fake it.

  So I ate the thing. It was hard going too, about as palatable as Christmas tree needles. My friend stared at me in astonishment as I gulped it down. I think it was obvious I wasn’t used to fancy groceries.

  Skeeter started batting the now-damp needles around the floor. I pulled out the vacuum, which got rid of him. That’s his idea of Armageddon.

  Love,

  Lynne

  January 10, 2000

  Dear Angie,

  Decorating for Christmas is magical, but taking the decorations down is a dreadful chore. As I mentioned in my last letter, I dismantled the Christmas tree on New Year’s Day. Skeeter, with unusual helpfulness, had already begun this task. I had been finding ornaments all week in surprise locations where he’d been playing with them. I can’t blame Skeeter for thinking they’re cat toys—they are similar.

  Not as similar as my original ornaments, though. When I got the Christmas tree for my first apartment, I had recently adopted my orange cat, Marmalade. In a flight of fancy, I decided to trim the tree with cat toys and stuffed mice.

  I searched for mice in all the pet and toy stores for miles around. I garnered a truly impressive collection, even an angel mouse for the treetop. Looking for garlands, I found what I thought was the perfect thing: a roll of iridescent white ribbon about three inches wide.

  I was completing this Yuletide masterpiece when my friend Patricia knocked at the door. I let her in and stepped back to admire my effect. Patricia was silent, and I slowly realized she was temporarily speechless. It also dawned on me that my tree didn’t look like I had imagined it would.

  “It looks . . . inf
ested,” I said, after a few moments.

  It did. Mice swarmed along all the branches and peeped from behind the lights. The tree was crawling with them.

  “It certainly does,” said Patricia. She seemed relieved she didn’t have to produce admiration.

  I looked again. “The garlands make it look like someone toilet-papered it,” I added.

  “They certainly do,” agreed Patricia. She seemed stuck. I think we both were, at that point.

  My tree this year was much less original. As I packed the ornaments for another year, rescuing a few from behind the sofa pillows, I noticed one of the garlands was missing. Skeeter is sure to have put it somewhere. It will turn up, probably when the minister comes to lunch, or Mark’s mother—someone I want to impress. It could be worse, though. This one is obviously a Christmas-tree garland. It doesn’t look a bit like toilet paper.

  Love,

  Lynne

  January 15, 2000

  Dear Angie,

  Rain in southern California is unpredictable. Some winters it’s so plentiful I think of Bill Cosby’s Noah routine. On the other hand, years can go by with no rain, not one blessed drop. Water is rationed then. After you take a bath, you leave the water in the tub and ladle it out in buckets to flush the toilet.

  This has been a dry year, but it rained this morning. Skeeter had never seen rain and didn’t know what to think. He dashed from one closed window to another, balancing precariously on the windowsills. He made a new sound that probably meant “What in the world?”—a soft but high-pitched gargle.