‘Life to the everlasting cat…’

It was cruel to be awakened with a start at 2:30 a.m. when one had hit the sack at 1:00 a.m.  The head is groggy, the pulse is frenzied.  I can’t blame my cats, though.  What issues they had which they decided to settle with catfights terrible enough to awaken me must be issues of life and death.

So, believing that only a human, me (pardon my confident presumption that I am like you who are reading this), can try to stop multiple catfights and keep the whole neighborhood from waking up, I ran to our so-called cat city.

I know that cats, unlike dogs, don’t understand punishment and thus it’s useless, even unfair, to hit them.  Growling cats with hairs standing on end and ears straightened backward are shorn of their tempests by shaking brooms, I found out.

When peace came at a price (my sleep) and it was hard to get back to sleep again, what else was there to do but think of the most abused domestic animal, their existence at the periphery of human civilization, and the song “Memory?”

Sung by the cat character Grizabella in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical “Cats,” the song’s lyrics by Trevor Nunn were taken mostly from T. S. Eliot’s poem “Preludes.”  The musical’s most popular song is affective in that both its lyrics and music capture and convey the loneliness at daybreak of the homeless, including alley cats.

Cats the musical was based on T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats to begin with.  Eliot’s poems in the book are considered some of his delightful poems, different from his more famous prophetic “Waste Land,” the 20th century’s most written about poem, which is dark, bereft of hope, and tackles the “impossibility of recovering meaning in life.”

Someone claimed that Weber composes music for “the undiscerning.” He must be someone adept at classical opera with Italian arias and players and divas, coloraturas and tenors, perform to the demands of operatic theater by not moving too much. Those, my pedestrian mind cannot discern either, truth be told.  The critic must have meant that Weber’s music is far from classical.

Eliot liked cats and his book about cats was liked by Weber as a child that Weber decided to make a musical out of it as an adult.  “Cats” became a hit for 15 years.

T.S. Eliot as the Old Possum in his book gave cats names like Old Gumbie, Growltiger, Mungojerrie, Rumpelteazer, Mr. Mistoffelees, Gus, Bustopher Jones, Cat Morgan, and “the Napoleon of crime,” Macavity.  The Weber musical’s characters had these names except for Grizabella whose name was taken from a line in another Eliot poem.

Admittedly they’re better names than the deliberate one- or two-syllable names we gave our own cats, in the order of their appearance in our lives— Rexit, Tuxe, Onyx, Lexa, Ewox, Lablax, Mexor, Gaspax, Balthax, Brox, Brax, Dixie and Anix.  Each name has a reason, from the mundane to the sublime.

Most cat riots start with Balthax and Brox, two strapping young men had they been humans.  When all the other cats get to join in the fray, their clan differences become clear.  Always on Balthax’s side are his two brothers, Gaspax and Mexor.  The three happen to be named after the Three Kings because I picked them up on January 6 two short years ago.  Balthax as a kitten was the sweetest.  His temper now I credit to his being the fattest that I guess he’s confused whether he’s a cat or a panda.

Except for the maladjusted Rexit who has to be  where humans are, where our cats live is called a cat city because it’s an airy building with facilities designed for cats (cat trees, cubbyholes we call condos, an area for their waste, cat toys) so they never stray as protected indoor cats.  Unlike a cat colony, they are citified.

What it takes to maintain these cats with food, veterinarian, medicines and one-time neutering is my secret.  All I can say is that it’s not the cost of an elephant and new clothes aren’t needed if it means surrendering a month’s sacks of cat food delivered regularly to our door by a supplier.

As in ancient times, cats will always be with us.  Even the English language has been influenced by cats.  There’s catfight, catty, cat-o’-nine-tails, catatonia, catlike, catnap, catwalk, catcalls, and relations like pussyfoot, which are just a few examples.  And there’s our own iring-iring however this word’s double entendrè has evolved.

It is said that dogs need a family while cats need a staff.  Yet cats are fun to be with even if I’m awakened at an ungodly hour.  What’s a home without a cat?  The husband once said.  Never had he spoken a more eternal truth that touches base with ‘the mystical divinity of unashamed felinity…’

(2006)