Gaslight

We always had cats when I was a child. We were a cat family.

Where did we get our cats from? Why, the farm, of course. My grandparents had a farm in the country. They had a big barn with lofts for hay and a big entryway you could back a huge haywagon into. Below were rooms with storage bins full of grain for the animals. In the back, on the downside of the hill where the barn was built, were stalls for the cows. They had these steel collars to lock onto their necks while they stood at night. During the day they could graze in the fields, weather and season permitting. A trough was full of hay and grain and an iron bowl filled with water when they plunged their noses into it, triggering a valve mechanism. It was a humane way to treat cows like cattle.

Of course, the rich grain attracted mice, rats, and other vermin. Lofts full of hay, hay full of stalks and heads full of seeds. Seeds full of nutrients. And so they had cats, of course. Farm cats. Barn cats. I remember the cats. My grandfather had an outbuilding we called the Summer kitchen. Back in the day they used to take on borders during the summer. They had immigrated from Russia and Poland to New York in the early 1900’s and later bought the farm in eastern Connecticut. They still had contacts with the city. People liked to ‘Go to the country’ for the summer. Kind of the early twentieth century snowbirds. Go live on a farm for a month or so. Rent a room. Kitchen privileges. Get away from the rat race!

Part of the package was kitchen privileges. The farmhouse had its own kitchen, which was there for the use of my grandparents and their children. There were rooms upstairs for the lodgers. And an outbuilding just beyond the house. The Summer kitchen. Inside, there were two cast iron cookstoves; One oven, six hot plates, a boiler, and a firebox each. There were cabinets and work tables. Enough for the lodgers to have a place to cook their meals and store their supplies.

When I was old enough to understand all this, there were no more borders. My grandparents were approaching their 70’s and no longer needed the adjunct income. They still had the stately barn with three or four cows down on the lower level over the pit where the cow flops were hoed into. It made excellent fertilizer for my grandmother’s kitchen garden. They had a pig sty where they put in a few piglets in the spring and took out bacon and pork in the fall. They had chickens, a breathable distance from the farmhouse, and cock houses for the roosters to squabble and fight each other. Lilacs grew by the outhouse. Crab apple trees and concord grapes grew where they could. And so did the cats.

It’s a farm, of course it has cats! Feral cats. Their job was to keep down the mice and rats. And not get too friendly with the humans. Which is where we came in. Whenever we needed a new pet cat, we just talked to grandpa. Our cat, Bootsie, just died. She was sister to Puss. Puss ‘N Boots! Puss was getting old and we wanted to have a few more cats, maybe to keep him company, definitely to keep us so.

“OK,” Grampa would say. “I think we have some kittens growing in the barn.” He would bring us into the barn, by the cathedral like chamber for the hay lofts, down a narrow staircase, past the cereal bins, and into some little room off to the side that looked kind of creepy to me. It was full of spiders and bees’ nests. And in the corner he would show us, behind some trough or something, a little nest of straw or fabric. And a cat, a momma cat, cradling her kittens.

“Don’t touch them!” He’d say. Of course we wanted to pick up the kittens and cradle and coddle and cuddle them. “You’ll get your scent on them and the mother might reject them and leave them to die. They aren’t ready yet, but you can take a look every time you come over and decide which ones you want.”

As far as that, ‘Momma cat rejecting them because of their scent,’ thing. I remember hearing that you could dab some vanilla or talcum powder on the mother’s nose and on her babies and she would think they were all hers. It sounded feasible to me back then. Dubious now.

When the time came, we selected our kitties and took them home with us, to the lap of luxury. They didn’t know how lucky they were. They escaped a life of feral working barn cats to one of suburban pampered house cats. The surplus kittens who were not so needed were not so lucky. The surplus get drowned. Farm life is cruel.

I haven’t had a cat in five years, and I miss them. So I decided to get a pair of cats, I wanted to keep up the tradition of getting them in sets so they would have a little playfriend. My nephew had a momma cat with a litter of kittens and had asked me if I wanted one. “Sure,” I said. I’ll take two. Do you have a girl and a boy?” He only had boys. Pity, I liked the idea of having a brother and a sister.

The day of adoption arrived. I got a cat carrier, litter box, cat toys, and food. I went to their house and picked up the kittens. Jesse told me they were kind of skittish. His is a young family with precocious children, so I just figured it was due to the excitement of the household and that they would calm down eventually in a more sedated environment. We scooped up the adoptees and deposited them in the cat carrier, cavernous with two mini furballs quaking in the back. I brought them to their new home.

Once there I put down the carrier in the living room and opened it. I waited with a cat toy to amuse them with. Cat’s like their humans to be amusing. I had gotten a call in the car on my way home, but had hit the ‘reject’ instead of the ‘answer’ button, so, while I awaited the second coming of kittens, I called back. After about five minutes the kittens ventured out of the carrier and scooted past me toward the hall. After a while I finished my conversation and went to find them.

They weren’t anywhere. I looked around, under beds and sofas, in corners. Nothing. I called them and made kissy noises, to no avail. Where could they have gotten to? I know you’re scared but you don’t have to act like war refugees.

I noticed that I had not closed my front door. There is a screen door and that had closed, so I don’t always close the main door, especially if I might be going out soon. Could it be…?

The screen door had not latched. Is it possible that they had looked outside, the door was actually all glass, no screens at all. I pushed. It opened. Oh, shit. Now began the doubt. Would they have opened the screen door? Could they have? It’s pretty heavy, being all glass. Kittens aren’t that strong. Or smart, for that matter. But they are curious. I’d better check around the house some more. They can’t have figured out how to escape that quickly. Could they? I had just been on the phone for ten minutes when the great escape occurred. Right?

Nothing. No sounds, No scurries. No commotion. No cats. Now I was starting to worry. I went outside and looked around my yard and in my garage. Maybe they were still hovering around the property. Nope. Back inside for another futile search and rescue operation. Nope. Not a peep. Not a purr. Not a pratfall.

Now I was getting panicky. I lost my nephew’s kittens!

I had to go out that evening. I told some people what had happened and that I felt pretty bad about it. In the evening I came home and once again did a kitten sweep of the house. Nothing. So I went to bed and berated myself for my negligence.

Then, as I dozed guiltily, I heard it. A little, “Mew!” My eyes shot open. Was that real or was it a dream sound you hear when you are starting to dream but are not quite asleep yet and get woken by it. Was I hearing in my mind or in my ears? I picked my head up and listened wakefully. Nothing. I laid back down again.

Again, “Mew!”

Alright. What’s going on here? I went back for another sweep of the house. Nothing… except. There was cat poop in the litter box! “Al right! Where the hell are you?” I demanded of no apparent living thing. I put some food and water out, cleaned the litter box, and went back to bed. The next morning the food was gone and the box sullied.

“Where are you, you little monsters?!” I demanded of the living room and proceeded to do another deep search of my habitable house. And there it was. A love seat that I had not looked under the previous day. It was low and it did not occur to me that there was much room underneath it, so I had neglected to check. But of course, kittens don’t take up much space. There, underneath and way in the back, were two kittens, back to back, looking at me nonchalantly. “Mew?”

During the day I managed to trap first one, then the other, and try to make nice. They were both skittish, but one let me hold him in my lap and pet him without protest, for a few minutes at least. With time he will probably come around to at least tolerate me. The other hissed and spit and clawed his way out of my intolerable embrace immediately. I decided then to call this one Gaslight for the head fake he put me through. I’m not sure what to call the other one. Norman Bates, maybe?

These two should be back in the barn. Why do I want cats, again?