Cats!

My wife and I rent­ed three upstairs rooms in a big old house in White Hall, Vir­ginia, right after we mar­ried. The house was the orig­i­nal “White Hall,” we were told, where trav­el­ers board­ed in the old days on their way from Char­lottesville across the moun­tains. We loved that place. It sat on a ridge over­look­ing a pic­turesque field where Angus cat­tle grazed.

My wife was hang­ing our wash on the clothes­line in the side yard one after­noon when a fur­ry black cat with white mark­ings walked up to her and rubbed against her leg. She fol­lowed my wife up the out­side stair­well to our bal­cony entrance and came inside. She was so friend­ly and play­ful we fig­ured she was some­one else’s pet and turned her out that night, but she was wait­ing for us on the stairs the next day when we came home from work. We played with her and fed her, and she curled up and went to sleep at the foot of our bed.

The old house had a prob­lem with mice. I’d set traps but hadn’t caught any­thing. I awoke that night to a loud thump fol­lowed by crunch­ing sounds. I’ll spare you the descrip­tion of what I saw when I flicked on the light. Suf­fice it to say, we named the cat, Mousy; she moved in with us; and our prob­lem with mice went away.

We fell in love with her and the feel­ing seemed mutual.

Then one night we came home and she wasn’t there. We called her, but she didn’t come. I searched the neigh­bor­ing yards. No sign of her. “Field cats like to roam,” I told my wife. “She’ll come home soon.”

But she didn’t come home. Five nights into it, I was wor­ried sick and couldn’t sleep. I got up and went look­ing for her again. I searched all the same places. Still no sign of her. An old barn sat in the cow pas­ture at the bot­tom of the hill below our house. It seemed like a good place to hunt mice, and I hadn’t looked there before so I climbed the fence and head­ed down there.

The cat­tle stood togeth­er in the moon­light by a creek near the barn. As I walked down the slope, they began to bawl. Then a dozen of them broke away from the herd and charged up the hill toward me. I grew up in White Hall, and I’d walked through fields of cat­tle at night before with­out a prob­lem. A farmer lat­er told me, “Cat­tle can get skit­tish when a stranger pass­es through their field at night. Some­times they kick up a big ruckus and charge at him.”

“Wish I’d known that before I start­ed down that hill,” I said.

When the cat­tle came run­ning at me, I was too far from the fence to make it to safe­ty, so I shim­mied up the near­est tree, a locust tree, and watched the cat­tle run beneath me and on up to the top of the ridge, where they stomped around and con­tin­ued to bawl.

Anoth­er piece of infor­ma­tion that would have come in handy that night is that locust trees have big sharp thorns all along their trunks and branch­es. Scratch­es and welts striped my arms and hands, and they stung and bled.

Worse yet, the cat­tle had cut me off from the house. My only way out of the field was to out­run the cat­tle down to the barn, and from there, try to make it over a fence that bor­dered the road.

The thorns ripped me again as I climbed down, but I hit the ground run­ning. The cat­tle drummed down the hill after me. They were almost on me when I dove through the barn door and closed it behind me.

When I’d col­lect­ed my wits, such as they were, I searched the barn. No Mousy, of course.

The barn had a back door that faced the road. I snuck out the back and jumped the fence before the cat­tle real­ized I’d flown the coop.

Worn out and deject­ed, I walked up the road to Wyant’s Store and on over to our house. It was about mid­night when I got home.

“Guess who’s here!” my wife cried out when I opened the door.

Mousy lay on our bed. She’d come home while I was climb­ing the cursed locust tree. She’d lost weight and she was filthy but she wasn’t hurt. I looked like a walk­ing adver­tise­ment for iodine, but Mousy was back with us so I didn’t complain.

Cou­ple months lat­er, we came home on a cold rainy night to find Mousy on our wel­come mat, des­per­ate­ly try­ing to keep two new­born kit­tens warm. We gath­ered them up, rushed inside, and held them over the radi­a­tor. One had already frozen to death. The oth­er, Geral­dine, survived.

Short­ly after that, we bought a lit­tle house in Crozet and the four of us moved to our new home.

Sev­er­al months lat­er Mousy dis­ap­peared again. Same drill. A fran­tic search with no suc­cess. Days lat­er she came home filthy and bone-thin. Geral­dine pulled the same trick the next week. Two months after that, we were awash in kittens.

I was talk­ing to the guy next door one day about the mys­te­ri­ous dis­ap­pear­ances when he burst out laugh­ing. He’d grown up with cats. He told me what was going on. I was shocked.

“Mousy’s a slut,” I told my wife.

“What?”

“The times she dis­ap­pears,” I said. “She’s run­ning around doing it non-stop with every tom­cat she can find. Geraldine’s no better.”

We placed the kit­tens in good homes and the cycle repeat­ed. Our base­ment teemed with squirm­ing lit­tle balls of fur. Hav­ing sat­u­rat­ed Crozet with black cats with white mark­ings, we ran out of adop­tion can­di­dates. I final­ly broke down and emp­tied our bank account to spay Mousy, Geral­dine, and the oth­er three cats we couldn’t pay any­one to take.

They remained part of our fam­i­ly for the next two decades, and we adjust­ed our lives to accom­mo­date them, some­times with­out sen­si­ble regard for our future. We took them to Atlanta when I sum­mer-clerked for a cor­po­rate law firm there. The night we arrived, a senior part­ner helped us smug­gle our five cats into a no-pets motel, shuf­fling along car­ry­ing a cat under each arm, gig­gling like a lit­tle kid. I fig­ured they’d nev­er offer me a per­ma­nent job after that night, but for rea­sons I still don’t under­stand, our ardent devo­tion to our cats seemed to work in my favor.

The cats made big adjust­ments, too. They moved with us three thou­sand miles cross-coun­try back and forth three times, once by car, twice in the bel­lies of air­planes, until we final­ly set­tled down in LA, where Mousy, the Vir­ginia coun­try cat, and her brood seemed con­tent to live out their gold­en years in tin­sel town.

Mousy retained some of her down-home coun­try instincts, though. She still stalked mice in our garage, and one Christ­mas, she got a crazed look on her face, climbed to the top of our ful­ly dec­o­rat­ed tree, and brought it crash­ing down on the liv­ing room floor. Try­ing to sup­press a smile as I cleaned up the mess, I was secret­ly glad that some of the field cat we loved so much had sur­vived all the rad­i­cal changes.

Mousy and her off­spring left us one by one in the late 80’s. Lazy Bones, the last of her line, laid down beside our pool one breezy sum­mer day in 1990, stretched out, yawned, and went to sleep for good, bring­ing to a close Mousy’s long hap­py chap­ter in our lives.

The first of many cats and dogs who lived with my wife and me over our fifty years togeth­er, she was the only one who adopt­ed us, instead of the oth­er way around. She gave us the great gifts of love and loy­al­ty, except dur­ing those sex-crazed binges, for which we for­gave her. She’ll always hold a spe­cial place in our hearts.

Post Script: I wrote this piece for Mousy on Nation­al Cat’s Day. She was a great cat in all respects.