chloe


My first cat was named Snowy. She was a totally white mongrel feline, and there was a photograph of me and Snowy sitting on Grandma's porch swing which was visual evidence that we loved each other very much. No doubt my Mama and Daddy sat on that very same two-seater swing long before either I or Snowy was born. Two Lesbians who lived next door to us hated Snowy going into their flower garden and killed her with poisoned hamburger meat.

For many, many years I never lived with a cat again. Then I moved into the NYC lower East Side factory loft with Edward Meneeley and Michael Felix Katz. There were three cats.

Carolyn Brown was Siamese. Thus she was beautiful. If asked to list the ten living creatures I have most loved in this life, Carolyn Brown would be on that list, and yet my favorite memory of her was the afternoon when I took her onto the back roof of the building, where she was only allowed to be when wearing a leash-and-collar, and she jumped off the building. No one has ever given me such a fright. Years later I understood how someone might wish to end it all rather than exist in fetters, but that day I just wanted to get her back to terra firma and managed to do it, with some considerable physical damage to my arms.

Cosima was all black. She was Felix's cat. She was a Major Bitch. We never came to terms with each other. One day, in our summer place in Frenchtown, New Jersey, Cosima ran into a storage closet and things fell around, trapping her inside. I went into the closet and moved objects so she could get free again and she almost literally flew out, claws at the ready, and I was in a state of clawed shambles. She got me so angry one day, ran under a bed, and I leaped on the bed, started jumping up and down hoping to squash her to a pancake. It didn't work, she survived, much to my karmic relief.

In London, one afternoon a beautiful black cat walked into the house, settled on the sofa in the front room and fell asleep. Adele had entered my life. She was joined by a brown tiger cat named Fred. We had five happy years together, and Fred remains most in my memory from the day I gave him a tiny crumb of mescaline, he went into the back garden, lay flat on his back with all four paws in the air and I bowed to him as my guru. If only mescaline had taken me to such a place.

Felix has always had cats, and many very, very special cats, but none was more special than Egypt. She was a black cat, with a little bib of white under her chin. She couldn't see very well, needed glasses, but who is going to put eyeglasses on a cat. Any time I went to visit Felix, Egypt would immediately climb into my lap and curl into a furry ball and not move until I had to give in to the urge to go lua or leave. One day I was indulging in some substance, Egypt suggested to me that she was hungry, so I set the table with the best china and fed her, and all the other cats. Felix walked in during the midst of the feast and I explained that she was far too special to eat from a bowl on the floor. I think he almost understood. Egypt, too, is on that top ten list.

Then there was the skinny little brown cat in Mussoorie, India. Every morning it would come around when I was sitting on the terrace having my morning tea, and I would give it a saucer of milk. I looked in the shops for something resembling "cat food" but it didn't exist. My fault, I should have just told the hotel to cook me some chicken for breakfast. But we had some special mornings together, watching the sun rise and looking down upon the over-populated plains.

For many years, I was responsible for no cat. Then young Jonathan White, aka Mister Mole, who shall be the subject of a future Tale, decided he wanted a cat more than anything else in the world. Since I would have then, and would now, give Jonathan anything within my power to give, we went to Ala Moana and the pet shop and looked. One day we went in and there was a new litter of kittens. All of them were asleep except for one, who was busy running around tormenting her brothers and sisters, looking for more ways to get into trouble. Jonathan instantly decided that WAS the cat he had been waiting for.

We took her home in a taxi and she yelled her head off all the way, the taxi driver eventually looking back and asking "what HAVE you got in that box?". It was Chloe, as Jonathan named her, a beautiful calico cat, and such a sweetheart. Ah, but only a sweetheart to me and Jonathan. To anyone else who entered the apartment, she was a hissing, slashing terror.

Some of the happiest hours of my life, and no doubt Chloe's life, were spent sitting on a bed, supposedly watching television but drifting off to sleep, with Chloe curled on my lap. She preferred my lap to Jonathan's, because he wouldn't stay still as long.

I delayed my exit from the life of householder for some months because of Chloe, then undertook extensive research and observation to determine where might be the best place to relocate her when we both undertook the life of an urban nomad. I settled upon the University of Hawai'i campus, where there are many cats and many people daily providing food. Then I observed for some time to make sure of the best location, one that would remain dry no matter how hard it rained. Having arrived at the decision, Chloe was moved there one evening.

She almost immediately discovered she could squeeze under the walls of a toolshed under the building I had selected, and she didn't come out for two days. I slid cans of food under the wall for her. Every day I would walk by and look for her; then I saw her sitting with just her head and front paws outside the toolshed walls, and she came out to greet me.

For almost two months, I took food to her every day, always to be greeted by her strolling in from somewhere (the toolshed having long since been abandoned as headquarters). She changed personality drastically, went from being a total bitch to being sweet and cuddly to anyone who stopped to talk to her. I several times went to feed her and saw her in the arms of some student (including one I wouldn't have minded being in the arms of).

An art student fell in love with her, asked me if I thought it would be ok to take her home, promising she would bring Chloe back if she didn't seem happy. I said, "yes of course".

So Chloe is gone from my life, perhaps forever. I shall miss her greatly, miss her rubbing up against my legs, snuggling into my lap, miss the soft touch of her fur. I have other cats here on campus, I've had, as I've said above, other cats in my life. But none were more special than Carolyn Brown, Egypt, and Chloe.



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