The XYZ Affair

I have an algebraic---or perhaps physics---problem to present to you, hoping for a solution but surmising there is none:

Let X = a gray female cat (spayed) who weighs about 10 pounds.

Let Y = an orange-and-white male cat (neutered)who weighs about the same.

Let Z = a human female of a certain age who weighs approximately seven times the combined weight of X and Y.

Let Z's double bed = Z's double bed.

If X sleeps on one side of Z and Y sleeps on the other, why can't Z turn over or otherwise change position during the night, and why does Z have continuing nightmares of being immobilized in leg irons?

Remember Gulliver's voyage to Lilliput, on which he awakes from a deep sleep to find himself tied and pegged to the ground, unable to move? Sleeping with two cats is exactly like that.

It is also like the law of physics that states something-or-other will always rush to fill a vacuum, as I know from rising to go to the bathroom and returning to find two average-sized cats have spread to fill the entire center of the bed. No lie: the exact and entire center. They must have GPS. Or the world's biggest sense of entitlement.

Moreover, I have to let sleeping cats lie; somehow their respective ten pounds becomes a hundred. Each. There must be a law of physics that explains that, too, but I have no idea what it is. Funnily enough, before I put aside my book and turn out the light, they occupy modest little nests down near the foot of the bed. I hardly notice they're there.

Short of moving to another room and barricading the door, I don't know quite what to do about these feline night riders. If you have a suggestion (short of exorcism), please let me know. My back and my hip joints are killing me!

***

This tickled me...

From "Introduction to Poetry" by a personal favorite and New York State's Poet Laureate, Billy Collins, who is describing his classes at NYU:

"...I want them to water ski

across the surface of a poem

waving at the author's name on shore.

"But all they want to do

is tie the poem to a chair with rope

and torture a confession out of it."

May you treat the poems that come your way with the joy they deserve!

Still Life, With Cats

Kittens, like shoes, should come in pairs, so it was a foregone conclusion that my trip to the SPCA would end in two sets of food bowls in my then catless kitchen.

I had already made the first-round draft pick for Team Askew on the basis of a phot on the SPCA web site: a little charcoal gray female who bore a striking resemblance to Boris and Natasha, a brother-and-sister pair I had found at the same shelter more than a decade ago. Their body conformation, soft, plush coats, and general demeanor strongly suggested that their provenance was more exotic than that of your basic domestic shorthair. Photographs and breed descriptions in reference books led me to conclude that what I had were a couple of rejects from a breeder of Russian Blues.

Boris had a tiny white patch on his chest that looked as though the neckline of his tee shirt was caught in the zipper of his cat suit; Tasha had faintly visible tiger stripes on her tail. Both patch and stripes are considered faults in show cats. Their sweet nature and affectionate temperament, however, made them grand champions in our household.

Could it be, I now wondered, that the aforementioned breeder was still fobbing off kittens that were not quite up to standard on the SPCA? If so, and if my luck was really in, the little female, whom I had already christened Lilith, might have a litter mate, perhaps one of those identified on the web site as "camera-shy."

I got my first cold-water dash of reality upon entering the cat adoption room and finding no gray cats at all.

Where was "my" wee girl? The woman with whom I'd spoken on the phone the day before had assured me that Kitten No. 1428996, shelter name "Sweetie," was still available, yet here it was, only minutes after the shelter opened, and she was nowhere to be seen. There were other kittens, true, but rather commonplace types, not one of which I could conceive of calling Lilith. Maybe the staff had put her aside for me somewhere? Probably not; an SPCA animal is not a piece of merchandise to be hidden under the counter.

I marched out to the desk, introduced myself, and asked for---no, demanded to know---the kitten's whereabouts. The clerk was the same person I had spoken with on the phone, and she assured me that the still unclaimed kitten was in surgery, being spayed. "Come back in an hour and a half," she said, "and you can take her home."

I knew just what to do with the time: there was a pet supply store two Thruway exits away, and Lilith was going to need things. One hour and many dollars later---I opted out of the cat condo at the last minute---I was on my way back to the SPCA. I did remember, when choosing cat dishes, to buy two, but it was only on the return journey that I recalled I had another, more important decision to make, the kitten to eat out of the second dish.

The clerk at the desk was guiding another adoptive "parent" through paperwork, but I interrupted to ask whether there were still kittens in the cage Lilith had shared in the adoption area, thinking it might be wise to go with the devil you know. This is a phrase I have come to rue many times since, especially when a passing animal control officer piped up, "Oh, you mean the pisspots...Yeah, they're all still there."

The clerk turned, unable to resist: "Remember? Yesterday I tried to put one back in the cage and two escaped. When I tried to put them back, the other two got out. It was a regular circus."

Oh. Good. They're spirited. What fun.

My sweet little girl, it turns out, had been bunking with three male kittens, two black, one orange-and-white tiger, and had apparently fit right in with the hell-raising trio. I had been hoping for sedate twin sisters; I was going to have to settle for a Paris Hilton debutante and

her ne'er-do-well foster brother from the wrong side of the barnyard.

The two black ones were handsome, but they were obviously brothers, and I could neither take both nor countenance breaking up a matched set. It was the little tiger's lucky day.

"I'll take the orange one," I said, returning to the desk. The other woman taking a kitten congratulated me on my color sense, remarking that the pair would make a striking complementary picture when curled up together. The clerk concurred, noting that since they were already accustomed to sharing a litter box, I wouldn't have to arrange for separate facilities at home. (The latter observation has turned out to be correct, the former not so much, not since the day they discovered they've gotten too big to fit under the halogen lamp on my computer desk at the same time, Instead, there is usually a shoving match that ends with one basking cat, one sulking cat on the desk chair, and the mouse, keyboard, modem, USB hub, speakers, and assorted office supplies on the floor.)

"What's his name," the clerk asked, of Kitten No. 1460066. (Why didn't I take closer notice of those three sixes?) "Nobody ever gave the poor thing a shelter name, and I have to put something down on the form. It doesn't have to be what you finally call him."

I pondered. He was orange and white, and it wouldn't be forever. "Creamsicle," I replied, cringing inwardly and vowing to spend the drive home coming up with a more fitting name.

Many forms and two hundred bucks on the Visa card later, we were indeed homeward bound, the little guy squealing every mile of the way, trampling on a still-recumbent Lilith, and doing his damndest to claw his way out of the cardboard carrier.

"Why don't I call you Sydney Carton?" I asked. "You act as though I'm taking you to the guillotine in that box. Of course, we'll have to spell it Sidney-with-an-I; I wouldn't want people to think I was naming you after Sydney Greenstreet; you're not that suave." At that point, he didn't care one way or the other what I called him as long as I stopped the car and got him out of that infernal container.

That, by the way, was the first and last time I ever heard him utter what might remotely be considered a Meow. At liberty in his domain---and this is his domain, make no mistake---he purrs loudly and almost nonstop, save for those rare occasions when, like the King of Siam, he finds a person, object, or predicament to be a puzzlement. Then, he trills in a decidedly interrogatory manner.

Released from confinement on that first day of entering into his kingdom---the sunny side sitting room with attached bath and litter box---he swaggered about the room, took its measure, and within the first half-hour was attempting a Tarzan swing on the cords of the Roman shades. Small as he was, getting from the floor to the quilt draped on the back of the day bed in a single bound was not a problem. The little cat in motion was like a melody, the one that goes: "Oh, the most wonderful thing about tiggers is tiggers are wonderful things. Their tops are made out of rubber, their bottoms are made out of springs!" Oh, yah!

Meanwhile, Lilith (remember her?), still recuperating from her abdominal surgery, found the water bowl and a quiet spot on the couch from which to survey her new digs. Eventually, Sidney did wind down and curl up beside her, suddenly tuckered out. This gave me an opportunity to inspect more closely the puss-in-a-poke I had adopted by process of elimination. The coat, shades of light and dark rust, is both striped and spotted, and it is nattily accessorized with white shirt front and socks. The ears are tufted; the tail, which he carries curved over his back like the handle of a teakettle when awake, is broadly striped like a barber pole. A white stripe runs the length of his nose, as if the artist making his portrait had playfully stroked it with a paint-stained finger. Not a bad-looking little cat despite his plebian origins, I concluded.

Plebian or not, Sidney was born with the conviction that dogs have owners, cats have staff, and so it has been since the day he suffered himself to be brought to East Aurora as consort to an aristocratic pretender. He plays second string to no feline---no cat gut jokes, please! In the short time he has been regnant, he has made clear his rules of engagement:

• Me first, always.
• Run like hell at all times.
• All doors shall be open to me, no matter what Mom's doing behind them.
• If that wussy Lilith has found a cozy place, whether on Mom's lap or the shelf of the linen closet, push her out of it.
• All the cat toys belong to me.
• Window treatments are made for climbing and, where possible, destruction.
• If it's on a shelf and possibly breakable, nudge it off and find out.
• I need to keep a firm paw on my realm, so I will stick my nose in the paint, the cake batter, the butter dish, the printer.
• Morning starts when I say it does.
• I'll come in when I damn well please.
• I will never, ever take No! for an answer, a command, a comment, or even a suggestion.

I am the Alpha and Omega cat, the once and future Sidney!

##

Lilith, on the other hand, is a tattletale, a crybaby, and a diva.

One morning, shortly after I had introduced the kittens to the fun of those realistic-looking fur mice, she came to find me, loudly (for her) proclaiming a grievance: Apparently, Sidney had stuffed his mouse way under the refrigerator, then commandeered hers. "It's not fair!" she complained; "Sidney stole my mouse, and you have to make him give it back!"

Yeah, right. Like that would last for five seconds...

"Me...me...me..." she continued in her tiny voice. (Never finishes a sentence, that girl.) "Well, can I have a snack, then?" She was born with a clock in her stomach, one that requires feeding her every five hours on the dot of 7 a.m., noon, and 5 p.m., a clock, furthermore, that adjusts automatically for Daylight Saving Time. (Hell hath no fury like Lilith in front of an empty food dish at 12:10 p.m.)

Yet, for all her apparent anxiety to eat, many's the time she will sniff at the dish, gaze at me reproachfully as if to say, "That isn't what I ordered; take it back," then stroll off as if food was the least of her concerns. She has also been known to gobble down her meal and promptly upchuck it (on the rug, usually), just like certain bulimic tabloid stars. Got to watch the girlish figure, you know.

When Sidney's away, Lilith will play, which usually entails rolling at my feet, delicate paws in the air, stretching and fawning. "Admire me, praise me... Aren't I the softest, prettiest cat you've ever seen? Rub my tummy... Ooh, isn't that nice?"

It is a one-cat show for a one-woman audience. Lilith is customarily so reclusive I call her the Belle of East Aurora, the Emily Dickinson of the cat world. I've had weekend guests who have never glimpsed her for more than 10 seconds at a time, and my gentle, soft-voiced cat sitter has never managed to pet her. Yet, like Dickinson, she is a keen observer of her small, circumscribed world and will sit for hours at the window, making tiny cries at birds and leaves swirling off the trees. For Lilith, "the thing with feathers" isn't Hope, it's entertainment.

On days like these of warming spring, when all the world and his cat seem to be outdoors, she gets wistful and tries to overcome her agoraphobia. Twice now she has made it out the front door and onto the walk (under supervision), but there is always something out there to spook her. Bugs outside are more menacing than the ones in the house; grackles scare her; squirrels petrify her. There are fewer things less funny than a declawed cat trying to claw through an aluminum storm door.

I will still, however, need to be wary: Sidney and I went out onto the front steps last Friday midnight to admire the full moon, and Lilith decided she'd risk it. What a revelation! No bugs, no birds, no squirrels---just warm, sweet breezes, shadows, and moonlight. "A girl could get used to this," she suggested, edging further away. This time I was the one who panicked; poet or no poet, a gray cat is easy to lose in the shadows and will not come when called away from the allure of scented breezes and moonlight.

I scooped her up and plopped her inside the screen door, then went back out to fetch Sidney. They make a handsome composition, just as the woman at the SPCA suggested, but I need to keep them in the framework of this still and peaceful household.

A blast from my past

As a sometime columnist myself, I've always been an admirer of Pulitzer Prize winner Anna Quindlen's opinion pieces, first in The New York Times and nowadays in Newsweek magazine, but never more so than for her recent "Because It's Right," a call to revamp the venerable GI Bill to provide a college education for veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan.

As Quindlen notes, the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, when signed into law in 1944, had dual purposes: Not only did a grateful nation feel such assistance was due to those who had sacrificed so much; the nation's leaders short-circuited the economic and social problems that might have arisen with the return of millions of unemployed, untrained men to the workforce. By calling for the draft of able-bodied young men to fight in World War II, the U.S. gave "employment," in a manner of speaking, to many who had been out of work since the Depression. One of my uncles was among that number.

Instead, some 5 million veterans went to college, even to law school and other professional graduate schools, on Uncle Sam's dime and paid him back many times over with the growth of the middle class and an era of unprecedented prosperity. (Two recipients of government largesse after World War II, let it be noted, were U.S. Senators John Warner and Frank Lautenberg, both of whom are enthusiastic supporters of legislation to increase GI Bill benefits that was drafted by Sen. James Webb, Vietnam vet.)

That era of prosperity was the 1950s, when I attended the local junior college with veterans of the Korean War, so I know firsthand what the GI Bill can do. I got an education in more ways than one.

Part of the credit goes to the institution itself, Holyoke (Mass.) Junior College, founded in 1946 precisely to address the overflow of local vets wanting to take their best shot, at last, at the American Dream. (Bear in mind that before the war, most of them wouldn't have been considered "college material;" higher education was for the well-to-do and the well-connected. The best they might achieve, helped along by a night-school business course, would be a white-collar clerical job.)

For returning vets, there were housing shortages and there were shortages of space in state university classrooms as well, so HJC was born under the aegis of the Holyoke Public Schools and its classes were housed in the high school during the afternoon and evening, after the high school kids had gone home. The odd hours were a real boon to veterans, many of whom were married, had children, and held down jobs while going to school.

The odd hours also meant that the college could draw its faculty from nearby colleges and universities in the Connecticut Valley. Ivy League or not, most professors were not averse to picking up a little extra money for teaching in the evening. As a result, I was instructed by faculty from Smith, Mount Holyoke, Amherst, UMass, Springfield College, and the State Teachers College at Westfield. (I mention the latter because of one of my favorite teachers, Mr. Welch, who made us forget that History of Civilization 101-102 was a requirement. The vets loved him not only for his teaching style, but for his speech impediment---the result, it was said, of his having mouthed off to a German prison guard when he himself was in the Army.)

The relationship of our older classmates with the instructors was a revelation to those of us who were newly graduated from high school. Class discussions were discussions among equals; the vets came fully equipped with what we would now call "credit for life experience," and they did not blindly accept faculty pontification. Moreover, they came to college to work, and they worked hard, eyes on the prize. The teachers respected that, and in a couple of cases of professors from the elite women's colleges, I truly believe they preferred the rough-and-tumble of their junior college classes to the more sedate surroundings of their ivied campuses.

Make no mistake: the vets played hard, too, when they could. The word would go around the day the government checks arrived, and the beer would flow---but never enough to make the celebrants miss class the next day. They were not averse to taking some of us younger students out with them and knew all the places in town where the bartender never checked the ages of everyone who shared the pitcher of beer. They were courtly with us younger females, watched their language and the color of their jokes, and taught us how to jitterbug but otherwise kept their hands to themselves.

They ran the social organizations, held most of the student offices, and comprised most of the sports teams. Most importantly, they showed us youngsters how to grow up and what real maturity looks like. Chronologically, there's not much distance between 18 and 24 or 25, but when the elder person has been stationed in Thule, Greenland, or anchored off Inchon, and the younger person has not, the younger owes the elder some serious respect. Attention must and should be paid.

That is absolutely true today, when the 25-year-old may have been stationed in Kabul or Fallujah. We still owe them big time.

Miss Lucy: a love story

Once upon a time, when I worked for a living, I walked to the bus stop around the corner every weekday morning in all weathers---rain, snow, sleet, icy pavements underfoot, dark winter mornings indistinguishable from midnight, summer mornings already hazy with humidity. I learned to take small comforts and small pleasures where I could, whether it was the prospect of a half hour's reading on the bus or the realization that 6:45 a.m. today is marginally lighter than 6:45 a.m. yesterday.

Beginning in late February, one of my greatest pleasures was the return of the birds, those who migrate from the South and those who winter over but rise with the sun. A cardinal's call can cheer a frosty morning, and the skeins of Canada geese flying purposefully to outlying fields for a day's feeding, honking encouragement---or "Hurry up!"---to each other, were company: fellow commuters. One amazing summer morning I turned the corner to the bus stop in time to see a Great Blue Heron, long neck hunched between its wings and long legs trailing behind, sailing over a silent Main Street.

The geese, however, crossed my path most often, veering southwest as I headed north; they became as familiar a sight as the unknown but familiar people I passed at the same time every morning in downtown Buffalo.

One morning I noticed that one leg of the 'V' of geese was shorter than the other, while a solitary bird, honking loudly, flapped in mad pursuit several yards behind. I could hear the desperation in the call, which sounded amazingly like "Wait for me! Wait for me!"

It happened again the next morning. And the next. Always one goose lagged behind the group and strove madly to catch up. It looked like the same bird every time, although who can really distinguish between one Branta canadensis and another? I surmised---no offense intended to my gender---that the slugabed was a young, unattached female fresh out of flight school and unused to the obligations of a workaday existence. I believed I could make out a travel mug under one wing and a stylish briefcase under the other.

"Miss Lucy," I decided, was a recent graduate, cum laude, of the Royal Ontario College of Aeronautics, who had come across the border in search of greener pastures and the gander of her dreams. As most waterfowl do, Canada geese mate for life, so Miss Lucy---hoping for a long mated life---determined to find her special someone in the protected environs of East Aurora's Sinking Ponds Wildlife Refuge. So far, though, she was a small goose in a small pond and was growing desperate as the spring days lengthened. After the day's gleaning in the fields south of East Aurora was done, she took to hanging around with the unattached ganders in the parking lots of local watering-holes, cadging corn chips and trading insults with the birds who were just passing through.

Silly Miss Lucy, silly goose! You'll never find your gander that way!

At dawn the next day she would rise alone from her single nest, to find her skein taking wing without her. Late again!

I did not see Miss Lucy (or the singleton I took to be Miss Lucy) for a few days. Either she was pining in the seclusion of the reeds at Sinking Ponds OR she had decided to straighten up and fly right. In the latter case, she was a full-fledged member of the group, tardy no longer, and therefore inconspicuous among her fellows, a career goose.

That could have been what happened; I don't know.

I DO know that one morning a short time later, the geese flew over as usual, honking on their way to the fields. Trailing them by several yards were a pair of geese, silent save for the rush of air under their wings. The symmetry of their flight was breathtaking, each mirroring the form of the other effortlessly. Envision the world's greatest figure-skating pairs, and you'll get a rough idea of how the birds flowed in tandem without a sound.

I believed that morning, and I believe to this day, Miss Lucy had at long last found her mate.