Marley: The Lion in Winter

Marley, our feline, family and friend: you're not feeling well. You’re eating a special food and taking daily medicine for a kidney ailment, but you’re still losing weight. It’s time to take you to Dr. M. for a check-up. 

You yowl in the elevator, then you’re calm, quiet, curious, as I pull you along Boulevard St. Germain in your cat caddy.

You growl at the alarming smells in the vet’s waiting room.

A door opens, a short yappy canine skids across the floor towards you. You hiss like a snake.

Dr. M. in slow-mo, as if walking in a dream,

John Lennon sculpted face and specs,

hands at home in fur, questions you.

I translate: your behavior is odd, changed.

You don’t jump up on the counter now,

sleep instead on your bed on the kitchen floor,

no longer come bounding out for our company,

you wander in beside one or the other of us for a while,

then return to the kitchen alone, as if disoriented.

You forget your cat box at least twice a week.

Dr. M. sinks his slow hands in your white belly fur,

feels around—how patient you are!—

then peers into your eyes with his light. This you barely endure.

We hold your head and paws while he presses a syringe into your front leg. 

You yell at him: you’ve had it!

One final indignity: claws clipped.

You are not amused; no, you are royally pissed.

Your eyes are fine, the doctor says, but it could be

a tumor of the brain or lungs.

The next day we have an appointment at a clinic

on the periphery of Paris, due north, a long Métro ride.

Richard places a turquoise towel around his neck,

and drapes you around his shoulders.

Won’t he jump down? I wonder. But no, you don’t.

Just in case, I wheel your caddy beside the two of you.

Photograph (c) 2013 Kaaren Kitchell

Your first Métro ride. Richard stands, with his Turkish Angora boa. You look around in amazement. You rotate your gaze in every direction, marble-eyed, down at the tracks, the tunnels, the cars, up at the ceiling, the ads, the humans, who eye you in amusement.  

Since we arrived in Paris, you haven’t been out at all except for up Blvd. St. Germain to the vet’s.

(I remember Grammy K., living in that high-rise care center in San Francisco, loving it when we sprung her and wandered the city streets.)

You stay close to Richard’s ears, lick them a little, your hind legs trailing down his back. I drape them around his shoulders again, but they prefer to trail.

A block from the clinic, you suddenly pant like a lunatic (a sixth sense as to where we’re going, or thirst?).

Photograph (c) 2013 Kaaren Kitchell

In the waiting room, Richard lays you down on a chair. You go limp, head and paws hanging over one side, tail drooping over the other.

I sign you in and bring you water.

Two young French girls ask your name.

Marley, Richard says.

Is your pet in there? I ask. They nod. What is his name?

Snoop.

Snoop Dog and Bob Marley, kindred spirits!

The vet comes out holding a tiny dog who looks like a fox with a tube coming out of his forehead. One of the girls reaches for him, cradles him on her lap. He sits there staring, forlorn.

Il est trés malade, says the other girl.

The girl who holds Snoop curls over him, sobbing.

We comfort her.

What kind of Frankenstein experiments are they doing in there? you wonder, still lying across the chair limp.

The doctor calls us in. He is young, handsome, warm.

You lie on the table, limp. The vet interviews us, examines you and carries you out of the room for the X-rays.

I go around the corner to find the bathroom. Returning, see the saddest dog I’ve ever seen, splayed on the floor, eyes wounded, his dewlaps spread like spilled water. 

He has neck cancer, the vet’s assistant says.

Will they put him to sleep?

She doesn’t know.

The vet carries you back into the room. It’s over!

You spring into action, explore every corner of the room, finally settle on a high counter near our heads.

The vet puts up the X-rays. Your heart: fine. So are your lungs and brain. But here, see the dark line along the colon? The lining appears to be inflamed. He’ll call our vet to discuss what to do. You need more blood work and an ultrasound.

We ask about the saddest dog. Oh, he’s on a course of chemo for three weeks, says the vet. He will look like that for another few days, and then he’ll be fine. Amazing!

All the way home, you’re alert and relaxed. Just a brief spell of white coat syndrome, just like Richard has.

Next day at Dr. M’s, a very young girl in a white lab coat with long dark hair tells us the doctor will be out shortly. She moves slowly, as if dreaming, comes over to you and coos.

Anouk is her name. She’s the veterinarian’s daughter, 11 years old, she wants to be a vet like her dad. 

More blood work means another needle. He’ll call us with the results later that day.

Drawing (c) 2013 Anouk McCarthy

The news is good. The renal condition is improving. He will give you medicine for the colon condition, and it’s not too difficult to treat. And you'll get your ultrasound the 24th.

Richard stops by the vet’s for the medicine. Anouk gives us her two drawings of you, looking like a little fox.

Marley with the plumed tail,

Marley the Prince (pronounced the way the French do, prance),

Marley with the Van Gogh eyebrows,

Marley with the turquoise eyes (now navy blue),

Marley, Mr. Floofypants, friend Dawna calls you,

Marley, little king of the block who adopted us

the day we planned our wedding,

Marley who wanted a home

with no other cats (or dogs or kids),

Marley with the white Elizabethan ruff,

Turkish Angora with buff-colored ears,

spirit neither shy nor neurotic,

fierce, sure of yourself,

certain of our affection,

rubbing white fur on us,

singing your feline song,

shedding your love

all over the house.

Drawing (c) 2013 Anouk McCarthy

Surrealist Café #2, Les Animaux

He stands on the chair beside me, nuzzling my writing arm. He is so glad to be released from his overnight stay in the kitchen. In spite of his soft bed, fresh water and food, his litter box in the petit coin, he’d much rather sleep on our faces. But we need sleep, too.

He sounds like a little fire. I put down my pen, pick up the pink brush, and comb his white and gold fur. He lifts his face so I can get at the thick Elizabethan ruff beneath his chin. Marley, Marley.

When he’s happy, the fur puffs up around his face, and he reminds me of a bumblebee, drunk on pollen.

It’s too cold now in Paris to leave the windows open. And anyway, Marley’s not as interested in prowling on the ledge since the Tourterelles were evicted.

<http://parisplay.squarespace.com/journal/2011/9/16/conversation-entre-les-tourterelles.html>

One morning, shortly after the first egg was hatched, we opened the curtains to see if their second egg had hatched. The older chick had been gobbling food for days.

The nest was gone. Gone. Our neighbors’ grimy window had been “cleaned,” that is, someone had opened it and rubbed a rag in careless circles, leaving swirls of dirt on the glass.

What had they done with the nest? Swept it out of the geranium box? Madame and Monsieur Tourterelle might have flown away, but the three-day-old chick could not have survived, and the egg would surely have smashed.

This was the first and only video we had of that chick.

We wanted to go down to their apartment and bang on the door. But the building is one adjacent to us, and we don’t have the entry code.

What kind of people, we wondered, cannot wait two weeks for two baby doves to gain the strength to fly, before sweeping aside a nest?

Had they seen Richard’s camera pointed at their window, and felt paranoid? No, he’d made sure there were no humans around when he photographed the doves.

So hard-hearted; they were hard-hearted. Can anyone be callous towards animals and birds, and tender towards humans?

What do you think?

To celebrate the life of the Tourterelles, and to kick off a second Surrealist Café event, in which you readers participate in Paris Play, we ask the following: 

On Saturday, October 29^th, at 1 p.m. in your time zone, go to your favorite café, and write or photograph or draw or compose a tune about an animal, or fish, or bird you see that day, or one who is dear to you, or an imaginary beast, or your totem animal. Write or photograph or paint from a human perspective, or from the animal’s point of view. Don’t be intimidated if you’re not an artist. Last Surrealist Café, every contribution was imaginative.

Send it to us by e-mail the following Wednesday, November 2 (absolute drop-dead deadline), and we’ll post the best work on Paris Play Saturday, November 5^th.

Marley just leapt back on the chair, nudged my arm, and started purring like a bonfire, like a champion Swiss yodeler.

Birth Announcement

A pair of our neighborhood Eurasian Collared Doves, who spent some days a couple of weeks ago building a stick nest among the red geraniums in a neighbor's window box, successfully hatched their clutch of two eggs on Monday, and are now raising two chicks.

Monday Unveiling

We can't tell the difference between the parents with our naked (or even binocular-clad) eyes, but birding sites say that the male and female work shifts (dad in the day, mom at night) sitting on the babies to keep them warm, and feeding them with the usual partially-digested regurgitated baby bird gruel that parents make.  (Let's not go there.)

Tuesday it rained, but regurgitation must go on

Since these pictures were taken in the daytime, this is Dad and the youngsters. The helpless, down-covered babies take from fifteen to eighteen days to become fledglings (with developed feathers, and with wing muscles that are capable of flight). We believe that our human neighbors never open their courtyard windows, which emboldened the Eurasians. The geraniums do well with the oblique sunlight (this view is down to a fourth-floor window box in a six-story building), and with the intermittent summer rains.

According to Wikipedia, the Eurasians are originally from subtropical Asia, but successfully spread during the 20th Century to inhabit a range from the Arctic Circle in Norway, to the Urals in Russia, and south into Morocco and Egypt. Introduced into the Bahamas in 1970, when it is believed that some pet Eurasians escaped their cages, the species has dispersed primarily into the Gulf Coast, but can now be found as far as Alaska, as far west as California, and as far south as Vera Cruz. Some birding sources speculate that it is filling the ecological niche of the now-extinct Passenger Pigeon. It does not appear to compete with either the Mourning Dove, or with another "invasive" (non-native) species, the Rock Pigeon.

Like swans, the Eurasians are said to be loyal mates.

As recent immigrants ourselves, we welcome our new neighbors, and appreciate their echoing, resonant coo-cooooo-cooing in the courtyard outside our bedroom window. Even Marley, the cat, listens at the window for their music, perhaps more attentively than we.

This big on Tuesday

This much bigger on Wednesday

Sex and Surrealism, America and France

Life is surreal. Oh yes, it is.

In a state close to dream last night, I finished Henry Miller’s “Quiet Days in Clichy,” his alter-ego, Joey’s, rambunctious accounts of sex with prostitutes and a 15-year-old girl whom his equally goatish roommate, Carl, picks up wandering the streets of Paris.

Joey comes home one night to find Carl with Colette, whose virginity he has just plucked from her as casually as the god, Hades, plucked the girl, Kore, from a meadow (where she was herself plucking flowers), and took her down into the underworld with him.

The homeless girl turns out to be so sexually ravenous that Carl begs Joey to help him sate her appetite on nights when Carl is away at work in a newspaper office.

But Colette, whom the two men agree is “dumb,” is not Joey’s type. He prefers women who have something interesting to say. Besides, they could be thrown in jail for having sex with a minor. (Though sex is legal in France at the age of 15, or at least is today, the two men at first believe that the girl is 14.)

Joey begs Carl to find Colette something to wear beside the transparent Japanese shift he’s provided for her, or he may find himself raping the girl against his will.

One day, Colette disappears. The next day at noon, when Carl and Joey are both home, someone knocks on the door. It’s the police, with the girl’s parents.

The mother is so beautiful that both men wish they’d found her first. “The mother!” says Carl later. “Did you have a good look at her? She was not only beautiful, she was divine.” But the mother is mostly quiet while the police and the father, who looks like a barrister, question the two men about the girl’s missing watch.

When the mother examines a stack of books on Carl’s work table, Faust, Blake, Lawrence, Shakespeare—good literature—and hands the last volume of Proust’s great work to her husband, the man looks at Carl with new eyes. Carl then discusses the essay he’s writing on the relation between Proust’s metaphysical vision and the occult tradition, and Joey is revealed to be a famous writer. The attitude of the parents changes from accusatory to respectful.

(This was first written in New York City in 1940, and rewritten in Big Sur in 1956.)

It is fascinating to read this account of untrammeled male sexuality by an American artist, a writer, in Paris, pre-Women’s Liberation.

The only woman in Henry’s accounts of his sexual adventures who seems offended by what some might see as insensitivity to a woman’s inner life is a beautiful young Danish woman. But that’s after she and Joey and Carl and an acrobat named Corinne have a four-way sexual romp after dinner at the men’s apartment.

Those Viking babes can be so difficult!

                                                *

The next morning, Marley and I read The New York Times over breakfast. The big news: Anthony D. Weiner (really, that’s his name?) was caught sending snapshots of parts of his body to various young women over the Internet. He had excellent pecs that must have taken many hours over many months at the gym to develop, so you can hardly blame him for wanting to show them off.

I didn’t get the opportunity to see the shot of him in his boxers, though it seems to me that he might be confusing what turns women on with men’s love of viewing body parts. But what do I know?

What knocked me out was the photo of him in bed with… Marley! Really. It was our cat, white with fawn ears, sleeping soundly beside him, so I knew immediately that Anthony, though not, perhaps, a man of good judgment, was certainly a man of good taste.

(A little aside here: Richard came home the other day from l’Alliance Francaise and told me that his French teacher had informed the class that they must not pronounce the “t” at the end of “chat,” when referring to a cat. Just as in English, in French, a pussy may refer to a cat. Or it may refer to a woman.)

Anthony, too, uses the two words interchangeably, calling this photo, “Me and the pussys.”  

But then I read that not only is Anthony married, but he’s been married less than a year. His wife happens to be a personal aide to Hillary Clinton, which perhaps suggested to Anthony that if Hillary accepted Bill’s indiscretions, her aide might do the same for him.

Furthermore, Anthony seemed a likely candidate to replace Michael Bloomberg, the current mayor of NYC. And those political hopes, it seems, have now been extinguished.

I watched a video in which Anthony confessed that yes, he had sent texts of photos of his body, along with flirtatious messages to several young women on the Internet. At several points he broke down in tears.

What has happened in our world between Henry Miller’s lusty joyous relish of sex with prostitutes, 15-year-olds and indignant Danish beauties (who nevertheless, surrender to his desires), and the sexual scandals that have erupted lately in the news?

The contrast between these two New Yorkers, Henry Miller and Anthony Weiner, seems to me to be utterly surreal.

Perhaps it’s the difference between what is permitted an artist (or rather, what an artist permits himself to do) and a politician.

Perhaps it’s a difference in space, of geography, between France and the U.S.A. (The parents of the 15-year-old shifted their attitude entirely when they learned that they were addressing a famous writer. Writers are that deeply respected in France.)

Perhaps it’s a difference in time, that certain changes that occurred in the 1960s—the birth control pill, sexual freedom, books such as Simone de Beauvoir’s “The Second Sex” and Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” and the rise of feminism—changed what women accept, and thus, what the culture condones.

However, I think another element is at play here.

There was a brief time in history in which one generation (in America, at least) was free to experiment and live out our sexual fantasies completely. There was a period after the birth control pill and before AIDS, when men and women could live as freely as they chose without fear of getting pregnant or catching a deadly disease.

Not everyone participated. But those of us who did had a rocking good time.

And listening to Anthony Weiner talk, I thought, Poor guy, he just wasn’t born at the right time. He didn’t get to live out his sexual fantasies before getting married, and this can be a big problem for highly-sexed (but repressed) people.

Artists and libertines have been sexually expressive at all times in history. But for other folks, who are socially or religiously programmed, sex may be a guilty pleasure that must be alternately repressed or furtively engaged in.

 

And yet, it’s the very essence of the life force. As the philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, said, “The degree and kind of a man's sexuality reach up into the ultimate pinnacle of his spirit.” 

In Henry Miller’s writing, he often gives the impression that he’s oblivious to the effect he’s having on the women with whom he has sex, whereas Anthony Weiner’s tears of regret at hurting his wife (as well as his more political concern about disappointing his constituents) seemed to me to be genuine.

This seems like a cultural advance, a man caring (at least in retrospect) about his effect on the woman to whom he’s married.

Yet all that magnificent lusty life force that Henry had! What I love about Henry Miller, what Nietzsche himself would have admired, was the way that Miller’s sexuality and spirit were not divided. It was all of one piece, in all its lustiness as well as crudeness and lack of sensitivity.

What seems sad to me about Anthony Weiner is how divided his spirit is from his sexuality. That seems to be the inheritance of Judeo-Christianity—the body divided from the spirit. And what a sad and tortured story that creates.

 

Marley Goes to Paris, Part One

The First Four Lives
 
The sun came out today in Paris after a month of mostly gloomy skies. Marley found the brightest patch of sunlight in our apartment, stretched out his paws and closed his eyes. Cats, the sun, Apollo, Leo, enjoyment. Ancient Greek myth, like the myths of most cultures, makes eternal associations.

I think of my mother’s words before we left the United States, “You’re not taking your cat, are you?” When it comes to expressing her opinion, my mother has never pussyfooted around. She doesn’t like cats, finds them weird. Whereas I could start a religion with a cat god. A dog god? No. I can’t picture worshipping a dog. But a cat? Absolutely. The ancient Egyptians understood the mystery and enchantment of these small creatures.


 
So, about Marley. Marley is a Turkish Angora, white with fawn-colored ears, Van Gogh eyebrows and eyes that were once turquoise and now are navy blue.

Marley is now in his sixth life, having entered our lives in his fourth.  This is what we know of his former lives:

Life #1: He had a home in Malibu, until the Great Malibu Fire of 1993.

Life #2: A stranger found Marley as a kitten with minor burns, and took him to a pound. That might have been his final life if our neighbors hadn’t rescued him.

Life #3: Crystal and Gabrielle brought Marley to their Venice (California) home. But then--as Richard Nixon once said--“Mistakes were made.” The two neighbor women next adopted a small black cat named Louie. Louie was as hysterical in nature as Marley was calm. Both cats were allowed to roam our Fifth Avenue neighborhood. Marley strolled around, confident, king of the block. Louie would shoot out the front door and straight up a tree, like a frenzied squirrel on speed. Everything spooked him.

Maybe it was male competition, but Marley decided that living with Louie was just not going to work for him.

He set about canvassing our block, stopping at every house to check out the inhabitants, the ambience and the food.

His requirements were modest: humans who were home most of the day, with no children, no other pets, good food offerings, a sunny, quiet, clean home, and a willingness to give him plenty of attention, if not downright worship.

The night we began planning our wedding in Crete, we had ordered out for pasta. The front doorbell rang. The deliveryman handed Richard our order, and as he was paying, a white streak of lightning shot up the stairs.

We put table settings on the white duvet on our bed, and placed the dishes of pasta on top.

Meanwhile, Marley sniffed every corner of our apartment. As we began to eat, Marley padded into the bedroom and leapt up on the bed, front paws smack in the middle of Richard’s Bolognese sauce. He tracked perfect red paw prints across the white duvet.

Richard shouted and shooed him away. I ran to the kitchen to fetch some soda water. Pouring it immediately onto the marks meant they’d come out in the wash. Richard held Marley’s paws under running water. I spread two towels over the duvet.

We ate dinner, then settled back against pillows to brainstorm. Marley leapt up on the bed again, and onto my shoulders and head, then across to Richard’s head and shoulders, and draped himself over our humming brains, and purred.

He stayed in this position for most of our planning session. It felt like a blessing on the wedding itself, so we named him our Wedding Cake Cat. He was white and orangey-pink, like a wedding cake.

Several weeks later, Crystal stopped us in front of our fourplex. “Would you two consider adopting Marley?” she said. “He won’t come into our house any more since Louie moved in. He’s chosen you.”

We were thrilled. Marley had done his homework, found the only house on the block occupied by two writers who work at home, and who so love cats that neither of us had been able to imagine adopting another when, before we had met each other, our former cats had died. But to be chosen by a cat? That you cannot turn down.

Life #4: So began Marley’s life with us in Venice, in 1997.  Tune in Saturday for lives #5 and #6.

iPad sketch by Richard