I went to Rome with my cousin when I was about ten years old. We visited the Colosseum of course, and what I remember most is the cats. They were everywhere. Like they’d built it or had important business there.
Here I expected the crumbling corridors and archways to be haunted by the spirits of gladiators, cruel emperors, the enslaved. But, no. Cats. Just like the ones that wandered my childhood street and invade my yard now.
It’s a kind of haunting, don’t get me wrong. Cats possess that rare aura of crossing between worlds. Residents of both the mundane and the mystic. Here and beyond. Possessors of nine lives and the seemingly-impossible ability to always land on their feet. The Ancient Egyptians idolized them, whilst the British blamed the plague on them. I can see why they team up with witches. And old people. Those with a foot in multiple dimensions.
All my life I’ve noticed that cats get a bad rap, in the same bigoted way that races or cultures often do. Their fabled nemesis, the dog, tends to be associated with common ideals of loyalty and friendship. While cats are saddled with unkind stereotypes; like being selfish or aloof. Evil, even. In the Thirteenth Century Pope Gregory IX declared that cats carried the spirit of satan. Mass killings by Catholics ensued.
It’s unfair, yet I have to admit that if there’d been dogs in the Colosseum, I’m not sure they’d have made the same kind of impression on me. It might have seemed more menacing, but also more relaxed somehow. Cool even. Perhaps cats still rattle my ex-Catholic bones.
I’ve never owned one. I grew up in a “dog family”, not that we always did a great job of that. We didn’t even know any cat owners. The lady next door was rumored to have more than one, they kept to themselves though. This ignorance has made me guilty of harboring a distrust - or at least general distaste - of cats myself.
I got bitten by a dog once as a kid, right in the face. It belonged to a stranger and I was only trying to pet it. Still, my allegiance stuck. But I’m trying to change. Especially now that cats have possessed our backyard. But unlike ghosts, I see them. The cats don’t care that I do. They have a way of entrenching themselves, indifferent to outside opinion. They haunt not just with soul, but body also.
So now, well into my forties, I find myself trying to really understand cats for the first time. To confront their spirits, at least, and by extension my own. Given the number in my yard, I might have to.
When we bought our house a little over a year ago, my wife and I hadn’t moved for over 12 years. That long stretch was a nice respite from the grueling, possession-management-nightmare of relocating. Paring down and transporting all your belongings is a torture chamber of confronting consumerism and examining personal values, best avoided for as long as possible.
You get so caught up in what you must bring when you leave somewhere, it’s easy to forget about what you might discover once you arrive. One of the first things I noticed were the cats.
My office overlooks the backyard of the new house and every day a parade of cats creeps along the deck and between the wild foliage. The garden is lush, with an almost tropical feel, a rarity for Los Angeles and it’s one of the main reasons we chose the house. After all the negotiating, worrying, paperwork and money were gone, to feel like the place didn’t really belong to us was jarring.
The previous owner had died in the house, as must be disclosed amongst countless, far more mundane details within the purchase documents. So I was ready for a little haunting, but not by the living.
The cats tiptoe along the top of the back fence and sometimes bed down for a quick rest in perfectly sized grooves of dry garden bed. Every now and then, as I stand at the kitchen sink, one will startle me, as it darts along a wooden railing just outside the window. Or by the front door, from the corner of my eye, I’ll see the back end of a cat, tiptoeing along the carport roof. At night they’ll call to each other in childlike moans, prompting my wife and I to pause our conversation, thinking one of the kids is wailing.
It’s no Colosseum, I can assure you, but this place is haunted, too.
Cats occupy a unique space amongst the pet hierarchy. Most pets are captive in some way. Caged, leashed or encased in glass. Dogs almost don’t exist in our society without a human beside them. We identify them as companions. I’ve seen panicked residents of Los Angeles run into traffic when they spot a dog with no owner, certain that something must be wrong, that it needs immediate aid. But cats wander streets all the time and mostly we all act like they’re not even there. What’s more ghostly than that?
The thing that frightens me the most is when one attempts to connect with me. Silently, of course. Stealth being one of cats’ most pronounced ghost-like qualities.
A cat will sometimes crouch at the back door while I’m cooking, staring at me through the glass. Like a vampire waiting to be invited in. I almost jump every time. “What is it?!” I want to ask. Then I go back to what I was doing, but look over my shoulder every now and then, to see if it’s still there. It inevitably is. Once a cat locks in on you, it’s going nowhere till it’s paid the required attention, or startled. No one’s winning a staring contest with a cat, I’ve learned. They’re persistent, it’s admirable.
The myth of black cats being particularly spooky is most likely further resonance of racism, sadly. It’s been whispered for centuries and they still make for a halloween decoration staple. I’ll admit to being a tad superstitious about one “crossing my path”, (a creepier way of saying “walking in front of you”, seemingly coined just for black cats), but deep down I know it’s silly. It’s not just me though. Animal shelters report having a harder time finding homes for black cats than their fairer-furred friends.
Fancy wanting a cat, but then saying, “Not one of those scary black ones, thanks.” It makes me like them the most.
When I was a kid someone taught my siblings and I to hiss at cats, of any color, in order to scare them away. Instinctively I reverted to hissing when the backdoor visits first began at our house. But it was like trying to hold back the tide with a sandcastle wall. They just kept coming.
Sometimes I think that cats are onto me. Amplifying their mysticism in my mind, whilst stoking my discomfort. A cat in someone’s house automatically puts me on edge. A friend’s cat once leapt on me in their living room while I was seated in an armchair, minding my own business. It ran right up my chest and over my face. The cat’s long gone (RIP), yet from time to time my friend will still laugh and say “It just ran up a man!”.
Once I left our old house in the morning (comparatively cat-free compared to the current one) and almost stepped in a perfectly formed cat shit, right in the alcove by our doorstep. No explanation. No known beefs. Was it messing with me? They’re incredibly shy (even shameful) shitters, according to my friend Amelie - a true cat lover. Perhaps it just needed a little cover. I could have accommodated elsewhere in the yard. A nice shrub, maybe?
When we were first dating, my wife used to room with a cat owner who had two particularly fluffy numbers in the apartment. Fur was everywhere; stuck to the furniture, rolling down the hall in faint tumbleweeds, clumped in dusty lumps under the beds. I remember taking my wife to the ER one night as she could barely breathe. They put her on a nebulizer and liquid came out of her face in a rush. Tears mixed with whatever else was clogging her respiratory system. I held her hand, hopeless in the face of it all. I’m convinced she had a fur-ball.
So even though I’m more acquainted with cats now than ever, these experiences still make me wonder, What’s to like about keeping these furry phantoms so close? I asked a couple of cat owning friends.
“What’s not to love?” texted my friend Kath, accompanied by a photograph of her cat Gwen peeking out of a paper bag. Adding that “the purring when they sit on your lap is better than any kind of meditation I have ever tried.”
Okay, but even with the delightful lap meditation scenario, I get hung up on the fur. Cats do make me sneeze and no amount of science can settle the fur versus dander concept in my head. They’re carrying an invisible allergen somewhere, that’s the point. It could be in a briefcase for all I care.
“Nothing against dogs,” my friend Amelie opened with when I asked her opinion, knowingly accounting for my defenses, no doubt. “But when a cat shows you affection you know it’s legit, a dog just wants love and attention so will pathetically do almost anything to get it.”
“Pathetically” felt harsh, but hard to argue otherwise. I can see what she’s saying and I think it gets to what might really scare me the most about cats. That like the worst people, a cat will need me until it doesn’t. I think we’re all prone to anthropomorphizing animals, myself included. Not that I would ever claim to be a dog or cat “parent”, as is the latest trend. But I’ve become estranged from friends and family members already in my life, it’s a horrible feeling. A type of mourning. To take on a cat and be shunned might be too much for me to bear.
Luckily I don’t see my family bringing one of these dander doused, love dispensers in from the cold anytime soon.
My 5-year-old daughter, for one, seems unconvinced. She picked up on my hissing habit and still tries it on the cats in our yard sometimes, giving me a cheeky look each time. But the cats have stopped really caring. They give her a little space, but are smart enough to know she’s harmless.
My son, 8, on the other hand, for a while was trying to woo a black cat down the street from under the parked car where it likes to hide. I respect his colorblindness, but I didn’t exactly encourage him. Maybe he gets it from his mother, who grew up with a pet cat and would happily take one in.
It would seem we are a house divided: Mother and son, cats. Father and daughter, dogs. Everyone wants an actual dog, but I’m waiting till there’s a better chance I won’t be the only one taking care of it. Though I’m sure my daughter would settle for anything furry. Even a cat. Still, I can only commit to so much as a fish or maybe the tortoise our son has asked for for his birthday.
Aside from those, two young kids and a yard full of cats we can mostly ignore, is enough for now. At least, that’s what I tell myself. We all live with too many ghosts anyway, don’t we?
Dogs every day. Cats are cold, heartless selfish creatures. Had one as a teenager, had a disagreement with her over “tolerating” a bit of affection and she retaliated with a large dump in the middle of my doona. Never been the same with cats after this transgression.
Ha! They really have a way of turning people one way or the other.