TheBanyanTree: Life Stories 104

Fri Dec 29 08:25:59 PST 2006

December 29, 20000006

Dear Every Single One,

	Today is Pablo Casals's birthday.  He 
would be way way over a hundred years old by now. 
He was born in 1876 and died in 1973.  He was my 
hero.  He was the YoYo Ma of his era (actually, 
Yo Yo Ma is the Pablo Casals of this era).  Not 
only was he a sublime cellist who revolutionized 
how the cello is played, but he also was a man of 
great principal and one of the first if not the 
very first performer in the arts to use his fame 
and influence to do good in the world.  He was a 
Catalonian and refused to play in Spain until 
Franco was gone.  He refused to play in any 
country that was supporting Franco.  He 
campaigned for good causes and humanitarian 
ideals.  And he was the sweetest man I'd ever 
seen, heard, or heard about.  He was quite short 
and quite bald, a little round.  He was married 
to one of his pupils, who was decades younger 
than he was, and treated her like a queen (though 
he was in principle against royalty).  I wept 
when I heard he'd died.  It was good that I had a 
hero.  Who would be a hero today?  I'm sure there 
are some.  But who would they be?  Someone tell 
me a good person to choose as a hero (or heroine).

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Bedfellows

	For winning a scholarship from the Young 
People's Symphony Orchestra, I was allowed to 
pick what I would like for a reward.  The first 
thing that came to my mind was to get a cat. 
Even though my father was allergic to cats, they 
said yes.  I never noticed any ill effect from 
there being a cat in the house.  He would say he 
was getting congested when he actually saw the 
cat, but not before.  I was fourteen.  My mother 
and I went to the Humane Society and I selected 
from their adult cat section, a year old Siamese 
cat, and I called her Thai.  Thai was my dear 
companion.   An indoor-outdoor cat, she would 
leave my room for the great out of doors by 
climbing out one of the windows and walking along 
the tile roof until she jumped over to the 
retaining wall.  Then she'd glide along the wall 
until it met the ground, and she was off.

	Thai and I were very close.  I had always 
loved cats, but she was the first cat that was 
actually mine.  I cared for her, fed her, cleaned 
the cat box (rarely, I'm afraid).  I remember 
sitting with Thai by the stove with a pot of 
boiling water on the coil, going through her fur 
with a fine tooth comb to remove the fleas.  I'd 
catch those little parasites in the comb and 
then, quick, dump them in the boiling water.  I 
did not make soup out of this mixture.  I also do 
not remember cleaning up after myself, truth be 
known.  When it came time for Thai to go into 
heat, I closed all the windows in my room, and 
made sure she didn't get outside.  I wanted to 
plan her pregnancy with a mate of Siamese 
extraction.  But Thai was much more determined 
than I'd imagined.  She pounced on the upper half 
of a window until it shifted down, leaving a gap 
on top that she could squeeze through, and she 
got out that way.  She was gone two days and came 
back drunk from copulating, and pregnant.  When I 
think back, I see how instructive it was to have 
a fertile animal go through its normal process 
for reproduction.  Now, all the animals are 
neutered and kids don't get to see how powerful 
the hormones are, what the  natural cycle is, how 
an animal will do anything to satisfy the urge to 
reproduce.  It could affect one's behaviour when 
dating.

	The first litter she had, she gave birth 
to in the linen closet, a fine soft place for 
newborn kittens.  She had five kittens, but two 
of them were born dead, their skulls not 
completely closed over their brains.  It was a 
gruesome sight.  And she mourned over the two 
still births while nursing the rest.  She kept 
looking for them, meowling and crying, and then 
returning to her brood of three.  They were black 
and sweet and we found homes for all of them. 
The next time Thai went into heat, I found a 
breeder of Siamese cats who was willing to take 
on a female without papers.  This would not 
happen today.  Today, by and large, the breeders 
are nazis who watch over the purity of the blood 
line, insisting on sterilizing all those who are 
not pure bred and licensing all those who are. 
But back then, the world was a different place. 
The breeders weren't members of the Aryan 
Brotherhood, and I found a willing woman who had 
a stud service.  We brought Thai there one day 
while she was certainly in heat, caterwauling 
pitifully, looking for a man.  She'd lain in the 
sun preening herself while the neighborhood Toms 
had all banged their heads, and worse, on the 
windows.  But now she was safely in the capable 
hands of a breeder who had just the husband for 
her.  You know, you never hear about cats 
carrying venereal disease.  Why is this?  They 
are surely promiscuous.  Shouldn't God punish 
them?

	Two days later, the breeder lady called 
and said we could come get Thai.  She was 
finished.  The lady described the wedding night 
to me.  "She was so cute.  She just hid her head 
under the shelf, but the sire got to her anyway." 
I watched the progress of the pregnancy 
carefully.  She grew like she'd swallowed a 
football sideways, its two points sticking out of 
her sides.  She started giving birth early one 
morning when I was just about to go to school.  I 
stayed for the first three kittens.  Again, she 
found her nest in the linen closet.  Then I 
gathered my books up and headed for the front 
door.  But Thai got up in the middle of her 
labours and chased me, then paced back and forth 
in front of it, begging me to stay.  I gave up my 
plans to go to school, and returned upstairs 
where Thai gave birth to two more kittens.

	After allowing her her time in the linen 
closet, I transferred her and the five newborns 
to the cardboard box I'd placed near my bed.  I'd 
lined it with soft linens and towels.  She was 
quite content in the box.  I went downstairs and 
was sitting on one of the stools that stood 
around the formica island in the kitchen, when 
Thai came down, leapt up onto the empty chair 
beside me and rubbed up against my face, standing 
on her hind legs to reach me.  She was proud of 
herself and was thanking me for staying.  That 
night in bed, as I lay there trying to sleep, 
Thai jumped up onto the bed, and deposited a tiny 
kitten, its eyes swollen shut, onto the pillow 
next to my head.  Then she jumped back down and 
fetched another kitten which she dropped on the 
pillow.  I picked up the kittens one by one and 
carefully placed them back in the box.  But she 
kept carrying them in her mouth up to my pillow 
as fast as I could return them.  Finally, I had 
to give up, and just shrank back against the 
wall, afraid to death that I might roll over them 
in my sleep.  Therefore I barely slept.  All 
night Thai nursed her kittens on my pillow right 
next to my face.  I petted her, sang to her, and 
finally fell asleep.  All five kittens were 
mewling and ecstatic in the morning.  These were 
the sleeping arrangements for the next few weeks.

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-- 

Tobie Helene Shapiro
Berkeley, California   USA

tobie at shpilchas.net