Doris Lessing - On Cats

I did not then know what neutering a female cat involved. People I knew had ‘doctored’ cats, male and female. The R.S.P.C.A., when asked, emphatically advised it. Understandably: they have to destroy hundreds of unwanted cats every week–every one of which, I suppose, has been to someone ‘Oh what a lovely kitten’–until it grew up. But in the voices of the ladies of the R.S.P.C.A. sounded exactly the same note as in the voice of the woman at the corner grocery who, when I went around looking for homes for kittens, always said: ‘Haven’t you had her done yet ? Poor thing, making her go through that, I think it’s cruel.’ ‘But it’s natural to have kittens,’ I insisted, dishonestly enough, since any instincts of maternity grey cat had were bullied into her.

My relations with the ladies of the street have mostly been about cats–cats lost or visiting, or kittens to be visited by children, or kittens about to be theirs. And there is not one who hasn’t insisted that it is cruel to let a cat have kittens–with vehemence, with hysteria, or at the very least with the sullen last-ditch antagonism of my mother’s: ‘It’s all very well for you!’

The old bachelor who ran the vegetable shop at the corner–now closed because of the pressure of the supermarket, and because he said his was a family business and he had no family–a fat old boy with cheeks red-purple, almost black, like the old woman of the fruit and vegetable barrows, said about the women: ‘They never stop having kids, but they don’t look after them, do they?’ He had no children, and was self-righteous about everyone else’s.

He did have, however, an ancient mother, over eighty, completely bedridden, who must have everything done for her–by him. His brother and three sisters were married and had children and it was his job, they decided, the unmarried brother’s job, to look after the old mother, since their children gave them enough to do.

He stood in his tiny shop behind racks of swedes, turnips, potatoes, onions, carrots, cabbages–other vegetables, as happens in such streets, being unobtainable unless frozen–and watched the children rushing about the streets, saying unkind things about their mothers.

He was in favour of the grey cat’s being ‘done’. Too many people in the world, too many animals, too little food, nobody bought anything these days, where would it all end?

I rang up three vets to ask if it was necessary for a cat’s womb and tubes to be removed–could they not tie up her tubes and leave her sex, at least? All three, with emphasis, insisted the best thing was to have the whole lot out. ‘The whole job lot,’ said one; exactly the same phrase was used to a woman friend of mine by a gynaecologist. ‘I’ll get rid of the whole job lot for you,’ said he.

Very interesting.

In Portugal, say H. and S., who are Portuguese, when the bourgeois ladies visit for their tea parties, they talk about their operations and their female problems. The phrase they use for these organs is exactly the same as that used for fowl giblets: ‘My giblets, your giblets, our giblets.’

Very interesting indeed.

I put the grey cat in the cat basket and took her to the vet. She had never been shut up before, and she complained–her dignity and self-respect were wounded. I left her, and came back late that afternoon to collect her.

She was in the cat basket, smelling of ether, limp, dizzy, sick. A large patch had been shaved off one side, exposing her whitish-grey skin. Across the skin a two-inch red gash, sewn up neatly with gut. She looked at me with enormous dark shocked eyes. She had been betrayed and she knew it. She had been sold out by a friend, the person who fed her, protected her, whose bed she slept on. A terrible thing had been done to her. I couldn’t bear to look at her eyes. I took her home in a taxi, where she moaned all the way–a hopeless helpless frightened sound. At home, I put her in another basket, not the cat basket with its memories of the vet and pain. I covered her, put the basket by a radiator, and sat with her. It was not that she was very ill, or in danger. She was in a bad state of shock. I do not think any creature can ‘get over’ an experience like this.

She stayed there, not moving at all, for two days. Then, with difficulty, she used the cat box. She drank a little milk and crept back to lie down.

At the end of a week the stubble grew back over the ugly scarred patch. Soon I had to take her back to the vet to have her stitches taken out. This was worse than the first journey, because now she knew the basket, the motions of the car, meant pain and terror.

She screamed and struggled in the basket. The taxi man, as helpful as they always are, in my experience, stopped his taxi for a while to let me try and soothe her, but then we agreed it was better to get it over with. I waited while the stitches came out. She was forced, struggling, back into the basket, and I brought her back in the same taxi. She made water from fear, and cried.

The taxi man, a cat-lover, said why couldn’t those doctors invent a birth control for cats? It was not right, he said, for us to steal their real natures from them, to suit our convenience.

When I got inside the door and opened the basket, grey cat, mobile now, fled out of the house and on to the garden wall under the tree, her eyes again wide and shocked. She came in at night to eat. And slept, not on my bed, but on the sofa. She would not let herself be petted for days.

Inside a month from the date of that operation, her shape changed. She lost, not slowly, but fast, her slenderness, her grace; and she coarsened everywhere. Her eyes subtly loosened, crinkled; the shape of her face broadened. She was, all at once, a plump, if pretty, cat.

As for the change in her nature, well, that might have been, probably was, partly due to the other blows life dealt her at the same time–losing her friend, the young tom, losing her kittens, and the advent of the black cat.

But it did change. Her confidence had been struck. The tyrannical beauty of the household had vanished. The peremptory charm, the heart-breaking tricks of head and eye–all gone She did, of course, return to old cajoleries, rolling back and forth on her back to be admired, pulling herself under the sofa–but they were tentative for a long time. She was not sure they would please. She was not sure of anything for a long time. And so, she insisted. A strident note entered her character. She was tetchy over her rights. She was spiteful. She had to be humoured. She was bad-tempered with her old admirers, the toms on the wall. In short, she had turned into a spinster cat. It is a dreadful thing we do to these beasts. But I suppose we have to do it. The little black cat, for a variety of sad reasons, was homeless and joined our household. It would have been better for harmony if she had been a male cat. As it was, the two she-cats met as enemies, crouched watching each other for hours.

Grey cat, half her side still stubbly from the razor, refusing to sleep on my bed, refusing to eat until coaxed, unhappy and unsure of herself, was determined about one thing: that the black cat was not going to take her place.

Black cat, on her side, knew she was going to live here, and would not be chased away. She did not fight: grey cat was bigger and stronger. She got into the corner of a seat, her back protected by a wall, and never took her eyes off grey cat.

When her enemy went to sleep, black cat ate and drank. Then she surveyed the garden with which she had already become acquainted from the end of a smart leash and collar, examined it carefully. Then she examined the house, floor by floor. My bed, she decided, was the place for her. At which grey cat leaped up, spitting, and chased the black cat away, took her place on my bed. Black cat then took up a position on the sofa.