Doris Lessing - On Cats

He had to go up and down them to use the garden to pee and defecate, and I did wonder if he would like a box, but felt this independent cat might find that insulting. Then it became clear that it was getting too much for him, and so now there is a cat box. Sometimes he does try to go out, but it hurts his shoulder, so knotted and swollen.

Immediately after his leg came off, when he defecated, his muscles tensed and worked under the smooth black slopes of his hide where his front shoulder was as he tried to scratch dirt over the mess. He went on, then looked to see what was happening, tried again, those muscles that had once moved the leg hard at work. And then–he looked foolish and embarrassed. He gave me a look as if to say he hoped I hadn’t noticed the foolish effort. He stopped trying to cover his mess. Now he takes a long time positioning himself on his three legs, making sure of his balance.

His favourite place is a low sofa in the living room. Easy to step up and step down. There is, too, a low pallet near a radiator and there he places himself so that his painful shoulder gets the heat directly on it. Once he always slept on my bed, but there are two narrow and steep flights of stairs, and he does not come up them now. I miss him. No longer do I wake to find him stretched out, gazing into the night, his yellow eyes gleaming, or hear his little friendly sounds that accompany my days, as I go into a room or leave it. What a repertoire he has, the purrs and half purrs of welcome, the calls of welcome, the small grunt that is the acknowledgement of a situation, or a thankyou, or a warning, I am here, be careful, mind my shoulder. Sometimes what he says is not so pleasant. He will sit in front of me, look hard at me, and then let out a series of angry miaows, on one note. An accusation? I don’t know.

When he was a young cat I would wake to find him awake and then, seeing that I was, he would walk up the bed, lie down on my shoulder, put his paws around my neck, lay his furry cheek against my cheek, and give that deep sigh of content you hear from a young child when he is at last lifted up into loving arms. And I heard myself sigh in response. Then he purred and purred, until he was asleep in my arms.

What a luxury a cat is, the moments of shocking and startling pleasure in a day, the feel of the beast, the soft sleekness under your palm, the warmth when you wake on a cold night, the grace and charm even in a quite ordinary workaday puss. Cat walks across your room, and in that lonely stalk you see leopard or even panther, or it turns its head to acknowledge you and the yellow blaze of those eyes tells you what an exotic visitor you have here, in this household friend, the cat who purrs as you stroke, or rub his chin, or scratch his head.

The room below my bedroom has a bed, but it is a high bed, and a ramp of piled cushions and blankets lets him easily get up and down off it. His range is now the living room, with trips to the kitchen and the little flat roof outside it, and to the floor above, where the dirt box waits for him on the landing.

He likes to be brushed slowly all over, and carefully, for the fur on the side where his front paw used to be gets rough and knotted. He likes to be kneaded and massaged, and to have his spine rubbed down, neck to tail, with my hand held hard. I wash his ears for him, and his eyes, for one paw does not do as good a job as two. And he licks my hand, which for a moment or two does become a paw, so that I can rub it over the eye on the side he can’t reach, again and again, for his spit, like ours, is healing and keeps the eye healthy.

Sometimes, if he has lain too long on the sofa, he can get down off it only with difficulty because he has stiffened up, the way I do, from sitting still, and then he does not even hobble, but crawls painfully, letting out a frustrated miaow, to his other place, where the radiator heat will loosen his old bones.

He is not doing badly, this old cat, with his three legs, and people coming into the room stop and exclaim, What a magnificent cat!–but when he gets up and hobbles away they are silent, particularly if they have seen him as a young cat step proudly out of a room, or lying on top of the basket–where he can no longer jump up–his two paws crossed negligently in front of him, his tail flowing down, his calm, deep eyes.

When you sit close to a cat you know well, and put your hand on him, trying to adjust to the rhythms of his life, so different from yours, sometimes he will lift his head and greet you with a soft sound different from all his other sounds, acknowledging that he knows you are trying to enter his existence. He looks at you with those eyes of his that continually adjust to changes in light, you look at him, your hand resting lightly…If a cat has nightmares then he must also dream as pleasantly and interestingly as we do. Perhaps his dreams could take him to places I know in dreams, but I have never met him there. I dream of cats often, cats and kittens too, and I have responsibilities for them, for dreams of cats are always reminders of duty. The cats need feeding, or need shelter. If our dream worlds are not the same, cats and humans, or seem not to be, then when he sleeps where does he travel?

He likes it when we sit quietly together. It is not an easy thing, though. No good sitting down by him when I am rushed, or thinking about what I should be doing in the house or garden or of what I should write. Long ago, when he was a kitten, I learned that this was a cat who demanded your full attention, for he knew when my mind wandered, and it was no use stroking him mechanically, my thoughts elsewhere, let alone taking up a book to read. The moment I was no longer with him, completely thinking of him, then he walked off. When I sit down to be with him, it means slowing myself down, getting rid of the fret and the urgency. When I do this–and he must be in the right mood too, not in pain or restless–then he subtly lets me know he understands I am trying to reach him, reach cat, essence of cat, finding the best of him. Human and cat, we try to transcend what separates us.

About the Author

Doris Lessing, one of the most celebrated and distinguished writers of our time, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007. She has also received the David Cohen Memorial Prize for British Literature, Spain’s Prince of Asturias Prize and Prix Catalunya, and the S. T. Dupont Golden PEN Award for a Lifetime’s Distinguished Service to Literature, as well as a host of other international awards. She lives in North London.

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Credits

Jacket illustration by Aurore de la Morinerie

Copyright

ON CATS. Copyright © 1967 by Doris Lessing Productions Ltd, © Doris Lessing 1989, 2000, 2002. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

EPub © Edition AUGUST 2008 ISBN: 9780061981951

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