Sherry Chandler

The Garden of Stubborn Cats

The city of cats and the city of men exist one inside the other, but they are not the same city. Few cats recall the time when there was no distinction: the streets and squares of men were also streets and squares of cats, and the lawns, courtyards, balconies, and fountains; you lived in a broad and various space. But for several generations now domestic felines have been prisoners of an uninhabitable city; the streets are uninterruptedly overrun by the mortal traffic of cat-crushing automobiles; in every square foot of terrain where once a garden extended or a vacant lot or the ruins of an old demolition, now condominiums loom up, welfare housing, brand-new skyscrapers, every entrance is crammed with parked cars; the courtyards, one by one, have been roofed by reinforced concrete and transformed into garages or movie houses or storerooms or workshops. And where a rolling plateau of low roofs once extended, copings, terraces, water tanks, balconies, skylights, corrugated-iron sheds, now one general superstructure rises wherever structures can rise; the intermediated differences in height, between the low ground of the street and the supernal heaven of the penthouses, disappear; the cat of a recent litter seeks in vain the itinerary of its fathers, the point from which to make the soft leap from balustrade to cornice to drainpipe, or for the quick climb on the roof tiles.

— Italo Calvino, from “Autumn. The Garden of Stubborn Cats,” text from Roger Caras’ Treasury of Great Cat Stories (Galahad Books, 1987)

Photo of pollinated Bertie by T.R. Williams.

Possibly related posts:

Cats in the National Enquirer, a cat caught with feather

Fat cats and scrofulous cats

On the Importance of Watering your Garden

Garden Poem

Pizza Cats and Cats with Wings

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.