Sherry Chandler » Black cat and grey cat
Black cat and grey cat
Black cat descends from the top of the house, when she thinks it is time to get up, and sits on the floor looking at me. Sometimes I become conscious of the insistent stare of her yellow eyes. She gets up on the bed. Grey cat softly growls. But black cat … knows her rights and is not afraid. She goes across the foot of the bed, and up the other side, near the wall, ignoring the grey cat. She sits, waiting. Grey cat and black cat exchange long green and yellow stares. Then, if I don’t get up, black cat jumps neatly, right over me, and on to the floor. There she looks to see if the gesture has wakened me. If it hasn’t, she does it again. And again. Grey cat, then, contemptuous of black cat’s lack of subtlety, shows her how things should be done: she crouches to pat my face. Black cat, however, cannot learn the finesse of gray cat: she is impatient of it. She does not know how to pat a face into laughter, or how to bite, gently, mockingly. She knows that if she jumps over me often enough, I will wake up and feed her…
—from Doris Lessing, Particularly Cats …and Rufus (Knopf, 1991)
Our black tom cat, seen above, uses this stare to get his wishes. I have waked up in the morning and stumbled out to the bathroom, only to glimpse him through the window, sitting patiently on the driveway, staring at the door. And it works. I open the door and let him in for breakfast after his night’s wandering.
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