Holidays with Sundae:
Conversations with my Cat
by
James T Baker
Green Hills Press at Smashwords
Nashville, Tennessee
www.greenhillspress.com
© 2002 1st Edition (Print only) James T. Baker
© 2010 2nd Edition James T. Baker
Holidays With Sundae: Conversations With My Cat
ISBN: 9780966131703
Smashwords Edition of the 2nd Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
Published with the services of Grave Distractions Publications
www.gravedistractions.com
Cover, eBook design, and Interior Layout: Brian Kannard; Grave Distractions Publications
Also by James T. Baker
Thomas Merton: Social Critic, 1971
Faith for a Dark Saturday, 1973
Under the Sign of the Waterbearer (a play), 1976
A Southern Baptist in the White House, 1977
Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness, 1978
Eric Hoffer, 1982
Ayn Rand, 1987
Brooks Hays, 1989
Study Guide for Jackson Spielvogel’s Western Civilization,1991
Studs Terkel, 1992
Nat Turner: Cry Freedom in America, 1997
Eleanor Roosevelt: First Lady, 1998
Abraham Lincoln: The Man and the Myth, 1999
Andrew Carnegie: Robber Baron as American Hero, 2002
Instructor’s Manual for Cannistraro and Reich’s The Western Perspective, 2003
Documents in American Religious History, 2005
Quest, 2007
Peter Peacock Passes, 2010
Prior Knowledge, 2010
Sex and Bondage in Three Colors, 2010
For more information about James T. Baker's other works,visit www.greenhillspress.com
Table of Contents
Christmas
New Year's Day
Saint Valentine's Day
President's Day
April Fool's Day
Easter
Memorial Day
The Fourth of July
Labor Day
Veteran's Day
Thanksgiving --- Finally
Epilogue
About the Author
Christmas
“Why?”
I have to tell you I was stunned when Sundae said “Why” to me that day because I didn’t know she could talk. I knew she could think, I knew she could reason, I knew she could reflect because I had watched her do it. I had seen the results. She almost always got things right. I knew she was smart, that part was never in doubt. She and I had lived together for over six months, and I had come to accept the fact that she and I were on just about the same intellectual level. But that she could talk, well, it had just never occurred to me. We humans are, as the psychologists say, Situation Bound.
Sundae is my cat.
“What?” I said to her, trying to hold the car on the road while I glanced with shock down at her face looking at me through the bars of her cage, which sat on the floor, while I tried to pro-cess this thing my ears told me was true but my brain, still Situation Bound, refused to register.
“What yourself,” she said back to me through the bars. Her eyes accused me of every kind of evil for keeping her in her pen. I had placed the cage on the floor facing me because I had been told that a cat should be able to see her master on a trip but should not be able to see the road. I was told that seeing the rapid movement of cars and trees would just confuse and frighten her, but that seeing me would reassure her. More human reasoning.
“What did you. . . Did you say Why?” I stammered.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.”
“I. . .didn’t know you could talk.”
“Well, now you do.”
How. . .long. . .?
“How long have I been able to talk?” she said. “I don’t know. A while.”
“But. . .you’ve never said anything before.”
She stared at me. Her look was still accusative. She seemed to be mulling over my comment. “Up to now, everything’s gone pretty good,” she said. “I’ve had no complaints. Now I do.”
“Oh.”
“The food, well it could be better, but it’s okay. Litter box, it’s usually clean. Warm enough bed. But today you’ve put me in this cage and driven since before daylight, and if you don’t know it, I’ve wet myself; and I think I may poop on myself in a few minutes, and this day may never end, and so I’d just like to know why. Why are you doing this?”
It was true what she said. In order to reach my daughter’s home in Louisiana, I had left Ken- tucky very early, when the grass in my yard crackled with frost; and I had apparently forced Sundae into her cage before she did her morning eliminations. About two hours into the trip, someplace in deepest Tennessee, she began to moan, and I didn’t know what was wrong. I had never heard her make such a sound. I was puzzled until I smelled the problem. I stopped at a service station, stole a roll of paper towels from the men’s room, and sopped up her cage. Her fur was damp from it, and she looked at me in sullen rage. It was an hour later that she spoke.
I thought I was hallucinating. I do that sometimes, when I’ve gone too long without food, and it was now getting close to noon. I popped a chocolate candy puff into my mouth and chewed. I felt the sugar spreading out across my stomach and then through my bloodstream and to my brain. I waited for a minute before I spoke again, so I could find out whether she could talk with my sugar level higher. She could. “Why?” she repeated.
“You are in your cage because we are on a trip,” I said tentatively.
“A trip? What’s a trip?” She had never been on a trip before, except from the pound to my house and a couple of times to see the Vet.
“A. . .journey. We are going to visit my daughter, and she lives a long way off. It takes all day. That’s just the way it is.”
“Where is this place?”
“Louisiana. To see Elizabeth. You know, my daughter, I’ve talked to you a lot about her.” Oddly, though I had no idea Sundae could talk, I had often talked to her, sharing my most intimate thoughts. I guess most people do that, expecting an animal to understand even if she can’t talk, perhaps because she can’t talk, can’t tell others.
“You didn’t ask me if I wanted to go.”
“No, I didn’t,” I admitted. “But there was really no choice. You couldn’t stay at home by yourself for a week, now could you?” I was talking to her like I would have talked to a child. I realized I really had gone around the bend.
“Why not?” she persisted.
“What if your food ran out?”
There was a long silence. I looked down and through the bars, and I could see the wheels in her brain turning. “I get the point,” she finally agreed.
So?” I said. I sort of enjoyed putting her in her proper place.
“Well, why do I have to stay in this cage?”
“For your own good. I’ve read that if a cat sees rapid movement all around, she can’t process it, and she gets scared.”
“Pretty paternalistic,” she said. “Why do you treat me like a baby?”
I chose to ignore that question because I didn’t want to admit that I was treating her like a human of any kind. “You see, if you were a dog, they say, I could let you sit up here on the seat beside me. But. . .” I paused. “You are not a dog.”
She took a deep breath and sat up as tall as was possible in the cage. “I thank my lucky stars every day of my life for that,” she said.
“I can’t stop the car and walk you.”
“Not on a leash, not like those slave animals called dogs,” she agreed.
“So since I can’t stop and let you take a whizz from a leash, you’re stuck there. I can’t let you do your business on my seat or the floor. This fabric cost a lot of money.”
"You just let me do it on myself.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Why do we have to go on this trip?” she said.
“I want to see my daughter. She wants me to come and visit. Visits, family get-togethers, it’s what people do at Christmas.”
“Christmas?” she said, showing some interest.
“Yes. Christmas.”
“I don’t get it,” she said, eyeing me suspiciously, as if I had mentioned some deep, dark mystery to which she had not been initiated. She could talk, but there were gaps in her knowledge. It was comforting to see that she didn’t know everything. I would have to explain Christmas to her.
So that’s how they began, my long series of heart-to-heart talks with my cat Sundae, talks in which we taught each other about life. I explained human things to her, and she explained feline things to me. Conversations with my cat.
* * *
I found Sundae in June of 1994. She was already two years old or so, she has never been willing to tell me her real age, but the Vet who first examined her for me estimated her to be about that age then.
I had just returned from a year of study in England. My house, which had been vacant while I was gone, felt terribly empty. It even smelled empty. Friendships would take time to renew. Romances would take even longer. I could get a pet immediately, and immediately was when I needed to fill my house with companionship.
I didn’t look in newspapers for ads. I didn’t want anything with a pedigree. Since I don’t have one myself, it seemed silly to have a pet with one. I didn’t want my pet to be better bred than I am. I went to the Humane Shelter because I wanted an outcast, not a pet from a fresh litter with all sorts of potential takers, but an animal with perhaps only a few weeks to live unless I saved it from euthanasia. I’m an outcast myself, having been abandoned to fend for myself by a wife who went on to better things. The Shelter is the place to find pets that were accidents, or were hard to control, or who got in people’s ways. I’m all three of those things; and I needed a pet to match me.
I went specifically looking for a cat. I’ve had dogs for pets, and I didn’t want another one. Dogs, to be blunt, are dumb. I once read that owning a dog is like having a retarded brother-in-law living in your house. A dog is affectionate, sure, if that’s what you value; but a dog is too “damp” with his affection. I prefer the cool, objective affection of a cat. A cat gives its affection only to select persons, at times it considers appropriate, and is able to save up its affection while you are gone to work without pining away. In fact, I think most cats enjoy their time away from you as much as you enjoy your time away from them. So---a cat.
Also I wanted a pretty cat, and that meant a calico. A calico has three colors, usually black, white, and orange, really pretty; and a calico is always, by genetic rule, a female. Since I’ve always preferred girls to boys in every species, a calico cat seemed the perfect choice.
I went to the Humane Shelter (they still call it The Pound where I live) with some trepidation. I knew there would be a variety of cats there, lots from which to choose. I knew that I would have to leave all but one behind. I knew that the shelf life for an animal at the Pound is about six weeks. The ones who are not claimed in that short time die. Sad but true.
A big, gruff man---who I discovered really had a heart as soft as his square shoulders were hard---led me to the cat pens. At first, as we walked, he told me I had a choice of fifty; and then when he learned I wanted a calico, he said there were about ten. They were grouped, each in its own cage, by color. He led me slowly down the row of cells, past the blacks and whites and grays and oranges. A hundred sets of eyes watched me. We came to the calicos, twenty eyes.
Some of the younger ones flirted with me, hopping around, showing off, unable to contain their enthusiasm as they seemed to be demonstrating the happy life they could bring to me if I chose them. Others, older, more experienced, wiser, seemed to know the odds were against them and hardly moved a muscle, understanding that it would probably be a waste of energy to try to attract this shabby guy passing by them. One or two showed open contempt, letting me know that I just was not their kind of man. Then I saw Sundae.
She was in one of the lower cages, a bad sign, a bad place to be, probably passed over for a week or two, without much hope. She eyed me cynically. Too many fickle men had looked her over and gone on. But she was beautiful. Her face had black, white, and orange stripes. She had a white neck. Her eyes promised intelligence. I couldn’t of course then guess that she would be the most remarkable creature I would ever meet.
“How about this one?” I asked the boss.
My question brought him to a stop. He stood staring down at the lower cage, breathing heavily. I could smell a mixture of Old Spice and Lysol Disinfectant.
“Her?” he said.
“Yes. Wonder why nobody’s taken her? She’s a real knockout.”
“Guess ‘cause she’s not a kitten. Looks like she’s got some miles on her. You wonta hold her? I can get ‘er out for ya.”
“Sure.”
He squatted down and opened the cage, and she shied away from him. He reached a long, hairy arm inside, pulled her out, and held her away from his body while he gave her a once-over. She was indignant at being treated that way, but she had apparently been there long enough not to argue too strenuously. She also seemed to know the man well enough to understand that he wouldn’t let her disagree.
“She’s got an eye infection,” he said. “Most of ‘em do. It’s in the air in this place. You take her it’ll cost you ‘bout $15 to doctor it.”
“That’s all right,” I assured him.
He tilted her backward and stared at her underside, rubbing a thumb through her hair. “She’s been spayed.” He felt of her front paws. “De-clawed too. That’s good.”
“Is it?” I had always been told declawing wasn’t such a good idea.
“If you want a house cat, you have to do it. Now it’s been done, you’ll have to keep her inside. We make you sign a promise. She can’t defend herself clawless like that.”
“Right.” I had intended to keep her inside anyway. I’ve had had several cats hit by cars. I wanted this one to be with me for a long time.
“Ain’t young.”
“Me neither,” I said.
The man and I laughed at that. The cat gave out a low, guttural growl. Now that I think about it, she may have understood some English even then.
“Where did they find her?” I asked him, supposing she had been a stray, lost, and found by a person who brought her to the Shelter.
“She wadden lost,” he said. “Man brought ‘er in. Left ‘er.”
“Really?” I couldn’t imagine why someone would do that, not to a beautiful creature like this one. I shook my head.“Yep. Said they was moving. Said they wouldn’t allow pets where his family was gonna live. Couldn’t keep ‘er.”
“But. . .” I was stunned. Someone who had owned her, and it appeared had cared for her pretty well, had just dropped her off in this place where she would have no more than a few weeks to live.
He read my expression of surprise, repulsion, contempt. “Yeah. Bad, huh? Happens all the time. They call this a throw-away society.”
Well, that’s all it took to convince me to take her home. Within half an hour I had put my $50 adoption fee on the table and signed a paper that I would be the owner, protector, guardian, and lover of this calico cat.
I took her home and showed her how to find her food and litter box. Slowly she began coming out from under the couch for longer periods to explore the house, and we got to know each other. By the middle of her third day with me her name was Sundae.
Why Sundae? Search me. I didn’t get her on a Sunday. She didn’t look like any kind of Sundae I had ever seen in an ice cream shop. It just suited her. It was a pet’s name, just a bit cute, yet it had a certain dignity about it. Sundae.
“I said, I don’t get it,” Sundae repeated when I didn’t respond to her speculative probe for an explanation. She was spunky, I knew that. That first week she was with me she had fought me when I tried to doctor her eye with the gummy medicine squeezed out of a tube. Then she fought me when I had to feed her a pink medicine through a mouth dropper for an infection. In fact, the morning that stuff was finally all gone, I held the dropper out to her to show her she wouldn’t have to take it anymore, and she knocked it out of my hand. By the way, I learned from her swipe that she’s a southpaw. I’m serious. She prefers to use her left paw. But I was a bit surprised when she was spunky enough to make me stay on the topic of Christmas.
“You don’t get what?” I said. Right then it occurred to me that most of my friends would declare me insane if I told them I was about to discuss the meaning of Christmas with my cat.
“You said people put their cats in cages and take trips that never seem to end. . .because of this thing called Christmas.” She pronounced the last word with a marked distaste. In her mind it was associated with bad times.
“Yes,” I said, “people like to see each other at Christmas. Or at least they like to pretend that they do.” I was trying to be honest. I wanted to tell her the truth. “A lot of people don’t really want to go, and they know they’re not wanted.”
“Christmas,” Sundae said. “It means getting together, a reunion.”
“Your vocabulary is remarkable,” I said with some admiration.
“Good thing you speak English,” she said. “I hate to think what it would have been like if you had been Japanese and I’d of had to learn that.”
“Right,” I nodded. I wondered how she knew what Japanese sounded like. I learned later that she had been watching television. “But no, Christmas doesn’t mean reunion. That just got associated with it somewhere along the way. Christmas actually means the day Jesus was born.”
“Jesus?” She turned her head, the way she did when I thought she was thinking what to
do next. She looked toward the back of her cage for a time before she turned back to me. “Is he
the one with the beard? The blonde?”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“Sometimes I watch that religious channel, usually on Sunday mornings, when you’re still asleep. His picture pops up a lot.”
That was the first time I knew she watched. I would later learn that she also watched during the day when I was at work.
"So he was born on Christmas,” she said.
“Yes. At least that’s what we are taught to believe. Jesus was born on Christmas Day in Palestine.”
“Was it as cold there and then as it is here and now?”
“I don’t know.” I thought about it for a moment. I wasn’t sure how far into this subject I wanted to go with her; but I decided to go a bit farther. “Actually, we don’t really know the real day. He was probably born in the spring.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, I don’t. But judging by the holidays mentioned, it’s likely.”
“So why do you say it was in the winter?”
“I think December 25 was already some kind of holy day, before he was born, and a long time later, after they had forgotten exactly when he was born, they picked that day.”
“Wait,” she said, “You’ve confused me. Why didn’t he set them straight about it?”
“He couldn’t. He was dead.”
“Oh. How old was he when he died?”
“Thirty-three, I think.”
“How old would he be now? About your age?”
“No, no,” I laughed. “He would be two thousand.”
“What?” Her eyes were as large as saucers. She probably had trouble imagining someone as
old as I was, which was 45, let alone someone two thousand.
“I mean, he lived about two thousand years ago. That’s one reason we don’t really know what day his birthday was.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So, you’re telling me that this dude lived two thousand years ago---that’s about 20,000 cats’ lives---and yet people still remember him, still remember his birthday, even if they have the date wrong?”
“Well, a lot of people think he was a pretty great. . .what did you call him?. . .dude. A pretty
great man.”
“Do they think any other men are great?”
“Sure. There’s Socrates. . .”
“Any women?”
“Joan of Arc. . .”
“Do you drive all day and night to visit people, and keep your cat in a cage the whole way, on the birthday of Socrates or Joan of Arc?”
“No.”
“Why not? And why for Jesus?”
“A lot of people believe the others were good, great even, but they think Jesus was the Son of God. That’s different.”
“Oh.” This time she didn’t just turn her head, she turned her whole body, and her face disappeared from view. She has grey and black stripes down her sides and a tail like a raccoon. She switched her tail around as she thought about what I had said. Apparently I had made a big impression on her. Finally she began to shift and came back full circle. “So. . .because a little baby was born two thousand years ago in. . .what did you call that place?”
“Palestine. It’s about ten thousand miles from here. In the part of the world they call the Middle East.” I thought I would confuse her more. “He was born in a stable there.”
“So was I,” she said. Then she made a clicking sound, as if to indicate that this made her pretty important too. “That’s odd for a human,” she said. “Poor family?”
“They got to town during a convention, I think.”
She sniffed with contempt. “A baby, people believe to be the Son of God, and they made his parents stay in a stable.” She sniffed again. “But back to the subject: A baby, born two thousand years ago, ten thousand miles from here, believed but not proven to be the Son of God, you don’t know for sure what day he was born, and people this far away in time and space still go these great distances, with their cats in cages, to visit relatives, even though they don’t enjoy going and the relatives don’t enjoy having them.”
“Yes,” I had to admit. “That’s true for a lot of people.”
“Unbelievable,” she said.
She grew quiet, and I decided not to say anything more, fearful that I would get her started asking more questions I couldn’t answer, or if I could, the answers would just get her more upset and confused.
Cats are a thoughtful species. You’ve probably noticed how they stare off into space, their mental wheels turning. William Faulkner believed that cats once ruled the earth but were smart enough to get rid of the job and foist it off onto a less intelligent breed, mankind. Now we humans do all the work and worry while cats just sit and think and eat.
Finally Sundae said: “Okay, now Jesus I know about. He has the blonde beard. Looks like a concert guitarist. Wears a white nightgown. But what about the other dude?”
I wondered where Sundae had picked up the word dude. Not from me. I later learned that she had been watching MTV while I was at work.
“Other. . .dude?”
“Yes. He has a beard too, but his is grey. He looks pretty old. He’s been on a lot just these last few weeks. Fat guy. Dresses in red.”
“Oh,” I smiled. “That’s Santa Claus. Old Saint Nick.”
“I see pictures of Jesus all the time, but I’ve only seen Nick the last few weeks.”
“Yes,” I said. “He’s more seasonal.”
“Is he a friend of Jesus?”
“Not really.” Sundae was leading me into deep water, and I wondered how well I would be able to swim in it. “Not in this life anyway.” She turned her head to one side, showing me her confusion, and I hurried on. “See, Santa Claus lived about sixteen hundred years ago, four hundred after Jesus. But he lived over in that same part of the world. He was a bishop.”
“Bishop?”
“A leader of the church,” I said. “He’s famous, and admired, and we see a lot about him at Christmas, because he knew a poor man who had three daughters but no dowries. . .”
“Dowries? What is that?”
“Well, back then, a girl had to have money before a man would marry her.”
“But not now?”
“No. Now it’s the other way around. A man has to have money before a girl will marry him. It’s changed.”
“A man without money can’t get married?”
“It happens. But if he wants to keep his wife, he has to get some quickly.”
“You got married.”
“Yes.” I wondered how she knew. We had never discussed it. Maybe she had seen pictures on the wall and figured it out.
“Did you have money?”
“No. I lucked out.”
“Did you make some quickly?”
“No.”
“That’s why you’re no longer married?”
“Yes.”
“I see.” And I think by the way she looked at me with such pity she did.
“Anyway,” I said, wanting to get beyond this part of the conversation, “Nicholas went to the man’s house three different nights, and each night he pitched a little bag of gold over the back fence into his yard. So that way each daughter got a dowry, and each one could get married. See those packages on the seat above you?"
Sundae craned her neck and looked up at the fancily wrapped boxes. “Yes, barely, but I can see them,” she said.
“Well, they’re gifts I’m taking to family members, to imitate Saint Nick, who imitated God, who gave the world his son Jesus. That’s why Nicholas is big around Christmas time. Each of the presents we give each other is like a little bag of gold. He taught us the real spirit of Christmas. It’s supposed to give you pleasure to give someone else a gift.”
“Did you have fun buying them?”
“Honestly? No, not really.”
“Why?”
“The stores were crowded. People were rude. Everything cost too much. I bought all these things because I was ashamed not to.”
“So that’s why Nick is everywhere now. He reminds you to buy things for people, even though you hate doing it and do it only because you’re ashamed not to.”
“Yep.”
“But I guess at least people like to get the gifts, like those young girls who needed the dowry from Nicholas.”
“I’m not even sure of that,” I said. “Most of the time I get the feeling I never buy the right thing and they don’t like what I gave them.”
“So you buy out of shame and buy the wrong things. Wonder what Nicholas thinks about the way he’s being used.”
“Used?”
“Used. I’ve seen him drinking Coca Cola, trying on tennis shoes, even stuffing cigars into a stocking. He’s used all right.”
“I guess you’re right. To answer the question, I guess he wouldn’t be very proud of the whole thing, would he?”
“Then why does he agree to pose?”
I realized that while Sundae understands a lot of things well, chronology is not one of her strong subjects. “Oh, Nicholas doesn’t do that. Those are actors pretending to be him.”
“But the photographs, they’re really Nicholas, aren’t they?”
“Photographs? Oh, there aren’t any photographs of Nicholas. . .or Jesus either. People just guess what they looked like.”
“So Nicholas wasn’t necessarily a fat little guy in a red suit? Jesus wasn’t necessarily a blonde dude in a night gown?”
“Nope. In fact, the pictures of them we see mostly represent the way they were portrayed by modern painters. Jesus looks like an Italian, and Nicholas looks Dutch.”
Sundae was silent for a long time, digesting what I had said, before she finally spoke: “Let me get it all straight,” she said, “A baby was born two thousand years ago ten thousand miles from here in a stable. People decided he was the Son of God, God’s gift to man. Then four hundred years after that Nicholas the Bishop put on a red suit and threw gold over a poor man’s wall to help his daughters get married, giving in the same spirit God gave Jesus. And now they use these two men to make people feel so guilty that they spend money buying things that no one wants for people who buy for them only because they too feel guilty if they don’t.”
“I guess so.”
“And on top of that, in order to deliver the gifts you didn’t want to buy to those people who don’t really want them that you put your poor cat in a cage and drive until she wets herself.”
“Yes, and I receive gifts from the people I visit that I don’t want because they feel guilty not to buy them for me.”
“Huh!”
Sundae turned away from me again. All I could see was her orange-and-black-striped rump. I wondered what she was doing. She seemed to have understood everything pretty well. What she was doing, I was soon to discover, was waxing philosophical. After about forty miles and half an hour, she turned to face me.
“It’s a sad state of affairs, what you’ve told me, James,” she said. I found it comfortingly familiar, her using my given name like that.
“Well,” I sighed. “That’s life. At least as we know it here and now.”
“I like the stable story---and the fat guy and his gold bags---but what started out nice has really turned weird.”
“I know.”
“I hate to see good things get all twisted.”
“Me too.”
“Still. . .I guess you humans might have messed things up even worse if it weren’t for those two dudes.”
“You think so?”
“I do. Without them you wouldn’t know anything at all about gifts. You would probably keep all your money for yourselves. You would probably never go to visit your children or your parents. That would be even worse than this farce we’re living out.” She nodded slowly, savoring her conclusions. She was sure she had human beings figured out. She didn’t know at that point how much more she had to learn about us, how much more weird she would find us to be. “Even a gift that is squeezed out of you by guilt, one no one really wants, is better than no gift at all. Even a visit you don’t want to make, to someone who dreads having you, is better than no visit at all.”
“Not a pretty picture, Sundae.”
“No, it’s not. But it could be worse. Without Jesus and Nicholas you humans would be the most selfish, lonely creatures on the face of the earth.”
“So you don’t object to the cage.”
“I didn’t say that. I hate it. In fact, stop when you can. I need to find me a nice, sandy spot and take my time over it.”
“But I don’t have a leash.”
“I wouldn’t walk on one if you had one. Just stop and let me out.”
“What if you run away?”
“Where are we?”
“Mississippi.” We had crossed the state line while she was waxing philosophical.
“Would I run away here? Do you think I would want to live the rest of my life in Mississippi? I’ve seen it on television.”
“So if I let you out loose, you won’t leave me.”
“No. I want to be there when those people open all these boxes full of things they don’t want. They will be fun.”
Then she laughed. The laugh started low in her throat, like her growl, and grew louder and higher until it sounded almost human. I was stunned. I didn’t know Sundae could laugh.
New Year's Day
Two weeks went by before Sundae and I had another extended conversation. We talked off and on, in snatches, bits and pieces, during our time in Louisiana; but we had to be careful not to let anyone hear us. If news had escaped that we were carrying on conversations, I would have been sent to an asylum and she would have been sold to a carnival. So we conversed, but always briefly, only when something important came up, while we were away from home. We were both relieved when we got back to Kentucky, to our home, and could talk openly.
We got back on December 29, driving the last hundred miles in a snowstorm; and we were both so nervous and exhausted that we went to separate rooms of the house and didn’t have much to say to each other for a couple of days. It was on New Year’s Day that we resumed the philosophical business we had pursued on the trip to Louisiana.
New Year’s Day dawned clear, sunny actually, full of hope and promise. The only clouds in my sky were from the headache I nursed, and that came from the wine I had drunk with friends the night before. I drank pot after pot of coffee and made phone call after phone call, sitting in a bean-bag chair, as Sundae sat on her perch and looked out the window at the sunshine on the snow. Occasionally she would look back at me, listen for a time to my side of a conversation, yawn, and go back to her window. She swished her tail from side to side when a bird flew up to the feeder near the window.
Finally I made my last call, put down the telephone on the floor, and closed my throbbing eyes to rest. I may have dozed off. The next sound was Sundae, clearing her throat. “Why all the calls?” she said. I opened my eyes and squinted against the light coming through her window. She jumped down and crossed to the bed, jumped up on it, and stretched out facing me. She was considerate to go where I didn’t have to face the sun. “Huh?” she said.
"The calls?”
“Yes. For someone as stingy as you are, you’re sure using up a lot of money making so many telephone calls today.”
I chuckled. It hurt to laugh, so I didn’t do it again. “It’s New Year’s,” I sighed.
“It is?”
I was just a bit surprised that she was puzzled. I guess I thought she knew everything. After all, she watched television, that much I had learned during the past week. I assumed she had watched the ball fall in Times Square the night before.
“Yeah. This is the first day of 1995. We’re in a brand new year.”
“How can you tell?”
“By the calendar. It’s something people agree on. January first is always the beginning of a new year. This one is about the nineteen hundred and ninety-fifth since the birth of Christ.”
“You said about. . . You’re not sure?”
“It’s a guess. Like December 25 is a guess, you remember, about Christmas. It was around that year when Jesus was born. It’s been about 1995 years, but that’s not known for sure. Actually, some people say we missed it by about six years.”
“Which way?”
“He may have been born six years earlier.”
“So this would be. . .” She calculated. “This is maybe twenty-oh-one?”
“Might be.”
“Huh. People are not very precise.”
“No.” I closed my eyes again and tried to ease the pain. “But it’s a nice day. Sunshine. No precipitation. That’s a good sign.”
“Why?”
I opened my eyes. “They say. . .”
“Who say. . .?”
“They. People. It’s collective human wisdom.”
She yawned.
“They say that what happens on the first day of the year will be repeated consistently through the rest of the year. The year 1995 should have lots of sunny days. Not just the weather, but it should be a good year for living. I expect it to be a wonderful year.”
“Dream on,” she yawned again. “But you didn’t answer my question. Why are you making all of these calls?”
“It’s a tradition. You’re supposed to get in touch with everyone who’s important to you on New Year’s Day. Family, friends, former wives. . .”
“Why?”
“You wish them good health and good luck. They wish you good health and good luck. They say it brings good health and good luck to be wished good health and good luck by people who care about you.”
“They again. Collective human folk wisdom, right?”
“Yes.” Once more I closed my eyes, and this time I rubbed my temples. It felt good, and I sighed deeply. Maybe by nightfall I would feel all right.
“You sick?”
“Headache. I drank too much last night.”
“Too much?”
“Wine. Remember I was gone? I went to a New Year’s Eve Party. There was plenty to drink and I didn’t know when to stop. I have a hangover.”
“What you drank gave you a headache?”
“Yep.” I looked at her, hoping to find some sympathy, but all she did was shake her head with contempt. “It’s a tradition,” I said defensively.
“They say to do it?”
“Yes.”
“Yesterday you did everything you could to make yourself sick. Today you call people to get them to wish you good health. You humans and your logic.”
“Tradition.”
“You want every day of the year to be as good as the first, so you make sure that you will be sick that day. Do you want to be sick all of 1995?”
“I’ve made a resolution not to drink during 1995. Not as much anyway.”
“A resolution? Like the ones the politicians make on C-SPAN? That won’t do you very much good, if your resolution is like theirs.”
“It’s another tradition. You are supposed to make New Year’s Resolutions. Make a list of
things you want to do differently in the next year. I’ve made seven for this year. One is not to
drink so much wine.”
“What are the others?”
I picked up the pad I had written on and let drop to the floor during my calls. I read the seven off to her. Among them was a resolution to diet, to write more poetry, to keep the house a bit cleaner. As I read it, I realized that my ambitions had been severely curtailed in recent years. Once I would have resolved to publish a book of poems and build a new house. I had become more realistic.
“Nothing about your cat?” Sundae said. She flashed me a lopsided smile.
“What about my cat?”
“Oh, maybe a better brand of food? Maybe a new window box? Maybe a promise never to take me to the Vet again, especially for a dip.”
Sundae hated dips. She always returned from dips angry. She would scratch herself for days and look at me with malice.
“Maybe I’ll add another resolution.”
“Let me know when you decide to do it. I’ll help with the wording.”
“Okay,” I promised. Slowly I got to my feet, taking it in stages, prepared to fall back into my chair if my head started to pop. It didn’t, and I felt I could move. I shuffled across the floor toward the kitchen.
“Where you going?” Sundae said, getting up, stretching, jumping down to follow me. She knew that when I went to the kitchen I usually found a bite of food for her.
I didn’t answer. I was too much involved in negotiating the floor without stumbling. She followed me into the kitchen. I cut open the sack of black-eyed peas and poured them into the crock pot, filled it with water, and flipped on the switch. Then I took the frozen hog jowl out of the refrigerator and began cutting it up.
“That smells good,” Sundae said. “Is it for me?”
“This? No, it’s for me. It too unhealthy to give you.”
“So you know what’s good and what’s not good for me?” She looked up at me accusatively. “What arrogance!”
“I’m saving you from a coronary thrombosis. If I let you eat fat meat, you may have a better looking coat, but you’ll die young of a heart attack.”
“And you won’t?”
“I will, but I’ve got more years to spare than you have.”
“Huh! They say I have more lives than you.”
“They?” I teased.
She watched as I dropped the fat meat into the pea juice and shook various forms of flavoring into the pot. Finally she spoke: “You’re going to eat that?”
“I’m not sure,” I admitted. “Right now I couldn’t; but maybe by the time it’s boiled for three or four hours, my stomach will be able to handle it.”
“What is it?”
“It’s black-eyed peas and hog jowl. Another tradition. It’s something people eat on New Year’s Day. It brings good fortune.”
“But not good health.”
“Well, they say it does, along with good fortune.”
“They say that too, huh?”
“Yes, the ubiquitous they.”
Having set my pot to cook, I made my way back to my bean-bag chair. Peas in the pot, beans in my chair, I lived among the foods of my childhood. Not much had changed. Only now I owned a cat who could talk.
She followed me back. Some days she follows me everywhere I go, and others I hardly see her at all. This was one of her days to stick to me like glue. I could tell she hadn’t satisfied herself about the New Year’s Day business.
She stretched out on my bed again and looked at me intently. Once more I could see the wheels turning in her head. I wonder how cats are wired. Certainly not like humans, not like dogs either, they are a breed unto themselves. If there is, as some say, a single Creator of the world, He or She or It must have had fun creating all the variety around us. Cats, I think, must have been one of the last to be created. The Creator had a lot of experience by that time. The cat is a great idea.
“You told me December 25 was the birthday of Jesus.”
“That’s the day we celebrate it.”
“Okay. And we start numbering the years from his birth.”
“Except we’re a few years off, probably.”
“You’re missing my point!” she huffed. I had upset her. “Even if both are off, shouldn’t the first day of the year be when you celebrate his birthday? But it’s a week later. Why?” Sundae is able to see every discrepancy in human logic and habit and tradition, yet she can’t learn to spit up hair balls into her litter box. I find the ropey things all over the house. See what I mean about the way a cat’s mind is wired?
“Well, yes, I suppose you’re right. Maybe we just can’t fit everything we want to do into one day, I don’t really know.”
She thought about this for a time. I was glad for the space of quiet, to let my head rest. Conversations with Sundae can be tiring, even when you’re not hung over, and I was.