The cat wholl live forev.., p.10
The Cat Who'll Live Forever, page 10
Then she closed the deal very effectively, ending with something I couldn’t possibly resist.
“I just can’t believe you weren’t invited,” she said. “And neither can Tony. He insists that you come. He specifically asked if you were coming and he’ll be very disappointed if you’re not there.”
“He did?” I asked. “And he will?”
“Oh, absolutely,” she said. “He’ll be crushed if you don’t come.”
“Tony will be crushed?”
“No question about it!”
“Oh, well, in that case I guess I’ll come,” I said, adding, “But you’ll have to find two tickets, not one,” since I knew that Janis would not be a happy camper if I deserted her on a Saturday night to go off to some fancy movie premiere.
“I’ll call you right back,” Sybil said, and indeed she did, just a minute or two later, to tell me that, miraculously, she’d found two tickets, that they’d be waiting for me at the box office at the local Sag Harbor movie theater (where the screening was being held) and that I could write a check at my convenience.
I hung up the phone, pondered the fact that I was such a sucker for human contact—if this had been a solicitation by mail, I would definitely have saved myself two hundred bucks and a couple of hours in an old theater that smells like a weird combination of fake butter and liquid cleanser—and went downstairs to tell Janis that we were going to the movies.
When I finished my little explanation, she looked at me, slightly confused, and said, “I didn’t know you knew Sybil Christopher.”
“I don’t,” I told her. “Never met her, never spoke to her before.”
“And who’s Tony?” she demanded.
“Absolutely no idea.” When she looked even more bewildered, I said, “Clearly, they’ve made a mistake and they think I’m somebody else. So it’ll be fun. Let’s go and watch ’em get all confused when whoever they’re expecting doesn’t show up—and I do.”
So the next night, a dubious Janis donned her Saturday best—she has an amazing knack for elegance on the spur of the moment—while I put on the ten-year-old ill-fitting sport jacket I keep in Sag Harbor for dress-up emergencies, and we went into town.
First we waited on line to pick up our tickets at the box office. While waiting, I pulled out my checkbook and began writing a check for two hundred smackers. As I was doing so, a rather snotty usher strolled by, saw what I was doing and sniffed, “We don’t allow checks.”
I could tell he thought this particular check was bouncy enough to play basketball with, and I immediately began to regret my decision to come, but since ushers are, in my mind, on the same intimidating, uniform-wearing authority-figure level as policemen, judges and cable TV repair guys, I started politely explaining how Sybil Christopher said I could write a check and how I only decided to come at the last minute and . . .
“What’s your name?” he asked wearily.
“Peter Gethers,” I said rather weakly, expecting our evening to end a little earlier than I’d expected.
But weak or not, he practically snapped to attention and said—with a vague tone of reverence, I might add—“Oh, excuse me, Mr. Gethers. You don’t even have to wait on line. Just go right inside and tell that usher over there to seat you. And I’m very sorry about the mistake. Of course you can pay by check. Whenever you want.”
I raised an eye toward Janis and smiled rather smugly. She shook her head in return. I think she was fairly certain we were on our way to imposter’s prison.
The next usher was even more obsequious. “Yes, of course,” she practically squealed. “Thank you for coming, Mr. Gethers. You’re sitting in the celebrity row, with Tony.”
“Good,” I said. “I wouldn’t want to miss Tony.”
Sure enough, she led us to a section right in the middle of the theater with three rows roped off, protected from what I was already beginning to think of as the riff-raff. Sitting in these rows were the usual group of Hamptons celebs: actors, actresses, directors, journalists, owners of media conglomerates, hairdressers, publicists and Dick Cavett (I put Dick Cavett in a separate category because I’m not exactly sure what he is these days; the only thing I do know is that he’s at every single gathering of celebrities in the area). The usher lifted the rope and told us which row was ours. We followed instructions perfectly and settled in to watch the rest of the theater start to fill up. Every so often, we’d see a friend or two who’d be off to the side in some crummy seat and who would look surprised to see us smack dab in the middle of Fame Row. When eye contact was made, I’d do something sophisticated and mature like stick my fingers in my ears and wag at them.
Eventually, the place was jammed to the rafters. The only empty seats in the whole theater were the two right next to us. As I was wondering about this fact, I noticed that everyone else was applauding. When I looked around, I realized that the star of the movie and his wife had arrived. Not only that, they were being led to the two empty seats to Janis’s right. They sat, nodded cursorily at Janis and waited like everyone else for the lights to dim and the movie to start. This gave us a couple of minutes or so of awkward silence, so Janis leaned over and said to the wife, “Hello, I’m Janis Donnaud.”
The wife smiled and said, “I’m Jenny Hopkins. And this is my husband, Tony.”
Tony?
As in Anthony?
As in Anthony Hopkins? Sir Anthony Hopkins? The world’s greatest living actor?
Yup.
That’s when Janis said, “And this is Peter Gethers.”
The sound you’re not hearing right now is the longest pause in the world.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins looked over at me, squinted, stared and said absolutely nothing. And I mean nothing.
“This is where we get sent to the balcony,” I whispered to Janis.
But not so fast. Because Anthony Hopkins—Academy Award winner, legend, star of Silence of the Lambs and The Remains of the Day, which was the movie we were about to watch that night—finally cleared his throat and said to me, in that great, booming Welsh voice of his, “You didn’t by any chance bring Norton, did you?”
When I tell you that I almost fell off my chair, believe that I’m telling you the truth. At some point, I was able to regain my composure and stutter something along the lines of, “Well, no, actually, I don’t usually bring my cat to movie premieres.”
And then we started chatting. It turned out that both Hopkins were cat fanatics. Jenny had read The Cat Who Went to Paris, fell in love with my little pal, and made Sir Anthony—excuse me, Tony—read it. When Sybil Christopher, an old friend from their days in Wales, invited them to Sag Harbor as a favor to help her theater, they had paced around their flat in London, saying, “Why do we know Sag Harbor? . . . Why do we know Sag Harbor?” Jenny said that, after several days of this, Tony had stopped pacing and suddenly screamed out with eureka-like relief, “That’s where Norton lives!” They immediately got on the horn to Sybil, asked if I was coming to the premiere and Sybil, assuming that I must be somebody she should have heard of, got on the horn herself and talked me into forking over the two bills for the tickets.
As the lights in the theater began to dim, Tony leaned across Janis to ask me, “Is there any way we could meet Norton?”
“Sure,” I said. And then I realized they were waiting for me to tell them how. “Ummm . . .” I looked at our generation’s Olivier and asked, “You wanna come over for breakfast tomorrow?” I immediately began fantasizing about telling my mother how I’d served lox and bagels to Hannibal the Cannibal.
“Oh, we’d love to,” Jenny said, “but we have a nine o’clock flight back to London in the morning. We have to leave extremely early.”
“You could come for a drink after the movie,” I suggested.
“Oh no,” Jenny said. “I’m afraid not. There’s a little party after the movie and we’re sort of the guests of honor.”
I was momentarily deflated. Also stumped. Then Tony said, “The party is over at Sybil’s theater. Could Norton possibly come to that?”
“I don’t see why not,” I said. “He’s a party animal.”
I wasn’t at all offended that no one said, “Could you and Janis possibly come to that.” I was, by this time, quite used to being seen in a subservient role as a companion to my four-legged star. So the minute the movie was over, Janis went over to the theater, accompanied by the Hopkinses, while I drove to my house, pulled out Norton’s preferred shoulder bag, and went back to the opening night party—accompanied by my cat.
Now, Norton behaves remarkably well in public situations (often, far better than his dad). But he hadn’t actually been to any movie premiere parties. When he’s in public, Norton is usually assured of being the biggest celebrity in the joint. That was clearly not going to be the case in this instance. So despite my confident reply to the Hopkinses, I admit to having had a few doubts about the wisdom of this little jaunt.
Once again, I was forced to issue my cat a sincere apology.
Because, of course, he was perfect.
I didn’t think that putting him down and letting him wander through the crowd was a great idea (he would have been fine, no question about it, but being a foot tall and walking around on four legs isn’t really the ideal situation to be in at a cocktail party; also, I wasn’t sure if the bartender knew how to mix a catnip martini and I thought it best to avoid that embarrassing situation). Nor did I think that setting him down on the bar was the best solution (I knew this crowd; standing between them and the alcohol was not a great location if one desired any peace and quiet). Finally, I decided to let him sit in the front row of the theater. I pulled the first aisle seat down, set his bag there and then watched as Norton settled in on top of it and did indeed become the star of the evening. Basically, he sat there calmly, as if attending a play. Or, more accurately, as if he were a member of a royal family receiving visitors. Occasionally, he’d swivel his head to check out his surroundings or if he thought someone was speaking too loudly. The Hopkinses would not leave his side. Jenny, in particular, spent most of the night petting him and telling him what a good boy he was. Gradually, the entire party moved down toward the stage area because that’s where Tony and Jenny were—and they were there because that’s where Norton was. One by one, everyone came over to congratulate Tony on another brilliant performance and then, one by one, everyone would get asked, “Have you met Norton?” (And yes, you’re absolutely right, absolutely no one got asked, “Have you met Peter?”)
After a few minutes, I actually relaxed and realized my cat didn’t need me hovering around him, so Janis and I drank, ate and mingled with the couple of hundred people who were there to support Sag Harbor’s newest cultural attraction. Every so often, I’d make my way back toward the front, check on my Fold who, as near as I could tell, was in heaven in the midst of all this fuss being made over him. At some point, I felt someone tap me on the shoulder, and when I turned around I saw that it was Lauren Bacall.
“Excuse me,” she said, smiling graciously. “May I ask you a question?”
With images from The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not flashing in front of me, I did my best to look debonair and said, “Of course.”
“Well, then, my question’s this.” Her smile broadened even more graciously as she put her hand on my shoulder and spoke warmly. “I don’t know who you are and I don’t know why you’re here. But if I want to talk to Tony Hopkins, who’s an old and dear, dear friend . . . why do I have to stand in line behind your fucking cat?!”
I looked toward the front of the theater. There were fifty people or so trying to get in close enough to talk to the Hopkinses. Jenny was holding Norton in her arms and Tony’s back was to the crowd while he petted and scratched him. I knew it was impossible in the midst of the din, but I was almost certain I could hear Norton purring above the chatter of the crowd. I turned back to Lauren Bacall.
“It’s a long story,” I told her. “Believe me. It’s a long story.”
CHAPTER 7
THE CAT
WHO TURNED
MIDDLE-AGED
It turned out that my cat and I had one more parallel going on in our already entwined lives.
We were both getting a little older.
And feeling it.
My brush with the aches and pains that come with no longer being able to describe oneself by the word “thirty” followed by any known number began with what I can only describe as an excruciating, whimper-inducing pain in my right shoulder. Perhaps you’ve picked up on the fact that stoicism is not one of the words that leaps to mind when most people try to describe me. Nonetheless, my shoulder hurt like hell and the pain led to various doctor visits, x-rays, MRIs, and ultimately an operation that revealed, among other messy but less serious stuff, degenerative arthritis. The operation was followed by a whole bunch of physical therapy (I was usually in a room with a lot of people who’d had their legs crushed by trucks or their arms ripped out of their sockets by machines I would never actually touch much less operate manually, so I had the double dissatisfaction of being in extreme pain but being way too embarrassed to complain about it). It was also followed by more doctor visits, a discussion of my future prospects with one of those doctors that included the unappealing phrase, “How’s your pain tolerance?” and another conversation that ended with this upbeat assessment: “Well, the idea is to keep you as pain free as possible for another fifteen years, then we’ll do a shoulder replacement so you can feed yourself and brush your own teeth.” I’m leaving out the session where my surgeon explained to me that my body was like a tire that was good for 100,000 miles. When he got to the part pointing out that I’d used up about 50,000 of those miles, I just started making pathetic little noises and begging him to come up with some other analogy. After he told me about the difficulties I was going to have brushing my own teeth I decided that the whole tire thing was fine and told him to stick with that from now on.
All in all, although Janis might disagree if I let her insert her own paragraph at this point, I think I handled the pain and trauma (and acceptance that gradually I was disintegrating and falling apart and would soon be little more than a pile of rotting garbage in this stinking, crummy world) with great maturity and grace. I might even go so far as to use the words “regal nobility.” However, when my cat got sick and began showing similar signs of middle-age wear and tear, I totally fell apart.
Janis, Norton and I had made another Christmastime trip to Sicily to visit the Tornabenes in their fourteenth-century abbey, and when we returned, I noticed something strange. The water in Norton’s water bowl was disappearing very quickly.
I didn’t really think anything of it, other than, after a couple of weeks of this, it occurred to me that my cat didn’t usually drink a lot of water. At first I thought that maybe my apartment and my house in Sag Harbor were both overheated and that the water was evaporating. I know, this sounds crazy (as well as pretty dumb) but it just never occurred to me that Norton would be lapping up an entire bowl or two of water a day. Then, the next thing I realized was that not only was the water in his bowl disappearing but Norton was suddenly drinking water out of the toilet. At all hours of the day and night, I’d hear that unmistakable sound of animal tongue taking in water as quickly as possible, head in to the bathroom and find Norton leaning into the bowl and drinking like a . . . well . . . like a commonplace dog. For a day or two, I did nothing but mull this over and think it was odd. Now you have to understand that for our entire mutual existence, I treated my cat exactly as I would treat myself (except for those occasions when I treated him better). By that, I mean that I believed in living well and making life as easy as possible for myself—and by extension, I wanted him to live as well as I did and have as easy a life. One of the things I didn’t do for myself was to go to the doctor very often. I’m not a hypochondriac and I’m not a very fearful person. I also tend toward fatalism and generally think that things will run their proper course. On the other hand, I’m not a total cretin and I’m not above seeking help when help is needed. So after a few days of puzzling over Norton’s behavior, just as I would have done over mine if I’d suddenly started lapping up water out of the toilet bowl, I decided that something had to be wrong and that it was time to take him to the vet.
Since kittenhood, Norton had been a lucky guy. Not only was he rarely ill, he had an absolutely sensational vet in Sag Harbor named Dr. Jonathan Turetsky. Jonathan is not only a caring and loving doctor, he is stunningly thorough. Whenever I’d take Norton in for his annual checkups, I’d come home to Janis and say that I wished my doctor was as thorough in his probing and analysis. I loved Turetsky. As did almost all his patients—both paying bipeds and sick quadrupeds.
Unfortunately Norton couldn’t stand him.
It drove the good doc crazy. For years, he’d greet Norton warmly, talk to him soothingly, treat him wonderfully, genuinely care about his welfare—and my friendly, charming, perfect cat would act as if he were being examined by one of the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz. All Turetsky had to do was get near him and Norton would hiss and scratch and do his best impersonation of Charles Bronson in The Great Escape trying to get out of the tunnel.
