The cat wholl live forev.., p.8
The Cat Who'll Live Forever, page 8
On the weekends, I’d discuss this phenomenon with various friends who had houses out there, particularly those friends who were in my exact same position. There were three couples we saw regularly in the summer months: Nancy and Ziggy, who have already been dissected in previous Norton books (You might remember that Ziggy is also known by various other names at his place of employment. Some people know him as John, some as Jack, quite a few refer to him as Aldy, and now, in his latest Wall Street incarnation, he apparently has become Old John, because his new assistant has become Young John), Ed and Caroline, and Tom and Andi. During those months, Ziggy, Ed and Tom would head back to the city every Monday morn, grumbling about my life of ease, while Nancy, Caroline and Andi would remain behind, wondering what I was actually doing all by myself in my little Victorian house. Over a period of weeks, our conversations progressed much like Norton’s sparring with his kitten pal. First we’d talk about how lucky we were to be able to stay in Long Island for such a long time. Then we’d talk about how we valued the time alone (or with cat/children). Then we’d say things like, “You know, why don’t we all go to a movie on Wednesday night?” Once we did that, it became, “Why don’t we go to a movie every Wednesday night,” and the next thing I knew I was having a Girls’ Night Out once a week. Nancy, Caroline, Andy and I (along with a rotating group of women who would be out in our neck of the woods for this auspicious occasion) would head out to a flick, have dinner and catch up on all the typical gal stuff. I’d hear about their kids’ soccer games, they’d hear about the latest blue jay who tried to peck Norton on the head. They’d try to get me to drink white wine, I’d see if I could turn them on to the joys of martinis and surf ’n’ turf. They’d listen to a little Mets stuff without squirming too much, I’d do my best to listen to something that had to do with women’s bodily functions without passing out. All in all, it became a night out on the town that we all looked forward to.
We looked forward to it so much that GNO—as it came to be called—carried over to the next summer. And the next and the next and so on. It became such a popular event that eventually we all got laminated membership cards, legitimizing the group (and detailing the strict guidelines for inclusion, the key being that you can pay for dinner when needed). It also caused a little jealousy among spouses who, when we were all together, wanted to know why they were never invited to our other get-togethers. We’d try to explain that it was girls only—and then I’d realize that everyone would be staring at me and all I could do was smile and shrug and hope no one would spend too much time thinking about it. Especially Janis.
There were a few awkward moments that arose from time to time, I must admit.
Nancy and Ziggy’s son, Charlie, also spent the summer out in Sag Harbor and Charlie is, to say the least, a precocious lad. The little bugger doesn’t miss a trick or forget a thing. We’re also pretty good pals. Now that he’s close to his teenage years, he’s got the freedom to ride his bike over to my place, which he will do on occasion so we can talk sports or Adam Sandler movies, two passions we both share. He’s also obsessed with wanting to see a movie that has naked women in it, which gives us another common passion. Every so often, particularly when he was younger, around eight or nine, I’d go over to pick up his mom for our dinner and I’d get grilled by the Chuckster. A typical conversation would be:
Charlie: Hey, Pete. What’s up?
Me: Big night tonight. Dinner and a movie.
Charlie: Girls’ Night Out?
Me: Yup.
Charlie: (with furrowed brow and look of great confusion): Can I ask you a question?
Me: Sure.
Charlie: Isn’t Girls’ Night Out for girls?
Me: You bet.
Charlie (after a long silence and a lot more furrowing): Have a good time.
Once, in my second or third summer of GNOing, Janis and I were having dinner with two friends, Oren and Betsy (I had to be in the city that day, briefly breaking my summer isolation). During the course of dinner, Betsy started hemming and hawing and finally said, “I was talking to Andi on the phone a few days ago and she was all excited because she said she was going to Girls’ Night Out that night. She told me how much she looks forward to it and she was explaining that all her women pals out there go out and eat and drink and talk . . .”
She kind of drifted off uncomfortably, then Oren nudged her so she went on: “Uh . . . I asked her who went and she said Nancy, Caroline, that night Esther was going . . . and . . . uh . . . you.”
I nodded and went on eating. Betsy waited politely for another few seconds then quietly said, “Um . . . is there anything you want to tell us?”
When I assured her there wasn’t, she and Oren resumed eating—and thinking God only knows what.
My cat’s life and mine were comparable, too, in ways other than establishing stimulating, platonic relationships with members of the opposite sex out there in summery Sag Harbor.
I wasn’t much for skulking through the high grass of our backyard looking for little critters. But I could regularly be found skulking through the fescue of a nearby golf course looking for lost little white balls.
At the end of a tough day in the sunshine, Norton liked nothing better than to chew on a bit of catnip, collapse on the couch in the den and relax. After a tough day in my upstairs office, I liked nothing better than to gulp down a Pete’s Wicked Ale, collapse on the same couch and watch any movie that might be on the satellite system that had Greta Scacchi in it (here’s an in-print promise to my now twelve-year-old pal, Charlie: when your mom says you’re old enough, you can come over and we can watch White Mischief together).
Come the late afternoon, Norton liked to clamber up onto my desk to get his ears and stomach scratched and rubbed for quite a long while.
I found out that one could actually get masseuses to work at one’s house, so come the late afternoon I would, on occasion, find myself on a massage table in the backyard, listening to Miles Davis or Chet Baker, getting my ears, stomach and just about every other part of my body rubbed.
But we weren’t just slugs, Norton and I. For one thing, we did quite a bit of work.
I wrote books and television shows and the occasional movie.
And, after a few years of having nothing to do with the literary community, Norton wrote his own book.
Well, let me elaborate on that.
I’m very grateful to everyone who reads these Norton books (actually, I’m more grateful to those who buy them, but reading them is okay, too). Clearly, anyone who reads hundreds of pages about the adventures of a nine-pound, four-legged creature with folded ears can be legitimately described as a “cat lunatic.” Just as clearly, there is a reason why the phrase “cat lunatic” has the word “lunatic” in it. I speak from experience. Not that long ago, my agent, Esther Newberg, called because she was a little depressed. She had just gotten a gift from a friend—a beautiful frame, and inside it was a photo of Esther’s cat, Tate. Esther thought it was a tad weird to realize that, as symbolized by the friend’s choice of photographic subject, the closest relationship in her life was with a feline. I had to interrupt her and point out that all she had was one little photo of her cat. I’d spent the last decade of my life writing entire books about my relationship with my cat. And going around the world talking about him. “Weird?” I said. “Forget just being my best friend, my cat also supports me!” She agreed that I topped her in the “weird” category.
The point is, I have pretty good anecdotal proof by this time that just about every cat person should have the word “lunatic” attached to his or her name as a permanent appendage. But my fans do seem to take it to new heights. So when my good friend Norm Stiles and I dashed off what we thought was the world’s funniest book, Historical Cats, and put on the cover that it was written by Norton, I have this sneaking suspicion that way too many of my readers went, “Oh, okay, well he is a genius cat, I guess he could have written it.” You’d be amazed, when Norton and I went back on tour to promote this book, how many people asked, at the readings, “So how much did Norton actually contribute to the book?” I would answer, as seriously as I could manage, that the idea was his, that he did the research and chose which cats to use, and that Norm and I only helped him with the jokes. You’d be more amazed if I told you how many heads would nod after that, the look in their eyes saying, “Yeah, that’s pretty much what I thought.”
Now, I’m not saying he didn’t have anything to do with the writing of the book. Of course he did. The premise of Historical Cats was that, as all of us lunatics know, behind every great human there is an even greater cat. So we imagined various figures throughout history and came up with what we thought was a realistic portrait of that person’s lesser known feline companion (and got a brilliant illustrator, William Bramhall, to bring those portraits to life). For instance, there was that great American patriot, Nathan Hale’s cat, who uttered the immortal words, “I regret that I have but nine lives to give for my country.” And, of course, there was Marie Antoinette’s cat, whose dismissive bon mot to the French peasants was, “Let them eat dry food.” And, among many, many others, was JFK’s cat, whose most inspirational rallying cry was, “Ask not what you can do for your human, ask what your human can do for you.” Officially, for the record, Norton did not write these. He did use his discerning taste to help, though. While sitting around Norm’s house listening to the two of us making each other laugh, Norton would occasionally close the pages of one of our history books or encyclopedias, basically saying, “Nice try, boys, but come up with something better.”
And, so I don’t shatter every one of his fan’s illusions, he did write the introduction to the book, which I will reprint here:
INTRODUCTION
by NORTON, The Cat Who Went to Paris
This was not an easy book to write. Let’s face it—no book is easy to write when you don’t have opposable thumbs.
Living in semiretirement after my last book tour, I suppose I could have been content to spend the rest of my nine lives in the lap of luxury (and I mean that literally; my human has a very comfortable lap). However, on my many travels throughout the world, I did not merely dine out in fancy restaurants and act cute on airplanes, despite the distortions written about me by my so-called owner in The Cat Who Went to Paris and A Cat Abroad. In my free time, I didn’t just curl up on a few books, I curled up with a few good books. And what I read really began to make my fur stand on end. Ever since I was a kitten riding around town in my human’s pocket, I was a history buff. Now, as I began to leap up onto library shelves in search of feline facts, I found a void. A wasteland. An endless litter box in which the history of an entire species seemed to be buried.
While there are countless numbers of books on Thomas Jefferson, where is the book on Thomas Jefferson’s cat? Why are his once magnificent catnip gardens no longer found at Monticello? And where do you think Jefferson got the idea for independence in the first place? While we’re on the subject, how is it possible that so little is known about Søren Kierkegaard’s cat, who developed the brilliant philosophy that all dogs are merely a figment of the imagination? Why is there no monument to Ernest Hemingway’s cat, who wrote the classic A Farewell to Mice? Or to Joe DiMaggio’s cat, who not only ate chicken in gravy fifty-six days in a row, but was married to Marilyn Monroe’s cat? The answer, my friends, is catism. But the fact that cats have been at the center of all historical events since the beginning of time—remember Adam and Eve’s cat, Ribs?—is a secret that can no longer be kept. Must no longer be kept.
Thus this book. My collaborators and I have attempted to right the wrongs of history. We have scoured the world in search of rare manuscripts; we have conducted thousands of interviews and skritched hundreds of bellies in an attempt to get information. I apologize for any omissions, but if there are any errors, I can only claim meow culpa. If it is true that behind every great man there is a great woman, then it is even truer that behind every great human there is an even greater cat. I just hope that our research and our passion can, at long last, bring that fact forth to the world at large.
—NORTON
Sag Harbor, New York
I have to say, reading that over these several years later, I’m impressed yet again by how eloquent my cat can be, especially considering that English is not his first language. Of course, I shudder to think what that would have read like if it had been in his first language. But I’ll leave that to the scholars. Maybe Vladimir Nabokov’s cat . . .
Although there was this brief foray back into the working world, Norton and I mostly stayed out of the public eye during this period. Of course, with Norton around it was impossible to stay totally away from the social scene. He was too much in demand.
He not only attended any and all dinner parties that Janis and I threw, he was often invited to come along to some of the parties we were invited to. If we’d stroll down to the Halloween parade in town (featuring just about every kid on the east end of Long Island), Norton would stroll along with us. If we went to a friend’s house to swim or have brunch, Norton would happily attend—he didn’t swim but he was a good sunbather, and he brunched extremely well. If friends gathered, Norton could usually be found gathering as well, and almost always enjoying it. I say “almost” because I have to include the time when we met up with friends Ed and Caroline and their kids to exchange Christmas gifts. One of their gifts was for Norton—an angel costume. We did put the little halo, as well as the translucent white wings, on my cat to see how he’d look. I suppose I have to say he didn’t look too good since it took Ed and Caroline a while to convince me that it wasn’t actually a reindeer costume. Norton didn’t seem too impressed with this form of dress-up, either. I can honestly report that this was a gathering he was not wild about.
One of our weirdest social engagements started as a result of a Sunday brunch with Nancy and Ziggy. When we were seated and about to dip into our scrambled eggs, Zig announced that he had a little story to relate. He then proceeded to tell us about something that had happened to him the night before. He and Nancy had to go to some fancy business party. You know, one of those go-to-a-billionaire’s-oceanfront-mansion-with-a-huge-tent-that-holds-two-hundred-people-on-the-lawn-and-live-entertain-
ment-by-somebody-you’ve-actually-heard-of-like-Gladys-Knight-type of affairs that we all frequent on a regular basis. They had to go because this particular billionaire was one of Ziggy’s clients. While there, Ziggy found that his dinner partner was a woman who absolutely terrified him. He described her as the scariest person on Wall Street: tough, brutal, merciless when it came to making money. Ziggy, who’s never intimidated by anything, was totally intimidated by her. But he decided, this Saturday night, with some prompting from Nancy, to speak to this woman and to get over his fear and intimidation.
Okay . . . dinner’s served, they sit down. Zig bobs his head up and down several hundred times and smiles, trying to think of something to say that won’t make him sound like a total moron. They chat about business things for a while, he manages not to put his foot in his mouth. Then, for some reason, someone at the table says something about dogs. The Bride of Frankenstein perks up a bit and asks Ziggy if he’s got a dog. He says no. Then he says, for absolutely no reason, “I have a friend with a cat, though.” She looks at him like he’s lost his mind, which he’s beginning to think he has. He wants to say, “Oh, forget I said anything and let’s just go back to talking about your money!” but he’s stuck with this topic for a while, so he goes about the process of digging himself in deeper and deeper. “My friend really loves his cat,” Zig now says, starting to sweat a little bit as the rest of the table stares at him blankly. And then, to finish things off and seal his doom, he mutters, “He even wrote a book about the cat.”
At this point, the Scariest Woman in the World jerks her head up, stares right at Ziggy and says, in as excited a tone as if he’d just told her that IBM went up a hundred points, “Is his cat named Norton?”
My buddy Zig almost fell over backward in his chair. And the whole thing got weirder and weirder as the New York winner of the Miss Terrifying contest then began to plead with him, begging him for an introduction to my cat.
At the brunch table, our eggs were now cold. Janis was shaking her head in that I-can’t-believe-this-is-happening-again kind of way, and Ziggy finally turned to me and said, “So . . . um . . . do you think Norton could pay a visit to my client?” He went on to explain that it would be a major career boost, that it could really help him in the future, that she was his most important client, etc., etc., etc.
As much as I loved the groveling, I finally told him I didn’t see any problem. Scottish Folds are known for always wanting to help out their buddies, I said, so after the dishes were cleared away, Zig called the woman, said that Norton would be thrilled to come a calling later that afternoon, and then he reported back to us that he’d never heard anyone quite so excited in his entire life.
A few hours later, Zig drove by and picked us up. Norton was in his Sunday best—which was actually the same as his Monday through Saturday best, but he did look particularly spiffy—and then we drove into Bridgehampton until we got to a very large, very new, slightly terrifying house on the beach. The whole way over, I kept hearing this warning: “Remember, she’s really scary. Don’t let her intimidate you. She’s really, really scary. Don’t let her intimidate you.” By the time I’d put Norton back in his shoulder bag and we were ringing the woman’s front door, I was practically shaking, expecting a cross between The Wicked Witch of the West, Mommie Dearest and the Barbra Streisand who directed The Prince of Tides to open up and let us into her lair (in case you’re wondering why I identified Babs specifically as the one who directed The Prince of Tides, it’s because as horrible as I imagine her to be normally, anyone who directed herself in that movie has to be particularly frightening).
