My Cat, Spit McGee by Willie Morris

Author:Willie Morris
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781400033072
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2000-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

7

A Calico Waif

The eternal Southern seasons came and went. The complicated mother cat Rivers continued to live rather much by her own solicitations and drifted about as she pleased. She was never gone for very long, and I was convinced of her ability to take care of herself against the external world. Spit McGee was relatively punctual, and although he spent long hours meandering outside, he seldom wandered beyond the nextdoor neighbors’ houses and almost always returned before nightfall. Gradually I got him accustomed to riding with me in the car, and later in this story I intend to account a few of our more satisfying journeyings together. For now, however, I wish to postpone my description of these mutual dalliances to describe a serendipitous moment.

It was a cold November, unseasonable for these American parts. The branches in the trees in the yard were frozen solid, making crackling little echoes in the palpitant wind. All along Northside and Normandy were the sight and smell of spiraling wood smoke. My basement dungeon was frigid too, and I moved up into the dining room to work. Rivers and Spit were keeping themselves closely indoors, more often than not by the fire we had going all the time.

JoAnne was at a publishing conference in Atlanta. One late night in my bed I heard for a few seconds an unaccountable sound, a strange, muffled chirp that seemed to have come from deep underneath the house. Later that night I was awakened by it again. I took it to be a noise from the pipes, and I gave it no mind.

JoAnne returned the next day. Late that afternoon she heard the same small noise from under the house. “That’s not pipes,” she said. We went outside with a flashlight to the minuscule opening under the house, the same one through which we had retrieved the infant Spit McGee months before. The Cat Woman bent down and crawled on all fours into the darkness. I flashed the light into a corner. Caught there in the icy glow was a tiny solitary kitten, her eyes caught momentarily in the light, hunched up and shivering against the cold. She looked up at us with a pitiful expression of fright and panic. You could tell she had just about given up.

We took her inside. She was frosty to the touch. She could not have been more than three weeks or a month old. She was a calico. I had never seen one of those before. JoAnne sat with her by the fire and began rubbing her up and down to get her warm.

“Poor little thing,” she said. “Let’s keep her.”

“Not on your life,” I said, the misanthrope returning in an instant. “I don’t want any more cats. All they do is get run over or run away.” I added: “And that’s the ugliest cat I ever saw.”

“She’s not. She’s beautiful. And she’s hungry.”

The Cat Woman took her into the kitchen, warmed up some milk, and put it in a bowl on the floor.

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