The House Guests by John D. MacDonald

Author:John D. MacDonald [MacDonald, John D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82703-6
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2013-06-11T04:00:00+00:00

Thus was devised the system we followed for years. Dr. Sellman would hold them until we announced our arrival and send them along. We would ship them back and he would hold them until we could pick them up and take them to Piseco.

From time to time during that period, Dorothy and Johnny would try with a carefully plausible argument to talk me into taking them north in the car—a nest amid the luggage, mild tranquilizers, maybe collars and leashes for roadside relievings, smuggle them into motels. But I never fell into the trap of being obliged to come up with a logical refutation of each point. I merely expressed vast astonishment that two otherwise intelligent people could even pretend to propose such chaos.

I can imagine, for example, how they would react to leashes. Once we were able to give up the toilet-box-system on State Street and give them continuous access to the out of doors, we never saw them go, except very, very rarely and then through the accident of taking a walk and coming across one of them in a remote place. It was a private and fastidious affair, one that they certainly would not undertake while at the end of a string.

… In the last couple of years the infirmities of age have at last led Roger to consider comfort more important than total privacy. Our screened terrace at Point Crisp is very large, with numerous planting areas full of peat moss and heavy growth. He began to use a far corner of it, behind a screen of dwarf banana. We have made it more suitable with a frequently replenished layer of kitty litter. Last Christmas Johnny and his wife, Anne, drove down from Michigan in a VW bus bringing their five cats with them—thus proving his nerves are better than mine have ever been—and they spent the holidays in our guesthouse. They had one adult cat, two almost adults, and two kittens. (The smallest female kitten was named Abishag after the biblical virgin taken into bed to keep the venerable king warm.)

Their cats were trained to kitty litter in big, shallow plastic pans. They put one in the guesthouse and one in the studio near the door to the terrace, which was propped ajar so Roger could get out there when the need arose. The weather was cold and uncomfortable for an ancient cat, and he was feeling unwell during the holidays. He took advantage of the convenience placed there for the new generation. As it had been almost eighteen years since he had used such a device, and because he is a very large cat, his first attempt was a total failure due to his getting only his front feet into the plastic bin. But from then on he was ept, and after the kids and their cat-colony had departed and the weather stayed cold, we continued the arrangement. When the weather warmed, Roger, by his own decision, reverted to his familiar area beyond the dwarf banana trees.

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