We each brought a cat to this house on Skinny Island after, as John Lennon once quipped, “The separation didn’t work out.” Meemaw’s Melba, a two-year old tabby, used to the wide driveways and lush lawns of suburbia; and Cecil, my year-old, very hefty, apartment-raised Maine Coon.  Cecil disappeared before the two of them could even disagree the first day.  We eventually found him, three days later, bloody-faced, battered and cowering behind some still packed boxes in the garage.  We never did find out what had happened, but he never went anywhere near the road from then on, and he had a little permanent cleft of his nose and mouth, and his eyes were always slightly crossed.  Completely incompatible inside the small house, Cecil took to staying outside, in the back woods, and Melba inside, befitting the Princess she thought she was, but went out at will, and we saw her a number of times in those first weeks across the road in the dunes, and on several occasions brought a little dune mouse back with her. Admonishing her was pointless, of course, so we gave up and hoped for the best.  Fifteen years later, though much has changed and she is now the outside cat, she is still here.

To know Melba is to love her. Merely to encounter Melba, however, without the requisite commitment to understanding her deepest thoughts, is an exercise in emptiness, if not downright danger.  To say Melba is aloof is like saying the Atlantic is a big body of water.  She has certain minimal expectations of us, primarily food, water, and modest shelter, but the association essentially ends there.  There is an elderly couple who take a morning walk by the house every day, and they always look for Melba and have something to say about her obvious aloofness and disdain.  They find it delightful.  When we took off for five weeks last summer we asked them to check on her and fill her food bowl and they were thrilled. It was like being asked to pick up after Grace Kelly, or something.

Still, the years have mellowed Melba, though we may be the only ones to see that.  She will surprise, on occasion, and want to climb in your lap if you are sunning outside. She has a little wicker cat carrier we’ve left outside for her, kind of a little wicker igloo with a round opening, and she loves to spend part of her day in there on a pink towel.  When it’s cold she wants to come in to the add-on room, which over the years has served as apartment, writing and painting studio, junk room, and cat hang-out. She is arthritic and slow-moving, and tends to miss the litter box when inside, but hey, she’ll be eighteen this summer.  She’s an old lady.

Cecil was a big, good-natured sweetie.  Topping twenty pounds, eating was naturally his sole priority.  He would bang on the back screen door with his head every morning at 5 a.m., demanding to be fed, which worked out because that’s when we needed to get up in those work days. No need to set an alarm with Cecil around. When not eating he stayed almost exclusively in the back, sleeping on the deck or out somewhere in the jungle.  He liked to sleep in one of those big terracotta pot plates, curled to fit as best he could, but most of him hanging out. He was a pacifist by nature, with a squeaky little raspy cry belying his size, but he was ferocious when cornered or challenged by the occasional stray that might appear, and could inflict serious damage. Certainly no lap kitty, he was, nevertheless, truly affectionate, and loved to have his head scratched, looking up at you with those little crossed eyes.  He lived for twelve years, and died while we were on one of our western trips.  He’s buried in the jungle, just down from the deck he loved.

And then there’s Pico (Pekoe.) He arrived here some five years ago as part of a duo of kittens our son brought with him when he was staying here between things.  He referred to them as “Crack Kitties,” and said he had rescued them from a bad situation.  He called them Pico and Lewis. They had the run of the place as kittens, chasing each other around the back deck and steps to the obvious amusement of old Cecil. Melba, still the inside cat, barely knew of their existence. They were fun to watch, and after our son moved on, we kept the kittens.

One morning early we let them out the back door of the apartment and they scampered off as always.  A few minutes later I went around front to bring the truck up to go into town and saw something in the dim light out in the road.  It was Lewis.  He had been struck and killed.  I got a shoe box and put him in it and Pico came up and sniffed him and I closed the box. He’s buried down in the jungle too.

After that, Pico became the inside cat; I was not going to go through that again.  We tried having he and Melba share the house, but she would have none of that and became the outside cat.  Very early on, I started taking Pico out for walks on a leash.  He took to it right away, and now eagerly comes to the back door for his twice daily outdoor excursions. Luxuriant and tawny, he is the cleanest, sweetest, best-natured cat we’ve ever had.  He loves to read the newspaper every morning with us and, quite hilariously, loves to take mid-day naps with us.  You just say, “Come on, Pico.  Wake up. Time for a nap.” And he’ll come sauntering in.  Our three-year-old grandson even says that now when he’s over.  And around nine at night, no matter how much sack time he’s put in, Pico heads for the back bedroom for a full night’s sleep.

Now, to the name.  When Meemaw took him in for his shots when he was still a kitten and told the vet his name, she was asked how it was spelled. “I think he spells it Pekoe,” Meemaw says, “Like the tea.”  That’s right, how he spells it.  Don’t think the vet had ever heard that before.  So that’s become kind of a running joke now, which brings to mind an old observation from poet T.S. Eliot, a cat lover and creator of Mungo Jerry.  He said, “A cat has three names: A name you give him; a name you call him; and a name only the cat knows.” So maybe Meemaw’s intuition has it right.  I still call him Pico, and it’s not like he actually responds to either spelling.

Got nothing against dogs, mind you, we’ve had dogs and loved them dearly.  But they are a serious pain in the ass, and you all know the difference between cat people and dog people, so we won’t go into that.  A certain segment wouldn’t be able to follow if I did.  Melba and Pico (Pekoe) are pictured below.  Sun is out.  Going to go sit in it a while, listen to the waves, and start planning the garden.

Miss Melba

Mister Pico (Pekoe)