The Long [Tail] Tale of Poli the Cat, With Peculiar Interludes of Charming Facts;

Or, An Experiment in Democracy

So here’s an experiment in democracy. I understand why people might not read things that make them sad or mad. I understand why their eyes might glass over at the abstruse. But what will they do when proffered a happy tail tale about a housecat’s survival, punctuated here and there with peculiar remarks about the use of the cat as symbol in the last 2700 years of human culture? Will they read it? Will they comment? Will they subscribe, and if so, will they subscribe for free, or will they become paid subscribers?

when I thought he was dying

I thought he was leaving us. He’s been with us so very long. He first came to live with us when we were different and much younger. My daughters were only seven and four years old. I hadn’t finished my ph.d. My then-future wife and I had just embarked on our 30s.

Three weeks ago, he’d stopped eating. He’d become still, too still, hardly moving, sinking into himself. I held him on my chest and looked into his ancient eyes, his little face so elegant. With both his eyes slightly exotropic, the opposite of cross-eyed, one clouded over beautifully blue-gray, his visage reminded me that what time does to us all has its own strange form of beauty, and of Bella’s words in Tennessee Williams’s penultimate play, A House Not Meant to Stand – “My eyes keep clouding over with – time.”

Gilgamesh, from an Assyrian palace relief more than 2700 years old, now held in The Louvre

What is this strange hold these particular creatures – housecats – cast over us? Why do people feel so strongly both for them and against them? Why does Gilgamesh seem to hold a housecat by the neck in that ancient Assyrian palace relief from 2700 years ago? And why did the lumber and forestry service’s fraternal organization call itself The International Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoos, Incorporated and its new inductees “kittens”?

the Hoo-Hoo House, Seattle, Washington, 1909

This tuxedo cat came from beneath a dumpster in Gainesville 20 years ago. Another doctoral student had taken him and a littermate into her apartment and named them Napoleon and Snowball, from Orwell’s Animal Farm. We kept them at our place in Jacksonville while our friend was traveling, then gave them back. When she couldn’t keep them and kicked them back out on the mean streets of the university town, we decided we’d take them for keeps.

a Berkshire Hog, image courtesy Whitney Creek Farms

We never found Snowball. We brought back Napoleon. Since we didn’t want a cat named for a dictator, much less a fictional authoritarian pig modeled on Stalin, Napoleon became Napoli, after Jo’s favorite restaurant back home in Panama. (I’d also quasi-renamed Snowball while we cat-sat. Since he’d stayed hidden the whole time he’d been in our house, but surreptitiously made of the shower a litterbox, I’d started to call him “Shitball.”). Napoli became ’Poli, with a thousand nicknames (Poli Wan-Cannoli, Poliwog, Pollo, Pollito), because creatures you love you nickname endlessly.

Napoli’s, Ciudad de Panama

Over the years, Poli has known many cats and two dogs in our household. When we lived on the Northside of town, we took in neighborhood strays and ended up with six cats at once. Poli outlived them all. He even outlived Fisher, the fat ginger cat who came later and whose story I should tell another time. When Fisher died, Poli fell into decline. Lost interest in food. His fur dried out and started rusting. When we brought home a new kitten from the Humane Society and the kitten climbed all over Poli, our already elderly grimalkin started eating better, gained weight. He was already 16 years old. He’s never weighed more than seven and a half pounds. That was four years ago. (That kitten, Mo, is now the biggest cat we’ve ever had.)

When I took Poli to the veterinarian three weeks ago, all the assistants marveled at this 20 year old cat. He’d started eating again when I’d started giving him wet food with names like “seafood medley in naturally occurring gravy.” He’d lost weight in the first place, when I’d thought he was dying, because of an abscessed tooth. Now he’s back. The vet told me that last year he’d seen a 27 year old cat and wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen the records.

at the vet

The last few nights I’ve fallen asleep with this ancient cat draped around my neck like a stole. I love still to gaze into his time-worn face. He has the clipped ear, from so long ago, the sign of the stray cat TNR (Trap-Neuter-Return) process. He has more white fur in his face than he did when he was younger. His face is shaped much more like a miniature version of a panther’s than the faces of the big tabbies we’ve had resembled those of bigger cats.

I’m fond of old things. Old books. Old houses. Old trees. Old cats. Old poets. I don’t think of time as the enemy, even though we die. Time is too mysterious and impersonal for that. What time has done to my face and my hair and my body I have earned. I love ruins. I love this ancient pagan planet that ever renews itself, that balance of world and earth.

Methusaleh, a Bristlecone Pine — 4,853 years old — image courtesy British Broadcasting Corporation

Even so, it’s hard for me to take that Gilgamesh image seriously. I know he’s holding the lion he’s conquered, but I swear it looks more like a recalcitrant housecat.

I love the theater, but have still never seen the musical Cats; I love T.S. Eliot’s poetry as much as I hate his politics, but still haven’t read Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.

I know that the first use of the term “kitty cat” in a Jacksonville newspaper was on April 24, 1926, when the Jacksonville chapter of The International Concatenated Order of Hoo-Hoos, being the fraternal order for lumberworkers and foresters, initiated 10 new “kittens.” I wonder what Paul Bunyan would think. Officers of the Hoo-Hoos, including several members of the Supreme Nine, carry titles inspired by Lewis Carroll like “Boojum,” “Snark” and “Jabberwock.” The lumberworkers’ emblem shows a black cat with its tale curled into the number nine. Supposedly cats have that many lives. I think, with respect, that maybe it’s true.

after his latest comeback, approaching a bowl of “seafood medley in naturally occurring gravy”