A Cat Named Darwin (11 page)

To illustrate, consider what happens if you confront your dog with
no
facial signals, at the same time placing it in a high-stress quandary by simply staring. This is perceived as a challenge, an act of aggression. (The eye challenge also exists among humans and can provoke an aggressive reaction, particularly from strangers.) The dog scans your face, compulsively looking for cues. You continue to stare. The dog tosses its head. It yaps plaintively, imploringly. Then it drops its forequarters to the ground, and with its rear still raised, attempts to draw you into play, defusing the confrontation. Motionless, expressionless, you stare on. The dog lies down and rolls on its back in a posture of submission, beside itself with anxiety at the inexplicable aggression from a dominant pack member who refuses to communicate.

The dog, then, draws us out of the self and into the social world of action and reaction, allowing us to forget the fears and doubts and cares and sorrows of solitary confinement and throw ourselves into the rough-and-tumble competition of a hierarchical life.

A proper dog is therefore good with children. It will take their abuse with its good, subservient nature and not strike back. Which makes this affable creature a fine subject on which a young human can practice its humanity.

***

Which brings us back to the topic of friendship, equality, and teasing. A quality tease had to meet certain criteria. It could not inflict injury or pain. Irritation, yes, of course, but no pain. It had to be clever, a challenge to the "master's" ingenuity, but friendly teasing was intended only to exasperate, and any sign of real anger brought an immediate halt to the campaign.

An example of my ingenuity was to feed King or Duchess a tablespoon of peanut butter. Incredulous at its good fortune, either dog would lap the stuff from the spoon, then spend the next fifteen minutes with head cocked to one side or the other while trying to dredge the oily gob from the roof of its mouth with the back of the tongue while I howled with glee in my superior intellect.

My greatest triumph occurred when I was seven years of age and had moved with my parents to an old, rundown farm near Doylestown in eastern Pennsylvania. One day, shortly after we had moved in, I was exploring near the barn while Duchess was snuffling about for odors in the grass, holding her short, stiff tail in the air like a flagstaff. I found a short piece of rope, held it in my hand, and stared. Then my gaze traveled to Duchess's tail. And then, naturally, came the inspiration. Why not tie the rope to the tail? Why not? No further reason was needed.

I wrapped the rope around her tail several times and secured it with a simple knot. Looking at my handiwork, my miniature human mind noticed the other end of the rope. Why not tie it to Duchess's hind leg? So I did. I did because I could. Just as I finished the second knot, Duchess took a small step, which drew the rope taut and jerked her tail. This triggered a reflexive leap which nearly yanked her tail from its socket. The first leap triggered a second, which triggered a third, and Duchess disappeared over the horizon as yelps of terror came wafting back.

Why do such events strike us as funny? Why do children, particularly boys, frequently tease animals in cultures around the world? Are we practicing our dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, the creatures of the land? Now it is play, but that same intellect will soon abandon all pretext and the game will be for life and death. Years later, after we have lived and suffered and endured the loss of those we loved, animal as well as human, then the thought of what we have visited on helpless creatures makes some of us cringe, for we have come to understand the helplessness in which the animal stands before us.

Despite my ingenuity, however, my favorite tease was simply an act of niggling affection, good for whiling away the idle afternoons, and it was merely to tickle the fur between the toes with a straw or a blade of grass while the dog slept. At first there would be no effect, but soon the toes would begin to twitch, then the foot would pull back in a sleeping reflex, and then, if I persisted, the foot would thrash around to rid itself of the pesky irritation. Finally the dog would raise his head and stare at me with a look of weary patience as if to say "Is everyone having fun?" Usually I would desist, feeling a vague twinge of what I later learned was shame.

***

One night I tried the toe-tickle with Darwin. He had been shedding his whiskers, and I found a handsome, snow-white specimen lying on the brown floorboards. As I picked it up, memories of my youth came up from the archives, and I could not resist the perverse urge to revisit my transgressions.

Darwin lay on his side, submerged in slumber, and I bent over and began working on his hind feet. At first there was no response. I persisted, of course. Then the left leg twitched, then it jerked, then it kicked out spasmodically. I laughed the thin, whiny laugh of the teaser and continued. Aside from kicking out, Darwin appeared to be unaffected. His eyes remained closed and he seemed to be sleeping, which meant his kicking out was purely reflexive, therefore unconscious.

That was not sufficient. No self-respecting teaser could let it go at that. Any tease worthy of respect had to bring forth a conscious outburst of perplexity, frustration, irritation. Only then would it have succeeded. So I proceeded to Darwin's forepaws and again applied the whisker to the fur between his toes.

As before, the forepaws began to twitch. Sensing success, I increased the tickle rate. The right forepaw pulled in to tuck itself away from the irritation. I turned to the left forepaw. It twitched a few times. I bent over to redouble my efforts. The left forepaw then shot out ... Followed by the right forepaw ... Followed by Darwin's entire body, including his mouth, which was opened very wide.

It happened so fast that it took a second for comprehension to set in. When it did, I realized that I was in a predicament. Forepaws—foreclaws—were grasping my left ankle, which was also clamped firmly in Darwin's jaws. Pinpoint fangs and knife-edged carnassials were pressing into my flesh hard enough to cause pain, but not hard enough to break the skin. Then, to my astonishment, Darwin turned his head slightly, and while keeping his hold, glared at me from the corner of his left eye, ears laid back, pupil dilated. I found myself staring into a black hole of anger which led straight to the bottom of my ancestry, and there it produced a voice.

"How do you like them apples, Pal?"

***

Now, if you inquire into the nature of intelligence as a biological trait, you soon come to the topic of survival. Like bodily organs—heart, kidney, liver, spleen, and so on—intelligence would not exist were it not vital to survival upon the face of this glorious blue-green planet. Therefore, the essence of intelligence is the ability to make the right decision for the circumstances. Smart is as smart does.

If you follow this reasoning to its logical end, you find yourself at the proposition that life is inherently intelligent. Nor does this intelligence require brain, because most living things do not have brains. Yet they respond appropriately to the world about them; otherwise they would not exist. The sugar maple, as good an example as any from the plant kingdom, alters its physiology for the onset of extreme cold, which would otherwise kill its cells. It sheds its leaves so the snow does not weigh down its branches and break them off, and it enters the winter prepared for the forces. Taking this notion to its ultimate conclusion, life is not merely intelligent: Life is intelligence.

As I peered down at my ankle with Darwin attached, I gazed upon the native intelligence of life and it spoke to me. It spoke the intuitive language of posture and gesture that lies beneath self-conscious intellect, and its voice was clear and unequivocal. Its message was profound. It comprehended all. The sense lay in the image, and this is how the logic went:

Darwin wasn't begging me to desist, as a dog would. He was
telling
me; with his teeth pressing into my flesh he held all the power. Clearly he was restraining himself and he was doing so in expectation of my next move. He was negotiating! Having no time to fabricate a conscious thought, I knew in this flash of awareness that he had pulled a
coup d'état
and turned the peck order upside down. Now
he
was dominant.

In the same instantaneous flash, my instincts weighed the terms that Darwin was offering: My ankle for a few idle laughs and a trip to the emergency room. A no-brainer, literally. A root could figure it out.

"Niiiiiicce Daaarwin! Gooooooooood boy!!!!!" I whined. I bent down ever so slowly, holding out my hand ever so submissively. So very gingerly, so very delicately, I extended my hand to pet him, watching his eyes for the slightest sign of agitation, and finally, sensing permission granted, I so, so, very, very gently touched his head and ran my hand slowly, slowly down his neck and back, understanding for the first time in my life the thrill of disabling a bomb.

***

We had arrived at a new level in our relationship. I could have invoked my humanity, put on boots, and continued to tease him. I could have insisted on dominance and smashed him down. But that would have ruined a friendship based on the equality of souls; to force him down would have crippled the love between me and this small creature.

From this attempt to tease Darwin, I learned that respect is a tool for dealing with the harsh realities not only of the animal peck order but of the human hierarchy as well. When you respect another being, you are restraining your self. You curb the urge to put him down, force him onto a lower rung of the dominance ladder. Showing respect, you defer voluntarily, thus accepting the other as an equal on the same rung. Nor does the object of your respect have to be a human being; it can be any being.

I saw, too, that respect exists in two forms or levels. The first is based on the fear of retribution, as Darwin illustrated with his fangs, and is therefore forced on others from without. This is the respect found among animals in their social interactions. It is found widely in human societies in the enforcement of law and among nations in the prominent display of military arms. It is the respect that parents have demanded during five thousand years of civilization in the rearing of children and, until recently, was taught over a parent's knee. The good parent pointed out that this humiliating position could be avoided if the child respected others, respected property, respected the law, respected God, and proceeded down the list of civilized restraints.

The second level of respect is relatively sublime because it comes from within. It is not imposed through the threat of reprisal. You enjoy the act of deferring to others because you have learned that like begets like, and as you treat others with respect, so they respect you. When the day comes that you realize this humble fact—that is the day you become an adult. This too, I learned from Darwin.

T
HE WEEKS PASSED
. Our bond deepened, grew more subtle. Things were good. One afternoon at the beginning of March, I was sitting at my desk, writing and pondering, when Darwin came down the hall to my office. He walked slowly, tentatively, as if he weren't sure where he wanted to go, and while his movement appeared normal at first glance, something was not right. The sort of thing you don't recognize at the time but notice with shock later, in retrospection. He walked into my office and meowed softly, a sigh of weariness and melancholy. He wandered over to the window behind my chair and crouched to jump onto the sill, where he liked to stretch out and gaze down on the neighbor's garden through half-closed eyes. He tried to jump, but he could not get off the ground and fell back feebly.

He tried again, pawing weakly at the sill, his white booties soft against the surface of the wall. Then he sank slowly to the floor, his footpads leaving eight parallel smudges in long streaks on the flat whiteness of the wall as his paws slid slowly downward.

Such a small, quiet act. The mind's cold blue eye observed, taking notes. Whatever was happening to Darwin bore no resemblance to the gradual loss of weight and spirit that the feline leukemia virus was supposed to cause. I had prepared myself for that, primed myself to watch for the slow incursions on life, but this display did not match the medical prognosis. Electrified with panic, I ran down the stairs to the storeroom, pulled the transport box from the shelf, strode back up the stairs, and picked Darwin up. He offered himself limply, without spirit, and I placed him gently in the dark interior of the box. I knew then that whatever the matter was, it was serious.

***

Dr. Mader lifted Darwin up, laid him on the stainless steel examining slab, looked in his mouth.

"His gums are pale—not getting enough oxygen. Let's keep him overnight." With one needle he took a blood sample. With another he gave a shot of tetracycline. Then a young technician picked Darwin up and carried him into the inner sanctum of the medical room. Somewhere within, a cat mewled and a small dog yapped inside their cubicles of stainless steel.

I returned home to a lonely space. Darwin's water bowl sat on the kitchen floor and his food bowl rested clean and shiny on the kitchen counter. Everywhere I looked I saw his limp, listless body in the assistant's arms, the stainless steel door shutting behind them. The cold mind, the rational one, then rose from my body to observe my writhing emotions. Why do these images of Darwin come up, asked the blue intellect? Why does the brain produce clear images of Darwin when he is not here? Why does the brain produce such pain on the absence of a mere cat? The questions were now posted. Subsequent observations, subsequent cogitations might produce the answers.

At nine the next morning the telephone rang. The doctor's voice cut straight to Darwin's diagnosis. His blood had tested positive for a new disease, feline infectious anemia, commonly called by its initials, F.I.A. Feline infectious anemia was caused by a rickettsial bacterium,
Haemobartonella felis,
which attaches itself to red blood cells, inducing the cat's immune system to mistake its own cells for bacterial cells and destroy them, causing acute anemia. That is why Darwin's gums were pale. Feline infectious anemia frequently appears in cats already infected with the feline leukemia virus and it moves fast. If not treated aggressively, it kills in a matter of days. Darwin would have to remain hospitalized until treatment was effective.