3 House Lion

When we have guests over, Bingley will come out to say hello--nothing elaborate, just a sort of "mew," meaning something like "I'm not sure about you yet, but you may stay for a bit if my people say it's all right."  Occasionally he'll jump into someone's lap or sit beside someone on the floor.  Once we had over three friends who play guitar so they could jam together, and Bingley sat in cat stance for as long as they played, swinging his tale back and forth in time to the music.  Sometimes he'll sit in my lap and monitor the conversation, or if he gets comfortable but doesn't find the conversation to his liking, he'll settle in for a nap. Music always grabs his attention.  He's fond of strings, especially acoustic guitar, and choral pieces, and he likes jazz and Classical music.  He doesn't care for loud rock music, and he finds Blues a little too depressing.  He likes bagpipe music if one doesn't play it too loud. Once, when we had company and had a nice fire going--the fireplace is probably the most special and interesting feature in our little house--a guest was asking about Bingley's habits.  "Does he go outside, or is he a house cat?" she asked. Bingley was sitting by the fire, enjoying the warmth and listening to Alison Krauss, and he turned to me to hear my answer. “Since we got him at the shelter, we've kept him inside, in case he went through any trauma.  He's a house cat now," I said. I could tell by the look on his face that he wasn't entirely happy with that answer.  He began to walk down the hallway, but he turned, and with a little flick of his head, he motioned me to follow.  So I went with him to his room. He stood there for a moment and looked at me seriously. "House lion," he said. "House lion?  Oh, I understand. Sorry: no offense." "Right," he said. From that day on I have referred to him as our house lion, which he much prefers.  He's not a small fellow, and from the side you can definitely see the lion profile--though more of the mountain lion than the African lion. He still wasn't saying much in those days, just a word or two.  He'll say rather more than that now, when something's on his mind. On Friday we were having an unusually warm day for this time of year, and we were sitting in the window box with the window open enjoying a cool (rather than filthy cold) breeze and listening to the birds. Two cardinals were having a dust-up in the maple tree out front, and one chased the other into the burning bush at the edge of the house.  Instead of their usual plink, they made a ruckus, giving each other the serious business until one flew off across the street.  The other danced up and down a few times to proclaim victory, then dashed off after his opponent, apparently ready for more. "Must have been territorial behavior," I suggested. "Theological argument," Bingley replied. He didn't look straight at me, just turned his eyes a bit in my direction. I tried not to guffaw.  Bingley can tell a joke and barely break a smile.  It's one of his talents, though not especially one of mine, so I value it especially.

2 A Few Words

You may not believe this, especially since Bingley was so quiet when he first got home with us, but before too long he began to teach us a few words and to understand a few of ours. You already know about how he chose his name and that he is a foodie if not a gourmet. One evening, as the tide of dinner-hour was rolling in, I asked my wife if she thought Bingley was ready for his food.He was sitting in my lap, and when he heard the word food, he stood up, looked me straight in the eye, and placed one of his paws on my chin. I asked him, "Are you ready for food?" He said, "Mmao?" The initial sound is a kind of trilled m--I can't make it, but it's one of Bingley's standard phonemes. I tried my best to duplicate his sound anyway. "Is that what you call it: Mao?" "Mmao!" He said, and he jumped off my lap and dashed to the cupboard where we keep his food. When I got there, he said it again. I fed him as quickly as I could, and he seemed happy as could be. After supper--his and ours--he came back and jumped in my lap, turned around a couple times, settled down, and sighed loudly and contentedly.  He had taught us our first important word. A few days later we found out that his word for milk is the same as ours--his is just higher pitched.  Cat language must be tonal.  We give him Cat-Sip, which doesn't have the chemicals problematic to cats.  I asked if he wanted milk, and he replied "Miiilk," without the trilled m and with a rising and then falling tone, higher pitched than his usual vocalizations. I love the sound he makes when he drinks: a hearty laplaplaplaplap that you can hear across the room.  He came away from his drink with his eyes scrunched a little and with a smile on his face:  his usual signs of relaxed pleasure. One day when I got home a little late from work (and so late for his dinner time), as I fumbled with the key I could hear Bingley on the other side of the door repeating "Myao-rao, myao-rao," with stress and higher pitch on the second syllable: I've since learned that means either "open the door!" or "let me through!" I don't think there's a "please" in there, though. I've heard him say the traditional meow only once. A tomcat from a few houses down was strolling through our back yard and decided to stop to relieve his bladder at our crabapple tree.  Bingley and I were watching through the back window.  Bingley's meow was more like a howl, a "meee-YOWW!" followed by a hiss--another sound he's seldom made, at least with us.  He must have felt his property was being invaded, even though he stays indoors. We had a lot more yet to learn about language, and so did Bingley. For instance, every morning he gets the "Kitty Tour": I say the words, and he runs over and scrambles up on my shoulder, and we walk around the inside of the house stopping at all the spots where he finds it's important to sniff or rub his chin and leave a little scent. The tour was easier for me when we got him and he weighed eleven pounds. Now he's about eighteen, so I get a better workout than I used to. He just calls it "tour," since he doesn't see himself as a kitty. But that's a subject for the next post. 

1 Finding a Home

When we met Bingley, he was in jail for vagrancy.

At the shelter they couldn’t tell us why someone found him alone, only that a man had turned in this stray cat at the local shelter.  They told us that he was between a year and two years old, but couldn’t say if his people had too many cats, or if he had bitten someone, or if he had just strayed away.  His paw pads were perfectly pink and soft and clean, so he hadn’t had a rough life for a long time.  He was already long and thin–not starved, but hardly overfed, either.

My wife asked to see a dog-cat, a cat with the friendly, interactive traits of a dog.

The kind woman there said, “I have just the cat for you,” and she brought him out.

He ran up to my wife, jumped in her lap, and buried his face in the crook of her elbow, and he sat there cuddling for twenty minutes.  When she put him down, he came over to me and did the same.  Then he looked me right in the eyes and said nothing, but his look said, “I want to go home with you.”

In case you’re wondering, he’s a buff tabby with white ascot and socks and jade-green eyes.

“Let’s see if we can find another:  he may need a buddy,” my wife said.  The volunteer brought out a few other cats and some toys.  I picked up a fuzzy ball and tossed it to Bingley, and he began to bat it around.  One of the other cats came over and looked interested.  Bingley batted the ball to him, and sat back to watch as the second cat played with it.  I had never seen that behavior before:  a cat sharing his toys.  A good sign . . .

We couldn’t take him home that night–we had to go through the adoption paperwork and the checking of our references–but we got him in a couple days and took him home.  None of the other cats seemed to want to interact with us, though they played with one another readily enough.  Bingley wanted to cling to my shoulder, but we had to put him in the carrier for the ride home.  He didn’t like the confined space of the carrier, but he still said nothing.

When we got him home, he got out of the carrier and again climbed immediately on my shoulder.  We gave him a tour of the house and set him down in my study, which has a window out to the front garden:  the volunteers had told us not to give him run of the house, but to keep him in one room for a couple days until he got accustomed to us and our home.  We gave him food and water regularly, and he got blankets and toys, and we told him he could use the books or the computer in the if he wanted to.

On his first morning home, I went in to see if he was ready to come out.  He had disappeared.

I looked all over the room, everywhere except behind the bookcase.  I thought he couldn’t be there, because from my point of view the bookcase sat right up against the wall.

He had tucked himself in behind the bookcase.

I asked him if he wanted to come out for breakfast, and he came right out.

He has always been a food hound.

After the first day, we left the door to his room (formerly my study) open, but he didn’t come out until the third day, though we would stand poised by the door looking out.  And he still hadn’t said anything.  But at last he began to explore the house.

A few days later he told me his name.  At the shelter they had named him Pilot.  That didn’t work.  I tried calling him that, and he gave nothing close to a response.  Would you?  When I heard the name, it made me think of “Pilate,” and while I’ve always thought Pontius Pilate got a bad rap in the Bible, I couldn’t call a cat by that name.  So we tried every reasonable name we could think of from Spot to Shostakovich.  Nothing worked.

One evening my wife and I were sitting on the couch watching Pride and Prejudice, our favorite version with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.  Bingley, then still Nameless, jumped up and sat between us.  That in itself was a big step:  he hadn’t yet got up onto anything except us–perhaps his time in jail, caged, had kept his thoughts low to the ground.  But he sat and watched the movie with us.

Shortly Austen’s character Bingley appeared on screen.  You may know the character:  unfailingly kind and pleasant, and everyone likes him.  And the thought struck me:  he’s just like the cat!

I turned to the cat:  “Is that you?  Are you Bingley?”

He looked back at me, then scrunched his eyes closed, nodded, and spoke to me for the first time:  nothing dramatic yet, just a confirmatory “mmrow.”  Then he turned his head back and watched the rest of the show.

He doesn’t watch much television, but he likes Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and tennis.

From that day he has answered to the name “Bingley,” which he chose for himself, and so far he has lived with us for more than eight and a half years, our devoted dog-cat.