A Cat Named Darwin Read Online Free Page B

enjoying the rights of ownership, primarily sleeping in the sun or the shade and absorbing bliss. In the evening I would call him to dinner and feed him in the kitchen, after which he would walk into the living room and curl up at my feet or jump onto the couch and sleep next to me while I read or watched TV. When I went to bed, he went outside to enjoy the night.
    I began to notice details of his appearance and behavior. His facial markings, for instance, led the eye on endless excursions through a labyrinth of fine markings. A line ran back from the outside corner of his eye and met another line running up from below to trace the outline of a mask. Five lines proceeded back from his forehead and converged in a cap of orange. They emerged from the cap and continued down to the base of his neck, where they coalesced into a single wide band that extended to the base of his tail. The tail, too, had its visual fascination, not for subtle complexity in its markings, but for the regular, half-inch spacing between the eight orange rings. But always my gaze returned to those thick circles of dark orange on each side that led the eye around and around, into a hypnotic trance.
    I could not help but notice that the cat spent much time staring back at me, appearing to seek out my eyes or my face. I would walk away and sneak a backward glance and find him staring at me from behind. What this meant I had no idea, but the staring became a constant habit.
    Then, of course, there were the fleas. They arrived in my flat like Ulysses' crew clinging to Cyclops' sheep, and the crew was impressive. Wherever the cat chose to sleep he left behind hundreds of tiny white eggs that seemed to glow against the black leather of the couch. There was no choice but to comb him as often as needed to remove these parasites—as much for my sake as for the cat's. I did not want to share my flat with vermin. I began to groom him every day and soon discovered that his reaction appeared to be hard-wired. In other words, he was incorrigible.
    He tolerated, even appreciated, the combing of his head, neck, shoulders, and flanks, but any attempt to do his tail or hind legs provoked the most bloodcurdling threats of violence. This placed us in a dilemma. As a human being, I concluded that his legs MUST be combed. Fleas were having their way, and that could not be tolerated. Even though the cat objected, my superior overview of life trumped his right to dignity and he would have to endure a brief grooming each day.
    So I called upon my superior human intellect to devise a scheme. I would wait until he was ravenous, and while he ate I would attempt to comb his hindquarters. This revealed that cats are able to yowl while frantically gulping food. They are also able to turn with blinding speed and rake their claws across the hand that feeds them.
    Over the course of the next week I tried wearing leather gloves. The cat tried waiting before he ate until my hand came within range. I discovered that leather gloves were not the best protection against the cat's armament. Finally, having exhausted all options, I was forced to concede that there was no alternative but to call off my campaign against the fleas thriving in the dense cover of the hindquarters. And so the cat gave me a lesson in respect, revealing the fundamental truth that when push comes to shove, respect is a subcase of fear, that reprisal and respect cannot be separated.
    Meanwhile, despite my cavalier presumption that cats meant nothing to me, this cat drew my attention compulsively. I could not be in the same room without glancing repeatedly at him, just as he gazed back at me, sometimes for hours. The thought never occurred that the more attention I devoted to his presence, the more memories my brain would store away.
    One day, not more than two weeks after our meeting, I found myself thinking offhandedly about names. The cat needed a name. This had nothing to do with how long I intended to keep the