“What does it mean to love an animal, a pet, in my case a cat, in the fierce, entire, and unambivalent way that some of us do?” That’s the opening line of my favorite Alice Adams story, “The Islands,” which is a lovely, oblique story about many things — the aftermath of a death, the imperfection of human relationships, the destruction of beauty in the wake of progress — but most of all about a kind of love that defies easy categorization.
I was thinking of “The Islands” the other night around 10 p.m. as I stood outside in the bitter cold in my pajamas, ringing a bell in order to get my beloved cat Prince to come home right now, damn it. Prince is a fixture in our neighborhood, for better or worse. The neighbors all know him; he sits in the middle of the street and suns himself on the asphalt, making the cars go around him. It’s not exactly ideal.
When I first brought him home, we tried desperately to keep him inside, but unlike other cats I’ve had, he refused to be tamed; when he couldn’t get out, he resorted to beating up Mitty, our other cat, or prowling and rampaging around the house for hours in an attempt to find exits. In a previous life, he’d been living outside, ill, unfixed and flea-ridden, until someone finally trapped him and brought him to the shelter. From the start, indoor living was a complicated proposition for him. He took instantly to sofas and beds and would bully poor Mitty out of them so he could enjoy them himself. But if you opened a window, he became disoriented at the sound of outdoor noises indoors and would cry and climb the shelves.
So we let him out, not without guilt. I got him a nametag and safety collar, which he tore off almost immediately. I got him another, and the same thing happened. After the fifth collar, I gave up and bought him a regular, unsafety collar. Every effort we made in the name of good cat parenting was met with fierce resistance. My friend Barbara was talking with her doctor at an appointment, and the subject of cats came up. “Look at this!” the doctor said and showed her a video on his phone of a cat taunting his cat through a basement window. The bully cat was Prince.
Some of Prince’s other outdoor activities were less amusing. For a while, he was coming back home with bite wounds and claw marks, his ears torn up from fights. Taking him to the vet was an exercise in shame. “We’ve really tried to keep him inside,” I would say, with a weak, ingratiating smile that I hoped would show I was actually a good person. My husband, Steve — who had been dragooned into wrapping the cat in a towel twice a day while I squirted cherry-flavored antibiotic down Prince’s throat — hinted that it wasn’t too late to bring him back to the shelter.
Steve was kidding, sort of, but even if he hadn’t been, the idea of giving Prince up was unthinkable to me. I should explain that Prince’s wild side is paired with a weird dog-like loyalty. He is cuddly and likes to sleep with his paws around my neck. He is good with kids and friendly with strangers. He has occasionally accompanied my daughter down to the school bus stop, and he often needs to be picked up and carried back home when he goes too far on walks with us. Who wouldn’t love a cat like that?
But actually, it’s the wild, unbiddable side of him that I love, or at least it’s the wild side that makes his more domestic qualities shine. The history of cats is less specifically entwined with human pursuits than the history of dogs. Cats were not bred to flush grouse out of the brush or herd sheep or track foxes — not bred for human usage, in other words. A cat is never going to be your bitch. The genetic makeup of the modern domestic cat is, in fact, almost identical to that of its wild ancestors, as anyone who has seen a tiger playing with a ball at the zoo might suspect. I find it immensely gratifying, then, when Prince decides to smush himself up against my face in the middle of the night or when he comes home when called, especially if he’s already had his dinner. These little things make me feel chosen in the purest possible way. If an animal with no instinct toward herd loyalty comes and settles down on your chest at 3 a.m., purring, that, my friends, is nothing less than a miracle.
Prince did eventually come home the other night, although I had to ring that bell for a good half hour, off and on, before he heard me or at least before he deigned to respond. When he finally did, he came rocketing out of the neighbor’s bushes, galloping across the street toward me. The other two (strictly indoor) cats cheered and made a ruckus from the window where they were watching. I opened my arms to receive him. It was like a scene from a Hallmark movie.
But just short of the porch stairs, Prince stopped, sauntered and flattened his ears when I hissed at him to get inside. It’s a thing he does sometimes, just to confirm, I think, that he is still the master, still the raw wildcat who admits of no power higher than his own free will. To love him is to love a little bit of wildness; to care for him is to play steward to a little bit of mystery that will never really be mine. When he finally reached the door, I shoved him inside with my foot to hurry him along, which earned me a swat and a loud meowing protest. I was pissed at him; at bedtime, we ignored each other pointedly.
Sometime in the middle of the night, though, the familiar weight settled down against my chest, and loud rusty purring filled the room. I registered this only dimly, in my sleep. In my dreams, I talked to him, I told him to live forever. The dream cat gazed back at me, regal, mute, but in his beautiful green eyes, I could see plainly the unspoken word that must be the secret byword of all cats, everywhere: Sucker.
Francie Lin is an editor and writer who has a complicated relationship with domestic life. She lives in Florence.