Still holding the drooping dead Manx, my dad gritted his capped teeth and said, “Camille, it’s still a kitten.” Through a tight smile, he hissed, “That damned thing will live for frigging forever.” He gave the furry corpse a shake, smirking, and said, “With this one, maybe she could call her boyfriend to perform a Lazarus number.”
“If that’s the kitty that our little Maddy has her heart set on…,” my mom said, and she reached into the wire cage and collected the shivering orange puffball, “… then that’s the kitten she should have.” Standing so as to allow the cameras full access to the gesture, turned toward them in a slight cheat, she settled the warm handful into my care. At the same time, in a whispered aside to my dad, she said, “Don’t worry, Antonio.” She motioned for him to lean down and read the index card.
And at that, a photographer representing Cat Fancy magazine stepped forward, said, “Smile!” and we were, all of us, blinded by the flash.
DECEMBER 21, 10:44 A.M. PST
Mother of the Year
Gentle Tweeter,
I never imagined it would be too awfully difficult to be a good mother. That’s why my own mother seemed like such a disappointment. Really, what onerous efforts did successful motherhood require? One had only to accumulate a sufficient deposit of fresh spermatozoa within one’s womb, and then await the release of a viable egg. From what I could suss out, the whole process seemed more or less automated. The actual birthing involved staffing a sterile, tiled room with an entire documentary film crew, all the grips and gaffers and sound engineers, the cameramen and assistant directors and makeup artists. I’ve seen the result: My mother blissed out on an intravenous Demerol drip, spread-eagled on a kind of vinyl dais with special leg rests. A stylist is powdering down the shine on her meticulously waxed pubis, and—voilà—the ooze-colored bulb of my newborn noggin pops out. Chapter one: I am born. This miraculous celluloid moment is absolutely revolting. My lovely mother winces a single grimace, but otherwise her dazzling smile remains intact as my slime-slickened miniature self comes corkscrewing out of her steaming innards. Swiftly am I followed into the world by an equally not-attractive afterbirth. Even then, no doubt I was hoping the attendant physician would give me a good wallop. A real public thrashing. Only a child raised in such complete love and privilege could crave a savage beating as fervently as I did.
Usually my mother played a copy of the video whenever people gathered for my birthday. “We got it in a single take,” she’d always say. “Madison was a lot skinnier back then—thank God!” And she’d always get a rollicking laugh at my expense. Such flank attacks are why I so longed for my parents to honestly sock me in the kisser. My blackened eye would trumpet what small torments I daily endured.
You, Gentle Tweeter, you no doubt saw the stills from the birthing film that People magazine published. My heartless Swiss school chums certainly saw them, and until the day I died I was to regularly find these photographs—a me the size of regurgitated food, the red of a ripe tomato smeared with cheesy pap and squirming at the end of a ropy umbilical cord—these were stealthily affixed to the back of my sweater with adhesive tape, or they were published in place of my annual portrait in the school yearbook.
Once I was born, I could see for myself that motherhood required no special skills. My general impression was that various glands come to the fore, and you’re rendered essentially a puppet or a slave to the timing of bodily secretions—colostrum, piddle, doo-doo. You’re always consuming or voiding some vital gunk.
It’s this full comprehension of motherhood that prompted me to give my kitten, Tigerstripe, a better upbringing than I had endured. I vowed to show my own mother how this job should properly be done. “Put some clothes on, you people!” I’d admonish my naked parents on the beaches of Nice or Nancy or Newark. “Do you want my kitty to grow up to be a pervert?” I’d locate their pungent stash of hashish and flush it down the toilet, saying, “You might not care about the safety of your child, but I do care about mine!”
Granted, as a distraction from religion, the cat worked perfectly. I no longer returned Jesus’ calls during dinner. Instead, I carried Tigerstripe everywhere in the crook of my elbow, lecturing in a stage whisper, always within earshot of my folks, “My mommy and daddy might be drug-hungry sex zombies, but I’ll never allow them to hurt you.” For their part, my parents were simply glad that Jesus and I had broken up. Thus, they acquiesced as I carried my Tigerstripe with me at all times, in Taipei and Turin and Topeka. He slept curled beside me in my various beds in Kabul and Cairo and Cape Town. At the breakfast table in Banff or Bern, I said, “We don’t like nonfat, fair-trade tofu sausage, and we request that you no longer serve it to us.” In Copenhagen, I announced, “We would like another chocolate éclair, or we refuse to attend the opening of La Bohème tonight.” Needless to say, Tigerstripe proved himself an excellent companion at the opera, largely sleeping, yet by his mere presence egging my allergic parents to barely suppressed fits of outrage. At La Scala and the Met and the Royal Albert Hall, a trail of shed cat hair and leaping fleas followed us everywhere.
The more I distanced myself in the exclusive company of my new kitten, the more my dad perused the photographs and the files of destitute orphans available for adoption. The more that I isolated myself, the more my mom surfed real estate listings on her notebook computer. Neither of them mentioned it, but despite their soy-based machinations, my stewardship of Tigerstripe resulted in a very fat little kitten. Feeding him appeared to make him happy, and making Tiger happy made me happy, and after only a couple of weeks of overfeeding, to carry him was like lugging around a Louis Vuitton anvil.
It wasn’t in Basel or Budapest or Boise, but one afternoon I came upon the doorway to a darkened screening room. It was in our house in Barcelona, and I was passing in the hallway when I saw the door was slightly ajar. From the darkness within, I heard a combination of caterwauls, an inharmonious duet like alley cats expressing their ardor. Holding my eye to the narrow opening where the door had not fully met its frame, I could see a writhing, paste-covered blob on the movie screen within. The squalling was that gelatinous creature, my infant self, clearly not happy to be delivered unto this harsh glare of lights, documentary filmmakers, and burning sage. And seated alone in the center of the otherwise empty seats was my mother.
She pressed a telephone to the side of her face as she watched that, the tiresome video of my new life beginning. Her shoulders shuddered. Her chest heaved. Inconsolably she sobbed, “Please listen to me, Leonard.” Her cheeks shining, she swiped at her tears with her free hand. “I know it’s her fate to die on her birthday, but please, don’t let my baby girl suffer.”
DECEMBER 21, 10:46 A.M. PST
My Beloved Is Felled by a Mysterious Condition
Gentle Tweeter,
Within days of my adopting him, Tigerstripe swelled as large as a popcorn ball, then swelled to the size of a brioche, feeling as spongy soft as homemade fudge. He had days before ceased going wee in his cat box. Likewise, his plaintive mewing stopped, so now I was compelled to cry in the manner of a ventriloquist, holding my lips fixed in a frozen rictus of a smile as I forged merry kitten sounds for my parents’ benefit.