In fact, during all of Geoffrey’s life, he had a special thing about cardboard cartons. Roger liked them, but not to the same degree. Nothing could be unpacked without Geoff establishing himself in the empty box moments after it became empty, looking fatuously content. Though when well he was not interested in sleeping in a box, he definitely wanted one when he was sick. He was restless when sick, and a box was the only thing which would stop his roaming from place to place trying to get comfortable. To Roger a box was more of a game place, a place to hide and pounce from. To Geoff it was ancient security.
We took them back to the apartment and they re-explored every corner of it and settled back into their routine.
At just about that time we were dislodged from our low-rent haven. It was still under rent control, but the house was sold, and the new owner elected to move into our apartment. That was the only legal way we could have been cast adrift.
After dreary rounds of overpriced and depressingly gloomy apartments, we decided to buy a house. Believing in our innocence that a small college town might provide a pleasant atmosphere for the writer, we looked extensively around Clinton, New York, near Utica, where Hamilton College is located, and at last found a large and very pleasant house up on the Hill, almost surrounded by college property. It was being sold by a Mr. Prettyman, the Athletic Director, who had built most of it himself and had not gotten around to finishing off the upstairs, a factor that kept it within our rather optimistic price range.
College Hill, that spring, was the cats’ introduction to the out of doors at ground level. They were tense and apprehensive. It was one hell of a lot of space for small animals. It was full of unfamiliar scents and shapes. Geoff, though the first to adjust, retained a certain wary conservatism about the potential dangers. Roger, after a few exploratory ventures, became entirely foolhardy. I believe that if a bear had appeared, Roger would have made his typically clumsy attempt at stalking it. He seemed to have that quality of egocentricity which made him think nothing would dare eat him.
It was there that we arranged the first cat window for them. You cut a square hole of sufficient size in a window screen, trim the removed portion down a bit, and hinge it back on with two small pieces of wire. A piece of plywood as tall as the exit and as long as the rest of the window opening keeps too much wind from entering on cool days. To the outside of the house, depending on the height above the ground and the agility of the cats, you affix one or two cat shelves in place with angle irons. It helps to have another at sill level, just outside their exit. On cool days when the sun is just right they will take their ease on the shelves, watching the world from a benign height, knowing the retreat hatch is handy.
Roger came and left in silence. Geoffrey left in silence, but would always announce his return. Rahr? Rahr? He would stump through the house toward us, saying, Geoffrey is here. If that announcement was curiously distorted or muffled, it was wise, we learned, to pay attention. He would have a mouthful of victim.
Dorothy and I have tried to make a reasonably accurate estimate of the number of birds Geoff slew in his lifetime. We think that twenty would be the absolute top, and that ten is a more likely figure. Many of those were killed because he caught them before Dorothy learned a system of taking them away from him. We thought the birds were being mangled, and when we leaped at Geoff with shrill cries of consternation, accusation, and dismay, he would give one emphatic crunch and the bird would be dead. I imagine nothing is more futile than trying to convince a cat he is morally wrong to catch birds.
Soon we discovered that the shocked and bedraggled look of the birds was a product of the actual capture, and that Geoff held them in his mouth with an uncanny delicacy. The curve of the fangs held them in place. He was inflicting no wound or bruise.
The proper procedure was to admire him extravagantly, and in the right tone of voice. Geoff, you are a great cat. Stroke his head. Tell him it is a lovely bird. Then he would, more often than not, lay it down gently. If he did not, you could stroke him again and bring thumb and finger around for gentle pressure on the hinges of the jaw. Then you could pick up the undamaged bird, shocked into immobility, and put it in some high, safe place, usually in a shallow cardboard box atop a car or high hedge or edge of a low roof. After minutes of shock-induced lethargy, the bird would suddenly jump up, stare around, and go rocketing off, yelling about its horrid experience.
The well-fed cat is not terribly interested in eating a bird. And apparently the instinct is to bring the game home undamaged. A few times, a very few times, when we were not at home, Geoff would eat a bird. We would find a few feathers by his dish. He was the methodical cat. If you are going to eat something, you take it to where you always eat, and you eat it there. I think we averaged about ten or fifteen birds a year released undamaged.
We cannot remember Roger ever catching a bird. Maybe he grazed a few. He exhibited extreme nervous enthusiasm when Geoff would bring one home, and the problem was to keep him from falling upon it when Geoff set it down.
There was a considerable difference in their hunting technique. I have watched Roger trying to sneak up on something. He worms along on his belly, ears flat, tail thrashing. I think it was the tail which made him so ineffectual. Secrecy seems improbable when the tail is whacking the grass and the brush. And possibly his breathing was audible. It might have seemed to any bird that a rackety little steam engine was slowly approaching. Roger’s proficiency level limited him to bugs and beetles, small hoptoads, the infrequent butterfly, and, on a very few triumphant occasions, a rodent. It would please me to give him credit for one entire rabbit, but the implausibility of it would seem to make Geoffrey the captor and donor.
We were privileged several times to witness Geoff’s curious and effective hunting method. I suspect that it was only one of his methods. I believe that it was the result of his lumpy feet, odd gait, and unexpected agility. I think he invented the system, finding that he was not very apt at sneaking up on things.
He would go trudging across the lawn, frowning, staring straight ahead, obviously unintersted in anything around him. His route would take him under small trees. Birds would scold him and, growing bolder, come down into the small trees to cuss him out at close range. One of them would get just a little too close. That solemn, square cat could suddenly, without warning, without even seeming to break stride, go five feet into the air and clap those two front feet onto the abusive bird just as it took off from the limb it had thought safely out of reach. In effect, he was using himself as a lure. Perhaps this system is not unique, but I have never heard of any other cat using it.
Our property was bordered on one side by what was known as the Saunders Strip. This was where a Professor Saunders, a delightful old man with astonishingly young eyes, bred tree peonies in great profusion, huge sizes, and uniquely beautiful colors.
One day Dorothy called me from my typewriter to see what Roger was doing, and there was enough urgency in her voice to bring me on the run. There was Roger in the taller grass of the Saunders Strip beyond our lawn, stalking a magnificent cock pheasant larger than himself. Stalking is not exactly the word. He was following it, using the posture and attitudes of the stalk, about six feet behind it. But the bird was entirely aware of him. It would stop and look back at him with assured, beady malevolence, and Roger would stop. When the bird moved on, he would follow.