At Casey Key that season we witnessed a triumph of cat co-operation which Roger and Geoffrey never again topped, at least not for an audience.
There were raccoons in the mangrove and water-oak thickets on the bay side. Our bay shore had been cleared. The thickets began at either side. A narrow dock extended straight out into the water. Dorothy had wanted to feed the raccoons some chicken skin, so she threw it out into the shallow water.
She called me to the kitchen that afternoon to see the raccoon. He was a dozen feet from the bay shore and in about six inches of water. It was low tide. His soaked legs gave him a skinny look. He was fumbling around on the bottom with his clever brown hands, finding the bits of skin, putting them in his mouth. When he searched by sense of touch alone, he would survey the bay shore, turning his head back and forth, evidently aware of resident cats.
Suddenly he saw Roger skulking quite carefully down through the tall grass which grew around the uprights to a short wooden water tower on the left. He settled down into the grass, out of our sight and apparently out of sight of the raccoon.
Then Geoffrey appeared from the left. He came ambling across the open yard behind the house. The raccoon froze, staring at him. We could not believe that Geoff was unaware of the raccoon not forty feet from him. Geoff acted goofy. He pounced at some small grasshoppers. He went up onto his hind legs like a kitten to bat at a yellow butterfly. We decided that the mighty hunter was putting on a pretty sorry performance. There was an upended boat at the right side of the yard. When Geoff, taking his idle time, disappeared from the raccoon’s view behind the boat, the raccoon started eating again. And Geoffrey, suddenly swift, tense, and utterly businesslike, flattened out and crawled along the yard, staying close to the boat, keeping the boat between him and the raccoon. He stopped when he reached the end of the boat and stayed there, the end of his tail flicking.
Suddenly Roger came galloping out of cover, right down toward the shore. The startled raccoon took off, angling in toward the shore, herded in that direction by Roger. At just the right moment, Geoff dashed out to intercept him. Roger was gaining. The raccoon slowed for just an instant, just long enough for Roger to wind up and give him such a mighty thump on the back flank with his right paw, we heard the impact in the house. Raccoon sped for the mangroves. I think Geoff got one whack at him, too, but I cannot be certain. They made no attempt to follow him into the thicket. They stopped, sat in neighborly fashion, and began to wash.
In retrospect the utterly astounding thing was the absolutely calculated act Geoffrey had put on. See the happy cat? The cat is harmless. The cat is playing with bugs, see? The happy, stupid cat does not even know you are there. Roger had performed well too. Somehow he’d found the sense to wait until Geoff was in position before making his move.
It was at Casey Key that both cats adopted the practice of following me over to the beach when I carried a fish rod and tackle box. If I went over empty-handed, I went alone. On the beach side they would drowse in the shade of the sea grapes beyond the sand and watch me. As soon as I got a fish on, they would come strolling down to see what it might be. I caught a lot of little trash fish off that beach. They would sit and watch me bring it in. If it was a trash fish, a little jack, or a blue runner, I would filet it immediately, rinse the two halves in the Gulf, and give them each a half. After one attempt they had learned the futility of trying to eat raw fish in the dry sand. Tails bannered high, they would walk back up off the beach and settle down in the grass, eat the fish, tidy up, and wait for the next strike. They seemed to understand about people fish. When I caught something we were going to eat, put it on the stringer to clean later, and made the next cast, they would go back to the shade. It always seemed to distress them when I took the rod and tackle box and went the wrong way, got into the boat, and went off into the bay. As long as I could see the dock, I could see them sitting there. When I came back in, when I was still a good distance from the dock, I would see them trudging down from the house.
At that Christmas time in 1951, we were made forcibly aware of the presence of ex-house cats in the brush. They found they could come in the cat window and find food in the kitchen corner. The wrapped presents were under the tree. We went out one night and came back to find the living room filled with the unmistakable tang of tomcat. We tracked it down and found that the torn or toms had staked out our Christmas presents. We opened them that year at arm’s length. A few nights later I heard a noise in the house and got up and turned on the light and watched three strange cats shoot past me and speed out the cat window.
We tried shutting the cat window at night. At intervals during the night our cats would take turns demanding service, and somebody would have to stagger out and let one or the other of them in or out. The twin beds were Hollywood beds without headboards, and the heads of the beds were even with the bedroom window sills. One night I merely unhooked the bottom of the screen and pushed it out, pushed the demanding cat out through the gap, and let the screen swing back. Dorothy suggested, and I agreed, that it was a pretty stupid compromise. We’d have cats walking on us all night long. Roger was the sort of cat you don’t want in bed with you. Geoff would settle down. But Roger was and is a yaffler. I believe James and Pamela Mason invented the word. It applies to a cat which gets on your bed and begins such a noisy, spirited job of washing itself it shakes the bed and makes a pronounced yaffling sound. (Rhymes with waffling.)
But in an extraordinarily short time I could let cats in and out all night long without ever waking up. When they tramped across me, I’d push at the screen, and when they hollered outside, I’d hold the screen out and they’d leap to the sill. It seemed damned undignified to be the abject doorman for a pair of cats, but the arrangement worked the rest of the time we were there. They used their window during the days. Whenever we tried leaving it open at night, we had strangers in for a snack and for loud, emotional serenades.
It was there that some cat put a ragged edge on one of Roger’s ears. He was always covered with scars and scabs under the chin from being mercilessly bitten by small rodents. But this was a visible memo of combat, worn jauntily, rather like a dueling scar acquired at Heidelberg.
It did not give him greater dignity. At seven years, by the standard cat-human ratio, he was nearing fifty. But if you were walking with him, he would suddenly break into a run, go fifteen feet up a palm bole at top speed, then hang there and peer down at you with a maddened gleam in his eye.
It was at the Casey Key house that I stepped on him. I was opening a door and he was underfoot and I stepped back, stumbled upon him, came down with my hard heel on his right front paw in such a way I could not, for a moment, get my weight off him. He screamed bloody murder. I broke no bones, but I did split the pad in one place. The foot became badly swollen, and then it became infected. It turned into such a bad infection that the veterinarian had to open it up and put a drain through it from top to bottom. He suffered visibly. He limped pitifully. And it would irritate me beyond measure to have him walk toward me, pause, give me a baleful glance, then make a wide half circle around where I was standing. He held a grudge.