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Gerald's Web Site
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The Traveling Cat
An excerpts from the book
The Mythology of Cats
by Gerald and Loretta Hausman
Siamese
SOME CATS ARE naturally good traveling companions, while others suffer apoplexy at the mere sight of a suitcase. Cleveland Amory, author of The Cat Who Came for Christmas, speaks of his white cat, Polar Bear, going with the author to Hollywood, and how his friends warned him against "feline foraying." The reason given was that "cats ranked as a fellow traveler on long trips somewhere above alligators and orangutans ".
Amory comments that cats are territorial, and that his cat "didn?ït like anything happening that didn't happen before" - something that, most of us would agree, is a feline tendency. As Arnory reminds us, too, the simple luxury of a hotel room is often missed by the feline visitor' for whom the room is an "uncharted wilderness, around any comer of which lurked dangers which would put to shame a Chamber of Horrors in a wax museum on Hallowe'en."
Of course, what's good for the cat isn't always good for the puss; which to to say that all cats are not the same. Some experts, and Cleveland Amory is one, believe that most cats can accept dislocation, provided it was part of their early training. There must be - to the cat's unwavering eye - a method to our madness; for cats and dogs aike are very big on procedure.
Here, then, are some cases in point that seem to defy the norm of the feline traveler's bias. These are cats who don't mind a bump in the road, who, in fact, don't mind the road. Some actually crave it. A black-striped gray cat we heard about was carried around in a large basket wherever he went from the age of three months,
The cat's name was Samuel Tinker, and as long as he was in his basket, he was in high clover. He stretched out in it, too, full length and whether or not he was skipping across the bounding main on a luxury liner, hanging out in a down-at-heels hotel, or passing through the clamorous cobblestoned streets of a Turkish bazaar, he was perfectly at ease. Samuel was an exemplary feline forayer, and at the height of his career as a traveling cat, he even learned to swim behind a gunboat in a seaport off the North China Coast.
Another remarkable road bum was a fifteen-pound Siamese whom writer Michael Joseph took with him to Bunna. The cat, whose name was Billikin, traveled on trains, survived fires, and at one point escaped from the clutches of a Burmese panther. To the cat's credit, she did it all with a smile.
Perhaps the most amazing of Joseph's traveling felines was the Persian whose rounds about Persia were made on the back of a donkey. The cat accepted this form of travel so readily that when camp broke, and the donkeys were being packed, she'd await the appropriate moment, then fly to the packsaddle in anticipation of her journey. All day she rode along the trail, as content as, well, a cat.
Normally, cats do not mind movement if they can "see with their nose." Such is not the case with an animal shut up in a box where unfamiliar smells lead to the chamber of horrors of a cat's fertile imagination.
Ernest Thompson Seton, author of Wild Animals l Have Known, once stated that a cat carefully examines "the long, invisible, coloured stream the wind is made of." Our cat, Sammie, who, though all black, was a three-quarter Siamese, would check the stream of wind one bright morning and, finding it to her liking, light out upon the road for three to four months?ëalways to return, however, with a seasonal change, or a shift in the weather.
One day a friend of ours, who lived miles away from us, phoned to say, "I think your cat is over at our barn." We drove over there, and there was Sammie, our Siamese. She wasn't a bit glad to see us. We took her with us, and while she said nothing in the car, she looked displeased. When we deposited her in the kitchen of our home, Sammie headed for the back door, which was slightly ajar, and sniffing the wind but once, she was on the road again.
When Sammie did return, sometimes after as many as six months, she would sing (purr) for days on end. All she did was walk around the house, singing, "I'm back, isn't it wonderful? I'm home.
By nightfall, the singing became more modulated, but it still went on for at least a couple of days. Of course, one bright morn when the sky turned a certain indefinable hue and there was some kind of minty freshness on the wind, Sammie would bestir herself, sniff that invisible stream of destiny, and disappear for perhaps another six months. One morning, after fifteen years of parting and returning, Sammie left, never to come back.
Fortunately, we had Moonie, Sammie's seal point son. Moonie never left the house except under extreme duress. He was exactly like Amory's Polar Bear, a nontraveler, or a traveler in the mystic realms of the mind. When it was necessary to move Moonie from the mountains of New Mexico to the pinewood flats of Florida, this feline studied the move from one remove, his face firmly resolved not to budge.
As each article of familiar fumiture was lifted from its characteristic place, Moonie let out a Siamese yowl. Finally, when everything went off in a moving van, Moonie settled down into a disconsolate mood. We had a cat-traveler's box for him, one of those claustrophobic little prisons, and after a brief struggle, Moonie settled in and accepted his fate.
In each new hotel room, Moonie was allowed to leave his jailhouse, and he could move about at will, but he didn't; he stayed put, usually hopping onto our bed and immediately crawling under the covers, where he stayed for the duration of the night.
Actually, our blue-fronted Amazon parrot, George, saw more of the passing countryside than Moonie, and he talked about it more, too. Moonie never said a blessed, or unblessed, word until, after a thousand miles, we got to southwest Florida. Then he yowled quite a bit, presumably telling us of the horror he'd been through at our behest.
Moonie did not like the subtropical atmosphere he'd been forced to live in. Normally an ebullient cat, he grew very glum. He didn't like it. He wanted his old home back; we could see it on his face. He wanted the familiar smells, he hated Florida.
Within a few weeks of arriving in the Sunshine State, Moonie came down with a bad cold, a cough that lingered through the winter. Then one moming we noticed that he had visibly changed. His lovely dark chocolate mask had a frostiness in it. Moonie was going white in the face. In one night this cat had aged ten years. He blinked dimly when we spoke to him, and we could hear him saying, "Go away."
Then we got an idea fostered by Emest Thompson Seton's remark about the invisible stream of wind a cat is dependent upon, and we took Moonie outside for walks with us. We showed him the bright green world of palms and palmettos and we let him sniff the invisible stream that had guided his mother for so many years.
Vaguely, after several outdoor experiences, Moonie began to grow more cheerful. His eyes grew brighter. Each rnoming he went outside and drank the wind. It was spring and there were orange blossoms on the air. We took Moonie to the dock beside our house, and a soft-shelled turtle arose from the dark, tea- colored water. Moonie met the turtle; they practically touched noses.
In no time at all, Moonie settled back into his old ways, comfortable, at last, with this major move from one place to another. He became his old talkative self. He grew strong and confident, and although he was sixteen years old, and looking a bit paunchy, he trimmed down and started to look fit. Most amazing, his mask lost the frost; it got dark again, the color of German chocolate.
Today when people see Moonie, they imagine he is two or three years old. No one guesses his real age. Sometimes we wonder why human beings cannot do what Moonie did - turn back the years and grow young again. When things get us down, when life seems to be out of control, as it was for our Siamese cat, why can't we just take a deep draft of wind, and follow that invisible stream toward our destiny?
The Lore of the Cat
The Siamese was, at one time, a wild species in the Far East, but we have no proof of this. The first Siamese in literature occurs in a five-hundred-year-old manuscript in the National Library at Bangkok, Thailand. King Chulalongkorn (the son of Monkut, whose story is told in The King and I) presented a pair of seal point Siamese cats narned Pho and Mia to the British consul in Bangkok. This began the Westem era of the breed, early in the nineteenth century.
Dark of face and blue-eyed, this chocolate-and-cream-colored cat is as distinct in form as in reputation. Walt Disney's characterization in the cartoon Lady and fhe Tramp presents two Siamese cats of cold, conniving, contrary personality. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth, in terms of breed, for these empathic felines are beautiful to look at and to be around and they are anything but mean-spirited.
The Siamese is a finely boned and vvell-muscled cat, with a tail which is long and thin. The proud, wedge-shaped head bears regally the ancient lineage of this highborn animal. The ears are quite large, and yet proportionate, and the eyes are almond shaped, and the fur short and fine.
There are four kinds of Siamese: the seal point, the blue point, the chocolate point, and the lilac point. These designations refer to the relative darkness of the extremities - face, ears, tail, and feet.
Siamese cat myths often tell of humans whose souls have stayed for a time in the body of this royal cat. It is a cat of longevity, and a cat that confers longevity to its owner. Siamese cats don't like to be patronized or trifled with, and their wish is to be with one person, or perhaps two people at a time. Once, in its long history, the Siamese cat was the guardian of the king of Siam's children, and this accounts for the diversity in the cat's vocalization. No cat has more to say than does the Siamese. If you do not talk to this cat, he will challenge you to do so. Our Siamese will actually put his paw to our lips to make us talk when he thinks we're being too quiet. He simply demands that we speak to him.
Our cat speaks in rounded vowels. Alone, annoyed or dissatisfied, he may let out some strange yowls, but this is true to form; all members of the breed do this as a way of letting out feelings about food, family, friends, anything that is weighing on the mind.
Cats may be the original aromatherapists of the animal world. Aromatherapy is an ancient healing art which came from Asia, the continent of the Siamese cat. The spirit of place, from which we humans achieve a sense of deep rest, can be nurtured through smells. Certain scents bring us back to who we are and meditatively return us to well-being.
If we, whose sense of smell is considerably less than the cat's, can find harmony in the moment of a particular fragrance, then the feline's appreciation must be a thousand times greater. A cat needs to "know" with its nose as much as, if not more than, a dog. For the cat, the nose evaluates more than smell; it takes in mood, time, climate, energy, mind; every nuance that possibly exists on the plane of the present moment can be experienced by a cat's ultrasensihve nose, palate, facial receptors, and whiskers. When a cat is in the "know," and all of these factors are working smoothly, the cat is content. However, when in rapid transit, as our Siamese Moonie was, the knowing is reduced - in a moment - to forgetting.
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