he came to the door one night wet thin beaten andterrorizeda white cross-eyed tailless catI took him in and fed him and he stayed grew to trust me until a friend drove up the drivewayand ran him overI took what was left to a vet who said,"not muchchance…give him these pills…his backboneis crushed, but is was crushed before and somehowmended, if he lives he'll never walk, look atthese x-rays, he's been shot, look here, the pelletsare still there…also, he once had a tail, somebodycut it off…" I took the cat back, it was a hot summer, one of thehottest in decades,
I put him on the bathroom floor, gave him water and pills, he wouldn't eat, hewouldn't touch the water,
I dipped my finger into itand wet his mouth and I talked to him,
I didn't go any-where,
I put in a lot of bathroom time and talked to him and gently touched him and he looked back atme with those pale blue crossed eyes and as the days wentby he made his first movedragging himself forward by his front legs(the rear ones wouldn't work)he made it to the litter boxcrawled over and in,it was like the trumpet of possible victoryblowing in that bathroom and into the city,
Irelated to that cat-I'd had it bad, not thatbad but bad enough one morning he got up, stood up, fell back down andjust looked at me. "you can make it," I said to him. he kept trying, getting up falling down, finallyhe walked a few steps, he was like a drunk, therear legs just didn't want to do it and he fell again, rested,then got up. you know the rest: now he's better than ever, cross-eyedalmost toothless, but the grace is back, and that look inhis eyes never left… and now sometimes I'm interviewed, they want to hear aboutlife and literature and I get drunk and hold up my cross-eyed,shot, runover de-tailed cat and I say,"look, lookat this!" but they don't understand, they say something like,"yousay you've been influenced by Celine?" "no," I hold the cat up,"by what happens, bythings like this, by this, by this!" I shake the cat, hold him up in the smoky and drunken light, he's relaxed he knows… it's then that the interviews endalthough I am proud sometimes when I see the pictureslater and there I am and there is the cat and we are photo-graphed together. he too knows it's bullshit but that somehow it all helps.
