Last evening at twilight I was sitting at a table next to one of the high windows in my new apartment. Through the branches of the linden trees on the village green, I could see a strip of orange stretching across the plain beyond the wooded hills of Nointel, the Parisian suburb where I now live.
It was one of those peaceful, perfect evenings and I was breathing easy after a break in another brutal heatwave that brought days of relentless sun with temperatures hovering around 100°. A breeze floated in through the open but unscreened windows (few people here have screens to keep out the bugs and you have to get used to sharing your home with mosquitos, flies, spiders and other winged and crawling creatures). Almost dozing, I was enjoying the wind’s invisible caress when I detected a faint clinking sound, as if one of the flowerpots on the windowsill was being moved.
I turned my head and saw my neighbor’s cat about to descend from the window ledge to the top of a wooden chest just below. Night had almost fallen. The silent incursion of a big, bushy black cat frightened me. I cried out and the animal ran away.
Where I now live—though not in my apartment—at least a dozen cats have the run of the place. They lounge in the entrance hall, atop the mailboxes, and in the parking lot beneath the cars. To get them back inside at night, their owners run around the garden rattling containers of cat food. For those who spend the night outside, they leap about 7 feet to the nearest windowsill where their owner puts out bowls of food. They’re the first up in the morning, the last to bed at night, and it would not be an exaggeration to say, at “le Domaine,” as this place is called, cats rule.
I don’t know how I feel about this. Cats are a mystery to me. My parents gave my sister and me one when I was 4 years old. This black-and-white kitten was like a bomb. We touched it. The cute little kitten set off an explosion of allergies. We had to get rid of it. My parents discovered that neither of their daughters could breathe in the presence of a tiny cat.
And that’s how it’s been ever since: scratchy, swollen eyes, trouble breathing, a sense of general itchiness, and a profound ignorance of what these animals are all about.
At “le Domaine,” there’s also a dog named Lolita. She is a “barbet,” an ancient French breed related to the poodle and the terrier. In fact, Lolita looks like a mixture of both. She has black curly locks, a white star on her chest, and the gentle jaw of her cousin the poodle. Lolita also has a gentle character and when she looks up at me, I know I’m staring into the eyes of man’s best friend.
No one has ever said that about cats.
“Le Domaine” is a perfect setting for nature-loving humans, dogs and cats. The forest descends from the surrounding hills almost to my front door. I can hear woodpeckers; at night I hear the cry of screech owls. I often climb the hill and walk the woodland paths with my friend Camille. She lives in the town next to mine and I can reach her house through woods and fields. She is a cat lover and when I’m perplexed, I turn to her for information and advice.
Concerning the bushy black cat that jumped 7 feet to my windowsill, she may be expressing a desire to move in with me. Her mistress often abandons her on the weekends and she is away at work in Paris every weekday. The cat, named Luna, knows I’m inside living a quiet life, and, according to Camille, she may want to share it companionably with me. Cats don’t like long days alone (as all you cat owners and lovers out there know much better than me) and they prefer quiet sorts to my noisy neighbor, who plays loud music in her garden and invites too many friends over for “l’apéritif.”
As Camille has told me, cats choose their masters and aren’t afraid to change when they don’t feel loved. They also like exploring and expanding their territory. Luna might simply want a bigger place to roam.
Thanks to Camille, I’ve also learned that I must teach this cohort of cats that I too have territory and there are places where they are not welcome—like in my vegetable patch or the flowerbeds outside my living room windows. I’ve been at it for months and the boundaries are pretty well in place though I get the feeling that with cats, nothing is definitive.
Only a week ago, we (Camille and I, not me with the cats) admired the drawings of a great cat lover, the Swiss-born artist Théophile Alexandre Steinlen, best known for his posters for “Le Chat noir,” the famous late 19th century cabaret of Montmartre, where artists, poets and slumming aristocrats met.
His more intimate work is currently on display at the chateau-museum of the town of Auvers sur Oise, where Van Gogh lived for a while (you can find my article devoted to him and the town that appeared in the Republican Herald in July 2013 at https://pottsville-paris-express.blogspot.com/2013/08/a-vacation-for-price-of-metro-ride.html). There are sketches and engravings of Paris and of Steinlen’s country home near where I live, including his garden, flowers, birds and lots of cats. Here was a true cat lover. For his monogram, Steinlen wove together his initials and the elegant curve of a cat’s back.
More than sixty years after my first contact with a cat, I’m still allergic to those cute furry creatures who, here in France, have replaced dogs as the preferred pet, which is not to say dogs are much on the decline. From my living room window I observe the local dogs with their masters from morning till night. For your information—and this says a lot about the French character, few owners stoop to scoop. The village green, so cool and lovely in the shade of the tall linden trees, is in fact a minefield of what the French call “crottes,” which I’ll elegantly translate as “dog turds.”
Americans still prefer dogs and in that, I’m true to national character, but if ever I get a dog, it will be a French barbet, as much like my neighbor’s as possible.
