Just A Cat
by Richard LeBlond



Until I met Tansy, I didn’t think cats were among the brighter lights in the animal kingdom. They seemed more instinctive than thoughtful. Cats spend a lot of time staring into space, as if their brains are in a holding pattern, waiting for some movement, sound, or smell to awaken a purpose. But I now have a great respect for the cat thinking process, and its awareness of how the world works. I thank Tansy for that. One evening I watched her perform a brave and wise act that revealed a conscious mind not unlike our own.

Tansy was part of a small troupe of feline gypsies herded by Irene, a biologist who lived in Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod. At the conclusion of a successful courtship in the early 1980s, she moved into my small house on the edge of a Provincetown woods.

Irene arrived with three cats: Tansy, Winkin, and Mudlark. I was struck by their distinctive personalities. Winkin was aloof, and could only be approached under her terms. Irene had found her as a kitten on a busy city street – so young she was still blind. Irene surmised Winkin’s mother had given birth in the urban wild, and dropped the kitten during a relocation of the litter. Irene became the replacement mom, and Winkin grew up thinking she was a human in a cat’s body. Poor Winkin. She got along with no one.

Mudlark was skittish. The slightest movement or sound might send her into another room or under the bed. But she loved laps and petting, and her purring sounded like a motor boat coming down our drive.

The clowder soon expanded to five when Irene was flagged down by a part-Siamese cat. It happened in the beech forest that grows in the Provincetown dunes. Irene was bicycling through the forest when she was stopped by a sleek gray cat mewing along the side of the road. Irene noticed that the small cat (soon to be named Minnie) was nursing, and eventually found her litter beneath a fallen pine, an empty cardboard box nearby. Minnie was healthy-looking and must have been a house cat. Apparently she and her six infants had been boxed and rudely dumped in the woods. Irene fetched her animal transport cage, and brought Minnie and her children to our home. All but one of the kittens were given away. The retainee, Buddy, acquired her name by a habit of crawling onto the forward part of one of Irene’s shoes, and staying there as Irene carefully walked around the house.

Tansy, the oldest and biggest cat, was the house warlord. It only took one whack to put another cat in its place forever – a whack accompanied by a look that said, “Do that again and I will have you for lunch, and you look pretty tasty.” The rest of the time, Tansy was content to be the house diva, mellow and unassuming. You could pet her if you wanted, but she seldom asked for it.

So now the table has been set for that evening when Tansy revealed her consummate awareness of how the world works.

Although I failed to notice it, Irene had observed that the house needed another mammal, a dog; in particular, a male English cocker spaniel named Cory. A purebred, Cory had been raised in a kennel. He grew up in a confined area whose width could be determined by measuring the diameter of the narrow circles he ran whenever he got excited. Even when he was out of doors with the whole world at his disposal, Cory ran in the same tight circles, confined by his imaginary cage. He always ran counter-clockwise, which we attributed to the Coriolis effect, and that is how he got his name.

The Tansy Incident happened the evening Irene first brought Cory into the house. She set the transport cage down in the living room and opened its door. Cory stepped out, took one look at five wide-eyed cats, and hastily turned back into the cage, lying down on its floor, looking outward and alarmed. The five cats were spellbound. The moment seemed to last forever. I had no idea how it would resolve itself.

Tansy was sitting on the floor, facing the front of the cage from about eight feet away. She brought that forever moment to an end by standing up. Slowly, deliberately, Tansy walked toward the open door of the cage, toward the startled dog, who must have been at least three times her size. We were breathless. What on earth was Tansy doing? Cory, although obviously apprehensive, did not freak out as Tansy approached. He was lying against one side of the cage, with his body occupying about two-thirds of the cage floor. Tansy walked right up to the door, stepped into the one-third space remaining, turned around, and lay down next to Cory.

It’s impossible to say how long she stayed there, and it’s important to note that Cory stayed there too. Even five seconds would have been an eternity, but I think it was closer to half a minute. Tansy then got up and walked out of the cage, ever so calmly. Shortly after, Cory did the same, and the house was together.

It was one of the most extraordinary acts I had ever seen any non-human perform, stretching the limit of credibility. Her behavior seemed to reveal an awareness that the dog must be shown it was accepted by the cats. She must have known it could have ended horribly, yet she had the courage to bring the olive branch anyway.

No doubt her wisdom came from age. A couple of years later, she began to fade, enduring a feline dementia. Sometimes when we let her out, she would be gone too long. And once she never came back at all. Irene posted notices on neighborhood telephone poles, and about a week later we got a call from a woman who had a house on the harbor. There was a cat matching Tansy’s description hanging out on the understructure of her pier. We found the cat on a cross beam below the pier’s deck. She was facing the sea, the tide moving in and out beneath her.

As we approached, Tansy mewed in recognition. Had she forgotten how to get back home? Had she forgotten she had a home? Staring out to sea during the final stages seemed a human thing, something Winkin might do, the human trapped in a feline body. Tansy was just a cat, with a cat’s practicality. I think she was there for the smell of fish.