Détente

Means release from tension, in French

These are my cats, Jack and Lewis. I took the photo in the hallway of my NYC apartment, in 2014.

My cats have a devoted fan following on Facebook, which I’ve neglected lately.

I used to post about them all the time and then I deleted FB from my phone, so couldn’t post photos anymore, and now nobody ever comes to my Facebook page.

Both are rescues; Jack I found under a car in Spanish Harlem as a kitten, in 2009. He was covered in grime, very skinny, very traumatized and had had his whiskers cut off. I scooped him up and a man said: “If you want to know about that kitten, ask that guy,” pointing to a man sitting in a folding chair on the curb. I went over and the man said: “You want him? You can have him. I couldn’t take care of him. His name is Kiki.”

The 9 block walk home, I just told him his whole life was about to change and everything was going to be ok.

It was just the two of us, for five years. I went back to the deli a few times until somebody gave me a piece of information about Jack’s infancy. They said his mother just up and left one day. He was a deli cat. Who cut his whiskers I don’t want to think about. Jack had a very rough childhood, whereas Lewis, despite being found wandering in the projects in the Bronx, seems to have had better beginnings. Maybe he got to be with his mother longer, I don’t know, but his nerves are better than either Jack’s or mine.

Jack has PTSD, and many people don’t understand him. He growls and hisses, and literally pushes every single object off surfaces, with a preference for anything made of glass—crash, bang, boom. He does this around 4-5 am, and in the 12 years I’ve had him I’ve never been able to negotiate for being spared a single night. I used to spend every morning sweeping up broken glass: Coffee cups, lamps, glasses, all kinds of things. I used to say: “It’s like living with Keith Moon.”

His color, by the way, is what I call “Quadrophenia grey.”

As a kitten, Jack ingested pieces of scrap metal, jewelry, Christmas ornaments, rubber bands; More than once I had to take him to have his stomach pumped. Once my ex husband spent New Year’s Eve in the ER with Jack (I was in Sweden) who had swallowed all kinds of things, they were given back in a plastic bag. You wouldn’t even believe it if you saw the contents.

I saw Lewis as a kitten in a cage, outside Fairway on Broadway, and, entranced, I said to Bruce, the best cat rescue man in NYC: “I want that kitten.” When he came to our home, Jack despised him on sight. Lewis spent his first two weeks wedged between the bed and the wall, while Jack hissed and roared. Lewis never reacted, he just accepted it. “Jack won’t recognize him,” I lamented to my father at the time.

“Like China and Taiwan,” said my father.

One day there was a détente at the food bowl. Jack sniffed Lewis’ bottom. I knew he had decided to accept him, that we had a détente. He began to clean him, licked his head, and Lewis was in heaven. He always adored his older “brother” and he knew, somehow, that when Jack hissed at him, that he didn’t mean it.

To this day, when Jack is being hissy and rejecting, Lewis just looks at him, sits down, waits for him to calm down. He never takes it personally.

The photo was taken the very first time they snuggled, and you can see from the look on Lewis’ face that he felt so proud he couldn’t even sleep.

When we moved to the island of Runmarö, in Sweden’s east coast archipelago, in 2016, they became what the Swedes call “real cats,” ie outdoor cats. When Lewis stayed out late, Jack would come get me and we walked around the island until we found Lewis. Years later, in Sharon, CT, Jack kept watch on the deck with his face pressed between the slats, watching over Lewis, or nervously going up and down the steps when Lewis wasn’t visible. My friend Anne nicknamed him “Grumpus”recently.

He’s our patriarch.

Right now he’s staying with my sister Bibi, and for some reason he never wakes her at 5 am, and never pushes anything down.

He purrs every morning, and is good friends with my sister’s rabbit, Boxer, who is normally deathly afraid of cats, as they are predators.

When it became clear it wasn't working out, and I started packing, Jack sat on the bed with me, didn’t budge.

I lose another small piece of Sweden every day. Didn’t use to be you had to swallow the EU and everything that came with it, to go home.

”I’m sorry,” I told Jack and Lewis. “I promise I’ll find a way for you two to be outside again.”

And I did.

Covid “hit,” and shortly after, Barry died, and then we moved, precipitously, to Sharon, in a state of what I only later realized was deep shock. I couldn’t do anything, even if it was imperative. Couldn't move. Somehow, the tiny garage apartment got messier and messier, even though I wasn’t aware of ever moving.

I didn't bother with collar trackers. Freedom was vanishing, but not for cats, so I made a decision to just trust them. I opened the door and let them out, even though I’d seen a bobcat near by.

One night they refused to come home and I was tired of calling for them, tired of feeling afraid. It was pitch dark, and cold. I decided to try reverse psychology. I put my flashlight down, went downstairs, got in my car, and drove off, gunning the engine a little when I drove up the road. I sat in the car at the gas station for about 15 minutes, then drove back. They were both inside when I came back, looking at me like: “Where were you?”

I knew it would work, because I have telepathy with Jack and Lewis.

When my son was a teenager, I proposed a movie script to the parents of his two best friends. The idea was for a bunch of parents of teenage boys to just get in a van and leave. And turn off their phones. And for the rest of the movie, the parents are driving cross country, being oblivious, while the kids stay home, checking their cell phones. A fantasy about being in control, of something. Anything. I still think it would have been a good idea for a movie script.

I don’t think we will ever feel “ok” again.

But I’m proud of us for not losing our minds.