Saturday, April 19, 2008

L.A. CAT - THE WAR YEARS


I was taking a shower. Looking down, I saw what looked like the tail of a rat coming out from the edge of the shower curtain. Heart pounding, I drew back the curtain and there was a live gray lizard. I screamed and leaped out, leaving the reptile behind. Chloe must have brought it in and deposited it in the tub. Thank God for Cervantes, the maintenance man who lived in the peach apartment building behind my blue one at Sargent Court. He was there in a nanosecond.

Cervantes loved plants and animals. He would talk with the cats all day as he worked outdoors. He was in his late 50s with graying hair and a slight paunch under his cambric shirt. When he came to my rescue, it was with a broom to gently roll the lizard out the door while softly crooning, "It's okay, baby...okay, baby...okay..."

Another day not long after, I found bird claws embedded in the carpet.

Chloe's fascination with birds and lizards phased out after several months. But there were coyotes who wanted to hunt her. One horrible day, Glen and I found half a cat on the lawn--its brain streaming out of its head.

"I do hate coyotes," Glen said as he went to get a bucket. Nobody knew who it had belonged to or where it came from. After that, I prayed it would never happen to Chloe.

In the summer, when the coyotes would get so bad that we could hear them yipping away outside our windows, Cervantes would prowl the grounds like a night watchman with a baseball bat.

Like Chloe, Cervantes was one of a kind. One day he pointed to a Wandering Jew plant in the yard and said, "Me too. I am Jewish." His mother had been a beautiful Sephardic Jew. Cervantes was a multi-talented man who had been a chef in Mexico, and on occasion would stage mouth-watering barbecues under the spreading pomegranate tree. He had several children and grandchildren, all of whom lived in Mexico and would visit from time to time.

Whenever I needed help, I could depend on Cervantes. "How's the baby?" he'd ask whenever he saw me. "Baby okay?" Baby is fine, I'd answer. Always okay.

Chloe would let him pet her.

Like most cats, Chloe was a shrewd judge of people. If a visitor was loud, they never saw her. Parties could happen in my apartment and she would stay invisible until the last guest was gone. When I first moved in and the ex-boyfriend stopped by one night (to bring me something I'd left at his place), he reached for her saying: "Gimme that little cat body...". She slipped out of his grasp and jumped out the window.

I was always afraid of losing Chloe. When we first moved to Sargent Court, she fought a cat who belonged to a neighbor down the street. The interloper tore a small hole in her belly. The vet drained the abscess and put a bonnet on her. For a couple weeks, she was confined to the couch, looking like a sulky Flying Nun. Like most cats, she finally figured out a way to slip out and bite her stitches. "She did most of my job for me," said the vet.

Then the Bad Cat returned and bit the hell out of Cecil, our neighbors' calico. That was the last straw. We warned the Bad Cat's owner that if she didn't confine her feline, we'd report her to Animal Control. And that was that.

The hillside on which we lived was covered with ice plants and thick brush. It would be years before the Fire Department would ding the owner for the fire hazard. What it meant for me was a nightly search to find Chloe, flashlight in hand...calling "Here kittykittykitty..." I'd go in circles 'round and 'round until I'd finally spot a pair of green eyes glowing between the leaves.

The "Chinese" Caucasian film director and others of her ilk in the apartments were probably giggling and imitating me to each other--as they imitated Glen--but I didn't care how big a fool they thought I was. Only keeping Chloe with me mattered.

Two years after we moved into the blue building, the water heater broke again. This time Cervantes was nowhere to be found and a couple of tenants tried to fix the dripping with a screwdriver, which resulted in water shooting out and hitting the movie poster on the opposite wall. The poster was from the Denver International Film Festival where a movie I'd made had played.

Deja vu all over again. My stuff on the lawn. Firemen. Except now the manager tells me that I should move into the vacant apartment in the rear peach building. It would solve my current dilemma. I've been locked in battle with my hulking upstairs neighbor.

An academy-award winning film director, this guy would often pace the floor all night long. Six foot six and over 200 lbs., his footsteps would shake my whole apartment. I'd begged him and his fiancee to move into that vacant apartment behind us, but they said they liked their view.

I was falling apart at work from sleep deprivation. My lawyer-boss suggested I file a complaint against the manager for failing to provide peaceful enjoyment of the property. When I told him, "My neighbor says he's too big and heavy to walk softly," he replied: "Elephants weigh tons and they can step softly."

Weeks ago, the manager offered me the peach apartment. I resisted because I'd found out that my ex-boyfriend (aka "The Jerk") had started dating my neighbor Suzie who lived upstairs from that apartment.

Initially, Suzie had been my morning hiking partner. She loved to "girl talk" as we walked, telling me details about her last breakup. I would interject from time to time with an anecdote about The Jerk.

One day she cut me off with "sounds like a real loser."

So imagine my surprise when one day two years later, she tells me they've been dating. They met when she found him practicing with his fishing rod on the lawn, and was about to throw him out when he said, "I'm friends with Marlan."

I didn't want to be anywhere near either of them, but with my apartment sinking like Atlantis, the manager told me: "You've got no choice."

One time my Tai Chi Si Fu drafted my Chinese horoscope for me. It involves sticks and predicts your life, decade by decade. My life would be fate-appointed, it said. Until late middle age.

With so much out of my control, I could only hope Chloe would stay constant. And she did. Up until two weeks ago, when neither of us could pretend anymore that she could fight off her cancer.

Our move to the peach building went smoothly. I was afraid Chloe might continue to pop in and out of the broken screen in that first apartment, and surprise whoever moved in next. But she never looked back. As far as she was concerned, the moment we moved into the peach apartment, we were home. Again.