TABLE OF CONTENTS

Travels with Chloe is unfinished. I began it as a memorial to my cat, and patterned it after Steinbeck's Travels with Charley--where the book is more about Steinbeck's journey than Charley's (the dog who experienced the travels along with him).

If you'd like to browse or just get an idea of the stories, here is...

TABLE OF CONTENTS

SAY GOOD-NIGHT, CHLOE

TWO FOR THE ROAD

L.A. CAT: EDEN

L.A. CAT: THE FLOOD

L.A. CAT: THE WAR YEARS

L.A. CAT: BIKER CHICK

 

L.A. CAT: THE FLOOD

When I first saw Sargent Court, it was 4:00 a.m. My then-boyfriend lived half a block up the street. We met while I was living in Topanga, licking my wounds over my divorce. Then he asked me to house sit for him while he went to Europe for three weeks.

His landlady lived and managed the Sargent Court Apartments. On the way to the airport at 4:00 a.m., he stopped off to leave his rent check at her door. When we pulled up, he said: "Come on, you've got to see this." In the pre-dawn light that September morning, the massive flowering grounds mystified me. I thought we were in front of a hospital or mental institution. I didn't understand that they were apartments until the day I needed them.

A week later after his return, he suddenly needed to be "alone" blah blah. It coincided with my news that I needed to get out of Topanga because my roommate Rainbow was on the warpath. She had drawn battle lines after I took her to my fave Chinese restaurant and the food made her sick. "You know I only eat raw food!" she screamed. She'd asked to go. I took her. She asked for a salad and they said they didn't have salad.

So I called him and said I needed to talk. We had an awkward dinner. Then I dropped the bomb. He smoked for a while. Then said, "Well, maybe you could live in the apartments. Up on the hill."

We went up the block to see the place again that evening. Fog lay in thick drifting white mists on the grand lawn. It was late. We stood at the hill's edge looking out at the view in silence. I knew it was over.

When I first moved into my apartment, my neighbor Glen gave me the rundown while he weeded his roses: "Don't be surprised if one day, you wake up and find the cat doing the backstroke. It means your water heater broke."

A few weeks later, Chloe woke me up early and when my feet hit the carpet, they sunk into water.

We were outside with a lot of my stuff on the lawn, watching firemen vacuum out the water. They left industrial fans to dry the place out. When Glen heard about the fans, he said, "Oh goodie, cats just love big noisy machines."

I'd been sitting in a daze at a picnic table when Glen sat down next to me, saying: "First, the manager needs to get you a hotel room until your place is dry...Then you need to be financially compensated for hardship."

At that moment, I saw my now-ex-lover saunter across the sidewalk where my furniture was spread out, and firemen were coming and going out of my place. Very happy to see him, I ran up and said, "My water heater broke!" He frowned and said, "Better get someone to vacuum that out. I need to talk to my landlady about my view. She's planning to build a fire escape for the upstairs apartment right in front of my picture window." He lived on the lowest floor of a duplex. His unit was ensconced into a hillside. Then he slid back down the steps to the street, calling over his shoulder: "Put in a good word for me!"

Then the manager appeared and gave me the keys to the place over my ex's apartment, which was empty.

I lugged the essentials to the quaint house. The first essential was Chloe. I put her inside, locked the door and went back for more. When I got back, I couldn't find her. Now I saw that a window was open in the kitchen, large enough for a scared cat to jump through. Hyperventilating and crying, I called The Ex and left a message on his machine that (a) I was going to be living upstairs for four days and (b) I think my cat ran away, so please keep an eye out.

After I had spread my sleeping bag on the hardwood floor, turned on the lamp (the electricity was still on), Chloe came down the stairs. The place was built like a townhouse with an upstairs and she'd been exploring. Relief! It felt right to see her tripping along down the steps, ready to keep me company in this new space.

Chloe didn't care where she was as long as she was with me.

And no, The Jerk (henceforth to be known as) never came up to say hello or ask after the cat. In fact, the following year, when we "got together" again for an ill-fated affair and he saw Chloe, he said: "Oh, I thought you lost her."

Those four days in that empty house with the single lamp and cuddling in the sleeping bag were like camping out. But I didn't care where I was, as long as I was with Chloe.

L.A. CAT: EDEN

This is hard. It's now eight days since Chloe left her body, and I want so much to give the blow-by-blow on her final hours that morning. But the purpose of this blog is to celebrate her life as well as mourn her death. So this post is Part I about her life at Sargent Court in Los Angeles, where we lived for 10 years until 2004.

As I mentioned, Chloe and I fled Topanga Canyon where I'd been living while sorting out my divorce. We did a reverse Adam & Eve and ended up in "Eden" (aka "Elysian Park"). At one time that whole area used to be called "Edendale."

The apartments on Sargent Court were composed of two buildings designed in 1947 in an outré villas style--one blue and one peach--perched on a hill, boasting palatial gardens and a 180 degree view of Los Angeles. Directly below were the Echo Park barrios and Latino shopping. Directly across the narrow street from us was the arboretum of Elysian Park with hiking trails that went for miles and picnic areas and glamorous date palms looming in a row along the strip of road that led to the Police Academy in one direction and Dodgers Stadium in the other.

When I first asked the manager if she allowed animals, she'd replied, "Only cats." So the place had its share of felines and what my neighbor Glen called "kitty politics."

The rent was outrageously cheap and the apartments rented to artists at varying ranks of success. I felt immediately at home. My apartment had a big hole in its screen door that Chloe would jump through to get in and out. The apartments were so remote that the common belief among tenants was that no crime could ever occur there.

We lived in a first floor studio with a wall of windows that looked out at a jumble of tropical plants that the live-in maintenance man and avid gardener, Cervantes, tended. "I am making a jungle for you," he said. I was nursing a broken heart and for weeks, lay on the carpet unable to do more than cry, with Chloe on my stomach giving off soothing purrs.

Chloe enjoyed leaping out of the windows which had no screens. And one day she popped into a neighbor's window, squeaking her "good morning" meows and alarming the neighbor. "What's wrong with her?" the neighbor asked. "I couldn't figure out what she wanted." She had no cat. In fact, she was a dog person.

It's safe to say we were not comprehended by most of our neighbors. But we comprehended each other and that was enough.

After I began working again, I came home one day to Glen's scolding. He accosted me, saying: "Your cat has been causing trouble!" He had six cats of his own in his studio apartment and would never allow any of them out. I'd left Chloe outside while I was gone, confident that she wouldn't leave me. She had a sharp intelligence that made it easy for us to reach an understanding about this.

"What did she do?" I asked. Glen explained that she had been "tormenting" a neighbor's cat by hiding in the daisy bush that grew in the planter in front of our apartment and was in full yellow bloom...and she'd wait for this cat to walk by and then jump out at him, scaring him.

"It's not very ladylike," Glen said.

"She wants to be Queen of the Hill," Glenn huffed as he walked away. "But she's not going to be Queen of the Hill." No, I thought, because you've got dibs on that.

Chloe's "victim" was Oscar who was slightly brain damaged from a botched operation and slow. The next day, I saw Chloe jump into the planter and hide in the daisies when Oscar came along. He paused and looked straight at her. She looked at him through the flowers. Then she jumped and he drew back a few steps. It was very playful.

For a cat who didn't like other cats, she was starting to make playmates.

Oscar's human Robert was a gorgeous hunk who was a trainer at a gym by day and avant-garde musician at night. The first time we talked and he told me about Oscar, he said, "Oscar was the first person I met when I came to Sargent Court" (he'd belonged to a tenant who then moved out and left him). I laughed and said, "Person!"

Now, 14 years later, I don't think it's so funny.

There was a calico that roamed the estate who belonged to a married couple. Her name was Cecil. I knew that if Chloe hadn't been there, Cecil and I would have been best friends. She was always appearing when I was reading at the picnic table under the pomegranate tree, and asking to be loved. Once or twice, I caught Chloe glaring from afar.

But Chloe and Cecil developed an uneasy rapport. One lazy warm afternoon, Cecil climbed on top of a stack of lumber and fell asleep in the shade. I saw Chloe come along, stand in front of Cecil looking up at her. Then she stretched out a tentative paw, as if to poke Cecil awake.

Cecil opened her eyes and stared down as if to say, "Don't even think about it." Chloe withdrew her paw. And they stayed that way for a while.

Just as there were cat lovers in the building, there were those who were less fond. I was invited to a Christmas party given by the neighbor who had the biggest and nicest apartment with the best view. She was an up and coming film director, and many of her film friends were installed in the apartments. Glen was not one of them.

At some point, the guests got onto the subject of Glen and his cats. The hostess made fun of the way he would come home every night and yell out (the guests joined her in imitation): "KITTIES, DADDY'S HOME!"

Months later, I was talking with this filmmaker outside her apartment where she was gardening and suddenly she said, "Chloe's sitting on a zinnia." I turned to look and thought it was cute. Chloe stood up and where her ass had been, the flower popped back up as fresh as ever.

This ends Part I of Sargent Court and Chloe.