One rainy morning in 1986 Joe and I returned to our
apartment in Watertown from Linda’s Donuts across the street to find one of our
two cats, Boots, perched on the kitchen counter with her paw behind an empty green
beer bottle, poised for protest. For two
people who were, at best, indifferent to pets, Joe and I somehow acquired a
string of them over our thirteen months on the second floor of a two family house
in Watertown. There was a third cat,
Duchess, who was blind and skittish and darted into walls at the sound of footsteps. Hamsters Damien and Scruffles routinely
escape their cage, swinging and kicking open the ceiling hatch no matter how many
cases of empties were piled on top. Puss
and Boots came in a package deal from someone associated with Joe’s friend
Phil. They had already suffered their
fair share of torment we were told, but Joe’s brand of psychological torture,
and our neglect in feeding them and cleaning their litter box with any kind of
regularity, must have sent Boots to the kitchen ledge that morning.
 |
| Linda's Donuts, Watertown, MA. 2014 (Brennan) |
She held our gaze for a two-count, then
casually gave the bottle a furry tap. We
were suspended in that long moment, helplessly witnessing the translucent green
bottle topple over itself through the air and then shatter into a hundred shards
at our feet. We stood there, wordless - shocked,
shamed, then awoken with new-found respect.
As it would happen, Puss and Boots were rightly removed
from our physical custody. Those who
professed to care more – Andrea and Tom - took the cats up North, stripped them
of their names and re-engineered them into Sasha and Salisbury. They lived their remaining years in the breezy peace of the beach house in Salisbury, where the lulling voices of Pat’s
books-on-tape and the trickle of ONE capful of vermouth in Tony’s martini glass
were undoubtedly more pleasing to their anxious, pointy ears than the thrashing of punk
music coming out of Watertown.
| Pat and Tony Grassi, Salisbury, MA, 1995. |
Later, after Joe and I were shamed out of our pet ownership, it was always a bit
awkward when we’d come up to the beach house to visit. You could feel the tension at the reunion of us four. Joe and I were not allowed to call Sasha and Salisbury by
their former names and physical contact was discouraged. If Joe even tried to coo them over, then send
them reeling with a demonic laugh, Andrea would be on the spot and in Joe's face. She had seen enough of Joe's antics in Watertown.
It all worked out in the end. Boots delivered her message via a shattered green
bottle and we were fine that it would be Pat and Tony’s beach house where Puss
and Boots – Sasha and Salisbury – would find their peace. Where people and cats live in harmony.
Happy eightieth, Tony!
