Happy 80th, Tony!

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!