Eleanor
Walcott reacted with predictable discomfort to any attempt to bring
nature into the house. Indoor plants were rare, though Eleanor tried
and failed many times to raise anemic little avocado trees on
windowsills and in tabletop pots.
It
figured,
therefore, that in Wyatt Walcott’s lifetime the family owned
few pets. Typically, Eleanor and her daughter preferred cats and
would nuzzle and eventually lament a succession of them, one or two
at a time. The guys naturally leaned toward dogs (Wyatt’s
paternal grandfather had raised purebred Scottish terriers), but the
women gently vetoed any suggestion to own one until 1962—by
then Charlotte had moved out and married—when a family friend’s
gorgeous tan whippet bore a prizeworthy litter.
Eleanor
hailed from
Miami (pronounced Miama) and met her future
husband when
both of them served in the army medical corps at Camp Blanding during
World War II. As a young married couple she and Herman frequented the
dog track, despite Eleanor’s opinion that this “sport”
was scarcely less cruel than bullfighting and should have been
abolished. Privately she had fantasized about adopting a retired
greyhound.
Greyhounds,
whippets, and Italian greyhounds have short, low-maintenance fur and
are considered nearly as clean as cats. The three breeds look
identical except for their size: if the Italian greyhound is the
violin and the whippet the viola, the full-size greyhound is the
violoncello. (For bass, one might need a borzoi.) Any suggestion of
sophistication ends there. But that didn’t matter to the
Walcotts, who drove home one afternoon with a graceful tan whippet
pup grinning from the back of the family station wagon.
For
the next decade,
the regal and hilariously stupid Nefertiti, a canine Barbie doll,
strutted around the house and ran like a cheetah outside it. She
could chase a squirrel with an effortless virtuosity that made other
neighborhood dogs look like retired golfers, but she lacked the sense
to get out of the road. Wyatt once saved her life and nearly
sacrificed his the day he leapt off a curb and jerked Nefertiti out
of the path of a speeding fire engine.
Nefertiti
claimed
one amazing talent: she could recognize the sound of Herman Walcott’s
Ford Falcon from a mile away. Everyone knew when Dad was coming home
from work, because Nefertiti would run at top speed down the suburban
sidewalks until she spotted the car and then race it home. Nefertiti
would prefer the patriarch’s company until she passed away
quietly in 1973.
This
relatively neat
animal husbandry and a writer-musician’s odd hours produced a
pet-free household for Wyatt Walcott until 1984, when he found
himself dating a young Chinese-American who worked part-time in a
Georgetown lawyer’s office and part-time in an animal shelter.
One day she showed up with a beautiful black, brown, and white female
Maine coon cat that she had rescued from probable euthanasia. The
girl’s roommates already owned several cats and wouldn’t
admit another, so she persuaded a skeptical Wyatt to take care of the
lovely creature.
The
mechanics of a
litter box, the equally foul smell of canned cat food, the expensive
and terrifying veterinarian visits, and all the other aspects of cat
ownership were new to Wyatt, but he agreed to take it on. Wyatt’s
relations with the cat would outlive the human love affair by half a
dozen years.
The
animal, which
thusfar had not been named, spent its first two days hiding in a dark
basement closet. Finally, on the third afternoon, having not even
thought to climb the kitchen stairs and eat the food that Wyatt had
set out in one of two matching bowls, the cat emerged from its
seclusion, walked straight over to Wyatt as he sat on the music-room
sofa editing a score, and jumped in his lap. It was the beginning of
a beautiful friendship.
Wyatt’s
girlfriend had a penchant for French literature and decided to name
the cat after Henry Miller’s friend and sponsor Anaïs Nin.
So Anaïs it was. That was fine
with Wyatt, and
he had loosened up enough not to argue with the vet’s
receptionist over pronunciation and the accented letter i.
For
ten years, Anaïs
provided a domestic joy Wyatt could never have foreseen. She usually
would sleep in his bed, either beside or on top of him, and typically
she would wake him for breakfast by perching on his shoulder and
purring in his ear. Some mornings she would slip down to the floor
beneath Wyatt’s pillow, reach up, and tap him on the nose. Once
awake, Wyatt would smile down at her, recede from view, and tiptoe
two fingers to the edge of the mattress. For the next several
minutes, man and cat would play grab-the-paw until Wyatt’s
laughter compelled him to get up and feed his beloved companion.
Wyatt
even found it
difficult to discipline Anaïs when she misbehaved. Like all
cats, she liked high places, and she loved the commanding view from
atop Wyatt’s timpani. The musician used standard fiber head
protectors on the drums he used for teaching and regular performance,
but Anaïs preferred the inactive instruments that Wyatt kept
under black drop covers. The long, fine, oily white fur that covered
Anaïs’s belly would accumulate on these covers at an
alarming rate, and, even though the charm of seeing the silly girl
lounging on his kettledrums never wore off, Wyatt eventually had to
curb this habit. The typical scenario was a firm but
gentle “No!” followed by a
scampering
leap to the floor and a half-hearted retreat to another part of the
room, where Anaïs would climb up on a speaker cabinet or some
other outpost.
Given
her patron’s
profession, Anaïs developed a taste for music. She gladly
tolerated Wyatt’s usual diet of classical and jazz listening,
and she seemed to perceive his fading enthusiasm for rock and roll.
Wyatt freelanced as a composer, and he could always tell when he’d
written a good piece. He’d thread the demo tape, hit Play, and
watch the cat’s ears. If they stayed put, he’d lived up
to her standards. If the ears went back, or, worse, if Anaïs got
up and left the room, it was back to the keyboard.
The
few times Anaïs
had slipped out the door and explored the yard had produced an
infestation of fleas that took weeks to conquer. Wyatt then accepted
the melancholy fact that Anaïs should be declared an “indoor
kitty.”
One
afternoon as
Wyatt was loading his little baroque timpani into the van for a
concert in Rockville, Maryland, Anaïs escaped, ran out of sight,
and would not respond to Wyatt’s pleas. With the clock ticking,
Wyatt reluctantly locked the door, headed to the gig, and hoped that
a contrite Anaïs would have thought better of her cabin fever
and would be awaiting him at the door. Wyatt even ditched his
postperformance habit of exchanging concert attire for street clothes
before reloading the drums and driving home.
When
Wyatt returned
from the concert late that night, Anaïs was still nowhere to be
found. But as he was about to change out of his tuxedo and schlep the
timpani back into the house, he heard a familiar meow from
just beyond his fence. He walked carefully through the English ivy
toward the sound and saw his little housemate glaring at him from the
edge of the next-door neighbor’s yard. Wyatt’s eyes
filled with joyful tears, he scrambled, tux and all, over the fence,
gathered Anaïs in his arms, and returned her to their home. She
had satisfied her interest in the outside world.
Anaïs’s
version of meow had always borne a
slightly sexy
hoarseness that Wyatt and his young Asian had found quite amusing.
What neither of them knew, however, was that the poor animal was
hosting and eventually would nearly suffocate from a cancerous growth
in her neck. This condition worsened to the point where nothing in
the vet’s arsenal could fight it.
Saying
goodbye to Anaïs in that sad lobby was one of the hardest
moments of Wyatt’s life, and he could never bear to own another
pet.
Key
West, Florida, 2020
Wyatt’s
new balcony faced the Gulf of Mexico. No one could see the balcony
from the north, east, or west. But the south side was open to the
building next door, twenty-two paces away. Wyatt’s young
neighbors were as quiet as he’d hoped, respected his privacy,
and guarded their own.
The
mere fact that one could see Wyatt on his balcony from the south if
one wanted to inspired him to buy a little buttonwood tree that he
transplanted into a pot to the left of his chair. The spindly plant
began its residency looking sad and dropping leaves. But as spring
transitioned into summer and Wyatt topped off the tree at the
railing, little buds and leaves began filling the gaps; soon the
sapling would look as good as the buttonwood shrubs the pros had
stationed throughout the complex.
Having
a living thing to care for rekindled Wyatt’s latent desire to
own a pet. It even occurred to him that he might now be old enough
not to worry about outliving a beloved little creature. But these
thoughts inevitably summoned memories of Anaïs, his gorgeous
Maine coon cat of the 1980s. He could just imagine her looking up at
him from his lap, saying, “No. You’ll never find
another one like me, Mr. Gatsby. Just let go.”
