Cootie Sprague, Co-Brat
1956 - 1982
The gendarmes weren't far behind me as I streaked across the
cavernous International Customs warehouse at Orly Airport. I
could hear them behind me, their footfalls heavy, their whistles
piercing, and their words foreign and menacing. Behind them was
my father, beseeching me to stop.
Undaunted, I ran until I reached my goal. When the angry group caught up with me, they found me, an
eleven year old American girl, opening up a cage and extracting a
large cat.
I felt my father's anger as we drove away from the airport,
finally finished with the formalities that my trek through the
warehouse had interrupted.
"Didn't I tell you to stay beside me? And there you went,
hopping the gate and dashing through an international customs
warehouse. Didn't I tell you it was against the law to cross the line on the floor?"
I waited, petting my cat who alternated between rubbing his
jowls against my face and peering out the window at the
countryside speeding by, knowing my father would soon wind down.
"I could have been arrested. Didn't I tell you that
international customs agents are nobody to mess with?"
"I wanted my cat out of jail," I said. "You asked me what I
wanted for Christmas."
True to form, by the time we reached our hotel in downtown
Paris, my father was reaching over to stroke the cat and was
beginning to chuckle at his own recounting of the gendarmes'
capes flowing behind them, batons raised, as they raced across
the warehouse after me, the international customs violator.
As we pulled up to our temporary digs, a hotel blocks from
the Arc de Triumphe where we would live while waiting for
housing, he muttered, "Well, I suspect our little jaunt through
Customs will be a piece of cake compared to getting the cat past
the concierge."
Not to fear. My mother, in our absence, with French-English
dictionary in hand and a can-do attitude born of a long
military background, had explained the situation to the
concierge. I could only imagine how she did it. But waiting for
us in the room was a kitty box, a bowl of water, and a selection
of cat food. French cat food. My cat would have to develop an
international palate.
That wasn't the first nor the last time that the cat, with me as a
close conspirator, had caused a scene.
* * *
Before leaving for Paris we'd
been training the cat to walk
with us on a leash. My mother thought it would be tres chic.
So the cat, resplendent in red halter and leash, began to
accompany my father and me on our nightly walks around the
housing area on the base. So good was the cat at staying with us that
often we would remove the leash and let him, dog-like, wander
around. He always stayed close by, sniffing or stalking bugs.
Or so he did until the night the base general threw his annual
party for all the high grade officers.
We knew it was The Big Party because of the cars parked in
the street, and couples going through the front door, the men in
uniforms and the wives in gowns. Through the kitchen
entrance we could see people in maid's uniforms scurrying around,
waiters toting this, unloading that.
I guess the smells were too
enticing for the cat because he broke training and loped up the
drive. Waiting for his moment, he crouched behind the tire of a
van parked right outside the kitchen door. My father and I, not
as fleet-footed as the cat, came puffing up the drive just in
time to see the cat dart into the kitchen through a door that
opened to admit a uniformed server.
"Oh no," breathed my father. "Of all houses to have this
happen."
I thought I heard the words court martial but I wasn't
sure. Like thieves we crept to the door. I, being the bolder of
the two, opened it and walked in --they couldn't court martial a kid, right?
- just in time to see Cootie in leap positiion,
ready to pounce on a tray of iced shrimp set on the kitchen
counter.
"Come here, " I whispered, and nabbed the cat, dodging
between tray-carrying waiters. Out the door I went, past the
hired help whose mouths were silent O's, past my father who was
silently watching his military career go down the drain, and
around the corner where we pressed ourselves into the bushes,
waiting to assess the damage. When alarms didn't go off, when
the MPs didn't show up, when the chef didn't come out waving a
carving knife, we figured we were okay. My father leading the
way, we sped for home.
The next day my father received a call at work, which he
recounted to us at dinner. Seems the general had called to
inquire if he was the same man frequently seen in the evenings in
the company of a little girl and a large cat who was usually, and
there was lots of emphasis on the usually, on a leash. Turned
out the general's wife had heard about the iced shrimp near
disaster from the hired help and thought it was funny as hell.
* * *
Cootie was as ugly as the day was long, but not so ugly that
he was in that category where ugly actually becomes cute. He was
just ugly. With a large, flat head, permanently fluffed tail,
and a perpetual sneer, he could be frightening to come across in
a dimly lit room. But he was family, and we loved him. He came
to us when I was four, an orphan kitten from a barn in California.
He could fit into a coffee cup, then.
Time is marked, in my memories, by the presence of the cat.
The day in first grade when the cat followed me to school, and
was allowed to stay, perched on the reading shelf, until I went
home at lunchtime. My mother instructing me in New Mexico,
"Watch the cat. He'll warn you if snakes are around." The
neighbor who complained about the scratches on her dog's face
when the dog was foolish enough to venture into our yard. The
comforting feel of his heavy body as he slept next to me through
the adjustment of each new bedroom in each new house at each new
military assignment. Helping to pack, helping to unpack.
Breaking the ice when I was again the new kid on the block.
California, New Mexico, Paris, Washington, DC - he flew first
class to all of them. My mother wouldn't have it any other way.
* * *
When my father retired, the cat didn't. He still kept vigil
in the yard, taking on all comers. Perched on the steps in front
of the house, he looked as though he was waiting for another
moving van. Eventually I married and had a child. And still the cat
patrolled my father's yard. The vet said he'd already broken any
age records he knew about, and I settled into believing that the
cat was immortal.
But the day came, as I should have known it would, and the
phone call from my father. The cat, after making his nightly
rounds, came in for a snack, settled down for his evening siesta,
and quietly went to sleep at the age of 26.
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