The private life of the cat who...: tales of Koko and Yum Yum from the journal of James Mackintosh Qwilleran

I’ll never forget the trick a delicate little seven-pound cat played on two healthy adult males at the Nutcracker Inn. It had to do with her uncanny sense of spatial relationships.

At home she liked to sit on top of a seven-foot cabinet and watch the scene below without getting involved. She would stand in front of it, look up, crouch, then rise to the top in a fluid leap, propelled by her incredible hind legs. She never fell short and never overshot the mark.

When I had a visitor, Yum Yum would walk into the room just enough to make her presence felt (she liked compliments) but not close enough to be grabbed. Scientists say a cat gauges how far a human can lunge, adjusting for the individual’s height and arm length.

One summer I took the Siamese to the Nutcracker Inn for a short vacation. We asked for a cabin near the creek, but it had not been vacated, so they gave us a room in the tower, temporarily.

When it was time to move to the cabin, the porter came up to help with the luggage.

Koko jumped into the carrier, ready to go, but Yum Yum never likes a change of address. She disappeared under the bed. Lying flat on the floor, I tried to grab her, but it was a queen-size bed, and she was positioned under the exact center, beyond reach.

“No problem,” said the porter. “The bed’s on rollers. I’ll pull it to one side, and you grab her.”

He pulled, and I grabbed. But Yum Yum moved with the bed, staying under its exact center. He quickly rolled it back into place, and Yum Yum just as quickly stayed in dead center.

“Ignore her,” I said. “Start taking the luggage out . . .”

Immediately Yum Yum wriggled out of her hiding place and jumped into the carrier with Koko.

That’s what I mean about cats. They’re always trying to make fools of us humans.

Although he has never owned a wristwatch, Koko is keenly aware of time. At eight A.M. sharp he expects breakfast. At twelve noon his midday treat is scheduled—something crunchy, good for his teeth. At six P.M. dinner is served, and it had better be on time. At eleven P.M. it is bedtime snack and lights out.

Occasionally, I invite a friend or two in for drinks and music in the evening. The cats are not in evidence, but at quarter to eleven Koko becomes nervous and parades back and forth through the area where they are seated. If they are not gone by eleven o’clock he presents himself briefly, then turns and walks to the front door, looking back once or twice to see if anyone is following. Two or three of these maneuvers deliver a telepathic message to the guests, who say, “Well, it’s time I headed home” or “Thanks for a pleasant evening, Qwill. “

 Koko’s finest moment occurred, however, on the evening of a cheese-tasting party to benefit the Literacy Council. It was black-tie. Fifty of the best people paid three hundred dollars a ticket for the privilege of tasting cheese and drinking wine in my converted apple barn, considered architecturally spectacular.

At nine o’clock the guests arrived by jitney and gasped at their first view of the barn floodlighted and resembling a medieval castle. Indoors the uplights and down-lights dramatized the balconies and ramps . . . the huge fireplace cube in the center of the space, with white stacks rising to a roof forty feet overhead . . . the living areas that surrounded the cube in one breathtaking flow of space.

The guests themselves glittered: the women in family jewels or beaded evening dresses; the men in dinner jackets and diamond studs. They drank amber punch and sampled cheeses from all over the world. Their small talk was witty.

Yum Yum watched from a safe distance, but Koko paraded among the guests, accepting their lavish compliments as his due. If he had owned a wristwatch, he would have been consulting it nervously. Eleven o’clock was approaching, and no one wanted to leave.

Suddenly there was a strange commotion in the kitchen, followed by a thumping and a growling and a loud shattering crash! Conversation stopped abruptly, and I rushed to the kitchen. When I tried to intervene the cat leaped over the bar and crashed into a lamp, sending the shade and the base flying in opposing directions. Women screamed and men yelled as Koko zipped around the fireplace cube and headed for the cheese table, scattering platters of cheese before leaping to the punch table and knocking over the lighted candles.

“Fire!” someone yelled.

“Grab him!”

Three men tore after the mad cat as he streaked around the fireplace cube with fur flying!

They bumped into furniture and each other.

“Somebody go the other way!”

Somebody did, but the trapped animal only sailed to the top of the fireplace cube and looked down on his pursuers.

“We’ve got him!”

A moment later Koko swooped over their heads and pelted up the ramp, not stopping till he reached the roof, where he perched on a beam and licked his fur.

I was embarrassed. “My apologies,” I said. “The cat went berserk. I don’t know why.”

Truthfully, I suspected that he wanted everyone to go home. It was, after all, eleven o’clock.