The Fur Person

Poet / Author May Sarton (1912-1995) was born in Belgium to Belgian parents. She and her folks lived in Belgium for the first two years of her life. When, in 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm sent his army storming through Belgium on its way to Paris, Sarton's family grabbed what they could carry and fled to a relative's home in Ipswich, England, and thence – a year later – to the United States.

Sarton's mother was an artist; her father was a historian of science. In America, while her father worked at Harvard University, daughter May attended school in Cambridge, Mass. She studied theatre, but poetry was her true calling. She published her first book of verse, Encounter in April, in 1937. Wikipedia tells that Sarton traveled to Santa Fe, NM, in 1945. While in Santa Fe, Sarton met someone named Judy Matlack, who became her "partner" until the couple separated in 1956.

During her life, Sarton wrote and published dozens of books. Poetry, nonfiction, novels and a couple of children's stories rolled in profusion off her typewriter. Her bibliography lists The Fur Person (1957) as Sarton's eighth novel. If other books she wrote were as good or better than The Fur Person, Ms. Sarton had a wonderful career and was a great success. She certainly worked hard and long enough to attain it.

Fur Person is a fantasy-biography, supposedly the story of a knight-errant tomcat that moved in with Sarton and Matlack at some time or other. When it happened doesn't matter. What matters is the cat and the story of his life with the two women.

The story is that the cat grew from an orphaned kitten whose mother disappeared before his eyes were open. He was taken from the litter (The rest went to a shelter.) by a little boy and bottle-fed until he learned to feed himself. At the age of six months, having decided he'd rather be a "cat-about-town," the half-grown tomcat left the boy who had nurtured him.

For two years he enjoyed his freedom, gallivanting about, eating what and sleeping where and when he pleased. He hunted; he sired kittens; he got in fights. He had all the adventures that come naturally to roving tomcats. He fancied himself happy as a "gentleman-cat-about-town," but then he started having strange dreams. The dreams involved gentle hands, warm milk, creamed haddock, a blazing hearth. His dreams left him oddly attracted to human beings – especially old ladies who keep clean houses, cook fish, and take in homeless cats. So, by and by, the gentleman-cat-about-town began consciously seeking a home – preferably a home with a housekeeper and a chef at his command.

Poor fellow: in his wildest dreams, he never dreamt what he had let himself in for.

He first tried a seemingly nice old lady, who took him and shut him in her tiny, grubby apartment. There he had no privacy because the old woman followed him everywhere and couldn't keep her hands off him. The food was barely passable and the old lady was creepin' him out, so he left.

At large again, he wandered for days before the aroma of boiled cod lured him into the nice, clean kitchen of another house. He was about to enjoy a tasty handout when a big, blue-eyed, long-haired, white cat – already in residence – charged into the kitchen, bowled our hungry protagonist over and knocked him right out the door.

Alas: No boiled cod for supper! Nameless, vagabond adventurer, gentleman-cat-about-town fled into the night screeching poetic vitriol:

"May your milk turn sour;

May your fish taste queer,

And your meat look strange,

From this very hour;

May your blue eyes blear;

May you get the mange."

By and by, protagonist Puss learned caution and manners and better ways to approach his marks. Sure enough, there came a day when two gentle ladies thought they'd fallen in love with him. Gentle Voice and Brusque Voice (as he thought of them) adored his pretty, expressive tail with it's snow-white tip, his sparkling clean, white shirt-front, his strikingly bold, black-and-cream striping. In short, Puss was handsome, neat, clean, polite, friendly and playful. He seemed to love and respect both of the ladies, who seemed to love and respect him in turn. Puss hated water like most cats, but still: things went swimmingly for a few days.

The women couldn't think what to call their new house-guest. They didn't figure it out until one day Puss got into an awful scrap with another tomcat when both males assumed possession of the 'girl' next door. Even as such things go, it was a nasty fight. Gentleman Cat got all bitten and sliced up, as did the other fellow in turn.

Brusque Voice and Gentle Voice then dubbed their new boyfriend 'Terrible Tom Jones,' a play on the name of the titular character in Fielding's doorstop novel. The ladies felt that the cat and the character – being of like disposition and possessed of a similar taste in females – should share the name. They also felt that they didn't want a rematch. So they took Tom Jones to a veterinarian, whom they paid to remove Tom's love life.

Here ends the story of Terrible Tom Jones, and here begins the story of 'The Fur Person,' after whom the book is named. So I will end this thing after drawing a lesson or two from what follows.

To neuter a half-grown tomcat as soon as his testicles descend is one thing – the youngster hasn't learned to use his male parts and probably doesn't even know what they're good for. A youngster's parts are tiny, seldom so big as a couple of pine nuts. The hormones that will shape his natural adulthood have scarcely begun to flow. The veterinary gives the kitten a shot that renders him insensible. The vet then makes a cut that is almost no cut at all and removes what the kitten's owner claims are a pair of undesirable parts. Finally, the vet staples the wound shut, the youngster wakes up and, to all appearances, seems unaffected by the operation. Barring a bungled procedure or post-procedural infection, there are no problems.