Shelley's Odd Cat

Amethyst right after I got her, 2002

I started going over to Shelley’s ramshackle house on the edge of downtown Urbana in the summer of 1998. Shelley was writing a column in a local paper called “The Octopus.” Her column was called “In the Doghouse.” Come to find out, the title’s double meaning referred not just to the fact of Shelley’s ownership of three German Shepherd dogs, but also to her notions about herself and her relationship to her community. She was, or at least saw herself as, or maybe it was that she perceived herself as being seen as, a troublemaker. The dogs were certainly a large and noisy presence at Shelley’s, but she also had a cat. My first encounter with Amethyst is lost in the chaos of the place. I remember her, at first, as a shadowy figure, hopping off the battered couch and ducking out of sight. Then she stayed in one place long enough to afford a good look. I had seen a few Siamese cats before, up close and personal. I knew about seal points, blue points, lilac points and points in general. I had never seen the likes of this cat.

“What is wrong with that cat?”

“Nothing.”

“Her markings. That’s some sort of a mixed breed.”

“She’s a tortie.”

I let it go at that for a little while. She had the Siamese black face, but her ears, fur, paws, and belly were mottled with browns and grays. She had the big blue eyes. As noted, her tail had a prominent kink near the tip. She swished the kink at a different tempo than she swished the rest of the tail.

            “What’s the cat’s name?”

            “Ammy.”

            “Amy?”

            “No. Ammy. Or we just call her “Am”. That’s the sound she makes all the time. She’s always saying her name.”

I persisted, for a while, in calling the cat “Amy” (as in ‘aim me’). Every time, I was corrected. “It’s ‘Am-me’.” (As in ‘I am me’.) Finally, in exasperation, it was explained to me that the eldest daughter had named the cat for the amethyst, the precious stone. In certain lights, indeed, the cat’s fur had a faintly purple tinge. In addition to the eldest daughter, the household consisted of the son, and the twins. The twins and Amethyst the cat came into the world at roughly the same time. Knowing the age of the twins puts a start date on the life of the cat. Supposedly. Shelley is the “unreliable narrator” of her own life. The mystery about Amethyst’s actual age returns again and again. It was thought by the household that she was an old cat, even in 1998. Indeed, for most cats, fifteen years would be a ripe old age. Amethyst was not an ordinary cat. You could see that, even in the extraordinary world that she survived in. In fact, remarking about Am’s breed and provenance, Shelley once declared that she was ‘an expensive cat’.

On one of these early visits to Shelley’s, I reached down and picked Amethyst up. She was, after all, underfoot. I flipped her upside down and looked at her eyes looking up at me, uncertainly. This is the way I always picked up the huge seal point Ace-kitty, another Siamese cat that I had known. With Acer, you could make him talk by giving him a little squeeze. He was like a feline bagpipe. Amethyst did not play this game.

            “Oooo. She likes you.”

            “Ya think?”

            “Sure. She hates to be picked up. See, she’s purring even.”

I didn’t detect purring, but it might have been true. Amethyst was capable of all sorts of levels of expression. She could purr like a locomotive, or sub-audibly. At this moment, a perceived bond had been formed between Amethyst and me in the mind of Shelley.