THE FELINE FACTOR

When I was younger, there were definitive choices. Chocolate or vanilla. Beatles or Stones. Dogs or Cats. Well, I eschewed chocolate for vanilla (and eventually went over-the-top for vanilla bean). I was a big Beatles fan, tried to rebel and enjoy the Stones, but segued into The Who and Led Zeppelin. And for the longest time I was a dog guy.

That is, until I met my wife in Boston in 1995. She had as her devoted companion a runt cat, then eleven years of age, named (of all things) R.C. How many times she confused H.B. with R.C. I can’t possibly recall. He was half full seal-point Siamese and very regal. Well, that whole dog thing went out the window.

After he passed at the age of 20, we took in three from a no-kill animal shelter in Andover, KS. There was a black-and-white bi-color little lady named Camille; her litter mate and tuxedo named Rupert; and my ornery black cat Mongo. They were all a delight. But Mongo made me feel like I was in the same room as Raymond Chandler. His favorite black cat, Taki, appeared in many photos. I made sure to do the same with Mongo.

They passed from our lives until we got Lady Mittens and Sir Pounce Alot from Beauties and Beasts, an 11th hour animal rescue shelter in Wichita, KS. They were manx cats, something neither my wife and I had experienced. Lady Mittens is an elegant tuxedo. Sir Pouce Alot is orange.

When I started developing the Wichita Chronicles, I had in mind my main character, Harold Bergman, was going to be a former policeman, an injured World War II veteran, and a Jew. On a lark, I decided to include my own cats as part of his life, considering how closely I felt to Harold. But there would have to be a reason for their presence. They couldn’t just be there for comic relief. Any character in possession of pets must need to take care of them. This requires some degree of literary exposition. How exactly do they live with him and how are they taken care of?

Finally, beyond all of that, why are they even there? Since I was developing Harold to be close to me in mentality and thought and morality, I felt I could imbue him with the same sense of compatibility that I had developed with all the cats in my life since 1995. Yet, there needed to be something more.

First, how did they get into his life? The back story (which appears early in the first book “The Day of Calamity”) is that the prior resident of Harold’s apartment was a pixilated Irishman who was a bartender and had the two cats. He died suddenly and, despite the housing crisis in post-World War II Wichita, many felt the apartment was cursed. The landlady didn’t have the heart to dispose of them but offered a discount on rent with a promise of a one-year lease and keeping and maintaining the cats. He accepted.

This, naturally, creates the environment in which the main character lives. But what of the felines themselves? What role do they play, perhaps in each book and certainly in the overall world of Harold Bergman? For this answer, I needed to turn to my own life. What is it that cats bring to my world? What did I learn from them? What is it they add each and every day?

You can start with the notion of a guy meeting a gal who has a cat. If the guy likes the gal and wants to continue on in some kind of relationship, he better darn well realize the cat (or cats) were there before him and for a good reason. Therefore, acceptance is the minimum. Understanding is vitally necessary.

Well, R.C. was my first cat and he initiated me into the world of felines for 9 years. When Mongo came into my life as part of a triumvirate, I figured I was well on my way to being a writer of crime fiction. Then I came across a great photo of one of my favorite pulp writers, Jim Thompson, with a cat.

There is a whimsical quality to it. Of course, Hemingway was noted for having polydactyl cats.

The progeny of those six-toed cats still reside on the property in Key West.

My wife and I do not have children. While I reject the notion of being a Cat Dad (for the purposes of getting me a pre-fabricated card on Father’s Day), I do take seriously the responsibility of caring for the loving feline residents in my home. I’ve gone through the pain of watching four pass across the Rainbow Bridge after years of having the pleasure of their company.

I have learned fastidiousness, freedom from convention, passionate action, ultimate and total relaxation, intensity (sometimes in the form of stalking), the simplicity of staring out a window or basking in the sun. I have watched trust in the form of offering bellies or ears to be rubbed. I have witnessed pure and uncompromising joy. Perhaps these same qualities can be found in dogs. My own experience has been restricted to cats for the past 28 years.

What then does Harold Bergman receive from his own association? Initially, it is more about acquiescing. He has had no prior experience with any pets in his youth. The opportunity to get an apartment in post-World War II Wichita with a remaining influx of workers is his sole motivation when we learn how he acquired the apartment:

The first-floor apartment contained a main room looking out over the street and pocket doors separating the quaint kitchenette, the bathroom, and the small bedroom. The cats of which she spoke were two Manx, one an elegant tuxedo named Lady Mittens and the other a bright orange fellow called Sir Pounce. None of O’Malley’s co-workers would take them in, and Mrs. Hanover didn’t have the heart to evict them, being the good Christian woman she was. That I was willing to move in with a guaranteed one-year lease and maintain the feline residents allowed her to offer me a reduced monthly rent. The place was in proximity to everywhere in downtown I needed to be. I did not believe in curses and had no aversion to felines I was aware of. I just didn’t know what I was getting myself into.

Somewhere along the way, the relationship between man and cat became symbiotic, then eventually became mutually beneficial. Whether his day involves an extreme of physical, mental, or emotional energy, Harold returns to the comfort of his home. Perhaps the cats seek attention or merely food. In either case, the act of tending to their needs brings him closer to God because it creates an act of dedication and devotion.

I made a concerted effort to find any reference to cats specifically in both Biblical and Talmudic texts. The closest I came was Eruvin 100b:

Similarly, Rabbi Yoḥanan said: Even if the Torah had not been given, we would nonetheless have learned modesty from the cat…

Without a specific tract to use as a reference point, I turned inward to consider how the various cats in my life have had an impact upon me both as a writer and a person. There, in my own life, I found the attributes that Harold Bergman could share with me. This is, quite naturally, a trope not found in the traditional hard-boiled genre. Whereas we can look to the charming photos of Chandler and Thompson with their cats, they seem more a part of the writers’ lives than their literary creations.

Therefore, it was a conscious decision to add a level of complexity to these stories by removing the devoted secretary (i.e., Effie Perrine for Sam Spade, Velda for Mike Hammer) and putting our main character, the private detective, with cats who are representative of countless mythological symbols.

They offer no support toward resolution of cases as the human associates would. They can not provide feedback. What they do in the life of Harold Bergman is create an environment where he can find peace and tranquility after experiences in the war and the shadows of criminal dealings have tainted his perspective on human existence. In that regard, we are much alike.

***

Private detective Harold Bergman stood as a testament to his former life as a Wichita Kansas policeman. Having endured the brutalities of World War II, he carries a slight but noticeable limp, a constant reminder of the battles fought on distant shores. As a Jew, his identity is woven into the very fabric of his being, but he cannot fulfill his father’s wishes that he become a rabbi, and instead faces a world where the laws of God and the laws of man don’t make sense, taking it upon himself to find the Truth and perhaps himself.

Harold finds himself entangled in the lives of a spoiled daughter, and the wayward husband of a devout colored woman. Their cases take Harold on a perilous journey into the depths of a dark underworld, where shadows dance with malicious intent and faith emerges as his sole weapon. Failure to wield it will usher in a day of calamity.

“The Day of Calamity” , The Wichita Chronicles Volume 1 will be released on November 29, 2023.