THE FIRST SUCCESS of Tiger Cat’s life, and one of his biggest, was not getting eaten by Old Mike, the Airedale. Old Mike was my father’s best friend, and everywhere my father went Old Mike went too. They had a lot of trouble that way with motels that didn’t like dogs, and years later, when my brother Johnny and I were old enough so that we wouldn’t get shocked, my mother would say at dinner parties that it was a terrible problem keeping Old Mike out of the bedroom. My father kept the other dogs at the ranch pretty much, but I think if you had offered him a thousand dollars to send Old Mike away for a week he would have told you to go to hell.
Old Mike hated cats, and, furthermore, unlike most dogs, he killed a lot of them. When he killed a cat he would bring home its carcass and leave it on the lawn for my father to see. My father hated cats too—they were the only kind of animal he didn’t like, snakes included—and my mother used to say that my father gave Old Mike a box of chocolate marshmallows every time he brought a cat home. Old Mike had a great weakness for chocolates of any kind, but he liked chocolate marshmallows the way an alcoholic likes Haig and Haig Five Star.
Anyway, as soon as we got Tiger Cat we knew we were going to have trouble with Old Mike. It was actually my grandmother who found Tiger. She was a painter, and she found him one afternoon while she was sketching up on Camino Escondido. She said Tiger kept following her around, and he looked lost and hungry, so she brought him home. My father and Old Mike were at the ranch, and at first my mother said we had to send Tiger Cat off to the animal shelter as soon as we had fed him. She said he was very scraggly and probably had tapeworm, and Old Mike would eat him up the first time he saw him. But Tiger Cat was still a small kitten at the time, and after he had drunk three bowls of milk and gone to sleep on my father’s big chair in the living room Mother changed her mind and said we could wait and see what Daddy said.
Daddy and Old Mike came in about a half hour after we sat down to dinner. My father was never once on time getting back from the ranch, and, though he was generally from a half hour to two hours late, he was known to be up to three weeks overdue, and three or four days one way or the other didn’t mean much at all. Mother said she had given up fretting about it.
My father and Old Mike were covered with dust, and Old Mike shook himself when they came in. My mother winced, as there was a lot of dust flying around, and my father said, “Had a hell of a sandstorm.”
Then he apologized for being late, which he always did, and bent over to kiss my mother on the cheek. A considerable amount of sand fell off his sleeve onto her peas, but Mother didn’t say anything.
After he had washed and changed shirts my father sat down with us and talked with my mother and my grandmother about the ranch until dessert. Then Mother told him about Tiger Cat and she said that we wanted to keep him. My father said, “I don’t like cats.”
Old Mike, who was fourteen at the time (he lived to be twenty), was a little deaf, and he raised up his head when my father said the word “cats.”
“But the boys want to keep it,” my mother said. “And you don’t have to take care of it. You don’t even have to touch it.”
“Don’t worry,” my father said.
“Johnny and I’ll feed it,” I said.
“I don’t mind as long as the damn thing doesn’t climb all over me,” my father said. “But Brother Mike doesn’t like cats either.”
When my father said “Brother Mike” Old Mike jumped up onto his feet and growled. My father called Old Mike Brother Mike because once when Old Mike was younger he killed a German shepherd dog that belonged to the head man at the monastery out by Sun Mount. My father always said the head man, whatever you call him, was the Pope, and since Old Mike had killed the Pope’s dog he was at least a Brother. Old Mike hated German shepherds almost as much as he hated cats.
“It’s okay, Brother Mike,” my father said loudly, and Old Mike lay down again.
“Do you think you could train him?” my mother asked.
“Who? Brother Mike?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know,” my father said.
“I think Edmund can train Brother Mike to do almost anything,” my grandmother said.
“You could try to train him,” I said.
“Thank you, Ma,” my father said. My grandmother was my mother’s mother, but she and my father were very close.
“Yeah,” Johnny said. “You could try.”
“How do you feel about it, Agnes?” my father asked my mother.
“This is a poor little kitten,” Mother said. “We’d have to send it to the shelter otherwise.”
“Do you want it?”
“Say yes,” Johnny said.
“It would be good training for the boys to take care of it,” my mother said.
“Do you want the cat?”
“Well, yes,” my mother said.
“All right,” my father said. “All you had to do was say so. I’ll train Brother Mike after dinner.”
“Terrific,” Johnny said.
“Where is it?” my father said.
“It went to sleep on your chair but I put it in the devils’ room,” my mother said. “I just hope it does things on the linoleum and not the furniture.”
After dinner my father took off his boots and put on slippers. He sat down in his chair and Old Mike lay down beside him. My father petted Old Mike and talked to him awhile, and then he said, “Bring in the cat.”
“I’ll get him,” I said.
“Don’t be rough with it,” my mother said.
I brought Tiger Cat in, holding him the way my grandmother showed me, with one arm under his tail and back and the other around him to keep him from jumping away. Tiger Cat hated to be carried, then and always, and he was scratching at me quite a bit. Old Mike smelled him, then saw him, and jumped up and let out a growl. My father had hold of his collar.
“Easy, Brother Mike,” my father said, and Old Mike stopped growling.
Tiger Cat almost got away from me and I had to hold on to him tightly. He snarled and spat at me.
“Lie down, old fella,” my father said to Mike, but Old Mike didn’t move. “Lie down, I said,” my father said again, and Old Mike lay down. He was tense and you could see that the muscles under his coat were all bunched up. He was beginning to drool.
“Put the cat on the floor,” my father said.
“He’ll kill it,” my mother said. “Be careful.”
“Edmund knows what he’s doing,” my grandmother said.
“Yes,” Johnny said.
“Be quiet,” my father said. “Please.”
I let Tiger Cat jump onto the floor, and I sucked at a big scratch on my arm.
Tiger Cat walked out into the middle of the living room and turned around in a complete circle. Then he walked straight toward Old Mike, who was foaming at the mouth.
“Easy, Brother Mike,” my father said. “Take it easy, old man. It’s all right.”
Tiger Cat walked around to Old Mike’s behind.