Tales of a Whiny Cat(Editor's Note: Hershey Frymer was columnist Murry Frymer's cat - and occasional substitute columnist until his tragic demise at the San Jose Humane Society a couple of years ago. However, the Frymer family recently discovered a number of precious, never-before- published perspectives about life in the Frymer household that Hershey left behind in a safe place. This is the first from that cache of "The Lost Columns of Hershey Frymer." And, by the way, all the cats pictured in today's column are professional models.)
Other cats have asked me: what's it like being a Jewish cat? I tell them: pussy, it ain't easy.
To tell you the truth, I didn't even know I was a Jewish cat. I knew I was a cat, all right, because every so often I have the urge to whine on top of a fence. I thought all cats do that. But then I heard my caretaker, the kvetch known as Ol' Mur, whine to beat the band. This man is all whine, one miserable complaint after another. He has a list as long as my tail about all the people who have done him wrong! He actually kvells in (enjoys) whining. (Yeah, I've picked up a little Yiddish over the years with Ol' Mur.)
We-e-ell. When I hear him groaning like that, I recognize that the whining I do on a fence is not a cat thing! No, it's a Jewish thing! Other cats in the neighborhood sometimes "sing" on a fence and they do it badly. Cats are usually off-key because of the missing feline gene for tunefulness. It got lost ages ago during a sad time and ever since it has been particularly painful to hear a cat sing a song of sixpence, not to mention do Andrew Lloyd Webber, who, you may know, wrote a musical called "Cats" without giving any of us a lousy audition. If whites in blackface are politically incorrect, what the heck about people in cat-suits!! But I digress.
With Passover now in the holiday picture, I reflect again about my ethnicity. One year, during the seder in the Frymer house, they opened the front door to let "Elijah" in, as is the tradition. Just then I trotted into the house from roaming in the neighborhood. Me-ow!!!! You should have heard the laughter. I blushed under my fur.
Ever since then, Ol' Mur' has made a big thing about his "owning" a Jewish cat. Well, I said nothing. I wanted to say there are no Jewish cats, just Jewish Katz. Yeah, cats make jokes, but we don't laugh. Cats can laugh, all right, but nothing has ever struck us as being that funny. Crying we do easily.
Anyway, it became accepted in the household that seeing me and
Elijah both come in the door at the same scriptural beckoning,
that I must be Jewish. Well, who knows. I was never circumcised,
but I was "fixed." I don't think that is the same thing.
As a Jewish cat, I don't get kosher food. I get the cheapest stuff that comes in cans. On Passover, I don't get anything different. I hear them saying, "Why is this night different from every other?" If you look in my dish, you'd see it isn't. (I once did have a little Manischewitz wine, heavy malaga. Either I hate wine or it wasn't a very good year. Gefilte fish is something else. Ol' Mur', who hates the stuff, slid a piece from his plate into my dish. Ve-ry tasty. )
Of course being Jewish can subject a cat to neighborhood bias. It doesn't help that I'm dark brown. Being dark brown and Jewish and nearly blind makes me feel like Sammy Davis, but he's gone. The good ones go too soon. Ol' Mur' goes on forever.
My neighborhood cats are all gentile, which is to say they like to act superior. Now that is something that comes easy for cats, especially gentile cats. So they sit around and look out the window at me wandering by in the street and I can almost hear them say: "Hey look, there goes the Jew!."
I don't look their way. It's better not to notice. But sometimes I stop, lift a rear paw and show them what I think of them. Smugness is unpleasant in any animal!
If I'd had my choice, I'd have been African American because of my color and the fact that I have style. African Americans have style. They walk with style, move with style. That's me all over. If you're ever in my neighborhood, you should come around to see me move. Silky silence. A little look here. A little look there. Stop. Look. Stop. Look. Style!
Ol' Mur' walks Jewish. Noisy. It must be gas. From the blintzes. Not me.
Anyway, Passover is here again and I know they are going to open the door in the middle of the service and hope, just then, to see me walk in. I'd do it, but they don't give me a cue. You can't make an entrance without a cue.
In my next life (I get nine), I think I'd prefer to be Italian. Like the Sopranos. If I was their cat, the other cats in the neighborhood would cross the street before they'd cross me!
Also I think the food would be better. Or maybe I could be Siamese. I like won-ton.
But being a Jewish cat in a gentile world is a lot to bear. Not that I want to complain. But I must. It's an ethnic thing.
© 2000 by Murry Frymer
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