Gird the Cats!

This year’s holiday battle cry in our home was, “Gird the cats,” a malapropism that stuck.  Beginning on December 20th, we hosted our daughter’s rescue dog, Artemis or Artie, who, anxious in new situations, was not a fan of our menagerie. Cordelia was afraid that, upon meeting one of our pets, Artemis would eat it for lunch—or dinner or breakfast.   The three dogs and the fish were easy to contain behind the kitchen door.  The cats, however, roam free throughout our house, and we worried about Artemis’s delicate nerves, not to mention the potential sacrifice of one of the metaphorical nine lives of one of our three cats.

“Are the cats girded?” we asked one another. Initially, whoever started the expression combined guard and herd, but the term caught on in our family.

“Could you gird the cats?”  someone hollered down the stairs. “Have we ungirded the cats?” we’d ask hours after we had contained them in a room.  Or the simple command, by text:  Gird.

After a week or so of assiduous girding, we grew lax.  One morning Artemis encountered our small calico, Phoebe, on the stairs.  No harm ensued. Phoebe gracefully leapt down the steps.  Artemis hardly noticed her. A few days later, we allowed Artie to pass through the front hall while black Tonio hid, undetected, beneath a chair.  While our dogs definitely knew there was a stranger in the house, the cats seemed unconcerned.

We embraced various forms of the verb, to gird.  We made it our own, introduced it into the lexicon of our family.  Early in the New Year, Seth sent us the etymology of the verb to gird, which derives from the ancient custom of girding one’s loins, as in cinching or wrapping a piece of fabric tightly around the mid-section in order to make flowing robes less dangerous in battle.  In more modern times, the connotation of girding one’s loins has come to mean to prepare oneself for a difficult situation, to get ready.  The idea of actually girdling the cats or trying to do so made me laugh.  They are their own creatures, alternately friendly and ferocious.  Over the holiday, they allowed themselves to be picked up docilely or scratched ferociously.  While Cordelia worried that Artemis might munch a cat, I worried that one of the cats would take Artemis down. 

Artemis lived in Cordelia’s bedroom, crated when we needed to be downstairs.  She may look ferocious, but is a love, pacing and whining when Atticus, our son, her primary care taker during Cordelia’s vist to her beau in Montana, left the room.  One day, I surrendered to a migraine and lay on Cordelia’s bed, Artie my faithful companion. Thinking about what she endured before Cordelia and Cole gave her her forever home makes me sad.  She is afraid of wind, pigeons, people, squirrels, snow, the inflatables on our front yard, loud noises, strangers, and, sometimes, people she knows—if only briefly.  But, she is a good dog, rich in love and kisses, delighted to have scratches and much larger than our little three.   It was fun having a canine houseguest, though I felt sorry that she couldn’t mingle with the rest of us downstairs and worried, always, about her wellbeing and the wellbeing of the cats. 

The other night, the black cat, Tonio, and the grey cat, Sebastian, did not come in when Seth gave the dogs their evening walk.  It is Sebastian’s practice to walk the circle with Seth and the three dogs, to use the dog door if necessary to come back into the house, to curl up on a coat or in a shoe cubby or on a dog bed.  Tonio never walks the whole way, but recently, both of them have been inside long before bedtime.  Phoebe, the little calico, never goes outside.  10:00 p.m. came, then 11:00.  I called and called.  Tonio often comes when he is called.  Finally, Seth put his clothes back on, went downstairs and walked and called.  He returned, cat-less.  As he was ready to give up, he turned around and saw both cats.  Had they come in and he hadn’t noticed?  Had they been there all along?  No matter.  They were safe.  We could sleep. 

And now, Cordelia and Cole are gone, Artie in her crate, looking dolefully out the back window as Cordelia and Cole make their way back to Manhattan.  The cats seem to have taken their departure calmly.  Tonio is sleeping on my bed.  Phoebe is sleeping on my freshly laundered pile of black slacks.  And Sebastian is in the kitchen with the dogs, sleeping in their bed.  Let’s be clear who is in charge in this family. 

Happy 2020.