A Cat Named Georgie, Part 2

This blip is continued from yesterday's, and I'm happy to have found these pictures of me with Georgie, taken by my friend Miriam when she and her husband visited a few weeks before I said goodbye to that brave cat.
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The days of June passed, and Georgie's day of reckoning grew closer. Would my pampered fur ball return to utter poverty as I fell from a moral precipice? A cat's life in the wild is cruel, and my boy would stand little chance against badgers, foxes, and agricultural poisons. Wandering stray in Paris or Noisy would offer more charity perhaps but at least as many dangers as well. I grazed the terrain of the needy life, remembering that I was not really so much better off than Georgie. Between November and March I had been lining up at the Resto du Couer (Restaurant of the Heart) along with the immigrant moms and children with my big tote-bag twice each week for free food. To get there I passed by the only surviving building from the old internment camp at Drancy. The thought of that place is chilling enough, but looking at it and thinking again is a much stronger dose.

I had wonderful friends in France who found me work, offered me shelter, and helped me deal with the new bureaucracies in my life. I was never out in the cold in that country, nor even close. Georgie had the nearby family with their wall, and the old cat lady, and he had me. But we both had the same grey wolves waiting by the door, staring at us. These were the elements, the sicknesses of the poor, and our own stomachs. Leave the stomach empty for three days and watch what happens to your principles, your manners, and your respect for laws. But I had a ticket to America, where work and shelter waited for me, and where many friends would be close by. Georgie had a few weeks of comfort left before he might go straight back to where he was the previous year, when his eyes on a wall caught mine at a window.

I made a flyer with a picture of my friend sitting by that same back window, and I posted it on as many bulletin boards as I could find. One of those stops was "Publico," which is the nickname for Librairie Libertaire on Rue Amelot, the Anarchist book store of Paris. I had never gotten to know anyone there, but one of my articles had run in their paper and I had bought plenty of material at the shop. I explained Georgie's situation to one of the comrades and I made a case for Georgie being an "anarchist cat" as best I could, just as light humor. The fellow said he'd love to adopt all that silky fur, but he was at his cat limit and his girlfriend would kick him out if he brought another one home. But he promised to post the flyer in the store and in the nearby bakery of another anarchist. I thanked him and left.

Time was running out. I stopped again at the Vet's office and asked for advice on my various options. It was one of those conversations where I knew that the French person spoke English and they were thinking many things I'd like to hear, but they were at work and would never speak a single English word, plus they were limited in what they could tell me. The main message they put on the table and repeated over and over was "DO NOT ABANDON THE CAT!" They could not offer a better alternative, but they did give all the details of transporting a cat over the sea on an airline. The costs of doing that were just out of my range, and at the time I was not sure I could keep Georgie in the cabin with me. I knew that it is common for pets to die in the holds of passenger jets, so I instinctively resisted trying that route.

The departure date was drawing near. I was selling and giving away my surplus books. I was scrubbing down the kitchen one last time. I was saying my good-byes to friends, neighbors, and co-workers. I was doing some of the things I had been meaning to do since I arrived, twenty months earlier as a resident. There was a spectacular performance of Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar at the national theater on Trocadero. There was a day in the Marais and an evening around the Tuilleries Palace during the National Music Festival, when every musician in the country, from the ragged busker in a small town to the national orchestra in the Louvre Museum, turns out and plays for the public, free of charge. There were sentimental tears in my eyes for days on end. It was as though this great enchanted city had dressed to the nines and invited me out for the night, just to say farewell. But how would Paris keep my dear Georgie?

My shelves were near empty and most of the items on my list were crossed out. I was thinking of who I needed to call before the telephone service would be shut off when the phone rang. A man was speaking English with a heavy French accent.
"Is Georgie still available?" he asked. I was astonished.
"Yes, he is!" I replied. "How did you hear about him?"

He heard about Georgie on Radio Libertaire, the anarchist station operated by the same crew as at Publico, where I had left my flyers. I listened to it sometimes. I had heard that it was established in the 1960s, originally funded by money robbed from banks, no less. At least that was the rumor. There had been a "good and welfare" kind of announcement, stating that an American comrade had to leave the country and was distressed because he still needed to find a home for his sweet cat Georgie. I didn't know about this before, and of course I was delighted. We arranged for me to bring the celebrated puss into the city the next day, a Saturday, so that the man and his partner could meet him.

I and my furry companion made our last journey together, catching the bus at the end of my street, then the train from Noisy-le-Sec to the city, then by the Metro to Saint-Germain-des-Prés in the 6th Arrondissement. Then finally, we walked a few blocks and rang a doorbell. This journey took us out of a working class suburb in the 93rd, which is the department (like a county) that has always been one of the most militantly left-radical in France. Today Noisy-le-Sec is home to many families of North African decent and holds its market on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. At the end of the journey we were in one of the oldest and most famous sections of Paris. A short walk will take you past the Sorbonne, through Place Saint-Michel, to the Île de la Cité where once upon an ancient time the sheep and cattle were forded across the river and the original settlement was built. This is among the most celebrated and expensive neighborhoods in the world, and my Georgie had an appointment there.

I and my cat were buzzed in and I carried him up the spiral stairs. We were warmly greeted by two excellent men in their small but comfortable apartment. I'm embarrassed now because I have forgotten their first names, but I do recall their cat Moon-Moon, who was all black and shortly to become Georgie's best friend -a girl, I think. There were sliding glass doors at the back which opened onto an oval courtyard, enclosed on all sides by other buildings and thus shaped like a standing tube. It was a clean and friendly place for a cat to sun himself.

The man who had called me spoke English well, but his partner spoke none. They graciously served coffee and biscuits while the two cats eyed each other. I was impressed by how smoothly the man navigated the economic divide between us. When I took out the half-bag of cat food that I still had left, both men stared at it, surprised. "Oh we'll find a use for it." It was bottom-shelf crap at one euro per 3-pound bag, and they would not dream of feeding it to their cats. They probably tossed it to the pigeons, unless they just threw it in the trash. He volunteered that although it was customary for the giver of a cat to bring all the veterinary care up to date before the animal was transferred, they would take care of all that. I was grateful of course, but I had not even thought of it.

They immediately took a liking to Georgie and were very interested in his awful adventure with the poison. I asked to be allowed to visit my dear friend next time I came to Paris, and they happily agreed. As we sipped coffee and made small talk I asked, "So you two are anarchist, then?"
"Well, no. Why do you ask?"
"You heard about Georgie on Radio Libertaire, the Anarchist station, so I assumed?"
"Oh, no. We just like the music they play." He mentioned also that the announcement was made in a very sympathetic way, saying that I was ever so sad and worried about my adorable, beloved cat.

Before leaving France I stopped at the vet's office to tell them the happy news. I gave them the brief report in French and then ended in English: "Thank you for helping me!" That brought big smiles to both their faces. They did speak English as I thought, and somehow I had the impression that they were a couple.

Georgie had a new home and a huge burden was lifted from my heart. After I left the country I sent a card to the lucky boy and received a card back. After about six months when I returned to retrieve the last of my stuff, I stopped in to visit and was very pleased to find how well my friend had done. His fur was all silky and shiny, almost as though it had been rubbed with oil. He curled up in my lap and purred, looking up into my eyes, just like old times. His new humans said that he and Moon-Moon had indeed become fast friends. And he had a new name! Jo-Jo he was called now, loosely based on Georgie but better suited to French ears. Another piece of news was that when they took Jo-Jo to their veterinarian, they were told that he'd already been castrated! The two vets had done it for free and without telling me, simply because there are already too many orphan cats walking around hungry.

The reason I cherish the memory of Georgie is because from its beginning to its end, solidarity prevails with an Anarchist twist. That brave moggie went from rags to riches. Ever since leaving him at Rue des Canettes I've joked that he's eating much better than I am now.

The core of it is that the Anarchists of Paris had come to the rescue, just as they had worked so many near-miracles through the years. Two of my favorite examples are that, underneath the city in the catacombs, there are large tracts of the tunnels that are legally off limits to the public, but serve as night clubs, restaurants, art studios -you name it. Another fantastic achievement is the big clock in the lobby of the Odeon. Its old gears had rusted and stopped some time during the 1960s and the government somehow never got around to fixing it. So the anarchists made a secret project, infiltrating the staff and gaining full access to the building. They maintained a clandestine live-in workshop in the attic for a whole year, and when the clock-works were all fixed and working perfectly, they walked into the director's office and announced what they had done. The director had a huge hissy-fit and took them to court, but at the end of the day, the anarchists were celebrated as heroes for saving a piece of the nation's patrimony. In the same spirit, Georgie was delivered from abject poverty, through a close brush with a poisoned death, then threatened destitution, and finally to a life of luxury as Jo-Jo, in the heart of Paris.