Animals exhibit strong character and distinctive points of view for those who are most perceptive. Pets narrate two recent books, Buster by George Pelecanos and The Ghost Cat by Alex Howard.
While the style of the first is contemporary and plain-spoken and the second is historical fantasy, each pet presents a delightful, poignant point of view. At times puzzled by the creatures who share their homes, Buster and Grimalkin pursue as much agency as possible in a world controlled by humans. Both tales serve as allegories about aging in changing societies, the history one life can span along with the treasure of memories for those who have loved and lost and the peace that accompanies reflection on past relationships.
Buster, born in a two-bedroom apartment in in Washington DC, romps with his mother, multiple siblings and a human mother with her three children. Sweet and smart, he relishes time outdoors but money is tight. The puppies gradually disappear until it’s Buster’s turn, when a visiting exterminator offers to give him a home.
Life is uncertain for Buster and the troubled humans who provide shelter. The exterminator is controlling and angry, prompting his wife to leave with their son. The breakup leads to Buster being left tied outside for long periods, often without water. Eventually, a neighbor calls animal control. The officer is kind, but fearing life in a cage, Buster flees, scavenging the streets until he befriends a grieving widower.
The widower gives Buster to his nephew, a marijuana dealer. Top lavishes Buster with a comfortable home, toys and attention. “Because he didn’t go out to a job, Top had time to spend with me, and we used it well. He walked me regularly and took me to places that I could run off my leash.”
An arrest disrupts their carefree days. Anticipating a prison sentence, Top arranges for his uncle to care for Buster once again before tragedy ensues and Top vanishes from Buster’s life.
Buster and the uncle grow old together, falling into a pattern until the man dies. Buster endures another period of scavenging until one day he follows a young girl home. Checking his tags, the family learns the dog’s owner has died. A neighbor warns that the animal was a “sweet and loyal companion to the deceased” and may not take to a new home.
Buster adjusts and his last years are idyllic from the human reader’s point of view. Comfortable and loved, he contemplates death with stoicism. “All of us had to get gone to make room for the new.” Buster appreciates his good home, but cherishes memories of earlier days, remembering his favorite toy in his first apartment, the warmth of his mother along with what he regards as his best days, riding with Top in the Monte Carlo: “My collar with my name spelled out in diamonds, my head held up, strong and proud. When Top was my master, and I was king.” Buster, like many humans, prefers adventure and thrill over stability.
The Ghost Cat begins in London,1902, with a yellow tabby's last day of his one real life. His favorite human is the charlady who rescued the abandoned, starving kitten and brought Grimalkin into her master’s home. Just before Grimalkin dies, he spies his reflection in a brass firebox. “A hunched tabby cat stared back at him, crooked of tail and jagged of whisker…. There was a majesty about him, as there was with all handsome cats grown old, and a robustness to his form…. He was a thinking cat and, as such, enjoyed a life of quiet intellectual contemplation.”
As far as Grimalkin is concerned, cats communicate as well as humans, “able to express everything he needed perfectly well in tail-flicks, purrs, chirrups and rubs; and any human worth their salt, like Eilidh, was able to understand this language.”
A peaceful death by the fireplace releases him from the pain of aging. “The ache of his back eased; the arduous pull and heave of his lungs subsided, and as the rising flames beat their warmth upon his fur, the twist of his thoughts fell silent for the last time ever in this life.”
A mix-up surrounding Grimalkin’s death leads to a choice, either moving to oblivion or proceeding with the remainder of his eight lives as a ghost in the same London home. Any time Grimalkin falls asleep, a new life begins, and he witnesses snippets of history: a 1909 meeting with James Barrie, the author of Peter Pan; the generosity displayed during a 1935 meeting between a wealthy Rockefeller wife and the the wife of Alexander Fleming, who developed penicillin; the rush to a bomb shelter with a newborn in 1942; a stop at the charlady’s deathbed amid the coronation celebrations of 1953; the televised moon landing in 1969; the breakup of the home into small rooms and roommate cruelty in 1997; the 2008 financial crisis and playfulness with a computer; and a final return in 2022 with a family preparing the space for their first child. Also in the home is one Grimalkin’s many descendants, a sweet gray tortoiseshell with an marmalade flank, “spoiled rotten by her humans.”
Like Buster, Grimalkin contemplates death with a stoic peace. “There comes a time in a cat’s playful existence when a huge, soporific calm falls over them.” As he falls asleep for the last time, two thoughts much like Buster’s enter his head: the memory of his mother licking him as a newborn kitten and a smiling Elidh, his favorite human, looking down at him.
Two well-crafted plots on aging ensure that any reader fortunate enough to share a home with a pet may not look at the creatures the same way again.
