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My Father's Menagerie: By Barry Hutchings
Once again I find myself in my father's menagerie. It is old now and I know that it is a reflection of my ageing persona. When I was younger it was a more solid building, but now it is crumbling and the bricks lay loose in powdery mortar. I look up to the windows, and see a grid of cracked panes in rusty crittle. They are opaque with dust and hark back to a time when crittle was fashionable. I am reminded of my childhood. I look down from the windows and around the menagerie. It stinks. The smell is of urine and sawdust and though this place has always been smelly, it is now acrid and stinks of decrepitude. It is a testimony of neglect and survives only to punish me. I am anxious, and look once more towards the windows, high in the roof-space. An old crow - a jackdaw - is perched on a rafter. He squawks loudly at me and flutters his feathers and lifts his tail. A jet of white, streaks onto the floor, close to my shoes and splatters into the dust - green and white. It is one of many, and when I look up again I see that there are more crows - more jackdaws. They are the birds of my father and are here to spy on me. I do not like them and want to get out. I begin to panic and push my way through the racks of cages, but lose myself in the darkened corners. I am enmeshed in the menagerie and find myself in a familiar room. I am with the rodents, in a room of tower-block cages made by my father. They are rotten now. The fine carpentry has distorted and bulged, and the wire frontages, once shiny chrome, have become rusty with piss and are caked in faeces. It is horrifying to see. Once - when I was young - these cages were pristine, painted, furnished with fresh sawdust and sweet smelling hay. Now it is just urine and rotting plywood. I look into the cages and see that they are not empty. I am surprised because I cannot understand how these animals are still living. I cannot understand why they have not starved. I have not fed them since I was child, but they are still alive, weak and feeble, tending towards death, but never expiring. They are increasingly frail, and linger with the weakest of hearts. I am guilty, and the guilt stings my heart and burns my gut.
You might think that I deserve my guilt, and that I am cruel to neglect my animals. But it is not my fault. How can I feed these animals when I am away from the menagerie? How can I even remember that they exist when I am no longer here? The menagerie is easily forgotten and remembered only when I am in it.
My guilt turns to anger. I wish these animals would die and not torment me so. The decrepit conditions are a frightening reminder of my own mortality. This place is dying and a new order is establishing itself. Wild rodents - rats - are infesting the menagerie. They gnaw into the cages and bully my animals. They are apathetic. It reminds me of a sink estate where all hope is lost. It is rundown, filthy, and vandalised by the rats. I peer into one of the cages and at the frightful conditions. It is a seething mass of waste and sawdust, droppings and urine. My anger explodes.
"Why do you live like this!" I shout - and swipe a handful of sawdust, out of the cage, and onto the floor.
It writhes with life. It is infested with tiny maggots and dot-like mites, and is a seething pile. A tired looking hamster is lying in the middle. It is disorientated and looks around itself trying to make sense of its new situation.
It is the hamster of my childhood. I kneel down and examine it closely.
"Sophie!" I say.
The hamster yawns and stretches and tries rebury itself into the infested sawdust.
"Sophie... you're still alive!"
She looks at me through a single eye. The other has long since shrivelled, injured by a small child. I pick her up and stroke her.
"Sophie... after all these years..."
The hamster turns away from me. I look down at her, and then into her cage, filthy with neglect. I know that the hamster feels that I have betrayed it.
"I'm sorry... I always meant to clean you out..."
The hamster curls into a ball and rolls away from my gaze.
"It's just that I get so busy... that I forget about you... I don't mean to..."
The hamster remains tightly curled, its face buried, its back towards me.
"I'll clean you out... give you some fresh sawdust... some clean hay..."
The hamster remains motionless.
"A new branch to climb on?" I say.
I put the hamster back into its hovel.
"We've grown apart Sophie... I'm too old to have pets."
I throw a large handful of food into the cage. Nuts, corn, sunflower seeds... I throw more and more and more...
"This'll keep you going... last you for years!"
The hamster burrows into its diseased sawdust. It knows that I am lying.
I am pained with guilt and run from the rodent house.
Part 2: The Japanese Hamster
I am in the aquarium now. It is nearly dark, cave-like, with shelves of fish tanks lining the walls. Like the rest of the menagerie they are old and ruined, but still capable of sustaining life. I peer inside and see desperate fish, flapping in an inch of water. It is putrid with rotting weed and rotting algae, and I recoil at the horror of it. Once these fish were beautiful, once they had been tropical.
I hope that they will die soon, that their misery will be over. Or maybe it is my misery that I want to end, their deaths freeing me from the obligation of guilt.
I turn to get out of here, the other tanks are filled with dying lizards, slow-worms, frogs... animals that I had once captured.
I run deeper into the menagerie trying to escape. There is a new cage and I wonder why it is here. It is clean and tidy, well made - freshly painted. I am curious and examine the label.
Japanese hamsters.
Is this another project of my father's?
I open the door and lift the nest box. A bundle of furry rodents are sleeping peacefully.
Oh wow! I think. Different hamsters!
And I realise that these animals are together, and that they must be sociable.
I prise the bundle apart and see that the hamsters are clothed, and that they are wearing kimonos. Small - neatly tailored, hamster kimonos. I am shocked. I have never seen anything like this. It is shocking in the extreme, but I am reminded of my brother's wisdom, and that he told me that the Japanese mind is impossible for the European to understand. I guess that these hamsters have come from a Shinto temple and that their meaning is inscrutable.
I close the bundle of sleeping hamsters back into a ball and close the cage.
They are different. Hamsters are usually antisocial and will fight to the death if they are caged together.
I think of Sammy, the golden Syrian with the sleek fir. Sophie's lover - the father of her offspring. When sex was done, it turned to war. They had to be separated.
I nod my head and remember that the hamster's only desire is to gnaw at its bars.
I put one of the kimono wearing hamsters into my pocket. It remains asleep.
"You are too good for this place," I say aloud.
I rush past the stagnant fish tanks, the tenement cages and the writhing mice in the plastic buckets.
"I've got to get out of here!" I shout.
Part 3: The Cat
I run into an empty room and close the door. It is dark and quiet and I can hear myself panting. My breathing slows and I realise that something else is breathing. I turn slowly around, and in the dim light I see my old cat seated on a cushion, on a wooden stool. She is ancient, and her blind eyes bulge with disease. Her fur is fluffy but dry. But she is still beautiful. Her white muzzle turns towards me. She knows I am here and pricks her ears. I stare at her, shocked at her presence.
Then slowly, and with deliberation, she speaks.
I am surprised because I know how difficult it is for a cat to speak, and that the effort for it to do is so excruciatingly painful.
"I have always loved you..."
Her voice is pained, high, and rasping. Her blind eyes follow the sounds of my movements.
"Since when I was kitten, when you first cuddled me.
Since when you kicked me off your bed.
When you hit me because of my toilet.
When you was ill and I lay at your feet.
When you spurned my gifts of mice and rats.
When you chased me away because I annoyed you.
When I was locked in a shed because somebody hated me.
When you heard my cries and kicked down the door to rescue me.
When you held me and fed me prawns.
When you kicked the dog that nearly killed me.
When that woman hated me and you gave me away.
When I ran away and came back home.
When she left you and I sat on your lap.
When I scratched you for your disloyalty.
When you took me to the new house and the new woman.
When she loved me and fed me.
When I slept on your chest as we lay on the settee.
When you left us both.
When I looked for you in your room.
When the woman cried.
When you returned to visit us.
When I became old and blind.
When it was time to die and you held me in your arms.
When you cried and carried me to the vet.
When you ended my pain.
When you buried me...
I have always loved you."
And the cat turns away from me. I am shuddering. I want to take her away but I know that she belongs here in the menagerie. She is content here and will survive for as long as I exist. I allow myself to touch her, to stroke her fur, and she purrs for me.
It is time to leave.
I walk towards the door and as I do so the jackdaws squawk loudly at me. They are agitated. Somebody is pawing my shoulder. I turn and see that it is the hamster boy. He is big, with tired eyes, lumbering; uncommunicative. He paws at my chest making low grunting noises. I try to ignore him. The pawing is insistent. He is angry and won't let me go. I think briefly of fighting him, but dismiss the idea. Judo would not enough against the hamster boy. He paws at my jacket and I realise that he wants me to open it up. I do as he bids. His clumsy hand reaches into my pocket and takes the Japanese hamster. He scowls at me angrily then walks back into his empty cell. The door remains open and he sits on his shelf seat, with his head bowed.
"My god!" I say. "A human who lives in the menagerie!"
The hamster boy looks miserable, but I know, deep in his insulated mind, that he is very happy.