HOLLY NADLER
508-274-2329
When composing a eulogy, sometimes the author must allow time to elapse before a complete, honest and heartfelt homage can emerge. So it is for a personality many of you came to know in my bookstore: Beebe, our Siamese cat, 1991 – 2010, who spent his last and perhaps best two years with the Martin / Seccombe family of Tisbury.
Beebe had to follow in some pretty big paw prints, although the paws themselves were tiny: We first acquired from a breeder in West Tisbury, a three-pound runt named Baby Roo with red ears and a red tail (he was some kind of rare Siamese). He was so cute, lovable and pliable that you could stick him in your pocket and carry him around on your errands, hence the name Baby Roo, like the kangaroo infant in Winnie the Pooh.
It turned out that his thimbleful weight and docility were signs of something fatal that not even the vet had detected, and Baby Roo died suddenly in his cat box. He had probably had a bowel movement bigger than he was.
We had a burial service behind our house in East Chop. Our neighbors attended — Bill Munson Sr., son Billy Jr., daughter Heather, and Charlie and me. I played Elizabethan canticles, recited prayers from an eclectic mix of mystics such as Hildegard of Bingen and the Hindu holy woman Anandamayi-ma, and Baby Roo was gently laid to rest. Afterwards, Bill Munson told me, when the time came, he wanted me to conduct his service.
So from the same breeder, we got Beebe (for B.B., Big Brother), and he became the Nadler cat for a number of, oh, interesting years. He may have had a bona fide, measurable split personality. Or he was just a plain old feline sociopath. He would cuddle up to you and purr in so engaging a manner that newcomers were amazed and ready to take him home: “What an awesome cat!” they’d say. “He’s like a dog, so affectionate.”
Then, just when he had you with your brain at its highest endorphin output, he sidled down to your calf and took a bite. Not enough to get himself into legal trouble. No blood was drawn. But the horror of being sucker-bitten by a cat that had nuzzled up to you was more than any of us could abide.
He also monitored his breakfast service by standing on the kitchen counter and swatting the first person to pass him by. But what could we do? He was our family cat. Marty ignored him, but Charlie loved him — sort of — and he got along with the dog, a cocker spaniel named Chopper, although Beebe treated the poor pooch with the same snuggle-whap! combo.
Occasionally we received calls from the animal shelter that Beebe had been turned in. Someone would find him on the beach and make an educated guess that no purebred Siamese would be outdoors unattended like that. But we always let him wander! He was way too cagey to be hit by a vehicle, and for some reason even big dogs, like Primo Lombardi’s hound of the Baskervilles, were scared of him. They could probably sense that certain Jeffrey Dahmer gleam in Beebe’s slightly crossed blue eyes.
By the time I opened my bigger bookstore at 44 Circuit and moved into the apartment upstairs, Beebe was in his late teens and had mellowed considerably. No more biting, no more scratching, no more pranks. He was the perfect bookstore cat. In the summer, kids would beg their parents, after dining out, to “Go see Beebe in the bookstore!” A large man with apparent emotional problems would sit with Beebe on his lap for 45 minutes at a stretch, pet therapy in action.
As ever, I let Beebe out to sample the neighborhood, and he endeared himself wherever he went. Families from the Camp Ground would enter the bookstore, spot Beebe and say, “We thought we adopted him! He comes around every evening, we feed him chicken or pot roast and sometimes he sleeps on our veranda sofa!”
This little puss had it made. One day I exited through the rear door of the building and came upon four young men on their haunches, breathing smoke rings of marijuana into the air. Beebe perched like a little beige prince in the middle of their tight circle.
One of the guys looked up at me, “Dude, is this your cat?”
“Please don’t do that here,” I told the dopers, snatching Beebe in my arms.
Inside my office, Beebe went straight up a set of decorative steps to his cat bowl and performed a face plant into it, munching his dry kibble as if it were pâté de fois gras. I don’t know if this was the sole occasion that Beebe had been stoned but, considering his uncanny ability to get what he wanted, I’m pretty certain he knew where these fascinating smoke rings could be found.
Two of the little kids who had taken a shine to Beebe were James, then aged 6, and Ciara, 8, Seccombe, the offspring of Lauren Martin and Mike Seccombe, best known on-Island for their work on this paper. When I mentioned I was closing the store and moving to a secluded location in Chilmark, the Seccombes offered to take Beebe into their home.
“He’s a lovely cat,” Secco (Mike) or Lauren would mention from time to time. “Really?” I’d say before I could catch myself. I had a longer memory of his hoodlum days.
Beebs died last September of old age stuff. Instead of Amandamayi-ma, I’ve invoked the great spirit of Timothy Leary to take him to the Other (Smoky) Side.
Back in the here and now, the Comsog Plant Sale will be held on May 7 and 8 and then until May 29, 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. each day. Homegrown organic plants, herbs and veggies, heirloom tomatoes, 15 varieties of peppers, hanging baskets, geraniums, petunias, sunflowers, zinnias ... gifts for Mom! The Community Solar Greenhouse (Comsog) is on New York avenue in Oak Bluffs.
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