Fielding Grey (aka Fielding & Tank) once lived in a home across the street from the Zen Center.  She had planned an indoor life of modest luxury.  Her servant betrayed her.  After a year of nothing but kindness to her servant, this servant one day locked Fielding out of the house.  Fielding wailed to assert her right of entry, but her anguished pleas fell on deaf ears.  When the servant came out to explain her treachery, she claimed her son’s asthma had gotten worse and worse from Fielding living in the house.  A doctor told her the boy should not live in a house full of cat hair and dander.  Fielding felt rage at this doctor.  What kind of medicine man was he?  Had he never heard of Advair, of Flonase, of Zyrtec?  Why criminalize something as natural as cat hair when medical science has answers on the book to the sequelae of exposure in wimps?   After Fielding later heard that mike was allergic to cat hair and took Advair, Flonase, and Zyrtec to live in peaceful co-existence with Chaucer, Bart, and me, her resentment grew.  By then, though, she had moved in with us all. 

Survival for a dispossessed cat is never easy.  Fielding’s traitor servant, probably out of Catholic guilt, continued to put food out to feed her.  The traitor encouraged Fielding to go on rat patrol to supplement her diet.  You already know from the story of the Battle of Martinez Creek that Fielding liked killing. Martinez Creek was already habitat for a full range of murderous undesirables; for example, raccoons, rattlers, and hawks degraded the neighborhood.  Fielding saw no reason to put up with sneaky rats as well.  Besides, rat kills kept her razor sharp.   

But Fielding also knew she was too pretty–a sleek, grey, emerald-eyed beauty–to have to live outdoors.  She launched her campaign to return to indoor life. The first step was easy.  She began to come over to my house’s porch.  She’d wait till Roberta had set herself down on a bench on the porch, then would start a charm offensive.  Fielding figured out fast that Roberta liked it when Fielding would charge her fist if she held it out.  Roberta demonstrated the technique to mike.  He’d make a fist, then stretch out his arm, and then fielding would charge the fist.  She’d purr as she rubbed against it.  The other method for home entry was unsubtle.  Fielding would charge into the house whenever mike opened the door.  He would grab her and return her to the great outdoors that she detested, but he was proving a hard sell. She wasn’t gaining entry.  Even worse, Chaucer was all against her.  He had enough subjects to bully already.  He also slandered her whenever he could

What Chaucer had never counted on was Fielding’s sex appeal.  Living outdoors is not a friend of abstinence.   It soon became obvious that Fielding was knocked up.  She told Roberta that I was the father. Bart called that story a slut’s lie.  I admit it. I didn’t remember good times with pretty Fielding, but I figured my wounds at Martinez Creek had caused a touch of amnesia.  I was so focused on the bad times; I forgot the good times.  What’s more, I liked the idea of being a father.  I would be in line, once Chaucey croaked, of being a pater familias. Kids would prove I wasn’t always like that chap Varys in The Game of Thrones. I was no Varys.  I had used my manhood before Roberta turned me over to the castratrix. 

Pregnant cats have kittens.  So it was with Fielding.  Roberta set up a birthing center on my house’s front porch.  It was a wood box with a single entry and a New-Mexico-style flat roof that was covered in fleece.  Fielding delivered four kittens.  Two soon found homes.  The treacherous servant claimed the right to the pick of the litter.  Her daughter came and collected one as did another. Fielding believed it a scandal.  Why had the daughter not offered to take her in?    The other two Toms got named.  The runt of the litter mike named Quine, an homage, I suppose, to the Harvard logician and philosopher.  Quine looked like you probably imagined Fielding did as a baby.  The other was a chap with white rear paws and a large, ascot-shaped white patch on his upper chest.  The rear white paws got mike thinking about the Chicago White Sox.  Bam!  The kitty had a name: Chicago. 

Despite the kitties, Fielding and her Toms stayed out living in the birthing center.  Then it happened.  One afternoon, Bart and I were talking to Fielding through the screen door to the porch, emphasizing how good we had it.  Suddenly, we heard a sound. Before my horrified eyes, two huge killer K-9s rushed onto the porch.  Fielding retreated into the birthing center.  Its door was a defensible position, provided the killers didn’t knock the roof off its foundation.   A battle started.  The filthy dogs shoved their hideous maws into the door, Fielding, ever a warrior, stood fast, slashing without remorse at these devouring K-9 snouts.  Fielding was showing her mettle.  She neither asked for no quarter nor was giving any.  She was braver and tougher than a Spartan.   Bart and I began to scream, “Police! Police!”  Roberta heard us.  She shot through the door faster than the Flash. When the door opened, Bart and I did the right thing.  We fled deeper into the house, though I could still see Roberta.  It was beautiful.  She showed her rural Tennessee roots, as she began to kick the crap out of the demonic, murderous dogs.  They scurried away howling “foul” louder than Trump after he blew the 2020 election.  Roberta then verified the health of Fielding, Quine, and Chicago.  She also noted with pleasure Fielding’s blood-stained claws.  Fielding’s valor equaled her and her brood’s admission ticket into the house.  Bart frowned.  Roberta gave them my entry room, which I viewed as sacred, the sanctum of sanctums.  Of course Fielding and sons liked their new digs.