Purring Becomes Electra

By rights, Bill Hanson shouldn’t have been sitting on a bench of the Armitage el station in Chicago at 8:15 in the morning, waiting for a southbound train to take him downtown. He should have been in a car, pulling out of the garage of his parents’ home in Des Plaines. Until two months before, Bill had been living with them following his return from service. He had been honorably discharged and sent home, after spending almost a year recovering from wounds received in an attack on a destroyer off Okinawa.

Bill was an only child, and his parents had been overjoyed when he returned home safely. Actually, for Bill, it was not home, but rather his parents’ house. While he was recuperating, they gave up the apartment they’d rented for years in the city’s Sheffield neighborhood and purchased and moved into a single-family ranch, not much larger than a small cottage.

The cheerful apartment in the brick row house that Bill remembered with nostalgic fondness was, in his mind, his real home because he had grown up there. In fact, it was the very home he had left, carrying a small cardboard suitcase, when he departed for the Great Lakes Naval Training Station.

Because Bill was still away when his parents had moved into the house in the suburbs, he didn’t see it until he came back to the Chicago area for good. The house in its quiet, pristine setting was a shock when he first saw it. Young trees dotted the landscape. Spacious, symmetrical lawns surrounded every dwelling. And the sky overhead was like an enormous unobstructed dome that cumulous clouds could drift across in an endless stream from one horizon to the other. In short, nothing was crowded; nothing touched anything else. But where were the children who should have been playing on the sidewalks and the cars that should have been parked along the curbs? Presumably, they were in their houses or garages.

But in his mind, Bill still retained myriad images of the city: apartment buildings, their walls almost touching; vehicles at stop lights, their bumpers almost rubbing; and people on foot, coming and going on errands predetermined and destinations known only unto themselves. Deep in his mind, he imagined he still heard the unique hum of the city that was ever present.

After two months in Des Plaines, Bill could no longer stand the silence – especially at night when the imaginary roar of enemy aircraft came to fill the vacant slots of his half-wakeful mind. If only there were other sounds, Bill thought, besides the mechanical grunts of the refrigerator in the kitchen. In the Chicago apartment there had been myriad sounds, not the least of which were those from the streetcars on Halsted and the tireless els. The icebox his parents owned for years, however – a sign to affix to the front window to order a new block of ice always on top for convenience – was as quiet as a sleeping lamb.

But now Bill was back in the city, and in the old neighborhood at that. And working downtown, he found himself every weekday morning on a bench of the southbound Armitage el station.

It seemed likely to become a listless habit of patient waiting into which, as the weeks passed, Bill was destined to settle, when a cat, appearing out of nowhere, suddenly jumped into his lap. Momentarily startled, Bill stared at it in surprise and bewilderment. Those few moments were enough for the cat – confident in its intuitive choice – to nestle into the space between Bill’s closed legs, and purr. It seemed as though its slender body had been designed for just such a place.

Bill soon felt the cat’s warmth on his legs and, as if predestined, began to stroke it gently. Its fur was soft and smooth. The more he stroked the cat, the more it purred almost as if in receptive rapture.

The relationship between Bill and the cat – a cat of unknown variety and insignificant consequence – began that simply. A sudden spontaneous (or was it) introduction, a rapid subconscious acceptance, finally an affirmation by mutual consent. That’s all there was to it, and each knew they were now life-long friends.

In the weeks that followed, Bill changed his daily habits in two ways. He arrived on the platform a half-an-hour earlier than usual so he could enjoy the cat, which – not surprisingly – appeared punctually when he sat down. And Bill carried a small piece of liver sausage wrapped in wax paper to feed the cat for breakfast. He had passing thoughts about a name for the cat, but nothing seemed to fit.

Other passengers waited on the platform. Sometimes they even occupied the bench, but it was for Bill that the cat appeared. Even when called by the most imaginative names and sweetly coaxed, the cat would not respond until Bill was seated. For whatever mysterious reason, the cat seemed to be his.

Some months later, a woman unfamiliar to Bill came to wait on the southbound platform. She was about his age with a slim figure, auburn hair, dark eyes and an attractive tilt of the head. She sat down on the opposite end of the bench. Bill couldn’t help noticing the high Lucite heels of her black suede shoes and how they accentuated her shapely legs.

The cat was already on Bill’s lap, purring audibly with contentment. It knew by now it had found a comfortable morning resting place and that it could remain there for at least thirty minutes. Hearing the cat purring, the woman studied it a moment, shifted her glance to Bill, then again to the cat.

“Do you take your cat to work?” she asked, a puzzled expression on her face.

Bill couldn’t help laughing. “Not really. They wouldn’t allow a cat where I work. In fact, I don’t think anybody would…Do you?”

“No, I guess not,” she said and turned her head to look down the track to see if a train was coming. “So what do you do with it when you enter the train? I mean, where does it go?” she asked.

“Actually, I don’t know. I put it down and it disappears,” Bill said somewhat defensively.

“And it comes back every morning?” she said, incredulously. It’s hard to believe. I wonder where it spends the night…how it eats…where it sleeps…that sort of thing.”

“I have no idea,” Bill admitted and shrugged his shoulders

“Um,” she mused. “Am I right in assuming you go this way to work every day?”

“Yes,” was all Bill was able to say when a train pulled up.

Entering the wrought iron gate at the end of a car, she said, “Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Before Bill could respond, the gate closed, the train started and she was gone.

It wasn’t long before Bill began to look forward to mornings on the el platform. He now had a double treat: the cat that sat in his lap and the woman (on the third morning he learned her name was Alice) who moved closer to him as the weeks went by, until she too came early, sat close beside him on the bench, and stroked the cat. The cat shrewdly guessed this was a relationship bound to grow so it accepted Alice with only minor reservations.

Three months to the day after they met, Alice and Bill decided it was time they became engaged. Electra (the name was obvious from the very first) sat snugly between them and purred as they planned the future. She was especially pleased and proud because she knew instinctively she had chosen a good future home.