I Remember Mama

One of my happiest memories about Siamese cats involves my mother in part, just as so many of my best remembrances do. Her best friend, as I remember it, was a woman named Ev who had two Siamese cats, a Seal-Point named Cork and a Blue-Point named Riley. This was the fifties, and I think the fifties in North America had a popular romance with Siamese cats, stemming in part from the evil yet glamorous pair in Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp. But in the fifties - at least in my neighbourhood - having cats that were of a particular type, and more importantly, a particular type that required a cash investment - and two of those cats, not one . . . made you eccentric to the neighbours, and maybe even more than eccentric. The household of my mum's best friend was truly eccentric, it's true, almost more than you could hope for. Where everybody else I knew had a house that was squeaky clean and well-organized, Ev's house proudly sported the evidence of the family's special obsessions: Ev's baking and sewing and gardening and poetry, and her sons' model trains, handicrafts, tropical fish aquariums, photographic equipment, sports gear, fishing gear . . . And for me - the best thing: all of this stuff was NEVER put away where it belonged! It was always right there, just where somebody left it!