The other day — it was Thanksgiving, actually — I was standing in my study looking at my desk and suddenly felt a wave of gratitude. For there was my precious cat asleep in the sun behind my indispensable workstation*, illuminated by my grandmother’s brass desk lamp with dried grasses embedded in its parchment shade. Also my monogrammed sterling silver teething rattle and cup, all set upon a massive rosewood desk with five big drawers that my grandfather had someone make for him out of an old spinet piano.
I’m so lucky to have all these things that connect me to the world and to my memories in one way or another. Of course, I have many more sentimental connections, especially my wife of twenty-nine years and daughter of twenty-five. Here she was at eleven with our two cats, Robbie and Renee. Renee, on her lap, is the weak sister of her now-deceased male twin. Right now she’s on mine.
Renee was the runt of the litter who had something like asthma when we adopted them. Born in an alley in Waltham Mass, the kittens were scooped up at three weeks old old with their mother and put in a shelter that my daughter volunteered at. She’d been negotiating to adopt a cat a cat for a while and this was her strategy to overcome my wife’s objections. Deniz had already run through brine shrimp, gerbils, and parakeets, and felt it was time to step up to mammals. I wasn’t against the idea but remained neutral in that battle, grateful she didn’t want a dog.
When Deniz said the shelter had an adorable kitten that she totally craved, my wife gave in. That was Robby. But when we went to pick him up, the cat lady insisted that his sister come with him, as she was frail and needed her bro. And so we got double the fun for the price of one.
Once Deniz left for college I became their caretaker. The cats were confined to Deniz’s upstairs suite under orders from my wife, in whose culture cats are to be left outdoors and who disliked finding pet hair around. Since I knew the kitties would be lonely, I started sleeping up there and would come up to visit them several times a day to find them snoozing in patches of sunlight coming through the windows. Sometimes they slept on top of me.
Deniz was still away when we left the apartment for a home of our own. I boarded Robbie and Renee with a friend during the transition, and when I brought them to their new abode they were under strict orders not to go upstairs to the bedrooms. They quickly understood, and were happy to roam the first floor and basement, where I put their food and litter. So many new spaces and smells to explore.
Sad to say, Robbie shriveled away in 2023 at the age of 14 after he stopped eating and couldn’t be helped. Ever after his demise, she shadows me like a dog (especially at mealtime), waits for me every morning at the bottom of the stairs, and cuddles with me in my desk chair. But this fall, Renee too went off her feed, took to hiding, and lost a lot of weight, just like her brother. about that other stiff. Hoping she wouldn’t share her brother’s fate, took her to a pet doctor. Somehow the vet and I nursed her back to health and while still petite, she’s no longer a skinny wreck.
About that other stuff: My grandfather, Charles J. Dutton, wrote eighteen books at the desk I now use. I’ve turned out only two, but many other pieces and presentations. For most of that time he was a Unitarian minister in the Midwest, turning out sermons and correspondence along with mystery novels on his Underwood typewriter..
C.J. started his career as a lawyer, but quit the bar a short time later after an unfortunate trial which split the family. It seems there was this brothel in the town of Little Compton, Rhode Island, where my grandfather lived with his parents. His father, a Congregational minister, led an anti-vice campaign that resulted in the arrest of some prostitutes. I don’t know what happened to their johns, but my great-grandfather (also a John), testified for the prosecution at the women’s trial where his son was a defense attorney. This led Charles to cross-examine John: “How do you know this was house of ill repute? Were you ever there?”
We laugh about that now, but at the time it didn’t go down with the family, and this was Charles’ last case before he entered divinity school, probably to appease his righteous father. While he was studying in Albany to become a man of the cloth, he met and married Laura Meigs, a school teacher from an old-line dutch family. Soon they had a son they named Charles Odard, named for his dad and an illustrious Dutton ancestor from England. My father was born prematurely at home and seemed frail, so the midwife put him in the oven to incubate. He was just hitting his stride as a kid when the Spanish Flu did a number on him. And even though he went on to become a decent athlete, he always had lung problems. Chronic bronchitis and smoking took its toll and he died of lung cancer in my late thirties.
Dutt — as his friends called my dad — had his demons, mainly his remote and often disagreeable father. But he himself was responsible and kind though he drank a lot and wasn’t very good with money, of which we had little. He indulged himself with a 1953 MG TC sports car, which he paid off by working nights at a gas station. That two-seater was the first car I drove, almost into a ditch had Dad not yanked the wheel.
Well before that, Dutt was an attentive dad who taught me how to study and make things, like furniture, model boats and railroads, developing film and printing photographs. And as a teen, I was grateful that he had stashed some dirty magazines where I could find them. He had playboy tendencies that didn’t sit well with my mom.
I’ve neglected my long-suffering yet upbeat mother here, but you can find a bit more about Sophie Pincus Dutton in this post. Both her parents had immigrated from Russia as children who settled in southern New Jersey. She became a teacher. Her five brothers went into business and science. The oldest one, Gregory Pincus, is known for being a mensch and inventing the birth control pill. I and many millions of women are thankful for him too. Find a review of his most recent biography here.
My thanks for reading this stuff. If you’re curious, there’s a post about my upbringing here.
*That workstation is an Apple iMac, the sixth one of perhaps a dozen Macs I’ve owned since 1984, each of which Apple obsolesced. I laid out my love-hate relationship to Apple products and the tech industry in general in this post a few years ago.
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