Nola the Cat

And Nola the cat found herself in the arms of a large firefighter. New Orleans, Louisiana was under water and Nola was finally out of the oil slicked mess she had been wading through since earlier that day when she saw a bright light at the end of a long tunnel and found herself looking at a world that was not what it had been only hours before. Around her neck, tied to a collar that proclaimed that she was - indeed - Nola the cat, was a sodden piece of wide-ruled notebook paper that had recently been ripped out of an already decaying journal; circa 1979. On it there was a message written in a badly trained hand. It read:

I may be drowned. In the event that I am not, however, I would greatly appreciate if someone would stop by Rue Noyé, # 34 and leave in my possession either a week’s supply of decent red wine, or four bottles of Jameson Whisky. You will be able to find me under the seven inch hole in the westernmost facing section of the roof at said address. Please and Thank You!

- Brian Ivrogne

p.s. Please be good to Nola the cat. She may hiss at you now, but I assure you, she is worth saving.

She was not hissing. In fact, she was actually quite content to be in the large man’s arms, out of the water.

* * *

Bad luck. Brian Ivrogne was house sitting as he watched CNN and saw the glowing, flashing graphics proudly proclaiming that, without commercial interruption, the whole world, or the part that cared, would be able to watch (LIVE!) as New Orleans slowly, but with startling alacrity, succumbed to the rising depths of murky water. He sipped wine and wondered if there was some symbolic importance to the way that Mother nature had chosen this specific location for her grand exposition of power. He mused that maybe she was out to specifically teach the American States a lesson. But, he thought, she had already shown a third-world country a powerful display of wet calamity quite recently with a sneak attack wave in Indonesia. He concluded, while massaging the backside of Nola the cat’s ears, that she didn’t really care about America or tropical third-world countries - she didn’t really care about anything at all.

Useless musings aside, there was a reason why Brian found himself in the awkward position of stranded castaway on his own family’s property with only Nola the cat for company. His mother, a native daughter of New Orleans had recently moved into her childhood home at Rue Noyé, # 34 because her mother, Brian’s grandmother, had finally given into science’s insistence that she should have been dead a long time ago due to her constant indulgence in good red wines and Newport 100’s. Ms. Ivorgne was floating along anyway and so decided to make a new life where she first attempted the act of living in the first place. She was allowed this floating lifestyle because her former husband, Brian’s former father, was a well respected meteorologist in the great city of San Diego. Along with respect came money, or maybe respect came because of money; the point being that both Ms. Ivorgne and Brian had little to worry about in matters of finance. Alas, Brian’s mother was much like her own mother and enjoyed a good red wine - she did, however, smoke Parliament Lights exclusively. Fortunately, well, not so fortunate for Brian as it turned out, his mother had learned the lesson of her mother’s premature death and admitted herself, with many a blessing from Brian and Nola the cat into a rehab clinic in Atlanta. Brian, having nothing better to do, set out for New Orleans to keep an eye on his mother’s childhood home and his grandmother’s aging cat, Nola.

The actual hurricane was not as spectacular as Brian had expected. Nola the cat on the other hand, was very impressed and hid under a couch through most of the storm. Brian merely sat in the closest corner of the house facing the storm sipping his grandmother’s good red wine because he was trained to do so in the event of a tornado back in his hometown elementary school in the northern suburbs of Chicago. Tornadoes and Hurricanes couldn’t be that dissimilar, he thought. The next morning, after coaxing Nola the cat out from under the couch he checked the phone lines and the TV and found that no power was being issued from the local power plant. With nothing else to do he climbed into the attic, stopping at the foot of the stairs to rummage through his grandmother’s wine boxes, blindly groping for a fresh bottle. Nola joined him after awhile, and he began rummaging through his grandmother’s exiled possessions.

There was also a fine collection of memorabilia from his mother’s childhood. An old wooden chest, propped up on an ancient, rusting sowing machine contained many artifacts from his mother’s past. He found, in particular, a journal from her sophomore year in high school. Turning the pages he encountered a rather monumental entry concerning both his existence and his mother’s current state of mind. Dated September 14^th, 1979 his mother wrote:

A senior asked me to homecoming today! Billy Vaniteux! He is soo cute. He runs track and is a DJ for the school radio station.

His former father’s surname was illuminated like a squashed bug on a windshield as he scanned the pages of her journal. He once shared the surname, actually, but he had recently adopted his mother’s maiden name since he felt no affinity with the meteorologist who left them in Chicago for a job in San Diego.

Although Brian’s grandmother was a very accomplished drinker, he was saddened to find that her makeshift wine cellar at the bottom of the stairs was quite barren when he retreated down for another new bottle. He reasoned that his mother had something to do with its fruitlessness. There was only enough wine to last him a couple of days at the most. He continued to read through his mother’s journal as Nola the cat explored the previously uncharted territory of the attic.

Hours drifted by. As Brian learned further details of his parents’ high school courtship, Nola was surprised to find that the entrance to the attic - a foldable ladder attached to the ceiling of the second floor - was quickly becoming submerged in distasteful green water. She was alarmed of course but thought nothing was seriously the matter since the actual floor of the attic was still dry and continued her survey. Soon enough, though, the water crested above the entrance’s threshold and Nola was forced to seriously wonder about their predicament. Brian, on the other hand, was just finishing one of the twelve or so bottles left untouched by his mother. He hadn’t noticed the rising water since he was sitting on an old wood dresser, flaking white paint, with his feet above the attic floor.

Nola the cat jumped on Brian’s lap. He peered into the empty wine bottle as a kid would peer into a kaleidoscope. He stroked Nola’s grey coat and as he was like to do lifted the cat’s front paw to feel the rough skin under her clawless appendages. He felt a damp paw where he expected to feel a dry paw. He adjusted his already blurry eyesight from Nola’s damp paw to the attic’s floor and was astonished to find that there was at least an inch of water below his dangling toes. He hopped from his wondering perch above the flaking dresser and splashed haphazardly over to the hole in the floor where the second floor ladder met the attic.

Bad luck. Even as Brian tried to focus his eyesight into the murky depths of what was once a relatively dry, if not moldy, second floor he noticed that the water that had recently begun to seep through the floor boards had risen almost another inch since he had lumbered his way over to where his exit should have been. Like a floundering submarine, his grandmother’s attic had become a most uncomfortable and inhospitable place. He had been in the attic before, years before, but he was not familiar with its layout and, like Nola the cat before him, he began to survey the lay of his quite suddenly sodden land. He found that there was only one window and it was much too small for any regular sized human to shimmy through. The water rose.

Eventually Brian, with Nola the cat’s insistence, decided that they should at the very least construct some sort of safe haven above the rapidly rising water. He enlisted the help of an old rocking chair and set it on top of the dresser he had been perched upon pondering his mother’s adolescence. He stationed close at hand the remaining bottles of wine that had casually and seemingly jubilantly floated up from the floor below and his mother’s journal. The water continued to rise at an alarming rate but as night fell it finally began to level out. The foul smelling water was just about above Brian’s ankles at this point as he sat rocking back and forth sipping his grandmother’s good red wine. Nola the cat sat purring on his lap. As happens, sleep overtook the two.

Nola the cat woke up first. The water, although rising slowly at this point was, quite to the dismay of Brian, still rising and it was now just below Brian’s knees. After uncorking another bottle of wine with the cork screw he had resourcefully kept in his pocket the day before, he noticed an annoying beam of sunlight from overhead as he tipped his head back to allow the warm wine to trickle down the back of his throat. Nola the cat was sick of being stuck on Brian’s lap by this point and was beginning to feel rather anxious to be outside, away from the murky green water and Brian’s hot, wine-tainted breath. She also noticed the beam of sunlight from above and attempted to climb on top of Brian’s head to discover the source of its intrusion. To both of their surprise they found that there was an old ventilation shaft jutting from the part of the roof just above their heads. They had not noticed it the night before because there was no light above them to beckon their eyes to its location above their island of shrouded candle light.

Brian had no chance to squeeze through. The hole was only seven inches wide at the most. There was wine to last him a couple days - no food, but he figured that wine, especially red wine, must have some sort of nutritional value. As Nola the cat kept insisting that something be done to save her, Brian found his mother’s revealing journal on top of the chest next to the wine he had rationed the night before just barely above the slowly rising water. With a pen he fished out of his cargo pocket he scribbled a note on the back of an entry concerning his father’s kissing prowess. He figured there were others in more dire need of rescue then him. His situation was rather stable. He desired only the necessities, which he carefully requested in bad hand writing on the back of his own symbolic conception. Nola the cat easily slid through the ventilation shaft.