Cats," offers Miss Jacobs a clear-sighted analysis of neurosis worthy of Freud: "The human situation is at fault, Miss Jacobs. If only men gave birth to girl babies, and women restricted their output to boys, and each suckled offspring of the opposite sex, why then I imagine girls would be as cheerful and confident and positive as boys. They wouldn't have to creep around trying to please, forever looking for the satisfaction that men naturally have; of once having controlled, owned, taken total nourishment from a creature of the opposite sex, and then, loftily, discarded it" (p. 174). The problem of raising children is related to raising catsthere is a pattern. Holly is now the family cat, one hundred and five years old in human terms, now listless in its dirt bed waiting to die. Holly is related to Don's "vaguely Siamese" former cat called The Cat, the black familiar who made Mary think of witches and who now exists only as a spirit in memory.
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Mary's daughter Jenny had gone the way of neglect and drugs "and nearly killed me with the distress of it" (p. 177). She blamed herself, but so did everyone else: "Poor little Jenny, all her mother Mary's fault, all of it. Mary was irresponsible, said everyone, Mary stayed out, went to parties, drank too much, took a job, had a career even after she married Don and settled down (so-called)" (p. 177). "I longed for Jenny to reflect credit on to me, be the proud child of love and sexual freedom, of kindness and cuddles: not this angry skinny devil who shot up heroin and would steal and borrow money from my friends to do it. This laughing buoyant child of the family photograph" (p. 177). Mary's insights are those of the middle class, aware, concerned, analytical, and totally astonished at the waywardness of its children. Is it possible the parents gave too much love? Was it a matter of too much freedom, too much privilege, too much concern? And who is to blame: "It was not my fault that she took to the dogs: it is to my credit that she survived'' (p. 178).
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Jenny survived through "Intervention by cat." Lying on a dirty mattress in a "squat," she felt a cat, a black cat, jump on her chest"A very flat chest, Miss Jacobs"and when it stared at her, Jenny thought it was The Cat, but The Cat was dead. And when she went out of the room into the air to stare after The Cat, somehow "instinct," not "reason," saved her and pointed her in the direction of Narcotics Anon. "Intervention by cat happened on a second occasion.... It's why I've come to see you" (p. 180). Jenny had picked up a boy she met at Narcotics Anon, and in her morning-after guilt, she lay in bed when suddenly a catHollythudded on her chest, and then went to sleep between her and the boy. This intervention saved them both: "And between them they worked it all out, and neither went back to the needles, which had been in the air" (p. 180). But, of
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