Cats

Cats recur in two distinct episodes as creatures who observe, provoke, and unsettle the people around them. In Garp’s story to Walt, an unnamed, battered street cat deliberately torments a café dog from just beyond the reach of its chain; later, during Garp’s nighttime visit to Mrs. Ralph’s disordered house, her cat Titsy blinks at him from the stove and complains when its owner falls heavily into the kitchen. One cat anchors a story about cruelty and limits, while the other punctuates a scene of domestic disorder with a small, alert presence.

The Alley Cat and the Chained Dog

Garp introduces the cat as the one thing capable of disturbing the dog’s fixed routine. The dog normally stays beneath a truck or at the far end of the alley, but the cat’s appearance makes him furious: it is the only thing that can make him bark. Walt guesses that the troublemaker is a cat, and Garp confirms that this one is terrible—not because of its appearance or hard life, but because it teases the dog.

The cat has no name and no owner. It is hungry enough to steal food, dirty and mean, and accustomed to fighting other cats. It has only one eye; the other has been absent so long that the hole has closed over with fur. Its ears are gone as well. Helen responds with pity, and Garp acknowledges that the cat cannot be blamed for being hungry, having to steal, or fighting without anyone to care for it. The story draws a moral distinction between injuries and hardships the cat has endured and the teasing it chooses to inflict.

Every day, the cat walks down the sidewalk to wash itself at the alley’s end. The dog charges from beneath the truck, but its chain snaps tight and jerks it off its feet, sometimes leaving it winded or striking its head against the pavement. The cat remains where it is, washing and staring with its single eye. The dog barks and strains until the café owner comes out to drive the cat away; then it crawls back under the truck. The contest is unequal in its consequences: the cat knows the chain’s reach, while the dog repeatedly suffers the same physical punishment.

The pattern intensifies when the cat returns and calmly continues washing. The dog first whimpers and whines beneath the truck, then howls and thrashes before lunging out again, despite knowing that the chain will choke and throw it down. The cat stays close enough to provoke another charge, and the dog barks itself hoarse until someone shoos the cat away. Garp’s narration dwells on repetition—the cat’s steady grooming against the dog’s escalating distress—so that the dog’s familiar habits become a cycle of anticipation, helplessness, and renewed injury.

The Chain’s Limit and the Story’s Turn

The tale sets up an apparent change when the cat again sits at the end of the alley, licking its paws and rubbing them over the old ear holes and the closed eye socket. The dog has stopped coming out, and the cat seems bored. Then the dog charges faster than before. This time it reaches the cat with its mouth, but the chain still does not allow it to close its jaws: the dog gags and is jerked backward, while the cat, recognizing that the situation has changed, springs away.

The near-catch turns on a narrow physical limit. The dog gets its mouth over the cat’s head, yet the chain’s reach remains just short of permitting the bite. The cat’s escape ends its assumption that the old distance is safe, while the dog’s charge still ends in restraint and pain. Garp’s drawn-out account, including Walt’s guesses and Helen’s unease, makes the approaching collision suspenseful without changing its outcome: the chain continues to govern the encounter, even at the moment the dog seems to have overcome it.

Titsy in Mrs. Ralph’s Kitchen

In a separate episode, Garp approaches Mrs. Ralph’s house while looking for Duncan. Inside, the room is in disarray: dishes fill the sink, a bottle of gin sits on the kitchen table, and a severed pair of pantyhose has been used to lengthen the cord of the overhead light. The nylon foot hangs above the gin. Titsy lies spread across the stove between the burners, chin resting on the handle of a heavy skillet and belly warmed by the pilot lights. Garp and the cat look at each other; Titsy blinks.

The stillness breaks when Mrs. Ralph comes crashing down the back staircase and bursts through the kitchen door. The cat bolts, and the skillet skids to the floor. Mrs. Ralph, lying on the linoleum with her robe open and a drink miraculously still in her hand, tells the cat, “Oh, shut up, Titsy.” When she tries to rise, she groans and lies back down; she then addresses the ceiling, saying, “I’ll get you out of here if it’s the last thing I do,” though Garp assumes she means the cat. The animal’s yowling gives the scene a domestic counterpoint to Mrs. Ralph’s fall and confusion, before it darts between Garp’s legs and escapes through the open front door.

Recurring Function

The two cats are not interchangeable symbols. The alley cat exploits the dog’s chain with deliberate, repeated provocation; Titsy is a household animal whose presence registers the kitchen’s peculiar disorder and reacts to the sudden fall of its owner. In the first episode, Garp makes the cat’s conduct the moral focus, distinguishing the suffering it did not choose from the teasing it did. In the second, the cat remains an alert witness rather than an explanation for what is wrong in the house.

Both appearances depend on a contrast between feline composure and human or canine disturbance. The alley cat washes itself while the dog strains, falls, and howls; Titsy blinks at Garp, then yowls as Mrs. Ralph crashes into the kitchen. Cats thus enter the narrative as self-possessed presences whose gaze, stillness, or sudden movement alters a scene without making them its central human actors.