Hernani's Cat

I was admitted early (after my Junior year in High School¹) to a liberal arts college in Massachusettts. The college had a small Engineering department where I planned to eventually earn a degree in Chemical Engineering. I was registered as a double major in Engineering and French Literature.

When I arrived, I found that I had been assigned a room in a very large, concrete block (but prettily brick-faced outside) dormitory. I was apparently the lone nerd among 300 jocks (suburban a**hole jocks) whose main competitive activity was testing who could play their fancy stereo record-players the loudest. The noise went on 24/7.

I appealed to the housing office, and since there was an empty bed in the “French House” and I was a declared French major of sorts, they signed off on the move. One was supposed to converse in French in said house, but that really never happened. I had traded 300 jocks for a dozen eccentrics.

The leading eccentric was an upperclass Theater major, who took method acting insanely seriously. He never dropped character, dressed all in black with a sweeping cloak. He cultivated a very pointy VanDyke beard and sported much swept-back hair. I thought of him as “Don Juan” at the time, as the closest trope I could think of. He seduced zero women, though. Sometime later, I identified his character as Hernani, from the 1830 Victor Hugo play of the same name².

“Hernani” (the Theater major) had an often-used exit line, said with a flourish of an (imaginary) sword and flip of his cape: Je suis une force qui va! (Act III Scene II). On occasion, he could declaim the entire speech.

The most memorable part of “Hernani’s” act was his white cat. This critter lived with his owner on the second floor of the house and rarely appeared elsewhere; my room was on the first floor. The cat had a litter box in the second floor bathroom under the sink, and the dry cat food could be found in a bowl on top of the toilet tank. The cat had access somehow to his owner’s drugs (legal/illegal) and partook at will. There was sometimes cheap wine in his water bowl.

One night, I was awakened by surreal screaming and the sound of water running. Everyone not out cold rushed upstairs, splashing through the water that was running down the stairs by then. In the bathroom, the cat was stuck in the bottom of the bowl, howling. I grabbed someone’s none-too-clean towel and pulled the cat free without getting scratched. When the cat came to his senses, he fled the house.

From what I can figure out, someone had left the lid up on the toilet. The druggie cat wanted some food and jumped up, missed the mark, but grabbed the flush lever on the way down into the bowl.

I later saw the same cat, fat and happy, in the company of some sorority sisters who had taken him as their house pet.

I transferred to a different school at the end of the year³.