THE MAJESTIC HOTEL CATS


Egypt

Japan

Ghosty-Girl

India




Gandalf the Grey

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Merlin, the Pumpkin King
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Too much cat nip

The cats were acting kind of nutty this summer, running around, climbing the walls and speaking Mandarin Chinese backwards. I was just told NOT to feed them cat-nip in their every meal. I had been doing this, creating big elaborate cat meals, capping these feasts with cat nip like a garnish, thinking it was a wonderful treat. But feeding a cat cat-nip every meal supposedly is the same as if you were feeding a human being LSD every day for lunch. So I immediately curbed back on this added aspect of their little buffet, and their kitty behavior returned to normal.


(with Tim Leary)

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THE CATS' HISTORIES

1. Egypt

Egypt likes to sit like Anubus, sometimes even next to the large Anubus statue in the Cairo Room. He knows he is the king cat around here and mystical link to the Egyptian sky. I couldn't have named him a more appropriate name. This cat and I are linked like there is no tomorrow.

2. Japan

Japan was named Japan after the young man samurai character Katsushiro from Akira Kurosawa's 1954 masterpiece The Seven Samurai. Japan is currently the largest cat here in the hotel.

3. Ghosty-Girl

Ghosty-Girl was Aimee Kast's strange cat. She ended up all over the web page. She had extra fingers and toes and was deaf. I actually didn't like her because she was always swatting things off tables. She had a little fan following. Ghosty is now dead.

4. India

India was a birthday present I gave to myself two winters back. He was named India because he had little tiger stripes all over in his fur. He's a brat.

5. Gandalf the Grey

Gandalf is really Renee Angle's baby grey kitty. He has a large furry tail. She saw him as a little key to magic. He was named after the wizard Gandalf from J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. He has taken to her immediately. This is the third familiar to live and play here.

6. Merlin

Merlin, named after the legendary Merlin the Magician of King Authur folklore, is hotel queen Deanna Dolges Kane's new baby cat from the streets.  Deanna found him in a trash can, he followed her home, he delighted in being covered with soot, he was ice cold and seemingly unfed, was even almost stolen by 'evil cat bandits' until she sympathetically rescued him.  Originally thought to be pure white, wonderful, and magical, we now know he is the haunted gutter monster kitty from hell.  He terrorizes the kitchen as Lord Brat and breaks at least one fine wine glass per morning.  He thinks he is "The Pumpkin King".

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We recently bought a fake dead cat. It looks really real. It fools everyone as if we have yet another sleeping cat. Sometimes the other cats sleep on it.



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Poet Michael Dennison is secretly visiting the hotel right now from Lebanon. He shows us a small collection of poems he's been creating there. They are on the familiar typewritten pages that almost define his group. Typewriters, typewriters, the onion-skin papers, the faded ink, the occasional miss-keyed letters. The following imagery for one poem came to him in a dream there. I ask him if I can post it.

Midnights

It was not really our baby but a foundling
tiny doll of a thing Sylvia heard gasping
in a shoebox by the ironwork and garage
in the alley behind that dark pied a terre
with its peeling blue paint and old sheet
nailed into the motor of the ghost fireplace
and those new friends she brought back
from that bar that night, lively, well-dressed
said he wouldn't live though I had fed him condensed milk
all day as he gurgled as he breathed, watery tiny lungs
you could lift and dance him like a cat and laugh
and now I like to remember that he was just a cat
a stray hairless cat that might live or die
little legs and arms around my wrist, large round head
nestled in my palm as I spoon him milk
and I think now if I took him out of that wooded box
from the chess set tucked up on the ledge at the flue
his legs napped back behind the sliding balsam wood lid
I would loose the narrow ribbon she had tied around his neck
we would sit at the board and move pawns, queens, knights
across the black and red squares
he would be a stick insect, skull hungry for kisses
struggling to our mouths to consume and be consumed
awake for an hour only at midnight.
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Renee Angle writes:

Tonight, we had visitors. As is the custom, first-time guests must have their heads messed with by King Blair. It is the rules. So a newcomer girl, upon seeing the cats swarming about the kitchen, asked Blair how many cats he has. Instead of simply answering this relatively normal question, he replied that there are fourteen hotel cats, many of which have missing tails. When she asked where the tails went, he insisted that Dylan and I ate them like beef jerkey. At this point you'd think she might be suspicious, but she accepted everything easily and asked where the other eleven cats were. Blair shrugged innocently. She asked the names of the three cats in the room. "Oh, uh, Chante, Jello, and... uh... goddammit I forgot one of my cat's names." She patiently waited for him to remember. "Mr. Ridiculous!" he shouted triumphantly. She believed that too. It was funny. 
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David from NJ writes:

Nine bows.

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THE ENLEGENDMENT AND DEATH OF GHOSTY-GIRL THE CAT 

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One day Aimee Kast and I shot out to the pound and found a skinny little cat with big paws that instantly spoke to us. Aimee took to her right away. She was all white, and kind of strange, so we named her Ghosty-Girl. She became the hotel web page mascot, in a way, and many of the paranormal posts at that time were created as if from her point of view.

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Hi! My name is Ghosty Girl, but it doesn't matter what you call me
because I can't hear you! That's right, I'm deaf. In addition to
being deaf, I also have a condition called polydactyl. This means
that I have extra toes on my front paws so they look like mittens.
Yay! I love peanut butter. We barely exist in Europe because they
used to burn polydactyl cats. We were thought to be witches'
familiars. I'm lucky that I'm living here in the Grand Midway Hotel
instead of Europe. Look at my hooves!

Watch for my "Ghosty Girl Alerts" as you tour the Hotel.

I'll give you the inside scoop on all the spooky stories!

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Aimee and I created many photo sessions of Ghosty-Girl.



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We were posting more and more passages "from Ghosty-Girl" on the hotel web page. People were sending Ghosty emails to the hotel. People were writing how they couldn't wait to meet Ghosty-Girl. She had fans. Ghosty had her own MySpace account. One afternoon we took her out and did an entire interview with undead actress Kyra Schon of Night of the Living Dead from Ghosty's point-of-view. (You can read the interview by Ghosty in Room 14, Interview with a Famous Zombie.) It was really starting to get a little surreal and wierd. I was talking about creating some underwater cat movie to star Ghosty-Girl as she drove around in some fake sub-marine I was going to build.

One night Aimee was home reading The Witching Hour by Anne Rice. The Witching Hour starts with a quote from the pot Stan Rice. Ghosty-Girl came to her in a dream and said, as a cat, her "true identity" was that she was the last of the Mayfair witches from the book...
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MY TRUE IDENTITY

It's raining tonight. I can hear it on the roof above me here on the third floor of the hotel. I love the rain. It's magical.

About this time last year, on the first night of my arrival into my new home, the great Grand Midway Hotel, I planted a strange alluring dream into my new owner's mind as she slept. In this dream I bewitched her. And I let her see how I was the Last of the Mayfair Witches from Anne Rice's novel The Witching Hour. That is my true identity!

She loved the book, and she loved the dream. And she loves me.

Earlier that first day she held me and dubbed me "Ghosty Girl". It was at a holding pen for found animals. Before that my origin shall remain a mystery. I called to her from within the tiny bars of my metal cage, louder and more persistent than the other cats. I was thin and long and elegant. My arms stretched to the point of contact. She was meant to claim me. I was meant to come to the hotel, roam its halls, and speak to the world. I think I'm a very pretty tour guide too.

My owner is also very pretty. She instantly took to me. Soon after she learned of my powers, of my strange sleeping ways, of the silent world I walk within, of the history of polydactyl cats as witches' familiars, and of my powerful hooves!

There is a quote by the poet Stan Rice that starts out the history of the Mayflower Witches book. This quote is from a long beautiful poem that Blair, the owner of the Grand Midway Hotel, actually recorded Stan Rice reading down in New Orleans long ago. He was met by Anne Rice at the door of their New Orleans home. He was shown into the upstairs to meet with Stan. They were alone in the attic studio of that First Street New Orleans home the Mayfair Witches' story is actually set within. It was the only recordings of Stan and the full of that poem that ever were created. The Stan reading the poem in its entirety will appear eventually on the as yet unreleased DVD of Blair's film Black Pearls. This film is being edited here in the hotel. Anne Rice recently purchased the rest of the Stan recordings, and the money went to refurbish the hotel roof that patters above me with the sound of rain hitting it right now.

To all of this I am related. And more.

-Ghosty

And the rain is brain-colored.
And the thunder sounds like something remembering something.
-Stan Rice

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We had one very mystical-seeming session where we photographed Ghosty with lots of candles, reading various books and even typing one!



That night we burnt all Ghosty's whiskers as she posed over candles for photo after photo.
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After a year of living in the hotel Aimee relocated up North to the Erie, PA area. She took her familiar Ghosty-Girl the cat with her. There, Ghosty leapt to her death.

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Aimee writes:

I'm not really sure where to post this, but I thought that I should let everyone know, because Ghosty was a loved hotel resident.

On Saturday Ghosty got out of my apartment. She got hit by a car and passed away. She is buried at my parents' house in Fairview.

I miss her more than words can describe. -Aimee

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THE MUMMIFICATION OF INDIA THE CAT 

India the cat was mummified, buried in a secret tomb, with salt, cinnamon, ground cloves, and rosemary.

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"One night I was watching tv and I watched three pictures fall over on my radio as if something was walking behind them...  I'd heard stories about a cat but there was nothing there..."
-Chef Thom on hotel third floor

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THE GHOST CATS!

By Deanna

Mid June 2010..I was lying in bed..Blair was upstairs in his office working.  The building was quiet.  After a few moments I heard the sound of something scurrying from what sounded beneath the bed into the secret room within Blair's room.  It was kind of a fast moving nails on wood sound.  I didn't think much of it & mentioned to Blair the next day he may want to get some mousetraps.  I thought it might be mice....Blair says no mice in here!

So on to the last week of June 2010...Blair & I had begun to clear out the room within his room as a space/sanctuary for me.  We'd moved so much furniture around stirring up a lot of energy in the process.  I was beat, so sat down in the middle of my new room when just off to my left I saw a cat, or more like a shadow of a cat jump off of the footstool that was just between the bedroom & my space.  "Oh my god!", I yelled and Blair asked what was up...."I just saw a cat jump from there!", I said pointing at the footstool.  I went down to the kitchen to check that the cats were all still locked in kitchen.  They were.

And so we arrive at late evening July 4, 2010....Blair was standing in the doorway, facing the hallway on the 2nd floor.  I was kneeling in the bedroom getting something out of my sweatshirt pocket, looking over at him as I was talking.  What I saw next gave me goosebumps...just then I saw a cat run in front of Blair towards the balcony.

"There it is again!", I yelled.  Blair asked what and I said, "I just saw the cat again - it ran right past you!"  The hair on my arms stood on end.

Blair said, "That's weird, because right when you said that it sounded like something light ran past me."

Again, just to make sure, I checked the cats in the kitchen. Yup, all still there.

After this last experience I thought about that night I heard the fast scratching sound as I was in bed.  The more I went over it in my mind, the more I thought it sounded like a cat when they're lying in wait,  then pounce on something.  I asked Blair if anyone else ever mentioned seeing cats (or shadow cats) in the hotel and apparently, I'm not the first.  I imagine I won’t be the last either…..

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