What I learned about Basil

I asked Maggie D., Basil's first owner, what she remembered about the snake. Here's what she wrote:
I got Basil my freshman year in college when I was living in Northgate and going to Cornish - would have been early in 1998. I really missed having animals around having grown up with pets and was also feeling kind of isolated living out there so far from my classmates. I had always loved snakes, but never had one and kind of on impulse one day I went to a pet store that was on Northgate Way at the time. I didn't really know anything about different kinds of snakes, definitely not cornsnakes. But I went for it. I didn't have a car, so I took the bus back to my apartment with Basil, heat lamp, tank that I could barely carry by myself, etc.

Basil came home with me for the summer, then the next school year, I moved into a Capitol Hill apartment with a classmate. He was also terrified of snakes, but Basil stayed in my room and Rob could mostly ignore that she was there. Until one day I left the top ajar after cleaning the tank. I was gone at school all day and didn't notice until late that night that she was gone. My boyfriend and I searched every tiny nook and cranny in my bedroom and the shared space in the apartment, but then had to go tell Rob that the snake was loose. He only panicked mildly... but even after searching his room, Basil was not to be found.

There was a significant gap between the bottom of the front door and the floor, so I put up a photo and sign with my phone number and an emphasis that she was a totally harmless snake by our mailboxes to have other residents of the building keep a look out. (Basil was still pretty small then - maybe a foot and a half or so long and half an inch thick.) I never received any calls about it, but my building manager did - people were freaked out. Fortunately, the manager was cool and it wasn't too big a deal to him. About a week passed and a good friend who lived the next floor up happened to be opening his front door at the same time as a woman down the hall from him. As she opened her door, he heard her make some kind of exclamation and there was Basil, coiled up at her threshold. Freddy ran over and said something like "Oh my god, that's my friends snake!" and he picked her up. The lady replied with something like, "I'm so glad you were here, I probably would have chopped its head off. It might have killed my cat!"

So thankfully, Basil's head was not chopped off and we were reunited, but not long after that I decided I just didn't have the time I wanted for her and I hadn't had time to get a stash of frozen baby mice and had had to feed her a live one. I was a bit haunted by the screams of that mouse as it was being eaten. So Polly took her!

I'm excited to read about the further life of Basil!
Best,
Maggie

11

I really do want to tell you about Schwartz, who for all the world looks like a stand-in for Sugar, although his profile is far less Siamese and far more elfin in nature. But to tell the story of Schwartz, I must first digress and tell the story of a snake named Basil.

10

But this is supposed to be the story of Schwartz, my current cat, who replaced the old cats a few months after they died (at the ages of 19 and 20). One was a crabby, foul-breathed ornery old child- and dog-hating bit of white nastiness that lived for many years under my bed and almost only came out to eat and poop. He had a yellow eye and a blue eye, and it only made him scarier. When you looked at him in the dark, you could only see the white ness of his face, but no ears and no eyes. His head looked like a skull. He had no tolerance whatsoever of sneezing, by anyone for any reason. If you tried to find him there was only one place: under my bed. I think his hair is still there today. When he didn’t hiss in your face with this catty death-breath, he would growl. He was a terrible, unhappy animal and we never, ever knew why.

9

Sugar lived to the age of 18. My mother called me the morning she had to put him to sleep, pretending to ask permission. By that time, I was in graduate school, and I lived in another state and had two cats of my own. I was very sad that day, and pointed out to anyone who cared to hear that I’d had the cat almost as long as I’d had my younger brother.

8

You should know that Francis was named for his resemblance to Frances the badger from the children’s book “A Birthday for Frances.” Unlike a badger, our Francis had a glorious striped fluffy tail that seemed at least 2 ½ inches too long. He was beautiful, but has also very stupid and walked into walls and ran from sounds no one else heard. He died before he was ever really an adult, succumbing to one of those terrible cat illnesses with a fancy name no child would ever want to remember.

7

Sugar out-lived his brother by many years, and also outlived other cat companions Sesame and Francis. Francis was the kitten we kept from Sesame’s litter, and he was kept because we thought he wouldn’t live. Sesame was rescued from someone or someplace; no doubt my mother would know, but she took that and so many other details with her when she died April 13, 2004. Sesame was wild, that I remember, and would not agree to doll clothes or carrying. Soon enough she turned out to be pregnant (do we call cats pregnant?) and delivered her litter over spring break while we were out of town. My grandfather, H. Richard Nussbaum was in charge of keeping track of her progress, and the kittens were delivered in a box of sandpaper in our basement. Once the kittens were weaned, Sesame was given away, along with the kittens. I am sure a reason for her departure was provided to me, but what it was I no longer recall.

6

Playing with Sugar was the best. First, you had to find him and catch him. He was a big cat, and even carrying him upstairs might have been something. I was very, very small when I was little. I was so small that when I was in kindergarten, and in first grade, and in every other grade of elementary school, I stood in the class picture on the end in the front row. The year that I was breathing and my stomach is all round and full of air, you could see it. The years that we wore sneakers and socks with our dresses, you could see it. The year that I scratched my arm you could see that, too. Once I got Sugar trapped in my room, I would undress the baby dolls with the flannel night gowns and the sleeping caps. The gown from the little doll fit on Sugar, but he had to wear the bigger hat. Then you tried to make him sleep in the doll beds, but of course he never would. It was then that I discovered all the things you can do to cats: how they react when you put a sock over their head, how they can’t walk if you tie something around their belly, and how fast they can run when they have a dress on. In retrospect, I don’t think I was very nice to my cat Sugar, but I loved him very much, and I can say for sure that if I ever really hurt him he would have scratched me hard and run off. Cats, after all, are hunters. If house cats were bigger and we were smaller, they would hunt us, catch us, play with us, kill us, play with our dead bodies some more, and maybe eat us, but maybe not.