Gangland Siamese Kitten

How dangerous was my venture into Englewood Illinois to purchase my new Siamese kitten? Possibly more than I was aware of at the time.

Englewood is a southside Chicago neighbourhood, just west of the University of Chicago. It is bordered by South Racine, Garfield, West 76th and Interstate 90 and is predominantly African-American. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, it is a "Gang Nation", home to three of Chicago's oldest and largest gangs: the Gangster Disciples, the Vice Lords and the Latin Kings. Their primary occupation is the distribution of crack cocaine, racking up daily sales of $10 - $15 thousand dollars. At least, this was in September of 2006 when 23 gang members in a barricaded crackhouse were charged in a huge bust. In a video of the drug raid, suspects were seen tossing bags of the drug out the windows.

On May 13 of this year during a sweep of the neighbourhood, five members of the Gangster Disciples were arrested.

Within three blocks of the address where I bought the kitten, there were 46 crimes on each of October 16th and 17th and 48 on October the 15th. These included, among many, aggravated assault, burglaries, weapons violations, car theft, narcotics charges and vandalism.

The map from the website of SpotCrime is solid with symbols of fists, fleeing men and burglars.

Into this mire, I, a blonde, white woman "of a certain" age drove in my Mercedes SUV. The google map to the house certainly informed me of the location, but not of its inherent risks. I knew the Southside had a problem with crime, but I figured anyone breeding Siamese kittens would be safe.

The website, Paws4Affection was impressive, boasting home-raised, socialized, well-loved felines and when I talked to the owner on the phone, she was effusive and well-spoken and seened sincere. She was a member of the American Humane Society.

But as I turned off the throughway and drove deeper and deeper into the neighbourhood, I saw street after street of derelict, boarded-up houses, dead cars, vacant, garbage-strewn, weedy lots and graffiti-smeared businesses. What shops there were were all behind bars and the blue lights that signal police cameras blinked at all the intersections where young African American males stood in tight groups. It was a scene of deprivation and uncertainty and idle, resentful discontent. I felt bleak, hopeless and unsettled just viewing it.

I wondered if I'd be wise to turn around. I felt like a target though no-one paid any particular attention to me even as I slowed down to look for street names and house numbers. And I was determined to get the kitten.

Finally I came to a ramshackle two-storey duplex with peeling green paint and rotting verandahs. I got out of the car with real trepidation and walked through a rusty, broken gate, (though still hooked up), across a junky yard and saw in the front window a sign that said, "No guns. We want to live." A big gas barbecue was tucked under the stairs. I walked up those rickety steps and knocked on the door and knocked harder a second time when no-one responded.

A personable girl/woman looked startled to see me but when I said I had come for the kitten she invited me into a sparsely furnished, living room cluttered with children's toys and said to sit down on the brown velvet sectional. I decided to remain standing. She explained it was her mother who had the kitten but that she lived upstairs. She telephoned her to come and get me. And then she disappeared.

What next appeared, or I should say, who next appeared was a sleepy, towering, sculpted and gorgeous Black brother, bare-headed, bare-chested, bare-footed, pants slung almost to his groin. He stopped dead when he saw me. For a shocked second, we both eyed each other. But scarcely missing a beat, he said, "Howyoall." And he too disappeared.

Almost instantly the front door opened and in bolted a hefty black and white pitbull, (aren't they all?), wiggling and wagging her tail. "That's Angel," the woman who followed said in a booming voice. "She alright."

The woman was all energy. I don't remember what she was wearing. Her hair was pulled into a high, tight pony tail that went down her back and thin braids hung around her attractive, made-up face. She was full-figured and maybe fortyish and forthright, loud, enthusing over the fact that I'd found her place in the middle of a raging windstorm. It practically blew us over as we climbed a second set of shaky steps up to her apartment.

It was even more spare than her daughter's but it was pin-neat and clean. In the centre was a large black leather lazy-boy facing a monstrous flat TV screen. A toddler teetered around not doing much of anything. He didn't respond to my greeting. "That's Cortez. My great-grandson," she offered. Then, "Come! Come! Come and see your baby. And be prepared!"

When she opened the door to the back room off the kitchen a hoard of Siamese cats and kittens came rushing forward. The room reeked and a litterbox overflowing with feces sat by the entrance. The felines, maybe a dozen of them were all ages and sizes and off in a corner was a carton of six tiny kittens, still too young to leave the protected space. The woman went around picking up the bigger kittens one by one, lifting up their tails. I wanted a male and there was only one. Finally, after examining several, she found him and picked him up and put him in my arms.

He was as sweet as I hoped he'd be and he was healthy, no runny eyes or nose, no wheezing, a good weight but he was really trembling and I wondered how socialized he was. It crossed my mind not to take him. I didn't want a scaredy-cat, one who skittered everytime someone entered a room.

Instead, the women held him while I retrieved the $200. from my purse. "I been doin' this for twenty years and I never had a complaint about none of my kittens. You just gonna love this baby and this baby just gonna love you," she said. I wasn't sure.

As I was leaving, thinking of our Great Dane, Maggie, I asked how the kittens got along with Angel. "They all been raised with her," she answered. And that was that. I was there barely ten minutes.

I walked down the flimsy staircases in the brutal wind, got in my car, drove away from the falling-down green house on the street of falling-down houses, drove away from all the other distressed, dark and dirty streets, the lost and menacing young men. The kitten curled up and purred in my lap and I wondered, pondered deeply about the experience. Had it meant anything at all? I'm haunted by those streets but somehow in the woman's space, (I never did get her name) with all those beautiful, loved and well-cared for cats, there was some kind of redemption.