I’d come to the western edge of Vaucluse for three days to visit the city of Avignon, the vineyards of Chateauneuf-du-Pape and the town of Orange. Before leaving on a trip like this I typically imagine that I’ll eventually write at least two texts:
– something practical about a subject that I’ve usually defined in advance, in this case a round-up of some of the nicer hotels in Avignon, and
– something that I come upon by following my nose, with or without some guidance from local tourist officials or others in the know.

In relation to the second article, I thought upon leaving Paris that I might compare my experiences in and impressions of Avignon and Orange with those described by Henry James in “A Little Tour in France,” which the American (and eventually British) author wrote in 1883, recounting his six weeks of travel of the previous year. I may well get around to that, but in case I don’t I take this opportunity to recommend the book, particularly for travelers who enjoy meandering around France and for bloggers, journalists and other writers interested in learning some of the basics of good travel writing: observe, research, experience, encounter, favor well-informed opinions over clichéd commentary.

Upon my arrival in Avignon, however, I forgot about Henry James’s little tour when, sitting in a café waiting for my first appointment of the day, I read in Vaucluse Matin, the local newspaper, that an Avignonnais had won the national title as best coffee roaster. I added him to my list of people to meet while in Avignon, and by the end of the day I’d decided to base an article on individuals who are cheerfully in tune with the workspace they inhabit.

This is not that article.

Instead, I’d like to introduce you to the individual that fit the bill for that theme in Orange: the cat Diva.

On the way in I’d spotted her splayed on the ticket counter and on the way out I found her again contemplating life by the illustrated gladiator books. A woman behind the counter introduced me to Diva. She told me that Diva had adopted the Roman Theater of Orange as her backyard about eight years ago. Her indoor home is the ticket office/boutique at the entrance and exit to the theater.

I learned much else that afternoon during a tour with Rose Papalia, an excellent guide with the Orange Tourist Office: about the Théâtre Antique and Les Chorégies, Orange’s spectacular summer festival of opera and lyrical music, about the museum and its fragments of a Roman cadaster, and about the arch on the opposite end of the Roman town. The Roman wall in Orange is the only remaining Roman theater wall in existence in Europe. I might have written at length all that, fascinating as it is, but this Diva isn’t mentioned in the audio-guide that you can listen to when visiting the theater.

Individuals such as Diva aren’t rare, but because we tend to plan trips in terms of sights and meals we all too frequently ignore them. Which leads me now to regret that I didn’t go speak with the person sweeping the stage by the 2000-year-old theater wall where Tosca, Aida, Carmen, Macbeth and so many others have died in the past 40 years alone.

But I did meet up with a young backpacker: me, 30 years ago.

You see, I had been to Orange before while backpacking through Europe on some ridiculously low number of dollars a day. The number stayed especially low that particular day in Orange because I had managed to see the Roman Theater without paying the entrance fee by climbing up the hill behind the hemicycle and standing on the edge of the cliff for a glimpse.

Looking up from where the town’s top Roman officials would have sat, here is where I stood.

© 2012, Gary Lee Kraut

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First, here’s a photo by Astrid Smits of the Netherlands who came across this cat and boots while vacationing on a farm in Italy near Casole d’Elsa.

Astrid first met this beautiful female as a kitten last year and laid out a box for her to rest in. Imagine then Astrid’s surprise when she returned to the farm a year later and found that the cat was still fond of the same box even though she’s outgrown it. “One morning,” Astrid wrote, “I got up and looked outside and saw her sleeping in the box, next to my walking shoes.”

This next photo was sent by our number one contributing photographer Va-nu-pieds, a unique vision of an encounter while wandering the streets of Paris.

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He was known to readers of “France Revisited” through various texts in which he played a prominent or supporting role, including Of Cats and Friends and a review of Hotel Saint Paul Rive Gauche.

Born to undocumented parents on the 14th of July 1999, possibly pure chartreux, he was adopted at an early age by Didier and his son Jeremie, who gave him the name Moumoon, and spent his kittenhood in a housing project in Noisy-le-Sec.

Unable to keep him in their growing menagerie when Moumoon was just under a year old, Didier asked this writer if he would take him in. This writer said “No” but the following day there was a knock at the door and when he opened it there was Didier with Moumoon in his hands saying “Here!”

Moumoon, known to friends as Moomzy and to intimates as The Moomz, was extremely affectionate and enjoyed human contact. He liked being scratched around the ears and under the chin and on the back just above the tail. He enjoyed being brushed and petted and patted. His beauty was such that even those with cat allergies regretted not being able to touch him.

He liked running after corks, ping pong balls, and crumpled pieces of paper. He played soccer. He would occasionally chase spirits, especially in his youth.

He never complained, even when ill, except to say that he didn’t like closed doors between rooms. At night he liked spending a few minutes exploring the stairwell. He mostly ate dry food and preferred tap water, especially directly from the faucet.

Moumoon enjoyed meeting people and was comfortable around guests, after smelling their shoes and bags. He liked having company yet he was very discreet. He tended to avoid crowds. He was a good sleeper but didn’t mind being woken. He would often come when called, unless he didn’t want to. He was equally fluent in understanding English and French. He spoke little. He was very clean.

He was tolerant of dogs and even of cats, though he could defend himself when necessary.

He mostly lived in Paris’s 10th arrondissement near Canal Saint Martin. He was a great observer of city life, whether perched on a table by a window or on the balcony, as well as a great observer of apartment life. He caught flies and once caught a mouse while in spacious ground-floor apartment the 16th arrondissement but let it go.

Moumoon was a big fan of writing of all kinds, frequently sitting or lying on papers, newspapers, magazines, and books. He could often be found near a computer keyboard. He enjoyed pushing pens and pencils off of tables and desks. His favorite author was this writer. His second favorite was Lolly Winston, who was his godmother.

He traveled often and was a good traveler, whether transported by foot, metro, car, train, or plane. He was much appreciated as a guest. He was a frequent visitor to the home of a florist whose plant-filled balcony in the 19th arrondissement he especially enjoyed. He once spent seven months in the 16th arrondissement. He also visited apartments in the 4th and 14th arrondissement as well as a house in the western suburb of Le Vésinet. Further afield, he traveled to the Jura, Vendée, and, despite failing health, the Eastern Pyrenees. He once spent a winter and spring in New Jersey.

Moumoon leaves behind no known surviving family but many friends and admirers.

He will be sorely missed.

In lieu of flowers, please donate to your local SPCA or autism society.

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I rarely go out for lunch in winter,
but today I joined a television weatherman
at a neighborhood restaurant that prides itself
in serving only the freshest of fresh food,
though it seemed a stretch for the waiter to call the scorpion fish fruity.

He recognized him, and I think the women at the next table did, too.
And afterwards someone stopped to say hello as we crossed the bridge.
What a beautiful day to be walking by the canal, she said.
It’s going to get cold again, he warned, maybe even snow next week.

I don’t have a TV to see him wave his hands before the map of France.
But I saw buds on the bush on my balcony today,
and the cat, too, noticed the morning sun on the kitchen table
finally reaching over the grey mansard across the street,
where the neighbors close their curtains a little later every day.

(c) Gary Lee Kraut

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I used to leave my chartreux Moumoon with Isabelle, but whenever I returned to Paris her daughter would cry that I was stealing her cat. Carine would be willing, but she doesn’t care for cats; once or twice she did keep Moumoon, but waking up to his steely stare from the head of the bed creeped her out. Jean-François would be willing, too, but he creeps Moumoon out since Moumoon associates Jean-François, who also happens to be his vet, with needles and pain. Henri is allergic, so is Pascale’s son. Jean-Pierre travels on business for weeks at a time. Mahinde would gladly help out as long I don’t go away too long—but I do.

So for several years I entrusted Moumoon with Olivier. Olivier is one of the most reliable people I know. Furthermore, he loves Moumoon. He loves him so much that he often tells me that I’m a bad pet owner for abandoning him as often as I do, that I don’t feed him the right nibbles, and that I should go a different vet.

Olivier is also one of the most negative people I know. As friends, Olivier’s rigid pessimism and my casual cheer led me to play Lippy the Lion to his Hardy Har-Har; I would come up with ideas for jump-starting our respective careers (he is a graphic artist and designer) and he would come up with a hundred reasons why not to bother. For a while, actually for two whiles, Olivier was unemployed, having worked for a small company that went belly-up and then for a second one that did the same, which only encouraged his natural negativity.

He used to live in my neighborhood, so we would often get together for coffee or for dinner or to go biking. Then he moved into the 19th arrondissement, which is just a few metro stops away but is far enough for us to meet less often. During the second while of his unemployment Olivier’s grousing became more embittered and I got increasingly tired of listening to it. It was always the same people—those with money or with power, their children, their friends, and assorted liars and cheats—who got what they wanted. His complaints were tough enough to endure when they involved his own life, but intolerable when they involved mine. My slipshod approach to freelance work and to finances disturbed him to no end. I saw him less and less.

Then one day I thought I would do us both a favor by hiring him to help with the design of my website. He was actually excited by the idea. So we met for lunch, and there, in the midst of my Lippy the Lion presentation of the project, his critical nature got the best of him. Little by little he tore every idea apart before concluding that my work was worthless and my graphic sense was worse. I said that I would deal with the work part and that I had no pretensions about my graphic sense, which is why I was soliciting his help. But he insisted. With his underpaid help, he said, the graphics of the site would be good, but the rest of it would still be rubbish, so maybe it wasn’t worth the effort.

I told him to go to hell.

I wanted nothing to do with him after that. Remembering his qualities didn’t seem worth the effort. I wrote him off as the classically depressed Frenchman who blame his woes on government and religious or ethnic communities, believing that complaint is man’s most honorable intellectual exercise.

***

Two months later I got the Call. Not the awkward call from a former friend asking how you’ve been but THE Call, the one from a family member telling you that there’s been an accident and that you need to get on the next plane home.

Henri came right over, followed by Jean-François. Corrine brought comfort and food, Mahinde brought more. Pascale called from India, Jean-Pierre from Lourdes.

Then I called Olivier.

“What do you want?” he said.
“My brother and his entire family just died in an accident. I’m leaving tomorrow morning. I don’t know when I’ll be back. Will you take Moumoon for a while?”
“Alright, bring him over.”
“Can you come get him, I don’t have time.”
There was a pause.
I said, “Can you take him or not?”
He did.

In the following year I made frequent trips to the U.S. to deal with estate matters and to be with family, always for a month or more. Each time I called Olivier to ask if he’ll take Moumoon. The first two times I called him several days before I was planning to leave and our conversation went something like this:

“I’m leaving again on Thursday, can you take Moumoon?”
“You’re using me.”
“It’ll do you good to have company.”
“Why don’t you ask Jean-François or Carine or Henri? They’re your good friends.”
“Yes or no?”
“For how long?”
“Five weeks.”
“Five weeks!? Poor cat.”
“Yes or no?”
“I’m only doing this for Moumoon.”

Like divorced parents who manage to get along for no more than three minutes every other weekend, we would then meet to make the exchange.

My view of Olivier has softened since then, partly because I’m aware that I’m using him, partly because he began speaking less like a victim. He was going into business for himself. After 18 months of unemployment, he planned to open a flower-and-deco shop in the fall.

We even called each other a couple of times before my last trip. I asked how his plans for the shop were coming along, he asked about my family, about estate matters, and about Moumoon, and I told him when I’d be leaving again. He still reminded me that I was taking advantage of him, to which I snidely remarked that he could use the company. But now I also said that I was looking forward to seeing the shop. And since the shop was near my apartment, he was also offering to water my plants. (Unlike Moumoon, my plants actually seem to have a masochistic appreciation for drought.)

I intended to stay in New Jersey for four weeks the following winter but didn’t return for six. I went to Olivier’s apartment the day after I got back. He was in an unusually upbeat mood. He didn’t even accuse me of being a poor pet owner for staying away so long. All he reproached me for was not putting the word out to my friends that he’d opened a shop. He gave me the receipts for cat litter and food, I paid him, stuffed Moumoon into his cage, and told him that I would stop by the shop soon.

***

Two blocks from home I came across the woman who, with her husband, cleans the common areas of the small apartment building where I live. They also clean two neighboring buildings. Monsieur and Madame—I don’t know their names—are from Portugal. In the seven years I’ve lived in this apartment I’d never seen Madame so far from my building. In fact, we’d never exchanged more than chirpy bonjours in the stairwell, with the occasional comment about the weather and the wet floor.

Meanwhile, Monsieur and I have become sidewalk buddies over the past few years. We tend to meet at about 6:15pm when I’m coming or going and he’s waiting by the curb for the garbage truck to pass to empty out garbage bins. We speak about recent events in the building or in the neighborhood: about the time a chunk of the cornice fell off the building, bounced from the awning of the restaurant downstairs, and smashed the windshield of a parked car; about the time they took away the old neighbor on the second floor who’d lost his mind; about who might have tagged our hallway; about why I’ve had to change the inner tube of my front bicycle wheel three times in the past year; about the homeless men camping at the end of the street. Monsieur is a short, gentle, talkative man. He looks both ways down the street then takes hold of my sleeve when he wants to tell me something important, such as the price the apartment was sold for on the fifth floor. He is my most constant friendly contact in the neighborhood since Olivier moved away. He actually notices when I’ve been gone for a few weeks, and I’m nearly jealous when I find him speaking on the street with one of my neighbors, who will look at me not as though I’ve been away but as though I never lived here.

Monsieur’s accent in French is thick, the words often mumbled, and the conjugations approximate. I wasn’t aware of how much smoother Madame’s French is than his and of her cheerful twang until I came across her that recent morning as I returned from Olivier’s with Moumoon.

We passed each other and exchanged a Bonjour Madame-Bonjour Monsieur, but one step later she stopped and said, “You have a cat.”

I turned to her, held up the cage, and said, “Yes.”
She peered inside. “He’s beautiful, is he a Persian?”
“No,” I said, “a Chartreux.”
“Oh, they’re wonderful cats,” she said. “I never knew you had a cat! We used to have a cat—not as beautiful as yours, un chat de gouttière–just an alley cat–mais avec les chats on s’attache, vous ne trouvez pas?–but it’s easy to get attached to a cat, don’t you find?”
“C’est sûr,” I said, one does indeed get attached to one’s cat.
“How old is he—she?”
“He. Seven.”
“How old was he when you got him? Ours was five. We adopted him from the street.”

Before I could tell her that Moumoon was one when I got him she launched into the story of her alley cat. It was a long urban tale involving a homeless male, doorstep feeding, cautious invitations inside, definitive adoption and family life.

I listened, but I wanted to tell her about Moumoon, how initially I hadn’t wanted a cat. I wanted to tell her that prior to having Moumoon I’d thought of cats and dogs as outdoor pets, as none of the animals we’d had when I was a kid lived in the house with us. Sharing my apartment with a cat once seemed as absurd an idea as sharing the house with one of our goats. Furthermore, whenever I’d been offered a cat I’d thought that having one would be bad for my image and, worse, for my self-image. I didn’t want to be a cat man. In graduate school I’d rented a room in the big, scantily furnished house of a cat man. He raised free-range show cats: long, thin, constantly whining Blue Point Siamese and evil, hyper Cornish Rexes who occasionally got closed into an empty spare bedroom with a hired lover. From my bedroom in the attic I would hear the growls and complaints of refusal, seduction, coupling and withdrawal. When the cat man, who also worked as a buyer for a major department store, went out of town for work or for a show, I would feed the cats. Once, going away for a week, he asked me to give daily medications to several of the kittens, which meant chasing the hairless creatures around the house and into my landlord’s bedroom, dragging them out from among the porn magazines under his bed, and getting bitten and clawed as I tried to shove a pill down their otherwise stranglable little throats.

I had no intention of becoming a cat man myself when my friend Didier asked me six years ago if I would take his cat Moumoon, a name given by Didier’s autistic 11-year-old son Jeremie. But something had to give in the menagerie of their apartment crowded with another cat, a dog, guinea pigs, parakeets, and several tanks of tropical fish. I don’t want your cat, I told him, but the next day Didier showed up at the door with Moumoon in his hands, not even in a cage. I agreed to keep him for a few days until one of us could find another solution. So I ran out to buy a litter box, litter and food while Moumoon went into hiding. When he finally emerged two days later, I realized that I was caring for the most beautiful, intelligent, responsive and affectionate cat that had ever lived. Furthermore, seeing him perched by my computer with a paw over the mouse, I understood that as a writer having a cat wasn’t so bad for my image, self or otherwise, after all.

But I couldn’t tell Madame any of this because she was still recounting her own cat story. Occasionally she would stop to crane her neck toward Moumoon’s cage, then say, “Where’s his vet? Ours was on boulevard de Magenta” or “Oh look, he’s sticking his paw out, he wants to shake hands!” or twice “That’s funny, I didn’t know you had a cat!” And then we were off again on the trail of her adopted tom with scratched armchairs, dead mice on the doormat, near misses alongside speeding cars, frightening gutter walks, illness, aging, and expensive visits to the vet (mais quand on aime on ne compte pas). When finally she told me that they had had to put the cat to sleep it wasn’t with sadness or even nostalgia but with communion, for her cat tale didn’t end with the death of a pet but with her comment, once again, “I never knew you had a cat!”

She repeated it, I think, not only as an expression of her discovery that I, too, like cats but that by consequence I must be a decent, caring human being, the kind of person one would be pleased to know.

“It must be difficult having a cat since you travel a lot,” she said.

“A friend of mine takes care of him while I’m gone.”

“He must be a very good friend,” she said.

“He is.”

© 2007, Gary Lee Kraut

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Doubly unfaithful. The first infidelity was to have slept there in the first place since I already have an apartment in Paris. The French, naturally, has an excellent verb for such infidelity: découcher, meaning that you chose to sleep (coucher) elsewhere. You may just have stayed out all night having fun or avoiding going home, but presumably you did in fact lie down somewhere, probably not alone.

I slept alone that night, but I hereby confess that several times that afternoon, evening, and following morning I caressed another… cat.

It’s no secret to readers of this site that I write at home in the company of a chartreux named Moumoon. Nor is it a secret that Hotel Saint Paul Rive Gauche has a house cat, Sputnik. While other hotels put forth their fitness center or bar, the Saint Paul puts forth its cat. Rather, Sputnik puts himself forth as he lies across the reception desk, graces a nearby armchair, or asserts his languid presence in the little lobby. He is more than simply the hotel’s mascot—he is its central character. At age 15, on daily thyroid medication, he has likely been photographed by every passing traveler with the slightest affection for fur.

So while my Moumoon stayed at home, possibly rushing to the door whenever he heard steps on the stairwell, I unfaithfully sojourned at the Saint Paul, where I admired, photographed, inquired about, and caressed Sputnik.

Late that evening, having come back from a sit at the beer bar La Pinte followed by dinner at the folkloric restaurant Polidor (see below) and now trying to strike up a conversation with the night watchman, who would have been happy enough to hand me my key and send me on my way and who seemed not to comprehend (and was possibly annoyed by) a visitor’s interest in the cat, I was momentarily ashamed to have left Moumoon on his own. There’d been that look in his eyes as I was packing my toiletries as if to say: Is this going to be like that time you left me little more than a meager lunch then came home two days later smelling like a 30-year-old returning from a weekend geek convention?

Some will think I’m joking about feline infidelity, but anyone who has ever briefly gone AWOL from a pet, a kid, a spouse, or a garden can understand. Nevertheless, the key to enjoying any infidelity is to take full advantage of it while it lasts and to not carry home guilt like a foreign fruit whose parasites might infect your own garden. This in mind, I handed the key back to the night watchman and went out again. Why feel unfaithful to Moumoon, I realized, when I can be faithful to my task as a researcher exploring the neighborhood? So I went to Le Père Louis, the crowded wine bar at the corner, for local flavor.

I’m undoubtedly preaching to the choir of guiltless infidels if your interest in reading this piece is to know whether or not Saint Paul is recommendable for your own découching.

It is indeed.

Nestled on a fairly quiet street between the Luxembourg Garden and Boulevard Saint-Michel, 3-start Hotel Saint Paul Rive Gauche has been in the same family for four generations. This allows for a personalized touch to the 31 rooms. Each has a different wall fabric, paint or paper—one striped, one faux marble, one painted over paper, one monkey-themed. Some have exposed beams. There’s one with a tester bed, another, facing a little enclosed ground-floor garden, with starry dots of light above the bed in case you’re in the mood for a touch of kitsch romance. All have AC. Room space is tight, as is to be expected in this price range in this quarter. And as is to be expected in a 17th-century building, the breakfast room cozily occupies the even older basement, and the ceilings get lower from floor to floor as you rise in the building, while the view gets airier.

This is all in all a well-situated, well-appointed hotel of contemporary warmth and old-fashion charm. The rates are favorable in view of the comfort of the rooms, the freshness (in most cases) of the décor, and the location by the Luxembourg Garden.

I’d been given a small suite under the eves, quiet as can be but for a hushing flow of ventilation. Entering and leaving (twice) in the evening I had the impression that I was the only guest that night even though I was told that the hotel was 80% full. My suite had wide rust, brown, mustard, and white stripes and a view out back over the recreation ground of Lycée Louis Legrand, one of Paris’s most high-achieving high schools. No need to worry about the noise out back; students there don’t recreate, they study. The night view from my window was dark but for several lit windows on the top floor of a building on Boulevard Saint-Michel, the dome of the chapel of the Sorbonne, and beyond that the dome of the Pantheon.

Rooms on the street side are a tad larger (though still of modest size) and are also likely to be calm at night, though there might be a bit of post-party chatter on a Saturday night when clubbers exit the Urgence (Emergency) Bar next door.

The bedding was a bit soft for my taste, though the down comforter was indeed comforting and the room sterling quiet, as befits the home of a tired old cat and a night of peaceful infidelity.

I washed my hands before going home.

[Update: Sputnik is no long with us, other than in memory. Neither is Moumoon. The hotel is still worthy for its category.]

***

Hotel Saint Paul Rive Gauche, 43 rue Monsieur-le-Prince, 6th arrondissement. Tel. 01 43 26 98 64. This is a 3-star hotel. See hotel website for rates. As with all hotels, ask if any promotional rates are available when reserving. [Jan. 2011 postscript: Hotel Saint Paul Rive Gauche has a new mascot kitty named Skype.]

Historical notes
American writer Richard Wright (1908-1921) lived at 14 rue Monsieur le Prince from 1948 to 1959. French composer Camille Saint-Saens (1835-1921) lived at the same address from 1877 to 1889. Notice the beautiful doorway there.
Auguste Comte (1798-1857), French father of sociology and founder of positivism, lived at 10 rue Monsieur le Prince from 1841 to 1857.
I spent a night at Hotel Saint Paul in November 2008.

© 2009, Gary Lee Kraut

The post A Night at Hotel Saint Paul Rive Gauche: Infidelity on Rue Monsieur le Prince appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.