The Adventures of Bentley Cat, by Sylvester Lawrence Jackson II with Carolina Soto and John Proctor
This week, three founding members of our collective reflect on the same time period in late 2019, when Sonny and his beloved cat, Bentley, were separated by the carceral apparatus.
Sonny with Bentley Cat
1
The story begins three years ago, Bentley Cat Jackson and I lived in Nassau County. I was homeless and asked a high school friend if I could stay there, not knowing it was the house of cats. I lived there a short time before Bentley was born with her cat brothers and sisters. Adding to at least ten other cats that already lived there. The owner of the house liked cats as much as I, but because of issues, he wouldn't or wasn't dealing with them. I was the one taking care of all the cats.
In any case Bentley was born in August of 2019. At first, I treated her like all the other cats, giving her love and attention, food and water. I didn’t want Bentley to get too attached. I had just lost my other baby cat, Diamond Bear Jackson, and I didn’t want the heartbreak that goes with the loss of another cat.
Weeks passed and Bentley became more attached to me. I eventually got my own room in the house, and only allowed Bentley cat in, she was fast becoming my cat. Much to the objection of my friend, she slept with me every night, straddling her little baby arms around my head, a paw on each shoulder.
We stayed in this room for a couple of weeks before the previous owner returned from jail and reclaimed it. Bentley went back to being a hanging out cat with her brothers and sisters. She hated it, I could tell. I began working on cleaning the basement for Bentley and myself. It was a big job.
The owner of the house, my friend, was a hoarder. The basement was packed floor to ceiling. Needless to say it took a while to clean. My only thought was that the sooner I cleaned it, the sooner I’d have Bentley Cat with me.
I cleaned the entire basement. It was a big job, and I finally brought her downstairs with me. We were living the dream. No other cats were allowed in the basement. It was at this time I was having problems with my parole officer. She threatened me every other week that she would violate me on some trumped-up charges. I was going crazy. I was afraid of losing all my stuff and Bentley Cat.
It finally happened. I went to report into parole, hoping to return home, but my P.O. had other plans and violated me, my last 71 days of parole. I freaked out. She would not allow me to call my wife or anyone else. Fortunately, I told my wife this might happen. My parole officer’s partner took me to Nassau County Jail and while handing me over to the C.O.s tried to invoke me into assaulting him, which I almost did. The C.O.s jumped in and kicked him out of the jail. I guess they have seen this kind of thing before.
I was finally allowed to call my wife. She freaked out as I knew she would. I told her there were things that I needed her to do. One was to call Professor John Proctor then go to the House of Cats for Bentley, Baby Diamond, my bike and my stuff. I knew I wasn’t going anywhere for at least two weeks.
This story truly is about Bentley Cat, but I have to mention, but I have to mention the very important people who helped Bentley and myself. They are my wife, Sandra, as I said, I called her from the jail, that one free call. She got the ball rolling. She contacted Dr. John Proctor, and they got together to go on a rescue mission to save Bentley Cat and Baby Diamond. She had to warn Dr John about the cat house, the condition of the house and the smell and the people there in. A true horror story.
2
By that time I was ready to go upstate for my last 71 days. In the meantime, my friend Carol Soto had worked diligently to help my cause, but to no avail, because a parole hold doesn’t give many opinions for release. I wasn’t going anywhere, except back to the mountains, which by now I’d accepted.
Now began the adventures of Sandra, my ever-helpful wife, and my brave professor John Proctor, who at this time didn’t quite know what he’d gotten himself into, even though my wife had tried to warn him. My love for these two brave and courageous soles will never be able to be expressed more deeply. What they did for Bentley Cat and myself for the next 71 days is nothing short of amazing. I’ll be forever grateful.
First let’s begin with Dr. John getting down from upstate to meet my wife and them going to the House of Cats.
3
My wife Sandy told Dr. John Proctor many times about the House of Cats, but I still to this day don’t think he expected it to be as bad as it was. They made it to the house and found my Bentley Cat outside. I still think she was looking for her baby, Diamond Bear Jr., who’d been stolen.
In any case, they grabbed Bentley Cat and left, saving at least one of my babies. When I was told, I was happy and heartbroken. So would begin her adventures away from her dad. I can’t thank them enough.
Bentley Cat went upstate to live with Dr. Maureen along with another kitten that Dr. John happened to grab outta the yard. I went upstate to finish my prison time, thinking every day about my Bentley Cat.
Not everyone in prison thinks about their loved ones waiting at home for their return. I’m lucky in that sense, I had my wife, son, Bentley Cat, Dr. John, Dr. Joni.
4
Carol Soto, and all my classmates. 71 days may not seem like a long period of time, but 71 days of prison time seems like a lifetime. My baby cat and I were both doing time, and time couldn’t go fast enough. I spoke to my wife often as well as Dr. Proctor. Finally my release day came, and we’d already made plans to reunite my and Bentley Cat. She had no idea that her dad was coming to get her. I can’t give Dr. Maureen enough credit for taking such good care of my baby, she really did everything, including having Bentley fixed, along with a lot of love and care, and Bentley befriended one of her cats, Molly, who sadly passed away.
My wife Sandy had made a deal with one of my nieces, Darlene, that she'd allow me and Bentley to live with her after my release, as long as I could pay rent. I really didn’t want to live with any of my family members,
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and my niece wasn’t a cat person. I found that out pretty quickly, and so did Dr. John Proctor. I still feel bad about their first meeting. In fact, I was so against living with my family I decided to sleep in a 24-hour laundromat my first night home. This was just before the pandemic, but I still had stage 4 cancer and couldn’t live on the streets, so I gave in and moved in with my niece, where I contacted John as we started the process of getting Bentley back living with her dad. Living with my niece was a nightmare, and I was glad when it ended. It once again ended in heartache. Bentley and I would be separated again for 10 months due to Covid. She returned to Dr. Maureen Kindlien (sp?) (the Kiddy Cat Saint). Bentley Cat was loved and safe, and I missed her every day. I spoke to Bentley over the phone and was sent pictures, and yet my heart still cried. I missed my baby cat.
6
Covid, separation, heartache, and homelessness. I became homeless during the first few months of the pandemic, living and sleeping in the back seat of my son’s truck, which was parked in his grandmother’s driveway. The woman I call my wife is actually my “ex,” and her and my son live with her boyfriend, so I couldn’t live with them, so it was the truck or live on the street. I’ve seen in my lifetime many a homeless person have their dog with them, but never a cat. Loving Bentley the way I do, I’d never put her through such a thing. Fortunately Bentley Cat and I have so many good people in our lives.
Anyway, my homelessness would come to an end. Carol Soto and Dr. John Proctor used every connection they had to find me residence at a hotel in Queens. I really didn’t want to leave Nassau County, but like I said, living on the streets with stage “4” cancer didn’t leave me with many options.
-Written by Sylvester “Sonny” Jackson
To Whom It May Concern
Re: Sylvester Jackson
I met Sylvester Jackson at a writing workshop for citizens returning from incarceration. Dr. Joan Schwartz and Dr. John Proctor have created a safe and encouraging environment through guided feedback, constructive criticism, with structured reading and writing activities for formerly incarcerated people. As we read our work, sharing our ideas and beliefs, read aloud what we had written, the entire workshop, teachers and students alike became a family. We tried to support each other in ways that were available to us and now I need to support Sylvester Jackson.
Sonny, as he is known to us, is a sensitive soul who has passed through horrors from Lebanon in the Marines to many years at Clinton Prison in Dannemora. I can see how much Salvatore Jackson has changed, how hard he works at sobriety, interpersonal relations, and writing poetry. He works hard to get through chemotherapy in the face of another much more difficult sentence, stage 5 colon cancer. His bravery and ability to reach toward support and friendship is touching. Instead of being rewarded for his hard work, he is being further punished. Jail is an excessively hard punishment for someone both older and sick with cancer. Sylvester Jackson should be released from jail and parole because he has served all but six weeks of his sentence, made profound changes, and presents no threat to public safety.
I have developed strong views on mass incarceration and what it means to our society. What I have discovered is that every person is worthy of the chance to return to their family and give back to their community. Sonny's 'family' at the Restoration Writing Project helps us to be better citizens as we aspire to make inroads in the movement for parole and prison justice.
Articles about the Nassau County facility in both Newsday and The New York Times have condemned the facility for brutal treatment of incarcerated people and lack of medical treatment. In these circumstances, all things considered, Sonny’s return to jail is an act of gratuitous cruelty. Dr. Homer Venters, who wrote a book, “Life and Death in Rikers Island,” about his experiences working at the New York City jail complex, said the Nassau jail functions as a kind of “black box” without appropriate oversight and cooperation between the community and facility. In June of this year, New York Newsday reported gang violence in the jail and an astounding 66 inmate-on-inmate assaults so far in 2019 along with 75 assaults by inmates on officers.
"The continued imprisonment of a group of people who have significantly aged out of crime, who pose little public safety risk and could in fact contribute to our communities, expresses clearly the revenge principle. It tells us that for some people—especially people of color— growth and change do not entitle you to a second chance." Soffiyah Elijah, Esq. Executive Director, the Correctional Association of New York
Please release Sylvester “Sonny” Jackson. He deserves redemption.
Sincerely,
Carolina Soto
*
My Friend, Sylvester “Sonny” Jackson
I traveled an hour to get to our writing workshop that started at 6:30 every Tuesday night. Two subways into Brooklyn at rush hour but worth the commute to be stimulated. A space to think of myself as capable of writing and grow like a plant getting care and nourishment. I never knew who would show up, but I was working on a piece and excited to workshop it with the others. Joni, John, and Sonny were regulars. Mike C was advertised but erratic because of a work situation. I arrived first, which was unusual. I set up a few chairs and plugged in my iPad. Within minutes, John and Joni arrived together. Looking at John’s face, I knew there was some bad news.
Sonny had mentioned that he was having some problems with his PO. He felt she would violate him, which meant that they would send him back to prison. He had two months left of an inordinately long parole sentence. To me, it was preposterous that anyone would send someone who had been out of prison for decades back inside for his attitude. It had happened, and Sonny was in Nassau County Correctional Center. Sonny’s former wife and close friend had called John and tasked him with finding Sonny’s cat, Bentley, and another kitten that he had saved from a group of feral cats.
The writing was given due diligence, but everyone was worried about Sonny. His emotional state would be much better if John could get the two cats and bring them to a temporary home of another professor on John’s campus. John was a champion in my eyes; he never thought twice about taking on this complicated task. Joni and I insisted we walk out with him and find some gloves and maybe a little food to entice the two cats into a carrying cage. We accompanied him to the store while he made the purchases and watched as he drove off on his mission. First, to Nassau County to pick up Sonny’s ex-wife, who directed him to the place where Sonny lived, then to the other professor’s house upstate. It was already past eight.
Knowing that Sonny was in jail left me deeply disturbed. Here we were, trying to create community, a safe space, and a way out of recidivism, and the least likely person to return to prison was being railroaded. I felt as if the ground underneath me was shaking. I have a private space in my heart reserved for injustices that need to be addressed, and it was beating out of my chest. It hurt my stomach. I had grown to love this gentle soul, Sylvester “Sonny” Jackson.
I did not even know his name was Sylvester until I was contacting every person who might help, every organization that had come through my mailbox, and every contact I had in the prison movement.
Google turned up several Newsday and New York Times articles. Nassau county jail was one of the most violent places to be placed because of gang violence: “… the alleged attack was one of 66 inmate-on-inmate assaults so far in 2019 along with 75 assaults by inmates on officers.” The plea, of course, was for more protection for the officers, not the incarcerated.
I felt worse by the minute.
On the front end, the system was not sending as many people to prison because of an enormous push back by activist formerly incarcerated people and allies. Still, on the backend, they were railroading a person who presented no problem to society and who had done his time and done years of parole without any major infractions. I knew he had been in AA for at least 35 years. He invited us all to a commemoration of his sobriety anniversary. That meant that he had been on parole for that long! People with access to the legal system and the knowledge of how to manipulate it would have been sending letters to the judge or a legal aid petition for release from parole. Sonny did not know how to work the bourgeois legal system.
A close friend and former lawyer suggested the National Lawyers Guild working group on parole. There were four or five groups listed for the Guild. No one answered a telephone at any of them. I sent emails.. It occurred to me I knew a much more current activist lawyer friend specializing in climate change. I saw him everywhere, including the demonstrations for the Occupy movement. This is not what democracy looks like! I called him and was rewarded with three phone numbers.
Each group said the same thing. This will be turned over to legal aid, and they are a talented group in Nassau County. You need to contact them first. When I spoke to the Legal Aid office, Sylvester Jackson was not yet on the roster. I called four times a day until someone said that I would be informed when his case came up. I didn’t trust that, so I continued to call until the lawyer responsible for the case, David R, returned my call. I expressed a wish to visit Sonny and to be present in the courtroom during the proceedings. I was not on Sonny’s phone list, and there was no chance of a visit. The lawyer informed me that no people were allowed at the proceedings unless they were there to contest the charges. I asked him if it was some kind of secret court. He replied he was trying to be as helpful as possible, but there were procedural rules.
Why would anyone send someone who has two months left of his parole AND stage 5 cancer back to prison? A parole officer has the power to make or break someone’s reentry. It disgusts me that an officer allegedly there to help is a person with no compassion. Sonny has never forgiven himself for his actions. You see that when you come to know him. He suffers for what he did. He spent 17 years inside, years on probation, and will celebrate 35 years off of drugs and alcohol with his friends when he may return to us. I am not inclined to believe that there was a dirty urine test. He had a parole officer that loved to push his buttons, and if he reacted, she felt abused by him. I felt like disabusing her of a lot of her notions. She was an ugly vindictive person in a position of power and was enjoying this charade. They held Sonny in the system far beyond anyone’s understanding of “Justice.” required. She was a dick, a screw, a boss, and another perversity of justice.
I do not think that it matters if he did drugs or alcohol. If I were undergoing chemotherapy, I would use marijuana to mitigate the effects. I am a holistic health counselor, and I would recommend it. Sonny was proud of his sobriety. This was an interpersonal vendetta. He is dying after being abused by the system, and they will not let him go and never helped him. His healing came from within and from his community at AA.
John had heard from Sonny that he was to be going to court on 10/17. There was a receptionist that tried to help. She said if he were to be going to court on October 17, it would be to assign him a lawyer. He left from that courtroom on that date directly to prison.
I had suggested to our workshop members that we write letters to the judge, attesting to Sonny’s excellent character and the futility of sending him to prison for the short duration of his parole. Because I had been incessantly calling, his lawyer returned my calls late Wednesday with a number where we could fax the letters to the judge. I had left my phone at home charging. It was too late for me to find a fax machine and fax the letters off. I sent mine in the morning by email directly to the judge. He never saw it. The fax went to the legal aid office. The proceeding was over before anyone saw it.
I spent a lot of would could should have time that day. I have never felt more incompetent.
Sonny had his day in court after allegedly failing a drug test. His lawyer told me that Sonny had an opportunity to contest the findings. His PO had ordered him to go to the Veteran’s Hospital to a drug rehab program, and when asked about it, he was said to have lied. He pled guilty to answering an officer of the court untruthfully. The part about this that hurt is that Sonny was doing all he could to build a new life, and we, our class, and our circle were anchoring him and anchored by him. He had been a Marine and served in Lebanon in terrible fighting. Sonny came home devastated with a drug problem. Soon after, he endured many years in Clinton Prison in Dannemora. He saw no friends or family while in this faraway prison. Most people cannot drive six hours and pay for a hotel to visit. He did not want anyone to make that trip on his behalf.
In his own words, Sonny is a day late and a dollar short. Not in my book. I would describe him as a gentle soul with honor, odd sweet humor, a lover of animals and nature, with a heart that leaps out to touch you with his poems.
He was candid. Our group of teachers and students were a circle, a place where things can be said and trusted. Circles are important to me. We discussed chemotherapy, colon cancer, the death of his mother-in-law, and the oddness of having dated one sister and falling in love with the second sister.
Sonny came bearing gifts. He lived in the basement of a true hoarder. Out of that basement would come little glass and plastic figurines, skull cups for Halloween, and Christmas plates that would never have seen the light of day. If you are a dollar short, little things could make a little gift that guaranteed a big smile.
-Written by Carolina Soto
***
On this, the morning of the longest night of the year, as the advent of the season winds down and the last grains of sand trickle down over another year before the hourglass is turned over on another year of hope and disappointment, I should feel much worse about the world than I do. After three years of having our worst American as President, a divided Congress goes through only the third impeachment in our history like it’s a reality show where the outcome is never in doubt. Our planet’s rhythms have in fact been subsumed into the cycles of media and industry, to the point that we may have a finite number hourglass switches left. But, on this day at least—I’ll take the next when it comes—I’m happy, and it doesn’t even feel like a choice.
I’m still learning how to be a generally happy person. My most pressing fear is that it will make me a worse writer, and perhaps it has. I no longer write one of the most popular series I’ve put to pixel on my blog, my annual 12 Days of Christmas Songs (12 Strange Days of Christmas, 12 Days of Miserable Christmas Songs, etc). It’s definitely made me a different writer, even than I was this time last year, and definitely than I was this time three years ago, when I came closer than I probably even now admit to driving my car off a snowy bridge after completing that year’s 12 Days of Happy Christmas Songs.
This morning, though, I have a definite reason to be happy, for on this day I’m fulfilling a months-long mission. Today, I’m reuniting my friend Sonny with his cat Bentley.
Almost three months ago, Sonny went to jail and then prison on a minor technical parole violation after his parole officer probably said he failed a drug test. Sonny is thirty-five years clean and sober, and had been back from a bid upstate of about a decade. I met him at a reentry writing workshop I co-facilitate in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. He’s in his sixties, a marine veteran of the conflict in Beirut, and has Stage 4 prostate cancer. When he was violated by his parole officer (that’s what they call it —“violated”—which has a somewhat sick applicability) our group mobilized on his behalf. Carolina, who is about ten years back from a federal bid on a marijuana charge, called every journalist and advocate she could find, and my co-facilitator Joni, a humanities professor at LaGuardia Community College, sent him money. I knew he had two cats he loved dearly at the basement he was staying in, so I volunteered to extract the cats and find them a temporary home until he returned from prison.
I contacted my colleague Maureen, a cat lover, for advice, and she began querying in earnest with her cat-person network. After a couple of near-misses, she talked to one of the psychology professors at our college, who she agreed to let Sonny’s cats stay with her for the next two months. I talked to Sonny’s ex-wife, who is remarkably willing to work on his behalf, and she agreed to go with me on a rescue mission. I went to our workshop on the Tuesday after Sonny was violated with all this worked out, with the plan that I would pick up the cats with Sonny’s ex-wife from the basement where he’d been staying. By then I expected them to be hungry and maybe half-feral. After the workshop Joni and Carolina went with me to pick up gloves and cat food to assist in picking up the kitties. Maureen had provided two cat carriers.
As I pulled up at the address Sonny’s ex-wife gave me, she came bounding off the porch with a phone in her hand. “Here he is!” she said. It was Sonny, calling from jail. He reminded me his two cats’ names and defining characteristics, which he said were important because there are many other cats in the house. He also reminded me that the man who owns the house is a hoarder, and that the owner’s son and his friends are heroin addicts. He told me his ex-wife had the keys. “Get in, get my cats, and get out.”
Sonny’s ex-wife led me through the front yard to the door, and before unlocking it she said, “It’s disgusting in there.” She was right—the inside looked just like I imagined the apartment of Homer and Langley Collyer. As I stepped in gingerly and watched many cats zoom past me around a labyrinth of junk piled higher than me, Sonny’s ex-wife made as close to a beeline as possible to a door in the back and started knocking. After a few knocks, a man in boxers and a stained t-shirt came ambling out.
“We’re here for Sonny’s cats,” his ex-wife told the man.
“Ah,” the man said, not unkindly, “we haven’t seen the kitten for five days. Had a realtor in here who had the door open all day, and I think he ran out.”
Having heard Sonny talk about writing in the basement and backyard of this house for many hours with that kitten in his lap, I was hesitant to leave without scouring the place for it.
“Go ahead and check the basement,” the man said. Downstairs was much like upstairs, except for a relatively clean, well-lighted place in the corner where Sonny wrote. We’ve been reading Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own for the past few weeks, which I recommended after Sonny described how he used writing to escape the reality of living in this place. I thought then that I should have recommended Hemingway’s story.
I ended up picking up, with the help of Sonny’s ex-wife, his cat and a random kitten from the pack of feral cats that kept rubbing my leg and begging for food. They stayed with another colleague from my college, a psychologist so grumpy I’d always been a bit afraid of her who took both cats in, cared for them, found a home for the kitten through a no-kill shelter, and cried earlier this week when she left Bentley at the vet for Sonny to pick up. She couldn’t bring herself to give her over in person, but she’s been hounding Maureen all week to make sure Sonny’s coming for her.
It’s now late afternoon, and I’m returning home after driving Sonny and Bentley back to West Hempstead, where he’s staying at his niece’s apartment while he finds a new home for him and Bentley. His niece didn’t seem terribly excited to have a cat in the apartment, or me; I believe her response when Sonny introduced me as his professor was, “What I care about some professor?” But she warmed by the time I left, mostly because I’d made friends with her portly miniature pinscher, Coco. I think she might have been a little suspicious that she couldn’t tag me as either a cat person or a dog person.
I’m honestly too tired now to go through all the details of the day, but I’ll add that Maureen drove us to the veterinarian’s office in Stamford, where she has an insider’s relationship with the doctors and staff, and the best part of all of our day was bearing witness to a proud old man who is both a poet and a fighter, being reunited with his cat after being pulled away from the world into a cold cell for no good reason.
I’ll also note that, after the first paragraph or two, I’ve ceased in reflecting and just told some stories. As an essayist, I think of my job primarily as turning things over in words, looking at ideas from as many perspectives as possible. But over the past three years since I, in the words of either Joseph or God in It’s a Wonderful Life, thought seriously about throwing away god’s greatest gift, I’ve come to terms with a set of priorities by which my role as a thinker is necessarily subservient to my role as an teacher-activist, as a storyteller, as both a caretaker and a child of the world. It’s only in the friction and the frisson between these roles that the term “essayist” even means anything to me.
In the car ride back from the vet, after acquiescing that Sonny was going to take Bentley out of her carrier and hold her for the whole ride despite her protestations, Maureen leaned back with both hands on the wheel and said, “This is such a great Christmas for us all!” We all sat together in silence, sharing the moment and the space. “Hope,” she said as we sped along the highway, the afternoon giving way to the longest night. “It’s full of hope.
-Written by John Proctor
Sylvester “Sonny” Jackson is a writer and retired Marine. As many of you know, Sonny is one of the most important members of our writing workshop for people returning from incarceration.
One of “the real women of Orange Is the New Black,” Carolina Soto is one of the founding members of the Re/Creation writing workshop at Restoration Plaza. Unlike the fictionalized Yoga Jones, Carolina has a long history of work in social justice and advocacy, and is a seasoned painter and visual artist. Since beginning her work in the Re/Creation writing workshop at Restoration Plaza in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn, Carolina has increased her confidence and aptitude with both the written and spoken word, composing speeches and essays for her advocacy work and as well as written memoir. In particular, her essays and memoirs illustrate her vast capacity for empathy in her descriptions of people with whom she shared time inside. She now splits her time between living in New York City and the Dominican Republic.
John Proctor is a writer, educator, activist, and founder of Re/Creation. He is also Communications & Digital Organizing Manager at Freedom Agenda, an initiative of the Urban Justice Center focused on decarcerating Rikers Island and helping create a post-Rikers New York City.