It just recently came to my attention that this was Cat Week. That’s the kind of information you miss when you turn your TV off for the summer. I hope this doesn’t mean they are going to run the musical Cats all week; if you have ever thought that there is still hope for the world all you have to do is sit through that musical. That musical should have been neutered after its first performance. If I had known it was that awful I would have brought extra shoes to throw.
We have two cats and they are both sort of special. I was just finishing up my morning work on the computer one Sunday morning when my wife called to me from outside; “We’ve got dead kittens in the yard.” Since this is not the usual greeting I’m used to on a Sunday morning it got my attention right away. I hurried outside and true enough, there were three dead kittens. We weren’t sure where they had come from, though we had seen a dead cat in the road a few days before. Since we live near a farm with lots of barn cats that’s, unfortunately, not uncommon. It’s part of that country charm; when the turkey buzzards show up it’s a real teaching moment for the young ones. We use it to explain Taco Bell.
The bodies of the three kittens were near a tree in our yard and we discovered a rather large hole in the bottom of it. My wife got down on her hands and knees and began to call “Here kitty, kitty.” It was such a pathetic sight I didn’t have the heart to tell her that cats don’t come from trees. They come from hell.
Imagine my surprise then when a cute little tiger kitten waddled out from the hole in the tree. We scooped it up and took it to take care of since it was obvious that mama wasn’t going to make it back. The next day we found its brother, an all black kitten who was sticking his cute little head out an even tinier hole on the other side of the tree.
That was about four hundred pounds ago. Now he couldn’t get his paw out that same hole. Their official names are Keebler and Pitch but they’re only called that at the vet’s office. Around the house they go by names that seem to fit them better; Prissy Bitch and Big Fatty Fat Cat. Prissy Bitch is our Valley Girl cat; she’s beautiful and seems to know it. She just kind of saunters around the house swishing her tale in what she thinks is both seductive and dismissive at the same time; “You can look, but don't touch.” She will occasionally lie down on your lap, usually when you're trying to sleep, and manages to usher up a half-hearted purr; “OK, I'll let you pet me now.” I usually roll over quickly to give her a little change of perspective.
Fatty Fat Cat seems to be trying to fashion a career for himself as a hot air balloon. However, the physics involved in getting him off the floor are going to squash that idea. If you are required to pick him up for some reason you have to hold him at arms length (no mean feat) because he sinks his claws into you the minute he can't feel the floor anymore. And he is surprisingly fast. He and Prissy Bitch will go charging through the house after each other at lightning speed, right over the top of you if you have the bad sense to be occupying any of the living room furniture at the moment. Prissy Bitch is like some light breeze that suddenly flashes by; when Big Fat Fatty Cat runs over you it's like being hit by a comet. I don't think he's seen his paws in several months, but he remembers how to work them. I guess he didn’t take well to being fixed. “Fixed” is our term, I don’t think he feels you should call it fixed if it doesn’t work anymore. Obviously he’s never taken a car in to be “fixed.”
Our dog doesn’t really like the two cats; she’s more of a people person. The cats seem to think she should be their surrogate mother; this is kind of creepy since we think our dog is the one who did in their siblings. It has a sort of Stephen King ring to it; two little kittens trying to become cuddly with Cujo. You know it isn’t going to end well. For the dog.
We've only had two or three good cats over the years. One of our earliest cats was Succotash, so named because when you looked at him that's what he looked like. He was a calico who looked liked he was designed by Salvador Dali. He was butt ugly.
But he was a great hunter. We were living in an old farmhouse and the upstairs was in an “unfinished” condition, as in “the fire didn't finish it off.” Mice would run upstairs; we think they were mice anyway. They sounded like a pack of elephants. I was afraid to go up there myself in case it was a remake of Ben (the squeaking sounded a little like Michael Jackson) so we opened the upstairs door and tossed Succotash in. In less than 30 seconds it was dead quiet up there, with the emphasis on dead. I don't think we ever heard another mouse. Or bird, or squirrel or even the mailman after about a week. We took to calling Succotash “The Hater of All That Lives.” He would leave us the heads of red squirrels on the porch each morning. Our little dog Casey gave him a wide berth when they passed each other.
Whitesox was the best cat we ever had because he was more like a dog. He never used a litter box; he would stand by the door to be let out. He was the smartest cat I've ever seen. We would watch him walk over to the road, look both ways, and then cross. We had him for many years. We had some other cats but they would invariably get wiped out by cars. We used to think Whitesox would lead them out into the road on purpose but there was never enough evidence to convict him.
For that reason we keep our present two felines in the house all the time. Our poor dog just lies there looking forlorn as they try to snuggle with her, wishing she had finished them off with their siblings. We've had them fixed so there won't be any other surprises. We had the tree filled too, just in case.
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