KINGFISH SHOWS OUT

From the Chapter "Doggy Tales"

Kingfish was a mean, medium-sized part-bulldog.  You were wise to give Mr. Kingfish plenty of room, especially if you were between him and his food.  Kingfish was what we called, “a sport model,” or the shortened, “spote.”  Mr. Cleve once took Kingfish with him on a trip to Leslie to buy some groceries.  The grocery store was home to a large orange tabby cat that thought she was the baddest cat who had ever lived.  This particular cat had terrorized most of the dogs in town, and was given a wide berth by the local city-canine population.  Since Kingfish was a farm dog, and not a city dog, he had no knowledge of the ferocity of the store’s cat.

Kingfish’s hackles rose to their full height as soon as he crossed the threshold of the store’s front door.  You could have cut the tension in the store with a knife.  The cat saw Kingfish, foolishly arched her back and began spitting and mewing at him.  That action was all the provocation Mr. Kingfish needed to begin the hostilities.  He made a bee-line for the cat, running right between the legs of the town’s oldest spinster, who was standing in front of the checkout counter.  Fear, or excitement, caused her to emit an ear piercing shriek and to begin jumping up and down, doing a pretty good imitation of the Macarena while managing to hang on to her paper sack of groceries.

Kingfish’s aggression made the cat set-out on a high-speed circuit around the outer perimeter of the grocery store, knocking over everything that was in its way.  Kingfish was not far behind, and began to close the gap.  They made two complete laps, destroying everything in their path, when Kingfish finally got within striking distance.  You could hear his teeth clacking together like castanets as the cat’s tail came into range.  Kingfish gave an awe-inspiring lunge and managed to bite off the last 1/6^th inch of the cat’s tail. 

The sound and the pain of the dog’s teeth snapping on its tail spurred the terrorized cat into putting on a tremendous burst of speed, jumping onto the spinster’s back, and from there springing to the top of the large walk-in freezer unit.  From this vantage point the cat kept hissing and spitting at Kingfish, daring him to jump to the top of the freezer and get what was coming to him.  Kingfish also used the spinster’s back as a launching ramp, but he failed to make it to where the cat was sitting with a smug look on its face.  Kingfish went berserk, doing his best to jump the necessary eight feet into the air to get to the cat on top of the freezer.  He finally, in a frenzy of activity, ran completely over the hapless spinster, knocking her down and splitting open her sack of groceries, scattering cans and produce everywhere.   This was anticlimactic as the spinster had already wet herself when the cat jumped on her back. 

The shopkeeper finally ran Kingfish out of the store by beating him with a straw broom, although he later gave Mr. Cleve a beef bone for Kingfish.  He told Mr. Cleve he despised that worthless cat, especially since it belonged to his wife, and that he wished Kingfish had caught it before it got away.  Mr. Cleve let Kingfish sit on the seat next to him instead of making him ride in the back of the wagon, and bragged on him out loud about his cat-whipping prowess while Kingfish gnawed on his new beef bone all the way home.  Kingfish just gnawed, grinned, and hassled, remembering the taste of the cat’s tail, and relishing what had been one of the best days of his life.  From then on, whenever Mr. Cleve walked into that grocery store, with or without Kingfish, that cat would haul-ass out the back door, climb high up in a chinaberry tree at the back of the store and stay there until it could see Mr. Cleve and his wagon heading out of town.  The end of that cat's tail never grew back and it never fooled around with any of the local dogs again.

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