HERE, KITTY KITTY

From the Chapter "All in the Family"

No self-respecting southern male will have anything to do with a cat, in any way, shape or form.  Other than occasionally reducing the mouse and rat population, a cat just ain’t worth a whole lot.  Before you cat lovers start meowing, spitting, and hissing, let me make one thing perfectly clear.  When I said pets earlier I was mainly talking about dogs, birds, squirrels, hamsters, guinea pigs, and the like.  I did not include cats, as I can’t recall anyone in our family ever having a cat as a pet, with the exception of my brother.  He has a cat only because his wife makes him do it.  One of our sons inherited a cat that came as a package deal with his wife, but the cat was soon transferred to a different location, and never really counted.

 When my oldest was young and foolish, he totaled his Datsun 200X at two o’clock one morning by running up on a curb at a high rate of speed, destroying everything underneath the car. His rather incogitable explanation was that he was trying to dodge a cat in the street and ran up on the curb in the process.  I may look stupid but I did not just hit town with the latest truckload of turnips.  There is not a family male, at least not a son of mine, who would miss the opportunity to nail a cat in the road, especially if he could do so without damaging his car.  If he had told me he was trying to hit the cat and ran up on the curb, I would have been proud of him and more prone to believe his malodorous tale.

I come by my negative feelings about cats honestly.  When I was in high school I wanted to ask a good looking girl I had a crush on for a date, but I was chicken.  It took months for me to get up the nerve but I finally asked her for a date and, lo and behold, she accepted.  I showed up at the appointed time on a perfect summer Saturday night, a picture of sartorial splendor, dressed to the nines in my faded Madras button-down shirt, broke-in and soft Levi’s, and Bass Weejuns with no socks.  The scent of Old Spice cologne wreathed my head like clouds around the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro .  I could have worn English Leather or Canoe cologne, but I didn’t want to show out on this first date. 

Her mother greeted me and said, “She’ll be ready in a little bit.  Go sit over there in the Lazy Boy.”  

Has there ever been, in the history of all mankind, a female who has been ready to go when her date shows up at the appropriate time? I had no way of knowing that their mean, perpetually ticked-off, extremely territorial Siamese cat lived up under that Lazy Boy chair into which I was about to deposit my innocent posterior.  Everything was fine until I leaned back just a mite and pinched the cat’s tail in the spring of the chair.

The cat didn’t come out from under the chair where it would have been a fair fight.  Oh, no.  She stayed up under the chair where I couldn’t get to her and began to use my bare ankles for scratching posts.  I didn’t want to embarrass myself, so I sat there humming “ Dixie ” and grimacing, taking my medicine like a real man, not once letting a tear fall from my eyes.  My date finally strolled into the room, and I managed to extricate myself from the ten-foot long, razor sharp claws of the cat, and stand up. 

As we were walking down the sidewalk to my car (I was half walking, half limping because my ankles were torn, bleeding, and felt like they were on fire), my not-quite-so-gorgeous-anymore date looked down at my ankles and said, “I see you met our cat, Jezebel.  I should have warned you she hates the smell of Old Spice.  It makes her crazy and drives her into a murderous rage.” 

I decided in that instant that whatever my future held, it did not include this sweet young thing or her sorry, Old Spice-hating Siamese cat.  No great loss; she, sadly, didn’t know how to kiss very good anyhow.

STAYING OUT OF SKEETER’S WAY

For some inexplicable reason, there are times when a perfectly good dog will act like a cat.  My sister has a little Jack Russell terrier named Skeeter.  His size is the only thing small about this dog.  He is feisty, aggressive, and rules their house with an iron paw.  He is extremely territorial and provides a significant degree of comfort to their family at night as he guards the premises. 

We recently went to see them and were greeted at the front door by Skeeter.  He wagged his tail and licked my wife’s hand in greeting, just as friendly as he could be.  He turned and greeted me by waging a vicious attack on my bare ankles, not unlike that Siamese cat named Jezebel.  He tore my ankles up.  It was like déjà vu, all over again.  As I was dancing around trying to get out of his clutches, I accidentally stepped on his tail.  That only served to infuriate him and to increase the intensity of his attack. 

My sister finally got him to stop treating my ankles like fried pork chops.  For the duration of our entire visit he sat on the end of the sofa where I was sitting, squinting his eyes at me and growling softly, daydreaming about what he would do if he ever got me alone again.  I shudder at the thought.

The Story Page