Family, Stories, Uncategorized

Chasing Tales

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It is almost a year since our youngest cat came to live with us.  She was found by our son,  abandoned at about 8 weeks of age in his neighborhood.  She is one of the nicest cats I have ever met. She is loving, affectionate, and playful. She always thinks inside the litter box, and has excellent manners. She fetches paper balls and carries them back to us so we can throw them again.  She follows us around the house like a dog would. She is utterly charming. If she were a middle school girl, she would be the one who you hated because she was pretty, everyone liked her, and she seemed too perfect.

Daughter recently got a new kitten, a real terror, who was bottle fed after being found abandoned in Tacoma, and who demands constant attention and loves to attack and scratch. She even jumped into the bathtub with daughter one night.   Daughter won’t listen to tales of our kitten, and says “I know, mom. Luna is the perfect cat. Don’t remind me!”

One of Luna’s more endearing games is to sit on the arm of a dining room chair,  reach her paws under the chair arm, and try to catch her tail. She appears to derive a great deal of pleasure from this.   She is oblivious to the silliness of it, playing catch and release with her tail and then attempting to catch it again.

PG Wodehouse wrote some terribly funny stories about cats. Luna reminds me of one who Wodehouse described as being owned by a C of E bishop, and who liked to sit in the pools of light that streamed through the stained glass church windows and listen  to the organ play. Such perfection is always a sham in these stories, and the cat was eventually outed to reveal feet of clay.  I wonder how Luna will slip up and show us some imperfections.  I think I will find our Wodehouse compendium and read about some cats.

 

Tell some good cat stories.

 

52 thoughts on “Chasing Tales”

  2. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    Warning. I just lost my reply and I have to depart. I will have to write my cat story later today. WordPress is having a VERY temperamental day.

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  3. My daughter brought home a two years old calico from the shelter. The cat instantly claimed me. Over the years, people would remark how worshipful of me she was. “Unnatural” some said. I believe it went back to our very first hour. I was nearly finished with a slice of toast when she jumped up on the back of the couch and snatched the bread from my hand. Then and there I named her Toast.

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  4. Our neighbor’s cat, Sesame, is an indoor/outdoor cat (fine with me, mostly) who is frequently invited into people’s homes (not here), knows how to get into garages, etc. The other day I had bought some soup bones for making bone broth, did a few more errands, but forgot and left the package of meat/bones in the car overnight. Remembered first thing in the morning, and found the package on back seat of car – opened and sampled. The only thing I can think of is Sesame, since the car windows were open, and the side door to garage ajar. Sneaky cat – and it’s hard to imagine the scent of meat traveling through shrink wrap enough to lure him…

    I see the posts are back to Renee, as we’re into a new month again. I’ll try to get something to you soon.

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    1. Plastic does not do a thorough job of sealing in food odors. I have a cat who is oddly fond of bread. Anytime I leave bread on the counter, even if I have not opened the bag, he’ll get into it. I’ve also had the experience, more than once, of leaving out a grocery bag with a package of english muffins in the bottom under a bunch of other groceries, and he digs in the bag and pulls out the muffins. He chews through the plastic and nibbles on them.

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  5. cats have been part of my life since I was three or four. We had Sam and patch the siamese pair
    m&m was a pickup on o trip out west in the be van . picked her up in a field of sage brush and jack rabbits in north dakota. winston and his brother, dupree the ginger, furball ( i had kids) a few others before my wife proclaimed cats are indoor critters. her cat sassy had been ravagly attacked by a dog when it was young and she never could forget. today we have ernest and hemingway (6 toes) who love to sneak out when my wife isn’t looking to eat grass. life doesn’t get better than eating grass
    they we determined are likely 10 or 12 and still chase around the house like kittens. how nice.

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  6. Finian was the orange tabby with only one claw on each front foot who was the neighborhood bunny and vermin eradicator. He lived across the street at daughter’s best friend’s house. He had been declawed by his first owner, who then had to return him to the folks across the street when he moved out of town. Finian couldn’t stand to be indoors, and went out every day no matter how cold or hot or snowy or wet it was. He dragged home his prey on a daily basis, piling the carcasses in the corner of best friend’s back yard. Bunnies, gophers, moles had no chance, and he roamed far from home on his hunts.

    After the best friend moved across town we had to fence in our veggie garden for the first time since Finian wasn’t there to keep the neighborhood bunny free.

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  7. The cat I grew up with (Timothy Grunchen Grooms) and the first cat in my married life (Pippen) were both so athletic that I assumed all cats were astonishing athletes. Then we bought a cat (Cleo) so clumsy that she could have starred in a compilation YouTube video of physical incompetence.

    We first witnessed Timmy’s capabilities when a bat flew into our dining room while our family sat behind 1950s TV trays eating TV dinners and watching I Love Lucy. The bat swooped through the room flying just below the ceiling. Then it flew to the kitchen before making the mistake of returning to the dining room. Timmy was lying in what Garrison Keillor calls the cat “meatloaf position” on the floor. Timmy suddenly shot up to a height of about six feet. Timmy snagged the bat out of the air mid-flight. We were almost too stunned to respond when he took the bat to the back door and asked to be let out.

    I could go on with Timmy stories. He was with us from 1944 to about 1964. When he was 20 (or close to it) Timmy disappeared for three days. We assumed he was dead. He finally dragged himself back, bleeding and unable to walk, more dead than alive. He apparently had lost a battle to some critter. My sister was pregnant with her first child at the time. My mom had an intimate talk with Timmy. “Timmy, old guy, you gotta rally. You were always the baby in [my sister’s] heart, the one she pushed around in a doll’s baby carriage. She will have a real baby in a few months. I’m asking you to hang on until your replacement comes.” Timmy survived a bit longer, dying shortly after the baby arrived. It was his last and most impressive physical accomplishment.

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    1. Some brief but favorite memories:
      Olga Korbut (Brooklyn NY apt.) – named for the gymnast; she was pure white and just fit curled up in a little round basket I had in the kitchen. We had a very tall bookshelf (actually one shelf atop another ) whose vertical edge I carpeted so she’d be able to get up top when s-i-l’s dog visited.

      I house-sat in California for a great part-Siamese ironically named Solid, because he was cross-eyed and pretty “slow”.

      Slushball, also Robbinsdale and part Siamese, earned the name because after kittenhood, he no longer looked like his original name-Snowball. He loved cantaloupe, and anything (cooked) from the cabbage family.

      Charlie the Cat (Robbinsdale era) would want to go out on cold wintry mornings till I opened the door – if it was really cold and/or nasty, he literally ducked his head, turned tail (What – do you think I’m nuts?), and returned to his warms pot.

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    3. I just got back from a day trip, Steve, so haven’t been on the trail. Also, the only cat stories I can think of right now are sad stories.

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  9. It is summer. Our oldest cat has just been diagnosed with a stomach ulcer. Who knew? She is on meds, just had a IV for fluids, and is back home.

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    2. try a littel epsom salts in her water for the stomach ulcer. i use baking sida but i am told epsom salts are better. either will eliminatte the acid problem instantly and cause a burp with the excess chemistry class residuals

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  11. One of that cats that lived with my sister and b-i-l liked to frequent the basement, looking for centipedes, earning the nickname “Renfield”.

    I had a cat, my first cat, in fact, who was fascinated by cigarettes. I think I’ve probably told the story before. Whenever my sister would come over for a visit, Franny would dig through her purse and pull out her pack of cigarettes. When my sister quit smoking, she gifted the last few cigarettes from her last pack to Franny. I pulled the filters off and repurposed them as cat toys. Franny would happily fetch them if I threw them for her. I wish I had taken a picture of her trotting up to me with a filter in her mouth, looking like some sort of feline juvenile delinquent.

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  13. thats right . it is my folks anniversary and now my daughters anniversary as well and vs birthday

    the inlaws just left with a nice little nephew whose birthday is 10/4.
    i thought they certainly would have named him roger d.

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      1. One of the oddities of life in Michigan: strangers call you “Bud.” In the South, the waitress is apt to call you “Honey.” Up here, it will be, “Ya want sugar in that, Bud?”

        And the squirrels are black.

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  14. when i was a kid we had new neighbors move in across the street. the drogies. the family consisted of three daughters the oldest was really old. maybe 20 and then the next two with the youngest being 3 years older than me.
    the oldest daughter landed a boy friend who was tall and blonde and drove a convertable. what a cool guy. they decided to get married and he became a regular fixture in the neighborhood.
    one day i saw him pull up with the convertable top down but on his way to the drogie driveway he stopped the car got out and walked over to my cat who was in the front yard and kicked it really hard, trhe cat cried out and took off running and the blonde guy walked over and got into his car and continued on to park in the drogie driveway.
    i was upset and called out to my mom who couldnt believe it and said she thought it must have been a different story than the one i reported. i gave her a detailed blow by blow and there was no doubt that it was an intentional abuse attack and she said she would talk t my dad about it.
    he didnt know what to do so he said just to see if it ever happened again. maybe ther was a reason the guy was being so mean.
    i saw it happen two or three more times and one saturday when the guy drove up my dad was home and i called him over to see the guy stop and go kick the cat. … my dad went flying out the front door and was on the guy before he got back to his car. he said the guy had no reason to explain his behavior and that my dad had explained to him that if it ever happened again the result would be more than a discussion.
    it never happened again.
    who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men…

    i had a guy who was sort of a friend who for some odd reason couldnt stand cats. when i asked him what the theck that was all about he said it was like the cats could see into his soul… odd i thought rthen i discovered what was in his soul. he and i had a business together and he stole 20k from me and dumped his wife and daughter to go be a new life sort of guy.
    there are twisted people out there.
    it reminds me of the twilight zone episode where the guy at the gate wouldnt let the dog into the gates of heaven. the old man wouldn’t go in without the dog. the punchline was that the guy at the gate was trying to pass it off as heaven but it was in fact hell. the guy another mile down the road at the gates of heaven said they wouldnt let dogs in because you can fool men into thinking it was heaven but you cant fool a dog. i think maybe cats are similar. animals know evil souls just get the heck out of the way.

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      1. Husband is terribly allergic to cats, but we have had indoor cats in our home for almost 30 years. He adores cats and wolfs sudafed to cope.

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  16. Back in 1964 while working for the Bridges family at the American embassy in Moscow, their cat, a Russian stray that they had somehow adopted, liked to observe traffic from her perch in the top window. Our apartment was on the fifth floor of the embassy, and the windows facing the street were divided in two: the lower window, a larger, rectangular window that we never opened, and a smaller, square one on top. The windows opened into the room, and on hot summer days the cat liked to perch on the lower frame of the opened upper window.

    One morning while I was busy doing some household chore, Mary, the youngest daughter, had escaped her nursery school class and came barging into the apartment looking for me, leaving behind an open front door. The resulting draft caused the window in the dining room in which the cat was perched to slam shut, catapulting the cat into the air and a five floor free-fall. Miraculously she landed unscathed, but scared the daylights out of the Russian guard who was standing close by. That was the first but not the last of that cat’s many adventures. I think she might have been a Russian spy.

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  23. My ex and her mother are both ‘crazy cat ladies.’ So, when we moved in together and the cat she had when I met her passed away, we had to get not just one, but a pair. (“One has to have another to play with…!”) A friend of mine had a barn cat that had a litter by another that he had around, so we took the mom and one of her kids. Her kid was big (20#!) but not too bright. The mom was VERY street smart…or barn smart, as the case may be.

    Once, I was using the laser pointer to play with her. She chased back and forth, up and down the hall. All was going well until she stopped dead in her tracks, looked up at me, and meowed with the same suspicious realization as a person saying, “Waaaaaaaait!” She turned away from me in a huff and walked away, ticked at how she’d been ‘played.’ She never chased the laser pointer again.

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