Cats Figure Into It

Summer is past they say, but Chatsford Hall is still basking in the afterglow of golden, summer-like evenings. Birdsong fills the sunsets that are now the color of opal and amethyst. The air is fresh and sweet and the damp earth exhales a soothing fragrance. The stars seem younger somehow as though the world has been reborn.

It was on an early autumn evening exactly like these when drainpipes and cats in the bedroom became forever linked with the Genome. I was about 11 years old and staying with my great-uncle and family at their farmhouse near the river. 

My older cousin Doyle was visiting with us. He'd been called by God to make my life a long sequence of events that could easily be described as just one damned thing after another. He took his calling seriously. No doubt he was motivated by the story of Jonah and didn’t want to be found wanting in his duty. No one wants to be swallowed by a whale.

Doyle was visiting the farm to be near the pretty daughter of a neighboring farmer. He was smitten with the girl. You might say that she’d gotten right up his nose. She had a great fondness for kittens it seems and my uncle's farm was overflowing with them. Doyle planned to exploit this surplus of cats to entice his girlfriend to drop by.

He requested access to my upstairs bedroom for a couple of hours and it was singularly important that I not be there when the young lady arrived. I was unclear on the particulars of why but imagined it had something to do with his divine calling. To prepare for her visit, we selected 13 of the kittens with just the right level of playfulness. Then I was told to disappear.

Well, it’s possible for a boy, aged 11, to entertain himself for a couple of hours on a dairy farm. Time passes in a flash—as long as you aren’t counting. I rode my bicycle into the cattle’s watering tank. I jumped out of the hay loft into a pile of hay. Still, after about an hour, I was bored. 

Even the company of my uncle’s prize-wining sow, a favorite of mine, wasn’t doing the trick. Watching this incredible creature tuck into her evening meal usually brought me to a blissful, meditative state but not on this evening. Bouncing a tennis ball usually helped to pass the time and I had one in my pocket. It bounced with a satisfying ‘pong’ on the back of the sow and she seemed not to notice.

I did it again and found the sound to be soothing. I don’t know how long I leaned against the fence of her enclosure listening to that sound--you know how you lose track of time when engaged in something you enjoy.

“Hey!” a loud voice called to me from somewhere nearby. It was the voice of my great uncle. Turning toward the voice, I saw that he was approaching at full speed and brandishing a wooden yard stick. He was quite fond of this pig and he had warned me about bouncing tennis balls off her back on more than one occasion. 

In the flash of leaving the premises, I heard a raspy grunt come from my uncle not unlike the sound made by a tiger when the goat on the menu disappears into the jungle just before the dinner gong sounds. 

I had no definite destination but I didn’t need one. I was lean and wiry, built for speed and my uncle was neither. And yet, where would my uncle not think to look for me? I was pondering this question when I rounded the corner and came face to face with the tile downspout that emptied into the rain barrels. This particular water pipe ran by the open window of my bedroom. To climb to the second floor and slip over the edge of the window sill into my room was with me the work of an instant.

I remember the feeling of a job well done as I rolled onto my back and lay catching my breath on the bedroom floor. But it was short lived. I quickly became aware of the sound of tires on gravel made by my father’s Oldsmobile. He was here to take me back home—an unforeseen complication. What to do now? Remain in hiding or meet him downstairs and risk running into my uncle again?

With all the excitement, I’d forgotten about my cousin and his plans for the room. I heard a low groaning coming from somewhere behind me. I saw that the covers on the bed were moving about, indicating that the kittens were under there, but not a single cousin, with or without girlfriend was in view. It seemed only prudent to release the cats. I approached the bed.

The expression on the map of my cousin when I pulled back the duvet outdid the look I’d seen on my uncle when he found me bouncing tennis balls on the back of the pig.

“Hey!” he shouted and began disentangling himself either from the sheets or from the girl. Hard to distinguish which.

You may have chosen a different course of action had you been in similar circumstances but I’m convinced any great military strategist—Napoleon for example—would have nodded in approval. Without as much as a glance to tell me the ground below was clear of bicycles and wheel barrows, I bunged myself out the second-floor window. 

Snakes in the grass couldn't have moved more smoothly. I bounced when I hit the ground but was pleased to learn that no damage was done. Then I heard it again for the third time. “Hey!”

It was my father’s voice this time. Like many people who make a defiant and dramatic gesture and then looking back realize they've gone beyond the limit, I was filled with regret. But too late. I was pinched and I knew it. Sampson must have felt the same when he heard the first pillar crack.

Dad rolled his eyes and I knew that he was making a silent but passionate appeal to the gods for support in a trying hour. My father followed the dictum that everything is figureoutable and so he knew that although it may seem puzzling that sons fall to earth like the gentle rain from heaven, he knew there was a reason for it. He knew that to ask, Why, would get a response like, “Oh, I dunno, I just thought I would.” 

“Mad as a coot,” said a voice from above and I remember thinking that a higher power had spoken. I looked up to see my cousin leaning out the bedroom window. “Type of a duck,” he said.

“Did you have something to do with this?” my father asked.

“Absolutely not,” said Doyle. “I do my best to take care of the boy.”

Without another word, my dad marched me inside and up the stairs to my room. It wasn’t until we were standing outside the closed door that I remembered the kittens. I had no way of knowing for sure but I surmised that finding them would not improve my dad’s mood. My hand hovered above the doorknob like a butterfly above a flower.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Dad and then he flung open the door. I got a momentary flash of about a hundred and fifteen cats rushing past us. I laughed. It was the another gesture that, upon reflection, proved to be over the line. My dad didn’t see the humor in it.

And that’s the story. It proves once again that rumor and innuendo are often less exciting that the actual truth. Still, the story is meaningful to me because even though my life has proven to be a  disappointment to many people, I've gotten a lot of stories out of it.