I Was Normal Three Cats Ago

My husband loves cats. I’m not such a great fan of them.

When we got married, we agreed on one cat. Then Joe said, “but he’ll get lonely. He needs a companion.”

So one cat became two cats.

When the kittens were old enough to leave their mother, we drove home with three.

I named them Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest.

One night just as we were falling asleep, we heard a very strange noise. It began right above our room and then faded as it went the length of the trailer. But then it was back above us again. Joe went outside to see what could be on our roof and saw the kittens peering down at him. They had climbed a tree beside the house and leapt onto the roof. He carefully got them down, thinking perhaps they were stuck and came back to bed. A few minutes later we heard them again.

“Enough of this!” Joe decided. “I’m gonna fix them!” He went out, got the water hose and sprayed those kittens until they jumped off the roof.

“Well that’s done,” we thought. But no. The very next night they were back at it. Joe went out with the hose again.

After several nights of this, we finally gave up and now they are as much at home on the roof of our house as anywhere!

Now they are grown and much to my dismay, two of them have become mothers. One of their offspring has become Joe’s shop cat.

Yesterday, I was scraping chipped paint from an old plantation shutter I wanted to paint. The repetition of running the scraper back and forth set off my brain. I could feel that I was pushing it but I really wanted to get it finished. Suddenly I was walking backwards, unable to stop until I hit the porch rail. With my back against it, I jerked as my body slowly bent forward.

One of the matriarchs of our cat family looked up at me and meowed, trying to get my attention. She seemed to sense something was wrong and when I failed to straighten, she leapt to the rail behind me, hooked her claws into the fabric of my dress and attempted to pull me upright. Next she jumped on my back and then to the floor, swatting at the scraper in my hand. About this time I had bent forward far enough that the momentum pulled me to the floor. The cat then, licked at my hand and bit my ear. I crawled to the rail and pulled myself up. Then walked along the rail back to the shutter and continued scraping. The cat curled up beside the door.

I wouldn’t call her smart, but I guess she isn’t “Dumbest” either.