The boom and bang of one cat's new year

My wife and I were enjoying a special brunch on New Year's Day -- black-eyed peas, cornbread, crab-stuffed crepes, the works -- with friends when one of our neighbors stopped by to ask about -- of course -- Missy Kitty.

We were happy to tell Darlene that Missy Kitty was doing quite well this winter. Then Darlene made a suggestion: You should tell us how Missy Kitty celebrated on New Year's Eve. We would all love to know.

Excellent suggestion, Darlene. But before we get to the particulars of how a cat parties, let me say a few words about that meal we had Sunday.

Brunch.

I'm told the word is a combination of breakfast and lunch, indicating it occurs sometime between morning and noonish. I'm not sure the exact parameters have ever been established.

I had never heard of brunch until I went to college. See, we didn't have brunch when I was growing up on Killough Valley over yonder in the Ozarks.

We had breakfast. A real breakfast. Bacon. Eggs fried in bacon grease. Potatoes fried in bacon grease. Toast. Real butter. Jelly. Every morning.

When the sun reached its peak, we stopped for dinner. Not lunch. Lunch was a skimpy meal. A sandwich with some carrot sticks and maybe some leftover peach cobbler. Lunch was what you took to school or maybe to a job too far away from home to be there for dinner.

Sunday dinner, of course, was a huge meal. It came after you got home from church and after your mother put the finishing touches on all the good things that had been in the oven since early morning. If we had company for Sunday dinner, we ate in our church clothes instead of changing into farm clothes, hoping to avoid gravy stains on the freshly starched and ironed white dress shirt, which might possibly be re-worn next Sunday if you were very, very careful.

The final meal of the day was supper, not dinner, which you had already consumed earlier in the day. Every day except Sunday involved cooking an entirely new meal called supper. Sunday was the only day we ate leftovers for supper. There is nothing better than cold fried chicken when the sun goes down. If you didn't grow up on a farm, you might not know what I'm talking about. Too bad.

So, there we were, this past Sunday, at the New Year's Day brunch. Two meals combined into one, and no hope of leftovers for supper.

So, let me fill in Darlene and anyone else who's interested about Missy Kitty's New Year's Eve.

The good news is she is OK. The not-so-good news is there were fireworks.

Missy Kitty has a bit of a history with fireworks. When we rescued her from Safe Harbor about five years ago, it was the week before Fourth of July. We were told that Missy Kitty was a year old, so that means there were probably a bunch of bangs and booms when she drew her first breath.

For whatever reason, Missy Kitty hates fireworks.

When we brought her home we fixed her a bed and a smorgasbord of food and water in the garage so she would acclimate to her new surroundings. She spent a miserable three days in the garage -- my wife was in the hospital at the time -- and endured firecrackers and full-blown sonic blasts the entire time. She sought haven in the engine works of my wife's Saturn Ion. And she got stuck. While I was dislodging her from the engine of the car, Missy Kitty would cringe every time there was another concussion in the air.

Now what I'm going to tell you next is something any pet owner or parent has experienced at one time or another. Here's how it goes:

Something happens that scares the you-know-what out of a small child or pet animal. The cause of the fright is beyond -- way beyond -- your control. But even though your frightened child or pet is unable to speak, you can see the plea in their eyes, the desperate petition "Do something! You're the grown-up with a brain the size of a melon. And you have opposable thumbs. Make it stop!"

But you can't.

So you hold your child or pet in your arms and try to provide reassurance that everything will be OK. But you really don't know that for sure.

On New Year's Eve, some revelers must have been celebrating the countdowns on every continent. The fireworks started going off by 8 or 9 p.m. When midnight rolled around, the fireworks were going full throttle.

Missy Kitty, crouched in her chair, gave me that look.

"Do something!"

Suffice to say that even fireworks fans run out of steam eventually. The noise abates. Order is restored.

I'd like to think that Missy Kitty believes her humans are capable of making the fireworks stop. But she's a smart cat. A very smart cat.

By morning on New Year's Day, Missy Kitty acted like everything was right with the world. She may have made a resolution or two. Who knows?

She skipped the black-eyed peas and cornbread. But I'm thinking she'll have a pretty good 2017 anyway. After all, she has trained us well.

Joe Sullivan is the retired editor of the Southeast Missourian.