Catch As Cat Can (or Catmandon�t)

Our family loves animals. We enjoy both dogs and cats, but since we lost our wonderful English setter, Merlin, to illness, our pet population is three cats. (I see some of you heading for the exits. Good, now the rest of you can move up closer.) The number goes up or down over the years. As older cats move on to that empty cardboard box in the sky, new kittens (often from the Humane Society) take their spots. It�s kind of like the Harlem Globetrotters: the show goes on even as new guys replace Curly Neal, Meadowlark Lemon, and so on. (I guess that makes us their hapless Washington Generals) or maybe they�re more like the generations of the Flying Wallenda family with their leaping and landing.

Let me introduce the three mouse-cat-ears. (My buddy Ron, a dog guy, at first jokingly declined my invitation to come by and see them. He�d pass on a �meet and greet,� as he put it) The two males, Louie and Zeedo, are 16-year-old brothers, born in a bedroom closet. Our female, seven-year-old Gremlin, was a stray kitten, rescued from under the hood of a delivery truck where it was warm.

Louie, the larger male, is black and white, fluffy, good natured. He has a soft voice, so he communicates with a kind of whispering meow. I�ve never seen a cat love food more. At dinner time he gets so excited that he runs laps (if you can call it running) around the kitchen and living room until his bowl is filled.

Zeedo (short for Tuxedo, because of his pattern of black and white markings) loves The Great Indoors. Rarely does he venture �out there.� He and Gremlin have an all-too-obvious romance going, despite the age difference.

Gremlin (Grem, Gremmie) is white with gray patches. Her lineage appears to go back to the cheetah, with her long legs, long tail (which she loves to chase), and small head. Her soaring vertical leap would make Michael Jordan jealous. She�s also one of the smartest cats I�ve ever seen.

They can also be entertaining wrestlers. As Louie flops onto his side, Zeedo places a paw on his shoulder. Then both wait � motionless except for twitching tails, for the exact moment to suddenly wrestle, shriek and shed fur. Watching, I�m struck by how much it reminds me of gym class and learning the basic wrestling positions on the mats down in the old Tiger Den at Central High. (And, of course, they are related to tigers.)

From wrestle mania it�s only a short trip to �The Bladder Stomp.� (The dance craze that�s sweeping the nation.) If you�ve ever had a large cat land suddenly on your abdomen while you were lying on the couch, you�ll understand. And all the cats sing:

We spring from the floor and land with a whomp,

crushing Dad�s gut in our frenzied romp.

Pressing our paws with kittenish kneading,

as we all do

The Bladder Stomp (or as Dad says, �That�s okay, kitties. Spleens are overrated anyway.�)

We never had a cat when I was a kid, and I wasn�t that crazy about them until college. The first place where I lived at Mizzou (almost literally a hole in the wall of a cave, in a dank stone basement), a girl upstairs had a cat. One day when she wasn�t around, one of my roommates threw a glass of water in the cat�s face. It bolted, shocked and indignant. I laughed along with him, but I also felt misgivings.

Next semester I upgraded to more civilized digs, and changed roommates. One day we found a black and white female with no collar or ID. We named her Katie, and she was obviously happy with her new home. She couldn�t stop rubbing up against us and purring. She was also very interested in our other pets, a green snake named Ken and a turtle, Lysol. (It�s a long story.)

One day someone accidentally let curious Kate get outside, and she wandered off. Soon a three-day torrential rain came. Later, after hours of heavy-hearted searching, we found her.

You never saw such a sick, pitiful, bedraggled kitty. She was soaked to the bone trembling, with mucousy, dulled eyes. We dried her as well as we could, wrapped her in a towel and blanket, and after giving her food and water, took her to a veterinarian. So bad off was she that the vet told us not to get our hopes up. Back at the apartment, we kept her warm and comforted her, and we held her jaws open to squirt the antibiotic down her throat.

Finally, after several worrisome days, she began to purr and nuzzle us again. That was when I became a true catophile. Katie went on to move to Denver with my roommates, return to Columbia and then Cape, and have a litter of five kittens before we had her spayed, all of which went to fine homes of friends and relatives. She lived out her days with my parents and family, reaching age 21, with her kitten Phoebe as her companion, who lived on to age 23.

Many years have gone by, taking us to today, and now I�m stretched out on the bed, under a comforter and our cats. Kind of like Three Dog Night except it�s a Three Cat Afternoon. Warm and purring. Better than an electric blanket. (With apologies to Walt Whitman, �I sing the kitty comforter non-electric.�) And now we all settle in for a pleasant afternoon cat nap.