bluetyger.ca Issue 4 September 1 2001

bluetyger main... issue 4 intro... Bethune House - Gravenhurst Wye Marsh Visit Weegee - Photographer The Black Cat Walks Down: Gibson Landscapes 2x Golden 4 Editor: William J. Gibson email to the editor Made in Canada

2 X Golden Part 4 - Cat Tale The cat has had enough. This dog saga thing is getting him down. So in an effort to get his purr back on track, I will tell a small story about him. Twelve years ago, I went cat shopping and came home with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Butch was black with 21 white hairs on his chest, I counted them one rainy day. Sundance is an orange tabby guy. Butch passed over to the big land of cream and salmon early in the spring of this year. He did it with style, passing away during a cat nap one fine afternoon. He and Sundance were great pals. Butch used to do all the complaining for both of them. Sundance was pretty quiet, uttering mostly the sound "murr" with a rising inflection. It was not a meow at all. I always took it as an easy going kind of "hi, what's up." Since Butch's departure, Sundance has become remarkably vocal. He gives long loud accounts of his day and he does some complaining, actually quite a bit of complaining. I guess he has to speak up for himself since his pal is not around anymore to talk for him. Sundance is exactly the same colour of gold that the dogs are. This created a problem for awhile. I believe the dogs thought that he was not a cat but was an odd looking golden retriever pup who never grew. To make him feel better about being such a puny golden retriever, they would on occasion give him a tongue bath. As friendly as this regrettable act was intended it has always produced the most disgusted look on the cat's face. He then walks off and spends a few hours repairing the damage done to his coat. When he was a lot younger and before the dogs I made the mistake of buying some of those small sponge balls that look a little like golf balls. He and Butch loved to play with them. There were two problems with this. One, it became impossible for me to work on my putting stroke indoors on the rug. The cats would watch one putt, then turn into crazed attack cats and bat the real golf balls away, long before they could make it to my indoor putting target. Problem number two, is that these balls are unusually affected by gravity. They end up under couches for a short time but end up somehow in the basement in the furnace room over the drain cover in the middle of the sloped floor. But the real problem became clear one night. I had got into the habit of playing with Sundance with these sponge balls while I was ensconced in bed, reading. He would bring the ball and drop it on the covers of the bed and look at me. I would keep reading pick up the ball and throw it out the open door of my bedroom to bounce in the upper hall carry on to the landing of the stairs and gently bounce down to the first floor pursued by the micro mountain lion. This was all well and good for awhile. One night at around 2 a.m., furbrain, decides it is time to play. He runs up the stairs from the ground floor, sponge ball in his teeth, murring madly as he ascends. I feel him jump up on the bed. I peer out at him and see the sponge ball rolled up to me and the cat standing waiting patiently ready for me to throw. I throw it, assuming he wants to play once. I am an idiot. He tears off after it, descends murring. silence descends briefly, then more murring, ascent of stairs, jump onto bed, and silence. I flick open my eyes and see ball and cat again. I do what any loving cat owner would do. I reach for the ball and pull it under the covers and go back to sleep. It usually takes about ten minutes for me to fall back to sleep. Amazing as it seems this is the same amount of time it takes Sundance to go find another sponge ball and to ascend murring with it. I hide ball number two. I hide ball number three. I hide ball number four and five. When he brings the sixth, I begin to weep. He purrs anyway. At this point I pull back the covers and hurl all six out the bedroom door and to the landing and down the stairs. Sundance is delighted.