By Jim Hagarty
1994
There is a cat show in my hometown Sunday and it’s been suggested to me that I spruce up my old pal Grumbles and haul her growly self over to the Fairgrounds to let people oooh and aaah over her.
I gave this thought some consideration – five seconds’ worth, I think it was – before deciding the only spectators she’ll be showing herself to on Sunday will be the sparrows sitting around the fence in my backyard. I have several reasons for knowing I made the right decision. First of all, having total strangers stick their admiring faces within a few inches of my temperamental cat with the Wilkinson Sword teeth would be like telling a friend who borrowed a table saw: “Blade guard? Nah! Don’t need one. You’ll be all right.”
Secondly, there’ll probably be about $5 million worth of cats at the show that would be worth about $5,000 after my peevish little scrapper broke loose and went around rearranging the ribbons and bows around their furry necks.
And thirdly, for me to put her through all that misery would earn me a cat chaw on a thumb or finger that would make the shark victims in the movie Jaws look like they’d suffered a slight scraping on the skin of their legs. This wound could come any time within a day of taking her to the show, as she remembers injustices and is patient in meting out her revenge.
But (can’t you just feel this building to a crescendo?) my biggest reason for not entering my critter in this ego-feeding frenzy for felines is my certain knowledge that the little grey bundle of fury that can shred paper towels, woodwork and upholstery faster than a Vegomatic can slice through a tomato, would come in dead last in the competition, embarrassing herself and her (somewhat reluctant) owner. Oh, she might pick up a point or two for her cute face and a few more for her street smarts – she can tell time, especially breakfast time, dinner time, supper time, etc. – but at 10 years old, she’s starting to show the effects of her battles. Some unfriendly neighbour pet made off with with a part of one of her ears one night and a big black dog chewed on her midsection for a while another time. I’m convinced when I look at her sometimes that her face is on crooked and as I watched her fall out of a tree on Saturday, I thought that maybe she’s losing her grip.
My cat’s belly sags now like the underside of an old cow, the effects of age and too many patch-up jobs at the vet’s. Her day’s work, which once involved chasing down and murdering creatures smaller than herself, now is made up almost solely of finding a nice warm place for her increasingly chilly frame. She spends a lot of her time now down in the basement on our huge, white cat warmer which also doubles as our water heater. And she actually lets our other cat walk by her from time to time without rushing out and getting him in a headlock.
Another pleasant feature is how her stomach disturbances burst forth into the air as she reclines on my chest with her hindquarters an inch away from my face while I lie on my couch trying to watch TV. She also coughs up fur balls and breakfast with disturbing regularity and in the most obscure locations around the house.
Ah, she’s a dandy alright, this little companion of mine. But sometimes when I’m sitting in the backyard and she crawls up and sits down beside me, looking off in the same direction I’m looking, I know darn well we won’t be missing much on Sunday. No fancy-pants cat with a Princess Diana manner about her could take the place of one, well-timed headbutt from dear old Grumbles, no matter how big a butthead she can be.
