Author: Jim Hagarty

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There was a young man from Peru,
Who had wives, but only a few.
He loved them all well
But never could tell
What was what and who was who.

By Jim Hagarty
1986

Just this week I read a quiz about cats – a list of questions and answers designed to help owners know the true facts about their pets.

It dealt with whether cats can see in the dark (they can’t), whether a high fish diet is good for them (it isn’t) and whether they need a lot of exercise (they don’t) among other relevant data.

However, it occurred to me that a lot of important information was left out of the article, perhaps by accident, perhaps by design, and I’d like to fill in the blanks. Here are 12 true-or-false statements about cats. Check your score at the end.

1. A cat is most content with itself after it has had a good meal and some pats on the head from its owner.
   Answer: False. A cat is happiest when it has kicked every last grain of kitty litter (along with some of the reason for the litter) out of the pan and onto the floor.

2. A cat can be taught to understand the meaning of the word, “No!”
   Answer: False. A cat, in time, can understand, “Here kitty, kitty, kitty!”, “Supper!” and “You’re in big trouble!” but “No!” is a concept entirely beyond its grasp.

3. When a cat has eaten all it needs, it will stop eating.
   Answer: False. A cat believes its duty is to eat everything it sees, whether the food is in its dish, on your plate, on the neighbour’s front porch or still walking around (as in mice, birds, june bugs, etc.)

4. A cat loves to drink cool, clean water.
   Answer: False. It prefers filthy, lukewarm water, especially the kind found in mud puddles. In fact, it’s next to impossible to drag the average cat past a murky pool without it dipping its face into it. Toilet water is like champagne to a cat.

5. A cat does not like to go to the veterinarian.
   Answer: False. A trip to the doctor’s office is a good chance to mix it up with a few strange animals, maybe slash the smile off a happy-looking dog named George, cuff another cat or two. Also, a cat enjoys breaking out of the cat carrier in the car on the way home and digging its claws into the upholstery.

6. A cat prefers cool temperatures to warm.
   Answer: False. A cat can detect sources of warmth more accurately and quickly than a heat-seeking missile. It loves to sit on furnaces, the hoods of recently parked cars, people’s midriffs and when it’s young, other cats.

7. A cat likes its name.
   Answer. True. At least the names Buffy, Whiskers and Coco. The names Dirty Little Rat, Rotten Beggar and Why You Monster Wait Till I Get My Hands On You don’t appeal to it quite so much.

8. A cat enjoys sleeping in a specially made $40 wicker basket.
   Answer: False. It prefers clothes hampers, shoe boxes, dresser drawers and kitchen table tops.

9. A cat can always find its way back home.
   Answer: True. Even if you move. It knows how to go to the post office, find out your new address and join you later.

10. A cat is so agile, it never falls off things.
    Answer: False. It falls all the time off couches, beds, cellar steps. And what it likes to do on its way down is to try to hang onto anything not nailed down, such as an afghan, cushion, bed sheet or your leg.

11. A cat has feelings.
    Answer: False. Unless hunger can be classed as a feeling.

12. A sick cat prefers to bring up on a clear, hard surface such as a linoleum or wood floor.
    Answer: False. A nauseous cat will crawl on its paws and knees across a tile floor to make it onto the living room carpet before throwing up.

Scoring: if you answered 10 questions or more correctly, you are onto your cat and any day now, will be getting the upper hand; if you answered between six and nine questions correctly, you’ve had your cat for only the past three months and are still telling fellow workers in the mornings about the cute things it did last night; if you answered fewer than six questions correctly, your cat is smarter than you.

And if you answered all 12 questions correctly, your cat is still smarter than you.

By Jim Hagarty
2012

My family and I went public skating in a mall rink on Saturday.

I was pretty wobbly out there, not having strapped on my ancient blades in some time. And my skates actually are pretty old. Old enough that other skaters stop and remark, “OMG, what kind of skates are those?”

After a few shaky turns around the rink, I decided to sit on the players’ bench for a break. As I sat there and looked at the throng out on the frozen sheet of water, it occurred to me that I was the oldest skater there. At 61, in my normal, everyday life, I don’t feel that old, but skating that day with a rink full of younger folks, the idea that time is passing by took hold.

I looked down at my skates and then at the crowd and realized that, at 36 years of age, my skates were older than 95 per cent of the skaters out there. Then, looking at some of toddlers poking along like newborn calves on their shaky pins, struggling to stand, it came to me that the underwear I had put on that day was probably older than some of them.

Finally, rested up, I went back out and felt it coming back to me a bit, my skating was gradually improving. Maybe the fact that my blades are covered in rust accounted for some of my problems.

Then, a tall young man sporting a really nice Team Canada hockey jersey skated my way, and when he passed me, I stared at disbelief at the big number on the back of his sweater: 61.

Aw, c’mon, I sighed to myself in disgust. Really? There were not enough reminders of the passing of my years for me to see that day without a guy skating by with my age emblazoned on his sweater?

No other hockey sweaters on any other skaters, no other numbers. Just 61.

Father Time was outright mocking me now.

What a jerk!

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

If you happen to see my big cat,
The one that is ten pounds too fat.
Though he likes to roam.
Please send him home.
We need him to chase down a rat.

By Jim Hagarty

If I could be just half as smart
As the smartest guy in town,
Would I then be known as half as dumb
As the dumbest guy around?

Or would it be the dumbest guy
Would be half as smart as me?
And the smartest guy would then become
Twice as smart as the big dummy.

But if the smartest guy in town
Lost a thousand big brain cells,
Would I still be half as smart as him?
I’m not smart enough to tell.

And some day if I happen to
Outlive the town’s smartest guy,
But then fall sick with the same disease
And sadly, tragically die …

Would the dumbest guy in town become
The smartest guy just by chance?
Though no one is dumber than the big dumb ox,
Guess he would be the Town Smarty Pants.

By Jim Hagarty
2002

Here is a question Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud and Sherlock Holmes, I am certain, couldn’t answer if they worked together on it for a solid year without a break.

Why does a man with a fine, full head of thick, bushy, flowy, curly, cascady, wavy, shiny hair walk into his barber shop one day and ask for a buzz cut? Is it not equivalent to the owner of the lushest lawn in town calling in a man with a cultivator to rip it all up and leave his yard a mess of stones, stubble and sorry-looking sod?

Of course, the latter scenario would never happen whereas the former one is taking place in every town, village and city across the land many tragic times a day.

What is it with these guys? Has the weight of all those lovely locks been pressing down on some vital part of their brains all these years, leaving them unable to make a wise decision any more? Because denuding a scalp that is still capable of pushing out such full-bodied fur is an affront to the owners of heads which have long ago lost that ability. A naturally bald man, seeing a fully haired friend voluntarily shave his head, couldn’t be more shocked if he were a homeless wretch watching the richest tycoon in town burn his own palace to the ground.

It simply isn’t right and something should be done about it.

Many bald-headed men, who arrived at that state through no act of their own free will but by the uncompassionate hand of a mean and merciless Fate, spend many years of their adult lives trying to reverse the judgment of Nature. They squeeze their craniums into ill-fitting wigs, submit themselves to painful surgical procedures, douse their heads with chemicals of dubious origin and effectiveness, and pop wonder pills with unknown side effects to try to look like they did in their long-ago youth when a brush and a comb were not redundant hardware that sat on top of their dresser gathering dust along with their cuff links and tie clips.

As the years pass and they come to terms with the futility of trying to recreate what God has chosen to uncreate, they enter a new stage where the object is not to turn back the tide of time but to conceal its effects from the curious masses. This period might also be known as The Hat Years, when every description of hat, cap, toque and even helmet are sought out and put to use in the never-ending quest to avoid detection. Some glorious day, when he’s rounded third base and is heading for home, it just won’t matter any more and the bald man will begin to finally brandish his bare noggin with no trace of whimper or excuse.

Before that sunny day arrives, however, he is left with the job of learning to accept the fact that his visits to the hair salon have now become little more than courtesy calls, made to renew old friendships, and that his hairdresser performs more like a patomime artist than a coiffure as she goes through the motions of styling a head which has nothing left to style. She brings out clippers, scissors, combs, and brushes but often stands there in a trance, as though she can’t remember why she is holding them. It has been years since she finally gave up the charade of using a hair dryer to finish the job. Using such a device on a man with no hair would be like sending a pair of roller skates through a car wash.

It may be that some would say the bald man should be flattered to see fully haired friends shaving their heads voluntarily, that it somehow means that, far from feeling pity for their hair-challenged associates, these guys have been looking at them with envy all this time. People who believe this are the kind of folk who gobble up such prince-wants-to-be-pauper notions like kids laying waste to a box of sugar-coated breakfast cereal.

It may even be, others will opine, that men with hair who purposely have it all removed are simply trying to get in on that “bald is sexy” wisdom that has been sweeping the nation like an urban legend. If this has been the motivation of the buzz cutters, let it clearly be said that they will soon discover how erroneous has been this idea. In this man’s experience, crossing the line from hairness to bald-as-a-baby’s-buttness has not, on one single occasion, produced a long line-up of love-starved women waiting impatiently outside his bedroom entrance to have their every animal need satisfied by the hairless wonder reclining sexily on the other side of the door.

And the sudden strange turn this story has taken leads the writer to an even more disturbing question. What, in the name of Samson and Delilah, is society to do with the woman who shaves her head bald?

Close to tears, now, the author of this piece must stop to prevent a complete breakdown. He has barely the emotional strength left to issue this paraphrased plea:

What God has thought to treasure, let no man strive to plunder.

By Jim Hagarty
Renowned Terrible Limericker

There’s a bee in our backyard
That’s obese, a real tub of lard.
He can just barely fly.
Other bees pass him by.
“I’d lay off the honey, but it’s hard.”