Cat-tastrophe!

Ohhhhh, there once was a cat, and his name was Jed! Poor Mountaineer barely kept his kittens fed... Sorry, wrong cat, wrong song.

This is a story about my brother, and a cat. It's mostly about the cat, but it involves me, my mother and father, my friends, my church, my school... everything. It involves everything.

So, where to begin?

I lived on Byron Rd, Howell, Michigan. We got a cat. It was a black cat with white markings on it... I think. I say I think because, the cat didn't stick around for very long. It was super skittish, but, in general, it was like most other cats. Just a normal, everyday, cat. Which is to say, it ate, slept, shat, and purred occasionally.

And then one day, the cat was gone. Like, we went to look for the cat, and literally, it was gone. Found out later on that my brother had opened the door to go outside and the cat had bolted out the door. At that point, living out in the country, you chalk it up as a loss. The cat is either going to come home for food and shelter, or it isn't. Cats eat field mice, and other critters. Other critters eat cats. Sorry but that's the way it goes.

I'm gonna say this now. Some people have outdoor cats, even here in my neighborhood in Florida (where I now live), and outdoor cats are just feral cats. You might feed them, but they're not yours. You don't take care of them, you don't let them in your house, you don't take them to the vet. You're just buying a cat, leaving it outside to become feral and you're feeding it. You really don't need to feed them. There are thousands of mice "your" cat will eat if you don't toss a cat of kitty-con-carne on the ground every now and then.

Oh, and another point, whenever a fox or coyote comes into our area, all of the sudden all the cats go missing, everyone is putting pics of their cats on the mailbox, and then, eventually, people give up, and they go buy another cat, and the fox or coyote has moved on. Your cats did not go on vacation to Florida... well, let me re-phrase that cause, yeah... yeah, they did. They went on vacation and didn't come back. That's what Florida was made for. Vacation land.

Anyways, so... the cat is gone. Bye-Bye-Baby. Gone-Gone-Baby? I don't know. It wasn't a kitten; it was a cat.

So, summer ends, fall begins, we have fall break, winter break/vacation. This is when I was like... ten, I think. Maybe older or younger. Ugh. So long ago. Anyways, first day of school back from winter break, I remember because it was WET. The snow was melting, my pant legs were sopping wet. I sit down on the bus, ready to go back to my safe haven, school. This was where I could get away from the bullies who just wanted to take offense to everything I said, slap me, whip me, beat me with a belt until I was black and blue, stand me in the corner for hours upon hours, have me open and close, lock and unlock a door for ten to twelve hours straight... You know. School. Oh, sorry. I said bullies. I meant my mother and father.

So, I got on the bus, sat down... next stop is Brent and Christy's house. They get on. They go past me... Christy then turns around and yells at me. I turn around, with a smile on my face because, I'm expecting niceties, she's always... mostly cordial to me. We're kids. We "went out" a time or two which is saying, "you wanna go out with me" and the other person says "sure" and then a week later, you break up. But in that week of time, you can say, you had a girlfriend, rather than a friend who was a girl. So... I'm expecting her to tell me she got something awesome for Christmas, or, she wants to come over and hang out... something other than, "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID!"

Now, thinking back on this moment, I believe someone overheard this exchange, and it became the premise for the entire "I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER" series of books and films, so if anyone is looking to throw some royalties Christy's way, or even my way, shoot, I'm not gonna send that money back! You know what I'm saying?

So I look at her and I'm like... What the fuck did I do? What the fuck did I do? I shrug. I have no idea. I ate a bunch of Oreos the day before and said my brother ate them... but she wouldn't know about that.

"OH! Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about! You KNOW what you did!"

Oh, No... No, I don't. I tell her that. Heh, she was quite possibly the ONLY girl I ever talked to, for uh... ever. Surely the only girl I ever spoke back to. I told her I had no idea what she was talking about.

For the rest of the bus ride to school, I got to hear, third party through the grape vine, about how I tortured, maimed, mutilated, dismembered, and killed... a cat. Who's cat? I don't know. Apparently neither did anyone else. Where did this happen? Nobody knows. Details people! We want details! Well, other than the gory details and the rumor that I skinned the cat and wore its fur on my face for a time, and ran through the hills howling at the moon, there was little other detail involved.

Now, in hind sight, this story made me sound like I was a total bad-ass. Me? Ultimate geek? Torturing animals? Ugh, back then it would have made me sound edgy, dangerous, a real bad-boy. Today it just makes it sound like I was a deranged kid planning a shooting or something. A quick note about mental illness. Mental illness is NOT something to be ashamed of, or teased about. If you need help, get help. It's just a phone call away. On the flip side, for all of us who are not mentally ill, we make fun of those with mental illness, or shame them, because it's OUR WAY of coping with things we don't understand, and we think are ABNORMAL. Illness, mental illness, is ABNORMAL. It's not something to be proud of either. Mental stability is what we all need. Aaaaand, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

I was not a bad-ass. Nothing you could say or do, would make me out to be a bad-ass. I didn't become a bad-ass military vet until much later in life (LOL). So, without the details, the shame and stigma of being a cat torturing a-hole, only lasted until lunch. By the time I got on the bus for the ride home, nobody said anything to me. Not a word. No "Hello", no, "Hey, how ya doing? How was lunch? How many wedgies did you get today?" Nope. Nothing. Suffice to say, everything was back to normal.

So... was that it? Probably not. My cat story and Christy's cat story may not be linked. I can't imagine how they would be... but maybe things got stuck in a time warp. Imagine if I built a time machine, went back in time, the bad-ass that I am now, married my mom, and killed the cat. I;d be my own dad too, which, if memory serves me correctly, that sci-fi movie has already been done quite a few times. Almost made it into Back to the future. Way to hit on your MOM Marty!

Well, the time machine never panned out, so... this is what happened.

Schools out. Summer vacation is just beginning. Nothing like sucking up your free time like... SUMMER CAMP and SUNDAY SCHOOL! YAY! Summer school was actually put together by the church, and I attended exactly ONE DAY before my mom and dad took me out, saying that the church was severely trying to brain wash both me and my brother. It was quite comical. I actually enjoyed just sitting there, listening to someone else read passages from the bible and then talk about them, tell me how they related to every day life, and how goodness existed in everything we did, saw, ate and drank. Unfortunately, Jesus was a trigger word for my father who (so it always seemed to me) thought that the "anti-violence against your own wife and children" theme was a sticking point, and every time they mentioned something like that, he took it personally. And he should have. what an asshole.

So, on the way out, as we're getting back into the van, my brother bolts for the edge of the woods. I'm like, "what the fuck?" My mom is yelling at him. My dad is like, "hey, if you're not in the van in the next six seconds, you can walk home," and he meant it. He loved torturing us. But my mother and brother were faster than that, and in five seconds, they had climbed back into the van, with an extra passenger... THE CAT.

Have you ever come up behind a loved one and put your arms around them, or gave them a kiss on the neck, only to find it's someone you don't know? Heh, just keep that thought in your head.

The cat, was our cat. There was NO FUCKING WAY, the cat was not our cat. The cat was exactly our cat. One hundred percent. Alex had found our beloved and long-lost kitty and had grabbed it and was destined to bring it back home... And he did.

Now, this is where this goes from being a loving story of a boy and his cat being reunited and riding off into the sunset, and turns into a story where the sun explodes and disintegrates all life in the solar system.

We get home. The cat is all purring and rubbing on everyone. I have really bad allergies, to the point where I have to take daily injections. Thanks mom. So, I wasn't petting or getting rubbed on. Like I said, this was mostly my brother's cat.

Let's say, an HOUR has passed. This is from my perspective. I'll fill you in on the rest, in a moment.

So... I think I was downstairs. I hear screaming. The kind of screaming you might imagine accompanies your dad sticking a skinning knife into your mother's guts repeatedly. I wasn't going upstairs. I ran into our laundry room, and heard the front door open and slam closed, and then again. and then again. I look out through one of the only two subterranean windows in the basement, and see something black fly through the air.

The black ball of fur hits the ground and then, like a cruise missile, darts back towards the house. There's an explosion and the cat does a 360, runs across the yard, hits a towering tree, and is a good fifty feet up and out across a low hanging branch in zero-point-two seconds. I hear another explosion to my right. It's coming from our front porch. What the fuck is happening?

A third explosion shakes the house. The back HALF of the cat separates from the front and spirals into the weeds. The front half falls shortly thereafter. My mother goes out with a trash bag and I'm still in shock as to what in the fuck just happened. What in the literal fuck.

This is what I learn, later on, from my mother...

Alex is sitting in the front room, petting the kitty. Everything is fine. Rainbows and unicorns are outside playing in a steady rain of diamonds and pearls. The cat looks up at my brother, and then POUNCES ON HIS FACE, and starts viciously biting him in the eys, and raking its back claws on his throat. Its claws are securely fastened on his head like an alien face hugger from the same named movie.

My mother screams. My dad runs into the room. My dad grabs the cat and literally has to unhook it's claws out of my brother's head while he is now getting raked on the arms and hands, trying to protect his eyes and face, and neck. Blood is flying everywhere.

The cat comes loose. My mom grabs Alex to inspect the damage. The cat wriggles loose and jumps up and attacks him AGAIN! Like my mom is standing there, like, "Oh sweetie, what did the cat do, lemme see," and the cat is like "Fuck you! Parkor! I'm not done yet! Fuck your face!"

At some point, the cat is dislodged again, and taken to the front door and thrown outside. Just as I witnessed, the kitty-cruise-missile came whistling right back in and actually makes it into the house after being slammed in the door TWICE. It attacks my brother, FOR THE THIRD TIME.

I don't know who got the hunting rifle from my parent's bedroom. The cat was thrown out again, and the first shot seemed to change its mind about attacking, and it went to the tree. My mother told me, the first shot had actually hit the cat and mortally wounded it. She says if it hadn't hit the cat, the cat probably would have attacked again, and kept on attacking. She said it just didn't seem right. It was an unprovoked attack.

Laer on, my mother would sit me down and give us a quick explanation. Animals are animals. They do stupid shit sometimes because they lack the intelligence of humans. If they go crazy, like a dog attacking its owner, or children, it has to be put down. If a dog attacks you because you did something wrong, that's on you. Dogs are smart. Cats are less smart.

My dad attempted the same thing during one of his drug induced rambling lectures, in which he explained why Obi-Wan-Kenobi was called Obi-Wan, because it means "The Only One... Kenobi" and other nonsensical shit he used to teach us, as if it were his own personal Mein Kampf.

Reality was, the cat had attacked my brother, so viciously and so violently, and would not stop, my dad shot it. Whether he hit it the first time, or not, it went across the road, and my dad made sure it would not come back, at any point, ever again, to attack again.

It's a tragic end to this story. I haven't really thought about it much until this point but, who knows what was going on from the cat's perspective. What if? It's the what if's in life, that kill us. You can't count on the what if's. I like playing devil's advocate, so I'll justify the cats actions by assuming the what if's stance.

What if the cat got away, found another cat, and had babies in the woods out back behind the church? What if, the cat was fine with being petted and getting fed, but then... what if it suddenly remembered the baby kitties? And Alex... the boy who had cat-napped her! Revenge!

Eh, but who knows. Cats can't talk. If they could, they'd probably just talk some nonsense or mumble meow-meow-purr-purr-meow, or some shit like that.

And that was the Cat-tastrophe, which also reminds me of a thoroughly disgusting incident that took place when I was fourteen... stay tuned for more! ---That... that's a saying from... when I was kid.... it means, keep the radio on the same station. Don't change that dial! Ugh.---