The cat sat on the arm of the sofa. He had a very stern look of intent written all over him. He was crouching, staring at the overstuffed easy chair that was about five feet away. Very silent. Very intent. His tail just hanging from his body, idle except for the tip that was moving back and forth like a slow metronome, just half-an-inch from the sofa cushion.
He stared at the chair's arm. Nothing else that happened in the room mattered. His only intent was to jump to that chair from the sofa. He stared almost as if he were stalking some sort of prey that had eluded him up until now. A ten-inch long tiger, stalking its prey. After about ten minutes of this silence, the muscles in his body tightened even more than they already were. With a movement that epitomized the phrase, cat-like, he lunges toward the chair, almost as if he were going in slow motion. Springing from the sofa, front arms extended, back legs pushing him off, he leaps, flying through the air with grace and poise.
Then almost like one of the old Road Runner cartoons, he misses, missing the chair by a fraction of an inch. Clawing furiously at the material but not quite catching his nails on it, he slips and falls to the floor in a crumpled heap. Before that, it seemed like he was suspended in mid-air but now he lays there for a couple of seconds. He has a look on his face as if he is saying to himself, “What the hell just happened here?” He realizes that he didn't make it, and he slowly gets up and walked out of the room only to return later and try again.
This is just one example of some the bizarre things my Grandmother's cat, Patches, used to do. He was probably the funniest creature I have ever known. I’ve always loved animals because they are so natural and they are what they are. The funny things they do never seem to be forced and I liked being around Patches, simply because he was just so damned entertaining.
I’ve been around cats all my life. I had them as pets as a child and like anybody else who has a pet, people like to have cats around because they provide good company or, if for no other reason, than just to have another heartbeat in the house.
For as long as I can remember, my grandmother had cats roaming around. She never really had too many at one time, usually just one or two, but she always had them. And she spoiled them rotten. I always said that if there such a thing as reincarnation, I wanted to come back as a cat and live with my grandmother because not only did she cook especially for them, but they pretty much got away with everything. Their life basically was sleeping, eating, playing and sleeping some more and she adored them. Meanwhile, they were pampered like kings. I have to admit that I was more than a little jealous. Over the years, the different animals tended to blend in with each other so that I could remember some but not all of them. Then one day, Goldie and Patches arrived and left their mark on our lives.
Goldie was your typical golden and white cat and she was quite beautiful. Of course there is nothing cuter than a kitten but she was especially pretty. Everybody thought she reminded him or her of Morris the Cat from the television commercials, but I always thought she was much better looking. She was born with double-paws. In other words, it looked like her front paws were double in size as if she had two on each front leg. I thought it was a very unique feature that made her special.
While everyone thought Goldie was beautiful, Patches was also quite cute. But he was different somehow. It wasn’t like he was ugly or anything, far from it. He was your basic white cat with dark brown and black patch markings on his body. Thus the name, ‘Patches.’ He was thin as a rail but I always thought he had the most beautiful black eyes. Eyes that were very intent and always on alert, looking for something. I used to love to pick him up and have staring contests with him. Never once did his eyes waver from mine. He just stared and stared, looking very intent until I put him down. People didn’t make fun of Patches or anything like that but they just kind of accepted the fact that he was just kind of, there and he made a very good companion to Goldie.
My grandparent's lived in Jamaica Plain, Mass., which a part of Boston. They lived in a second floor apartment that had a long hallway from the kitchen to the front living room. Being two very active young kittens, they turned this hall into their private little raceway. They used to have a grand time running up and down this corridor chasing and nipping at each other. Because of Goldie's double paws, they also sounded like a herd of elephants and were especially loud during the evening. Since cats are nocturnal animals anyway, this went on pretty much every night. I remember watching late night TV late and hearing them come galloping along. They were very good at stopping at the right moment and sliding halfway down the hall. They were a lot of fun to watch. Most times, they would just end up in a heap of yellow, white and black, and they always looked like they were having a good time.
As Patches got older, the shakier he became. Whoever coined the phrase “nervous as a cat” most definitely had Patches in mind. He wasn't the type of cat that would suddenly spring up on your lap hoping to get petted. He didn’t like to be picked up and held unless it was on his terms. When my female cousins would visit, the first thing they wanted to do was to hold the cats. Goldie would go along with it and probably liked all the attention because it usually meant getting a good belly rub. Meanwhile, Patches would have a look on his face of absolute stark terror. His ears would be backwards, pressed flush against his head and his eyes would be bulging out as far as they go without falling out of his head. Ironically, he would not scratch and try to claw his way out of their grip but would just be kind of be frozen in this position until he was put down. Once he was put down, he then made his escape and disappeared for a couple of hours.
He would just as soon just sit in the corner, keeping a watchful eye on the world around him. This is not to say he didn’t like the occasional back-rub as well but I always felt that he preferred being on his own. Like all cats, the main thing he did was sleep, mostly in a sunny spot. When did this, he kind of lost all inhibitions and would stretch out as far as he could get, mainly on his back. It actually looked kind of painful, but relaxing at the same time. It was as if he magically managed to stretch himself to look like he was six feet long.
After a while, my grandparents moved to Brockton, which is about forty miles south of Boston. They bought a house and naturally Goldie and Patches came along for the big ride. They were very amusing when they first arrived, checking out the new digs. They also quickly established their own little territories. Patches liked to be down in the cellar but also liked the living room quite a bit. Goldie had the run of the den and the upstairs area as well. This is where Patches would continually try to jump from the couch to the chair.
I witnessed these episodes more than once. For some reason, Patches just could not complete the jump as much as he tried. And God knows he tried. Some times he made but most times, he didn’t. One time, he actually hung by one claw one time until I got up to help him. I often wondered if he had a depth perception problem with his sight.
As much as I liked Patches, I couldn’t help but tease him. I would be in the living room reading a magazine or watching TV and out of the corner of my eye, I would see Patches walking very slowly, almost slithering into the room. He would crouch down, looking around, very aware of his surroundings. But, he would be literally shaking as well. Twitching would be more like it. It looked as though he came was coming off a three-day bender and was still trying to find his way around. I wouldn’t do anything but watch him. When the time was right, all I had to do was move my foot about a half an inch and he would literally jump straight up in the air and bolt out of the room. Up and zoom! Just like the old cartoons where the coyote would be suspended for a moment before he took off. I know it was a little nasty on my part but his reaction was funny as hell.
In spite of that, he kind of took a liking to me. I always paid attention because I always felt kind of sorry for him. During that time, I slept over their house on weekends. Since he liked the cellar, he became my foot warmer. The unfortunate thing about it though was that, when he slept on my bed, he liked to sleep right on my feet and if I moved or disturbed him in the slightest way, he would give me a look that would stop a clock. As if to say “Who the hell are you and why are you in my domain?” I would just look at him and say ‘Excuse me, your majesty” and he would put his head back down and fall asleep again.
He also had a very nasty habit of sleeping on my chest. Yes, on my chest. Why he found this so pleasurable was beyond me but he did it all the time. I would be asleep on my back and he would crawl up on my chest to rest. Maybe he liked the fact that my chest would go up and down. The thing was though; he would sleep with his face about an inch away from mine. So, when I woke up, the very first thing I would see would be this two big cat eyes staring back at me. Naturally this would startle the hell out of me and probably accounts for any anxieties I have today.
I have so many good memories of Patches. One of them involved the time we took him to the vets for his check-up. It was obvious that Patches didn’t want anything to do with this and when they tried to put him in his traveling box, he put his feet out along the edges of the entrance, not allowing them to put him in the box. We would remove the front two paws and get them in the hole and while we tried to get the back paws in, the front paws would reappear and block it again. Once we got the front paws in again, the back paws would come back. This went on for about five minutes before somebody realized that if two people held his legs at the same time, we would be able to get him into the box.
Once we got him into the box and started on the trip to the vets, Patches, thinking he was probably doomed, literally started moaning. But moaning in a way that sounded like he was saying “Oh no!” He would say this very slowly so it sounded like “Ooooooh nooooo!” Since we were taking him to a vet in Boston, we listened to this throughout the whole trip. He would quiet down a bit and just meow but then he would pause as if he realized that something dreadful was happening and would continue with moaning.
Patches was born with a hernia on his belly, which really was just a little lump on his underside. It was no big deal and it never really bothered him at all. When we brought him in, the vet naturally wanted to see if this lump would be detrimental to Patches health so he examined it. He squeezed it while he doing so. When he squeezed it, Patches would make a loud meow noise. But, the very second you stopped squeezing, Patches would stop meowing. It didn’t look like Patches was in any pain at all. He just kind of stood there and let the doctor do his thing.
I think the vet however had a somewhat strange of humor. Either that he was a bit of a sadist because once he realized that Patches could stop meowing on a dime, he squeezed it again. Again, when he stopped, Patches stopped. So it sounded a little like this;
Squeeze
Meeeow
Squeeze
Meeeow
Sque--
Meeo---
Sq---
Me---
S---
M----
I know all this sounds a little cruel but, like I said, it didn’t look like Patches was in any sort of pain. He just stood there with almost no visible emotion or movement except for his mouth opening to meow. I think that’s what made it so amusing to me He was like a statue with a moveable jaw.
The vet did find something a tad wrong with him but it wasn’t serious. It did mean however, that Patches had to take a pill to cure it. It literally took three of us to give this pill to him. One had to hold him down. This was of course after we finally caught him. While that person also tried to hold his feet together, another one had to open his jaw while yet another one tried to jam the pill into his mouth. You couldn’t just pop it into his mouth because by this point, Patches would be clawing, spitting and hissing with the best of them. He was also too smart for the old put-it-in-his food routine so we had to go through this until he felt better.
My grandfather’s favorite chair was his recliner. He always had one and it was his chair. When I was a little kid, my cousins and I would vie for the privilege of sitting in Grandpa’s chair. Of course this would be while he wasn’t in the room because as soon as he showed up, we would vacate it. He wouldn’t demand it but would instead, tease us into thinking we doing something wrong. None times out of ten, we were the ones who sat in it.
Grandpa loved sleeping in the chair especially after he had a couple of beers. He was a heavy smoker and he always had a cigarette in his hand. For some reason though, he always seemed to know when he was going to fall asleep in his chair because he would have a cigarette dangling out of his mouth but it would never be lit. How he knew this, I don’t know. I always thought it was just pure dumb luck that he never set the house on fire.
But there he was, sitting in the chair, cigarette dangling and jumping up and down every time Grandpa snored. Goldie and Patches found this cigarette completely fascinating and would sit on the back of his chair playfully trying to bat this cigarette out of his mouth. Once and a while, they would miss and accidentally brush against Grandpa’s cheek. When this happened, he would try to brush it away like a bug had landed and Patches and Goldie would pause and wait. Once Grandpa relaxed, they would start in again. They never did get the thing out of his mouth but they certainly tried their best
Patches became a very good friend to me and it seemed like I was the only one he would allow to pet and hold. Of course, I couldn’t hold him for too long. Like I said, he liked to do things on his own terms. He’s long gone now but I have some great memories of the cat that couldn’t jump
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