The Cat

The Cat
By Don Jones
It is interesting how in life, things have a tendency to come full circle on us. A good example is my dad. Now dad was a farm boy that left home and went into the navy just before World War Two. He served for 22 years and around age 46 or so he decided to retired from the Navy. It was during those years of the early 1950’s, while he was still in the Navy and I was still a very young boy, I remember some of our trips from the Naval base to our grandmother’s house.

The journey took us on several dirt and gravel roads in middle Tennessee, to the old farm that dad had grown up at. It was here my dad would turn in to this temporary mad man, or so it seemed. If there was a stray cat wondering along the roads, he would try to hit the cat with the car, and run over it. My brother and I did not think to highly of dads radical departure of reason. Being kids of course who are you going to tell. Anyway, some times he would hit one and we would hear a thud, or he would miss and we would just smile that the cat had got away before the car could get it.

On some occasions he would almost lose control and my mother would yell at him for being so foolish. He would explain that those cats were just killing wild game birds and rabbits for sport and would not even eat their kill and deserved to be exterminated. Now to understand this strange behavior it is necessary to see thing from my dad’s point of view. He had spent his youth during the depression hunting birds and rabbits on the farm as a staple for food on the table when he was a boy and considered the cat a competitor as far as he was concerned.

Finally, dad retired and we all moved to the city and his cat killing days had ended. In the late 1968 dad worked for a garage as a mechanic, we boys had grown up and left home. Of course we had our house hold pet we had got from someone which was a Calico Cat. Dad accepted the fact that we were going to have a cat, as long as we took care of it. What he did not count on, was when we left home, we left the cat, and it fell to mom and dad to care for it. Being house broke the cat had won a special place at my dad’s feet and would cozy up to his feet, wrapping his body around his bare feet, resting there during the evening while he watched TV. My Dad had grown accustomed to the cat, and to the amazement of my brother and I, he would feed it Ice Cream every evening.

During the winter of 1968, there was a blizzard. And everyone was snowed in. When the roads were passable, dad got up to go to work. He opened the back door to let the cat out to take care of business. Then went about getting ready. When he got ready to leave he called the cat but heard nothing. He closed the door and got in the car and backed down the driveway to the road, when he looked forward for a moment, he saw something in the snow. The cat had found a nice dry spot to sit in under the car, just behind the back wheel. He had killed the cat. To his dismay, he was heart sick and greatly hurt, that he had ran over his beloved cat. I suspect that at that moment, he most likely, realized the pain he had created for may other cat owners, of years gone by. Sense that day, he has owned several pets, one of which was a small poodle, that was hit by lighting. When he saw the dog laying at the side of the road after being hit, he ran out to it, and administered mouth to mouth resuscitation and CPR reviving it, and it lived to die of old age.

As a pet first aid instructor for the Red Cross, I find it amazing he did everything right, long before it was even thought of or taught by the Red Cross.

What goes around really does come around to visit us again. All animal lovers can rest assured that there is divine justice, even for the cats.

Story ID:	2323
Written by:	Donald L. Jones (bio, contact, other stories)
Story type:	Family Memories
Writers Conference:	$500 2007 Family Memories Writing Project
Location:	Nashville Tennessee USA
Year:	1968
Person:	Family